I got an e-mail petition from a family friend that reads "I just cancelled MSNBC and I'm boycotting their advertisers. They cancelled Keyes without reason. He is a true friend to Israel. Join me in protest and click here," and it gives a website. Needless to say, the family friend is a rabid Israel supporter.

My first question is, of course, how do you cancel one channel? MSNBC is not a premium channel that you can pick and choose a la carte. But of course, that's not the biggest question. My biggest question is what made her think that Alan Keyes was being let go because of his views on Israel, because that seems to be her motivation for acting on his release? He could've been let go because he was perpetually late to his show or made racist remarks to some African-Americans on staff or maybe he was rude to the president of the network or sexually harassed one of the female staffers -- or, in what is usually the case, maybe he just wasn't getting the ratings that the channel wanted him to get. It was most likely something completely unrelated to his political views, yet action is being called to protest MSNBC for his firing and people are getting riled up simply because he held a pro-Israel viewpoint.

At what point do we recognize the person for his faults and not his views, and at what point do the "financial repercussions" end? If there were a president in power who was anti-Israel, would the rabidly pro-Israel Jews stop paying taxes because they didn't support him on that issue?