Something Stupid This Way Comes

Micheal Scheuer plays with fire:

Surprisingly, Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Whereas Bush saw a world of Muslims yearning to betray their God for Western secularism, Obama gazes upon a globe that he regards as largely carnivore-free and believes that remaining threats can be defused by semantic warfare; just stop saying "War on Terror" and give talks in Turkey and on al-Arabiyah television, for example.

Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards." Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?

Barack Obama is graciously willing to bet your life on his ideology, a matter of breath-taking arrogance, immaturity, and intellectual desolation, but a position we've come to recognize as his status quo.

Scheuer stops just short of stating that Obama is immoral or amoral; perhaps to avoid inflaming those who would see the President's willingness to purposefully gamble "the loss of major cities and tens of thousands of countrymen" as justification for what Obama's mentors would have glibly described in younger days as "direct action."

It is a dangerous rhetorical game he suggests, and one that other loose cannons may be emboldened to parrot with every dangerous move this incompetent Administration makes.

Fox Rejects Obama Request for News Conference Airtime

They no doubt decided that one prime-time airing of "Lie to Me" was enough.

Hostile Takeover

Confidential sources close to the White House have confirmed that President Obama was indeed on Air Force One today as it attempted to land in New York, but the flight was turned away three times by ground fire originating from Bank of America shareholders.

White House Orders Air Force One to Strafe Manhattan; Obama "Furious"

How incredibly stupid:

President Obama's White House was forced to issue an apology Monday after a photo opportunity gone badly wrong — an Air Force 747 plane did a low flyover over Lower Manhattan, prompting terrified citizens to flee from their offices and high-profile accusations of government insensitivity in the post 9/11 era.

White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera issued a brief statement saying he was too blame.

"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," he said. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, its clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused."

The panic started Monday morning when a backup 747 known as Air Force One when the president is aboard flew by Lower Manhattan with a U.S. fighter jet closely following, rattling windows and causing some limited evacuations.

Hot Air has several video clips gathered by panicked citizens; judge for yourself if the evacuations or the terror the flight caused as the huge 747 made aggressive high-speed banked turns just above the skyline was in any way "limited."

President Obama, of course, is furious. I rather doubt that he was directly in the loop about the photo op beforehand, but he is certainly taking the heat for it nonetheless, and by the rules the game established by his own supporters over the past eight years, deservedly so.

Regardless of whether or Obama was personally involved in this decision, he is the head of the branch of government that made this decision, and if we've learned anything from his most vocal supporters, it is that the President doesn't have to directly participate in an act to be fully culpable for any adverse reaction.

If President Bush is to blame for torture, the recession, and trumping up fake WMDs to start a preemptive war as the left has howled for years, then President Obama has earned the "right" to take the blame for this debacle and every other than can be tangentially be blamed on his watch.

Jimmy Carter's Cry for Help

Jimmy Carter needs to be disarmed:

I have used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own two handguns, four shotguns and three rifles, two with scopes. I use them carefully, for hunting game from our family woods and fields, and occasionally for hunting with my family and friends in other places. We cherish the right to own a gun and some of my hunting companions like to collect rare weapons. One of them is a superb craftsman who makes muzzle-loading rifles, one of which I displayed for four years in my private White House office.

But none of us wants to own an assault weapon, because we have no desire to kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives. That’s why the White House and Congress must not give up on trying to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, even if it may be politically difficult.

President Carter doesn't go on to mention precisely what kind of firearms he owns or what calibers they are chambered for, but I feel confident asserting that every single firearm he owns, in every caliber he owns, has been used to kill people, and I suspect we can include police officers wearing bullet-resistent vests in that tally. I'm equally confident that weapons strikingly similar to what Carter owns can be directly linked to some of the worst mass killings in American history, most of which did not use "assault rifles."

Carter claims that he has no desire to " kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives."

But can we really trust him?

After all, Carter admits to owning two handguns, and it was with two handguns that Seung-Hui Cho committed 32 murders at Virginia Tech before taking his own life, and Jiverly Wong recently used two handguns to kill 13 befor taking his own life in Binghampton, New York.

Carter also admits to owning an arsenal of four shotguns, and it was a pump-shotgun that Eric Harris fired 25 times at Columbine High school; his perverse partner Dylan Klebold was found with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun beside his body as well.

As for Carter's scoped rifles, why are his any different than the weapons used by Charles Whitman in his Texas bell tower attack that left 14 killed and 32 wounded?

Perhaps it is safest to err on the side of caution and view Carter's angry letter to the editor as a final cry for help before he embarks on his own killing spree.

Jimmy Carter owns weapons have been used in more mass killing sprees than the assault weapons that that the former president is somehow convinced contain a malevolent soul, and Carter's record of incompetence has been unmercifully skewered for three decades as being one of the most incompetent Presidents in American history, giving him a far greater reason to go on a random killing spree than almost any mass shooter in American history.

Perhaps America does need more gun control.

Let's start with James Earl Carter.

Update: Jimmy has killed before, shooting his sister's cat. Don't profilers claim that animal cruelty is one sign of a sociopath?

Barack Obama Hates Brown People

The Nation has always been a bit "off" as a conspiracy-minded forerunner of the Huffington Post, and is roughly as credible.

