The hyper-alarmists at Fox News can’t go a single day without manufacturing a new horror over which to panic. If it isn’t Obama’s Peace Corps operatives coming to collect your guns, or immigrant farm workers selling crack to your children, it’s identity thieves laying in wait for people buying health insurance. And now there is a new fear causing the curvy couch potatoes on Fox & Friends to cower in their studio/bunker.

This morning Fox News reporter Heather Nauert reported that a YMCA in St. Paul, Minnesota has succumbed to Sharia Law in an attempt to promote Islamic terrorism. Well, more precisely, they have set aside one hour a week to offer basic swimming lessons to Muslims girls in an environment where they can observe the modesty dictated by their faith. But it’s really the same thing, isn’t it?

Nauert whipped up the standard Fox News fear machine to frighten their dimwitted viewers over something that most people would regard as a practical safety measure and a fun leisure activity. But to Fox it’s a foreboding preamble to catastrophe. Says Nauert…

“Well the minority becoming the majority at one community pool. Sharia law is now changing everything. A YMCA in Minneapolis-St. Paul is starting a swim group for Muslim girls but special considerations have to be made to keep with their religious beliefs. Now this means during the one-hour class, the pool is being shut down, the men’s locker room is being locked, and female lifeguards are being brought in. Similar classes are now starting at towns across the Midwest. We’ll keep watching this story for you.”

Aside from the fact that learning to swim in Minnesota, the land of a thousand lakes, is practically a mandatory public safety measure for all residents, especially children, Fox News is escalating the fear factor by injecting the specter of Sharia Law “changing everything.”

However, this swimming class has nothing to do with any law. The program is being offered by a local, non-profit, Christian organization and no one is required to participate. It may, in fact, prove popular with girls from other faiths whose parents would prefer that their daughters be separated from boys while learning to swim.

True to form, Fox News turns anything they can into a reason for outrage and dread. It is their purpose for being. And it is particularly noticeable when they can combine it with overt racism and anxiety over terror. This episode may not rival Fox’s idiotic story about terrorist Boob Bombs, but it comes close, and it strikes a sadder note when it is directed at harming kids.