More stale NY Times headlines. These from May 31, 2007:

Jihadist Groups Fill a Palestinian Power Vacuum

The story, of course, is as the headline describes. This is the second paragraph, about a raid on a Gaza Internet cafe:

“The gunmen tied their hands, then forced them to stand at the stairs while they broke all the screens, and then the server and the television and the photcopier,” said the owner, Hamad, of the attack a few months ago. “Then they burned all 36 computers.”

Stir in G.O.P. As Ex-Senator Moves to Run

This story is about Fred Thompson deciding to decide toenter the Presidential race as the conservative’s conservative. Mr. Thompson, notably, took every oportunity he had to vote in support of Internet censorship, for the CDA in 1995 and COPA in 1998. Both have since been struck by the Supreme Court.

So, in a way, the two stories are remarkably similar. An insurgent force, percieving a power vacuum on the extreme religious conservative side, rush in to try to grab power.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.