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Sixteen members of an Ohio Amish sect are set to go on trial in federal court Monday in Cleveland. The defendants are accused of violating U.S. hate crime laws by cutting the hair and beards of detractors, a humiliating reprimand for the devout.

Chin hair, according to Jacob Troyer, an Amish craftsman in Holmes County, Ohio, is a rite of passage for young Amish men.

"When they join church to get baptized, they grow a beard up to the bottom of the ear. They usually have an inch or so of space there. When they marry, they grow that together," Troyer says.

Sometimes you just walk into a metaphor.

Greetings from Tampa, where that old phrase "the calm before the storm" has never been more appropriate.

Tropical storm Isaac is now looking like it will make landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana east to the Florida Panhandle. And when it gets there Tuesday or Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center is warning, Isaac could be a Category 2 hurricane.

It's hard to know if 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a target or collateral damage.

Al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was killed last fall at a barbeque with friends. His father, Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida supporter and also American-born, was killed in a drone strike two weeks earlier in Yemen.

The two of them, plus one more man, now make three Americans — three of thousands — who are believed to have been killed by America's top secret drone warfare program.