As if to prove that point, one of their writers, John Nichols, is attempting to preemptively blame swine-flu deaths on Republicans who voted against the bloated $787 billion-dollar "stimulus" bill Democrats in the House and Senate approved with near lock-step conformity without reading.

For all these Democrats knew at the time, David Obey could have inserted a $900 million appropriation for swine flu research in Mexican facilities that went awry and created this never-before-seen avian-swine-human H1N1 hybrid. Democrats would have voted lock-step to approve that as well, but do you think Nichols would have blamed Democrats for it?

Of course not.

It's also a fact that Barack Obama actually shook hands with a noted Mexican archaeologist who died of the flu the next day.

If Obama had been a Republican President instead of a Democrat, you can rest assured Nichols and his fellow conspiracy theorists at The Nation,and the Democratic Underground message boards would have been buzzing about the racist Republican attempt to eradicate Democrat-voting minority cultures with a genetically-targeted virus.

Afterward, Kanye West would find a second-rate awards show to declare "Barack Obama hates brown people," and Naomi Wolf would use the occasion to once again declare that it was evidence of a fascist coup, probably orchestrated by Blackwater and Karl Rove, and no one on the hivemind left would dispute her.

But Barack Obama is a Democrat, and is therefore always blameless, so the leftists who need an outrage-of-the-week have found another (rather creative) way to blame Republicans for a natural event.

I can only imagine next week they'll find a way to blame the GOP for missing sunspots.

No doubt, we'll find out Dick Cheney had them waterboarded.

Letter to an Ignorant Hero

It is more than a little sad that a man like Mr. Crumbo put his life on the line in dangerous combat missions in the service of a Constitution and Bill of Rights he clearly knew nothing about.

As various other posters to the op-ed linked above have made clear, the 1994 "assault weapons" ban did not ban so much as ONE assault weapon or machine gun capable of firing one shot per trigger pull. It was, for all intents and purposes, a law to ban scary looking features on some firearms, and did not in any way affect their lethality or rate of fire.

The Second Amendment that Mr. Crumbo so clearly does not understand was not written to protect your hunting rights. It was written by a group of very wise men who had just watched a army comprised largely of civilian militiamen defeat one of the most formidable land armies on the planet. The Second Amendment was expressly written to protect the rights of following generations to own arms that would be suitable for them to use as militiamen if the need again arises, as it has repeatedly through American history, most recently (to my knowledge) in the Battle of Athens/McMinn County War in 1946.

The semi-automatic intermediate-caliber rifles that mimic the look and feel of today's modern military weapons, far from being something not protected by the Second Amendment, are the very weapons that should be most protected by a Right that ensures Americans never again need feel the boot of a tyrant on their necks. It is perhaps the Right most singularly responsible for ensuring that our United States boasts what may be the oldest continuously-functioning government on Earth.

The Second Amendment was never about home defense, or hunting, or target shooting. The clear purpose of the right to keep and bear arms was to create a nation of riflemen, a citizenry armed with weapons suitable for use as a militiaman.

If former Navy SEAL Kim Crumbo is the weapons expert he claims to be, perhaps he can point out a civilian weapon more suitable for the militia use imagined by our Founding Fathers that the very semi-automatic rifles that he now says should be banned.

I thank Mr. Crumb for his service, and hope that he uses his retirement to educate himself about a Constitution he defended, but so clearly never understood.

(h/t NC Tea Party Revolution)

Betrayer in Chief

Over at NRO's "the tank," Steve Shippert leaves little else to be said about Barack Obama's easy betrayal of the military.

The assault is relentless. It is enraging. And today, the Obama administration's assault on those who dare to defend America from terrorist thugs who rejoice in publicizing beheadings, mass murder, and pure evil are on notice: "You will be punished. We're coming after you."

The target audience now includes the American Warrior. The Obama administration has abdicated the Warrior's defense, refusing to appeal the 2nd Circuit's decision that more photos should be released from investigations of the detention of enemy fighters from the battlefield. The Obama administration has sided with the ACLU and abandoned our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

...

The Obama administration — and those at the Pentagon not standing up in vociferous defense of its warriors — had better buckle up for an American backlash. Pay attention here.

The photos, taken from Air Force and Army criminal investigations, apparently are not as shocking as the photographs from the Abu Ghraib investigation that became a lasting symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But some show military personnel intimidating or threatening detainees by pointing weapons at them. Military officers have been court-martialed for threatening detainees at gunpoint.

The photos are not egregious. Not even rising to the level of panties on heads. But no matter. The assault is on. And your president — your Commander in Chief — supports it.

The release of these images serves no practical purpose, except perhaps for "enhanced prosecution techniques" against our own. Understand clearly that the purpose of the release — and the Obama administration’s decision to do so willingly if not energetically — is to denigrate the American Warrior and to further the assault on the American psyche.

...

...the principled defense of the warrior is over, by choice of the Obama administration in directing the Pentagon to end the defense short of SCOTUS. It is an outright abdication.

It's utterly an utterly detestable acquiescence of one left-wing radical to a group of like-minded fellow travelers that would rather see our soldiers demoralized or killed than victorious—and that's just what they're willing to admit in public.

