Mainstream goes silent
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Joel Mowbray
March 2, 2006

Unbeknownst to most Americans, federal prosecutors opened their case last week in the terrorism trial of a young American who studied under two Taliban-tied imams in California and whose grandfather was Pakistan's minister of religion in the 1980s.

The trial of Hamid Hayat, 23, is neither taking place in the dark of night nor in a military tribunal from which the media is barred. It is in an open California courtroom, the very kind that has been overrun for trials of the likes of Scott Peterson and O.J. Simpson. Yet in the month of February, the New York Times had exactly one story on the alleged terror cell in Lodi, Calif. The Washington Post had none. And on the cable news channels, the trial has received scant attention.

Not that the trial suffers from lack of excitement. Mr. Hayat confessed that he had attended terror training in Pakistan, the video of which jurors saw last week. An FBI informant who had befriended the defendant -- while wearing a wire -- testified that Mr. Hayat would offer praise for "martyrs" and the Taliban, while professing disgust for America. The rest