Fox News's token Democrat on Outnumbered, Kirsten Powers, has had just about enough of Barack Obama's silence on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. For instance, when Obama held a joint press conference Friday with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Obama just stood there and didn't even condemn the murders of a dozen Christian refugees who were thrown from a migrant ship by Muslims on April 15:

As Renzi was questioned about the incident, Obama was mute on the killings. He failed to interject any sense of outrage or even tepid concern for the targeting of Christians for their faith. If a Christian mob on a ship bound for Italy threw 12 Muslims to their death for praying to Allah, does anyone think the president would have been so disinterested?

We guess that what makes Powers a "liberal" on Team Fox is that she merely accuses Obama of not condemning the murders, rather than saying he planned them.

Now, we realize that what we're about to say will sound to Fox viewers like "making excuses for Muslim persecution of Christians," but what the hell: Yes, murder is bad, regardless of the motivation; religiously motivated murders are especially horrible because the killers think they're doing the bidding of their Imaginary Friend in the sky. But in her eagerness to paint this as a clear-cut case of the Muslim war on Christians (and to accuse Obama of overlooking it), Powers is mute on a few details herself, although they're easily found in the Daily Beast piece she links to: Probably most importantly, she doesn't mention that the Christians were thrown overboard in the middle of a panic while the rickety, overcrowded "ship" -- an inflatable rubber raft carrying 105 people, actually -- was sinking. While the Christians prayed, several Muslims told them to stop, because they were praying to the wrong God for deliverance, and then the Muslims threw the dozen people overboard.

And yes, the 15 survivors being prosecuted in Italy for the murders were indeed charged with "multiple aggravated murder motivated by religious hate." But then, there's also context, which has an annoying habit of getting in the way of a good clearcut atrocity narrative. For one thing, even the head of the Vatican’s Foundation for Migrants, Monsignor Giancarlo Perego, cautioned that the killings may have been more the result of a “moment of fury” in the middle of a sinking boat, rather than organized persecution of Christians, telling the Italian press, "We need not to exaggerate the facts and turn this into religious hate."

Damn it, when is the Vatican going to stop turning a blind eye to the Muslim genocide against Christians?

Also not mentioned by Powers: this wasn't an entire ship full of Muslims throwing the Christian passengers into the water. It was a seriously terrified bunch of refugees who suddenly found themselves dealing with 15 zealots among them who were bent on murdering people in the middle of a disaster that could kill all of them:

In an interview with La Repubblica, one of the survivors said, “They seemed crazy, they were out of control. They just grabbed the boy and threw him in the water because he was praying. We tried to stop them but they killed many,” the witness said. “We made a human chain with all of our hands so they couldn’t push more people overboard.”

Now, the piece doesn't say whether the people who linked arms to save themselves and their fellow passengers from the madmen were Christian, Muslim, or a mixture of both (Oh, that is silly -- let's just assume they were all Christians, because Muslims have no regard for human life and would never rescue Christians, right?), but we suppose maybe it matters that they were resisting the murderers, not joining them.

Still, it was pretty cowardly of Barack Hussein Obama not to condemn this clearcut case of premeditated persecution against Christians, even if it wasn't quite so clearcut or even premeditated.

There's more in Powers's dumb op-ed -- the ritual condemnation of Obama for "lecturing" Christians about the Crusades at the National Prayer Breakfast, for instance, as well as a litany of other Muslim crimes against Christians. But no matter how much Obama actually does condemn those who "seek to hijack religion for their own murderous ends" and says that faith should never be "used as a weapon" -- which is what he said at that Prayer Breakfast -- he's really just turning a blind eye to the very special persecution of Christians, because he just has to go and speak out against all religiously motivated hatred, when the only kind that matters is the Muslim flavor. We understand, of course, Powers is especially sensitive to persecution of Christians because she used to be an atheist, and no doubt persecuted a few herself, as one does, until she actually met Jesus in person.

Also, we'd just like to note that, in her selective use of news clippings, Kirsten Powers has once again proven, just as she did when she accused Obama of trying to "destroy" Fox News, that she truly is working at just the right news outlet for her talents. She has a new book coming out, too. It's called The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech. We bet that one will simply be LOADS of fun to fact-check. Maybe we'll read something cheery instead, like Conrad's tale of high-seas adventure, Lord Jim.

[USA Today / Daily Beast / BBC / CBS News]