Doing the Right Thing

North Carolina State Senator Doug Berger, a Franklin County Democrat, has introduced a bill that would end the requirement for North Carolina sheriff's offices to conduct background checks and issue permits before citizens can buy a pistol or crossbow.

"There should be no infringement on a person's ability to purchase a gun," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Doug Berger, D-Franklin County.

Gun control advocates were shocked when they learned of the bill.

"How can this be the response, that we want to to make it easier (to get guns)?" said Roxane Kolar, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence.

Berger argued that leaving it up to local sheriffs to decide whether to issue a person a gun permit is too subjective.

"We need to begin to look at those laws that are on our books that were written at a time when people did not fully appreciate the Second Amendment," the senator said.

"Did not fully appreciate the Second Amendment," indeed.

The existing law, like so many throughout the country, are the ugly remnants of racist gun control that came down from this nation's founding and through our shared history.

It is particularly poignant that a North Carolina Democrat is the senator offering up such a bill, as it was the North Carolina Democratic Party that staged the only successful coup d'etat in American history, which was followed by the passage of Jim Crow laws that destroyed the rights of African Americans until the Civil Rights era. Among those laws inspired by the Jim Crow era was the process of county sheriffs awarding pistol permits to people of "good character," which was widely understood for many years to mean whites.

Not surprisingly, the bill is already encountering opposition from gun control advocates.

Racists.

Cartel "Anti-aircraft Machine Guns" Neither Anti-aircraft, Nor Machine Guns

And please, don't blame me for the title.

Tarheel Fascism

6 people, presumably students, have been arrested protesting Virgil Goode's speech against illegal immigration at UNC-Chapel Hill. They seem to be every bit as tolerant as the Carolina blue fascists that violently ended Tom Tancredo's attempted speech last week.

The Daily Tarheel covered the speech via Twitter, and described juvenile protesters that simply don't understand that the freedom of speech hinges on the free exchange of ideas, not drowning out those that oppose your own.

It's a sad commentary on the state of education and intellectual discourse at Chapel Hill, but sadly a kind of intellectual bullying that has become a favored tactic on the political left.

A protestor at the Tancredo event sums up the thuggish behavior with daring honesty when she admitted, "I don't believe a lot of change in this country have come through debating and being happy and talking to people."

Presumably one day in the future this protestor or another one like her will brag about having the university with the cleanest-burning ovens.

Obama's Quietness on His Torturing Allies

Barack Obama doesn't seem to miss an opportunity to criticize the previous administration with the bitter, petty relish one would expect of today's breed of liberal fascist, especially when it comes to attempting to brand officials of the Bush government as torture-loving deviants.

It is strange, then, that Mr. Obama is silent about the torture allegations being levied against the government he recently visited just over our southern border.

Mexican soldiers fighting a war against drug cartels have arbitrarily detained suspects, beating and torturing them with electric shocks, a senior human rights official said on Wednesday.

Mauricio Ibarra, a top investigator at the National Human Rights Commission, said complaints of army abuses have spiked since 10,000 troops surged into Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent city on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Soldiers charged with patrolling drug hotspots have detained suspects in military barracks -- sometimes for up to 12 hours -- and beaten them to solicit information before turning them over to police investigators, Ibarra said.

"They give them electric shocks on different parts of the body ... testicles, arms, legs, buttocks," Ibarra told Reuters.

I'm not a torture absolutist. While I feel it is a last resort, I'm not the kind of idiot who will cling to the lie that I wouldn't condone it if it is the last, best hope of saving lives that are in imminent danger.

Further, I feel that those who would make the claim that they are against using any means necessary to save lives in imminent danger are either dishonest even with themselves, or they are monsters in their own right, willing to sacrifice the lives of innocents for their own quite-warped absolutist ideology.

That said, the torture outlined above doesn't seem to come close to a standard of imminent jeopardy. Those being allegedly tortured here are certainly not terrorists plotting a near-term attack, and if the allegations are true, some of the Mexican citizens being shocked or beaten may have no ties to the cartels at all.

You would think that the Obama Administration and their sycophants in the progressive blogosphere would be leading the charge against human rights abuses that are occurring within sight of the United States, but apparently, torture only bothers them when the subjects are terrorists wishing to kill Americans.

Happy Poisoned Piven Day

Pseudo-environmentalists are celebrating Earth Day today, a day "a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment."

Uh-huh.

My company is celebrating Earth Day by passing out compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light bulbs to all employees. As you may imagine, I am absolutely thrilled that they are attempting to introduce fragile glass tubes containing poisonous heavy metals into my home. After all, mercury worked so well for Jeremy.

Like Doctor Sanity, I see Earth Day for what it is, a political machination more than an environmental one, and so I'm hardly surprised to see President Obama burn thousands of gallons of jet fuel to take a junket to give a short speech in Iowa supporting his plan to wreck capitalism with a so-called "green economy" that will cost American jobs and cause fuel prices to soar for all Americans during a down market without actually benefiting the biosphere.

Today is Earth Day, they tell me. Today I should appreciate the environment.

Maybe it's simply a sign of how I was raised, but pretty much every day is Earth Day. We cut off the lights when we leave a room. With the exception of the baby, we take showers instead of baths. We grow some of our own vegetables and spices, and hand weed and use organic remedies to minimize pests instead of using chemicals. Given more time, I'd even provide more "green" meat for my family, hunting and fishing to harvest those other meaty emitters of greenhouse gasses and biowaste for the children!

