BlackFive

Remind me again which team supports us again.

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Pakistan's federal minorities minister, a Christian, was gunned down in this capital city Wednesday in the second killing this year of a senior government official who had spoken out against the nation's stringent blasphemy laws.

The assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti represented another severe blow to Pakistan's beleaguered moderates, whose voices are increasingly drowned out by those of violent Muslim hardliners. The shooting came two months after the killing of Punjab province governor Salman Taseer, who, like Bhatti, argued that laws making insults to Islam's prophet Muhammad a capital crime were wrongly used as tools to persecute religious minorities.

It is tougher every day to look at either Afghanistan or Pakistan and give a rat's ass. Absent nukes in Pakistan, I would have to say that the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" strategy would look pretty damn good.