Women in Saudi Arabia may have felt a bit of hope for their personal liberties when Saudi King Abdullah recently declared that they could vote and run in some local elections in 2015.
But whatever symbolic value that limited move in the direction of freedom may have had, it was surely wiped out just days later when a court found a woman in Saudi Arabia "guilty" of driving an automobile.
Worse still, the woman, Shaima Ghassaniya, was cruelly sentenced to 10 lashes for her supposed "crime" of driving.
The United States may not be a perfect country. In fact, no country ever has been.
But we appreciate our nation's liberties all the more when we read about nations where the most fundamental human rights of a huge portion of the population are systematically and sometimes even brutally denied.