But Earth Day isn't about protecting the Earth for many of those involved. It's about regulating and controlling people, especially people that they find objectionable.

Thanks, but I'll pass.

Duck and Cover

Yes, kids. The media is always willing to cover the Obama Adminstration's butt:

For the first time, an accused domestic terrorist is being added to the FBI's list of "Most Wanted" terror suspects.

Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old computer specialist from Berkeley, Calif., is wanted for the 2003 bombings of two corporate offices in California.

Authorities describe San Diego as an animal rights activist who turned to bomb attacks and say he has tattoo that proclaims, "It only takes a spark."

A law enforcement official said the FBI was to announce Tuesday that San Diego was being added to the "Most Wanted" terrorist list. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the announcement ahead of time.

San Diego would be the 24th person on the list, and the only domestic terror suspect.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko declined to comment on the pending announcement.

The move to add a domestic, left-wing terrorist to the list comes only days after the Obama administration was criticized for internal reports suggesting some military veterans could be susceptible to right-wing extremist recruiters or commit lone acts of violence. That prompted angry reactions from some lawmakers and veterans groups.

I have to ask—by what standard is San Diego the first domestic terrorist added to the FBI's "Most Wanted" list?

Ted Kaczynski was a high-profile left-wing domestic terrorist that went on a 17-year bombing spree that put him on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list as the Unabomber.

Eric Robert Rudolph was on the "Most Wanted" list as a right wing domestic terrorist when he was captured in 2003.

Those are just the first two domestic terrorists that were on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list that immediately come to my mind; I strongly suspect there were others.

If I didn't know better, I might suspect that the addition of an obscure left-wing terrorist who planted two bombs that caused no injuries and only minor property damage to "Most Wanted" list was a political calculation, perhaps made specifically to help take the heat off a DHS Secretary under fire for supporting the release of a controversial report that labeled mainstream conservative values as those belonging to extremists, and who more or less stated military veterans were too stupid to keep from being duped into joining extremist groups.

I'll leave it to others to judge which.

Correction: As Jim notes in the comments, there are two distinct "Most Wanted" lists maintained by the FBI, the traditional "Most Wanted" list that focuses on criminals and one created specifically for terrorism suspects in 2002. While Kaczynski and Rudolph are without a doubt domestic terrorists, they were listed on the FBI's traditional "Most Wanted" list, and not the terrorism list. The AP article was correct in listing San Diego as the first domestic terrorist added to the terrorism list, even if he wasn't close to being the first domestic terrorist.

The timing of adding left-wing bomber San Diego, a minor figure in every respect, at this time, is still highly suspect.

Media Survey Bleg

Aaron Veenstra, a PhD. Journalism Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is asking for your help:

My primary research interest is political blogs and I am conducting a experiment with blog readers that I would greatly appreciate your readers' participation in:

http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/~asveenstra/09study-3/start.html

...This study will hopefully shed some light on some understudied areas of news effects by letting me focus on a group of heavy news consumers who are highly interested in politics and current events.

Completing this survey will take about 15-20 minutes and will require a high-speed Internet connection (a connection that's fast enough for YouTube will work fine). As thanks for participating, 10 respondents will be randomly selected at the conclusion of the study to receive $25 gift cards to Amazon.com.

For those of you would would like to let a researcher know what you think of the news media and blogs, here's your shot.

The Sullivan Orthodoxy

While Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton walked away as Miss America last night, it was runner-up Miss California that got the headlines for her answer to Perez Hilton's question about gay marriage:

When asked by judge Perez Hilton, an openly gay gossip blogger, whether she believed in gay marriage, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

That is hardly an unconventional view in most of America, but it did expose the blithering self-centered cluelessness of at least some of those in attendance:

Miss California's answer sparked a shouting match in the lobby after the show. "It's ugly," said Scott Ihrig, a gay man, who attended the pageant with his partner. "I think it's ridiculous that she got first runner-up. That is not the value of 95 percent of the people in this audience. Look around this audience and tell me how many gay men there are."

Is he actually arguing that state and national policy should be determined by the audience demographics of beauty pageants?

Why not?

It seems to be how "conservative" Andrew Sullivan forms most of his political opinions.

Hatley Convicted of Murder; Beauchamp Still a Fantasist

Master Sgt. John Hatley has been convicted of four counts of murder and has been sentenced to life in prison:

Master Sgt. John Hatley, 40, also will have his rank reduced to private, forfeit all pay and receive a dishonorable discharge, a jury of eight Army officers and noncommissioned officers decided. He has the possibility of parole after serving 20 years. The sentence came a day after Hatley was found guilty of premeditated murder and conspiracy in the execution-style killings of the detainees. He was found not guilty of premeditated murder in a separate January 2007 incident in which a wounded Iraqi insurgent was shot and killed.

Combat documentarian J.D. Johannes was in "The Arena" the killing ground in Baghdad's West Rashid neighborhood during the time of Hatley's deployment, and provides some perspective of what was occurring there at the time. It in no way justifies Hatley's action—to the contrary, it magnifies just how wrong Hatley's actions were during a critical time—but it does help explain how such crimes can occur.

And while I haven't yet surveyed the liberal blogosphere for reaction, day-late-and-dollar-short liberal bloggers are eventually going to latch on to the fact that Hatley was, at the time, the Sgt over one Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the fantasist that got The New Republic in such trouble for his various fictions including square-backed bullets, Bradley 25-ton IFVs that could turn on a dime to pick off dogs in the vehicle's blind spots, and verbally-abused female military contractors that never existed.

Hatley's case is proof that while no system of justice is perfect, the military system's promise of protecting those who turn in offenders from reprisals works.

Soldiers had to sense of justice to take down a superior (Hatley) and his accomplices for murders. Funny how none of the dozens of witnesses that would have witnessed Beauchamp's minor atrocities ever came forward, even when not doing could have lead to time in Leavenworth.

Far from weakening the Army's case against Beauchamp, that fact that soldiers in his unit are willing to testify against the most horrible of crimes actually bolsters the case that they would have come forward if Beauchamp's poorly-constructed stories were even close to the truth.

Below is a repost of my response to the announcement of Article 32 hearings of Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, Sgt. Charles Quigley, Spc. Stephen Ribordy, and Spc. Belmor Ramos, Hatley's fellow murders.

And? [Originally posted Sept. 19, 2008]

Some of the defenders of Scott Beauchamp's trio of fables in the New Republic simply can't let go of the fact that his stories were poorly written fiction. There's always been an odd attachment by some of them to justify his lies, almost as if his stories of minor atrocities were dismissed, then no atrocity claims would ever be taken seriously again.

Today, several left wing blogs have latched on to a story than has been simmering for months, the trial resulting from the execution of prisoners by members of Beauchamp's battalion between mid-March and mid-April of 2007 near Baghdad. They are trying to use that story to somehow resurrect Beauchamp's credibility.

"See? This guys in Beauchamp's battalion committed atrocities, so his stories must have been real!"

Uh, no.

During the debunking of Spencer Ackerman's cartoonishly bad "Notes on a Scandal" roughly a month ago, I compared the military investigation into Beauchamp's lies to that very same far more serious and still developing homicide investigation to make a point:

Ackerman’s biggest point of contention that Beauchamp's stories may be true are the claims that five soldiers contacted the New Republic to vouch for the accuracy of the claims made in the article — but that none of the soldiers were willing to go on the record in the magazine for fear of retaliation by the Army. Ackerman himself presents no evidence that he spoke to a single one of these soldiers, so we don't know if that claim has any merit, but I did get in touch with an officer yesterday involved in the saga who referred to claims of fears of retaliation as "a bald-faced lie."

The claims made in "Shock Troops" — insulting a burned woman, wearing bones as a hat, running over dogs — are barbaric, but at best are minimal crimes if true. Punishment for even those soldiers involved in acts such as those Beauchamp described would be administrative punishments carried out at the base, while those who would have witnessed such acts would face no penalty for reporting them. Lying on a sworn statement, however, is far more serious, and could potentially result in a court martial and prison time. Does anyone seriously want to argue that 22 men would risk their careers and freedom to lie for Scott Beauchamp, a soldier who had gone AWOL on several occasions and who many of these men did not trust?

In addition, whistleblower laws protect witnesses of crimes, whether minor cases of cruelty as reported by Beauchamp, or murder, and we need look no further than Beauchamp's own brigade for evidence proving this.

An Article 32 hearing for Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, Sgt. Charles Quigley, Spc. Stephen Ribordy, and Spc. Belmor Ramos will begin next week to determine whether these four soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion executed Iraqi prisoners.

It was other soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion that stepped forward and reported the far more serious crimes of executing captives. It is highly improbable that soldiers trained to do their duty would report their fellow soldiers for serious crimes, while men in the same battalion, presumably with the same training, would participate in a cover-up of far more minor violations, fearing non-existent reprisals, and risking their careers by participating in a cover-up to do so. The argument made by Beauchamp, swallowed so easily be Ackerman, is absurd.

The one particular detail of the murder investigation that has the left so suddenly feisty is that one of the soldiers facing charges (added as a defendent in the 1 1/2 months that has passed since the story cited was written) is SFC John E. Hatley, a soldier that has been cited for an email he wrote to milblogger SFC Cheryl MacElroy (RET).

Vietnam war historian Keith Nolan wrote this afternoon seeking my reaction to this development as he recalled I mentioned Hatley's email, and this is what I told him:

Mr Nolan,

Yes sir, I did quote from and refer to an email between SFC Cheryl McElroy and a SFC Hatley. I've contacted McElroy to see if she can contact the Sgt she emailed and determine it is the same Hatley. If it is the same Hatley, it would certainly destroys his credibility if he is judged to be guilty of such crimes.

What interests me is that Hatley isn't mentioned among the accused at all in this earlier article. I wonder what changed since late July.

As for how that impacts the overall case against Beauchamp? It doesn't.

It was still against SOP (not to mention suicidal) to change a HMMWV tire while on urban patrol in his area, and doubtful that a run-flat equipped vehicle would stop anyway.

There are still no such thing as a square-backed bullet in modern firearms, and Glocks are still among the most popular handguns in Iraqi culture, despite Beauchamp's claim that only Iraqi Police carry them.

There is still no burned female contractor. She simply never existed. I have an independent civilian contractor at that Kuwaiti base and military officers on the record supporting that.

Bradleys and other tracked vehicles still cannot maneuver as he described, and that comes straight from the company that manufactures them.

As for the most plausible story he told, that of someone abusing human remains, I've got two dozen signed affidavits in my hands (well, photocopied onto a CD) that makes the all sorts of slightly different claims you would expect regarding several bones found at a COP under construction, but not a single one of a guy wearing a rotting skullplate with flesh attached for part of the day and night.

Hatley's account was a supporting anecdote I relayed, but it played no significant role in my investigation or conclusions.

Hatley may very well prove to be guilty of murder and of lying in a email about how all of his soldiers are "consistently honorable."

But Hatley's guilt or innocence in a separate matter is of little more than a footnote in Beauchamp's stories, all three works of fiction that editor Franklin Foer finally decided that even he couldn't support.

Update: It looks like some of the liberal blogs found the story of the murder convictions, and predictably, are using faulty logic to insist that since Hatley lied, Beauchamp must be telling the truth.

A sampling.

Crooks & Liars:

If you cannot place the name, Master Sgt. Hatley was the direct superior of Pvt. Scott Beauchamp and the person most used to discredit (along with the gay porn star) the New Republic diary of the life of a soldier in Iraq and the ways they dealt with the pressures of Operation Clusterf*ck. All of which Hatley said was absolutely not what his ever virtuous soldiers did.

TPM Muckraker:

Some of those conservatives, including the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, participated in a concerted (and inaccurate) effort to discredit Beauchamp and tar, for lack of patriotism, the notoriously dovish New Republic and, by association, liberals everywhere.

For his reporting, Goldfarb relied on some...let's call them 'questionable' sources and even got an assist, in a bizarre breach of protocol, from Beauchamp's First Sergeant, who took to the blogosphere to make the case against the beleaguered Private. "My soldiers [sic] conduct is consistently honorable."

This soldier has other underlining [sic] issues which I'm sure will come out in the course of the investigation. No one at any of the post we live at or frequent, remotely fit the descriptions of any of the persons depicted in this young man's fairy tale. I can't and won't divulge any information regarding this soldier, but I do sincerely appreciate all the support from the people back home. Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here.

The name of that Non-Commissioned Officer might ring a bell: John Hatley. And he seems to have protested a bit too much. Hatley had, in fact, committed the murders before he took to the Internet to defend himself and his fellow soldiers against charges of recklessness. We excitedly await Goldfarb's statement on the issue.

Andrew Sullivan:

In many ways, you couldn't make this up. But given Michael Goldfarb's enthusiasm for killing innocents, it's not terribly surprising. Goldfarb was part of the wide bloggy attempt to describe TNR's correspondent, Scott Beauchamp, as an America-hating loser and liar for pointing out that some soldiers in Iraq acted dishonorably and immorally. One of his key sources, Beauchamp's own First Sergeant, was critical in rebutting Beauchamp's charges. Goldfarb's source for defending the honor of his men and himself was just convicted "of executing four handcuffed, blindfolded Iraqi men by shooting them in the backs of their heads." Goldfarb's kinda guy. But who looks more credible now? Goldfarb or Beauchamp?

Looks like we have some liberals trying to rewrite history on a grand scale.

Hatley was not a source cultivated by Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, and his comments were not solicited by Goldfarb either. Then SFC Hatley wrote his comments in an email responding to milblogger SFC Cheryl McElroy, which you can read in the original form at her blog. It's quite obvious after reading that link that both Sullivan and TPMM's Brian Beutler owe Goldfarb at least a correction, thought I doubt they have the integrity to issue an apology for their rather gutless smears.

Like all of Beauchamp's wannabe defenders, these bloggers and others have overinflated Hatley's importance. Hatley's email on SFC McElroy's blog was a character reference we now know to be worthless.

That said, I have, via FOIA, all of the statements taken from soldiers in Beauchamp's unit, asked about the specific allegations Beauchamp alleges. There were more than two dozen. Even though they would have faced felony jail time if they lied under oath, not one soldier would support Beauchamp.

Not. One.

Bu the evidence that damned Beauchamp more than even the military investigation were details I investigated independently of the military.

I hunted down the manufacturer of the Bradley IFV, gave him Beauchamp's story, and he explained why you can't hit dogs as described in Beauchamp's fictions with a 25-ton tank.

I hunted down both civilian and military personnel in other commands that were stationed at both the camps Beauchamp claimed to have insulted the burned woman at, and all confirm that such a distinctive character would have easily stood out, and yet, she never existed.

As something of a firearms expert in my own right, I can state definitively that "square-backed" pistol ammunition Beauchamp wrote of and claimed to have recovered has never existed. Not was he even close to correct in claiming that Glock pistols were carried only by Iraqi police when they are in fact the most widespread pistol among the military, police, and civilians in Iraq.

Hatley is a murderer who directed a conspiracy to cover up his crime. He's also a liar. We all agree on that, and I think we all agree he earned his life sentence (though I would prefer that he didn't have the opportunity for parole after 20 years).

That said, Hatley's role in the Beauchamp case was a minor one (you can read my archives if you doubt that), and watching liberal bloggers trying to inflate his role so that they can tear down the case against Beauchamp (and thereby justify for their loathing for all things military) is a pathetic attempt at self-edification by a group that would still rather spit on the uniform than honor it.

Seeds of Discontent

While "public" opinion polls published by the media show broad public support for President Obama's political agenda and the American press has continued to give him and Congress fawning coverage, a wave of disgust with Washington seems to be growing across the country.

Montana's governor just signed a law that exempts firearms manufactured in the state for residents from federal regulations.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has signed into law a bill that aims to exempt Montana-made guns from federal regulation, adding firepower to a battery of legislative efforts to assert states' rights across the nation.

"It's a gun bill, but it's another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana," Democrat Schweitzer said.

Texas Governor Rick Perry affirmed Texas' sovereignty last week, and then created an uproar when he hinted the possibility of secession:

We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.

Today, Rasmussen released a jolting poll that just 75% percent of Texans would opt to remain in the United States. It would be good to know if the 25% that feel otherwise is a number that has increased, decreased, or remained the same, but that simply isn't the kind of poll that gets asked anywhere often enough to determine a trend.

Mirroring a Congress that passed a nearly trillion dollar stimulus bill without reading it, the Georgia Senate passed a bill affirming states rights and rather stupidly pronounced a right to secede over inconsequential, trivial matters.

Montana, Texas and Georgia are not alone in their disgust, as 30-percent of state legislatures are in some stage of debate over resolutions challenging a power-hungry federal government.

This pushback against federal authority comes at a time when it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security released a document that painted those who disagree with the left-wing bent of the current federal government as "right wing extremists." This overly-broad threat assessment painted a significant number of Americans as potential domestic terrorists for sharing one or more mainstream conservative values. The story broke just one day before hundreds of grass-roots protests involving more than a quarter-million Americans took place against excessive government spending in what were promoted as non-partisan TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties. This report was sent to police agencies nationwide, much to the disgust of the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), and over the objections of the DHS Civil Rights officials as well.

It is perfectly normal for a political party out of power to feel disenfranchised, and the wailing drama of the minority can indeed be both obscene and absurd as we've noted abundantly during recent years.

But there is something deeper and far more disturbing about the present simmering distrust between American citizens and a federal government that seems to desire to be rulers instead of leaders.

It isn't just partisan sniping directed at one party's politicians by the opposition, but a questioning of the competencies and motivations of the federal agencies under their control. In addition to doubts about the federal government, their is an open disgust and mutual animosity developing between the pundit and media classes and the citizenry. Journalists, editors, and publishers that are supposed to be government watchdogs have long ago debased themselves into being nothing more than partisan cheeerleaders, and have now descended to the point of making contemptuous and crude sex jokes at the expense of citizens, or flat out suggesting they have a mental disorder if the have political beliefs that diverge from their own.

Historically, Americans have found ways to resolve or at least contain even the most polarized beliefs. We've had one bloodless transfer of elected power after another to the point that only twice—the Civil War and the Wilmington, NC coup d'état—has insurrection been a significant threat (the Civil War is obviously notable the size and scope of it's insurrection; the Wilmington Insurrection was notable for being the only successful coup against a lawfully elected government on American soil, and because it was possible because of a fusion between Klansmen, the state Democratic Party, and the most powerful newspaper in the state, the still existing and still reliably Democratic Raleigh, NC News & Observer).

Thankfully, not having the kind of significant political strife that threatens to undermine the core of our political system has simply become expected. That faith we have in our political systems and the checks and balances contained within have served this country well, but those systems are not perfect nor permanent.

Odds are that the current situation will diffuse peaceably of its own volition. The states and federal government will likely learn to accommodate each other without a constitutional crisis, and market conditions will either put an end to overtly biased news companies or see them marginalized.

But there is a chance, a very slim chance, that those in power have developed too great of a sense of their self-worth, and it is that troublesome DC-centric self-importance that has caused state governors and legislatures of both parties to sound a warning rattle.

Young or old, Democratic, Republican, or politically apathetic, we love our freedom in America. we will not cede it to tyrants, be they foreign potentates or self-aggrandizing homegrown snobs that think they know better than you do how to live your life.

Let us hope that once again words will be enough, and that the cautionary, months-long run on firearms and ammunition is just an over-reaction, and not a precursor.

Finally! Anderson Cooper Comes Out of the Closet

A bit of personal wisdom approximately 50 seconds in.*

Other so-called "professional" journalists engaged in the juvenile wordplay as well, all--perhaps not surprisingly--on networks that aren't doing so well.

*MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is not gay, despite a performance history that might suggest otherwise.

Yeah, low-hanging fruits.

Oh, wait. People, people...

Rep. Jan Schakowsky = The Biggest Joke In Congress?

Probably not considering the cast of incompetents, malcontents and crooks we have in both parties, but she has some nerve calling the Tea Party protests "despicable" as if being a Congresswoman gives her the sovereign right to pillage the national treasury.

Then again, she is yet another far left progressive Democrat married to a tax cheat, so perhaps she does honestly think she's entitled to both your money and her "let them eat cake" attitude.

Schakowsky's antipathy for America's taxpayers is all too common from our elected officials.

Of course, if people keep electing people like her by wide margins, there is no reason for them to feel otherwise.

Their Favorite Fictions

Two readers sent me a link to another infuriating and dishonest New York Times story about Americans guns begin purchased in the United States and being smuggled south for use by Mexican drug cartels.

As you may expect, it picked up on the White House's favorite faux talking points:

Sending straw buyers into American stores, cartels have stocked up on semiautomatic AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, converting some to machine guns, investigators in both countries say. They have also bought .50 caliber rifles capable of stopping a car and Belgian pistols able to fire rifle rounds that will penetrate body armor.

As it so often does, existing BATF rules and regulations disprove the media’s assertions. Simply put, The BATF does not allow the manufacture or importation of firearms that can easily be modified into machine guns, and those drop-in parts which can quickly change a semi-automatic design are treated and as strictly monitored and regulated as machine guns themselves under U.S. law.

If there are conversions going on in Mexico, it means that the parts that make a machine gun a machine gun already exist in Mexico, meaning no additional laws targeting U.S. guns would make a difference.

And when you come down to it, I'm tired of government officials that favor gun control telling us that these conversions are taking place. I want them to show us specific conversions they have captured, making the serial numbers and manufacturing details of their parts public record so that we can determine for ourselves where these parts are coming from.

As for the .50 caliber rifles "capable of stopping a car," well, a typical car can be stopped with just about any centerfire rifle you would use for deer hunting, or with a typical shotgun. Implying that .50 caliber bullets have magical properties is rhetorically disingenuous. Yes, the .50 BMG cartridge produces far more energy than a typical rifle bullet, but the bullet isn't explosive, which is just what most pro-gun control stories stop just short of stating when they imply such firearms are threats to train cars, airplanes, and armored vehicles.

As for the .50 rifles being recovered in Mexico, commenters have remarked before how the .50-caliber rifles being recovered by the Mexican police look suspiciously like those sold to the Mexican military, right down to the same brand of scope and back-up iron sights (BUIS). Once again, that is not a problem that would be resolved by more restrictions in the United States.

As for the "Belgian pistols able to fire rifle rounds that will penetrate body armor," the authors are peddling yet another statement that is a only loosely based in fact.

The round in question is the 5.7x28, and it is not remotely a rifle cartridge.

It is chambered for pistols and personal defense weapons that falls into the submachine class of weapons , but that can shoot bullet designed for armor penetration. What the Times won't tell you is that armor-piercing bullets are highly-restricted under U.S law, for sale only to the military and police. Nor will the Times tell their readers that even when these pistols are loaded with the heavily-restricted "armor piercing" bullets, these bullets utterly fail to penetrate the more advanced body armor used by police and military units, and work reliably only on lesser armor classes.

Lastly, the Times neglects to mention that their rhetorical whipping boy 5.7x28 cartridge is failing to catch on in many circles, because while it does possess some armor penetration capabilities if using the restricted ammunition, it always uses a tiny bullet, and does not have a record of reliably causing incapacitating wounds.

You've got to give it to the Times for efficiency, though; they packed so many half-truths and lies in two sentences that it took seven paragraphs to detail them all.

But the Times isn't quite does just yet.

Watch the mastery in the deceptive sentence below:

Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona.

If you read this quickly as most newspaper readers would, you'd come away with the distinct impression that 90-percent of the guns recovered from drug dealers in Mexico came from the United States, which is exactly what the author wants you to understand.

It is only upon reading the sentence deeper that you would recognize that the the phrase "and asked to be traced" is the key.

Mexican authorities only ask American authorities to track the small fraction of those guns that it suspects comes from the United States. The do not ask us to trace the majority of the guns they capture that are clearly not of U.S. origin. Of the total number of guns recovered from cartels, just 17-percent came from the United States--quite a big difference from the 90-percent the y tried to trick readers into accepting.

It is really quite sad that so many journalists feel they have the right to publisher such clearly biased information as fact, but their reporting is no more pathetic than the editors and publishers that allow journalists to publish advocacy instead of news.

News organizations are dying on the vine in the United States, and the media loves to claim that the Internet is to blame. That may be true, but if it is, it is because the Internet allows the media’s favorite fictions to be exposed, leaving their reputations—arguably their most important product" irrevocably damaged.

People won’t knowing buy damaged goods, and why should they?

Day by day, story by story, the Times justifies ever dollar it loses with another fiction that turns away another reader, and when they are gone, they will not be missed.

Hmmm... where was the DHS Report on These Guys?

Left-wing fascism is alive and well and violent in Chapel Hill:

Campus police used pepper spray on student protesters angry over immigration issues who disrupted a speech by former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Hundreds of protesters denouncing Tancredo's tough stances against illegal immigration gathered at Bingham Hall on Tuesday evening, shouting profanities at the former Colorado congressman, who tried to speak about his opposition to in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants.

Tancredo left after a protester broke a window and police shut down the event. He had been invited by a student group that opposes mass immigration and multiculturalism.

Sadly, there were some pro-immigration UNC students that wanted to hear Tancredo if only to debate his points, but the violence, profanity, and threats forced the cancellation of his speech.

Uh, No

The Mexican police have captured another cache of weapons from a drug cartel, and their apparent instinct was to hype their find as being something more than what they captured, which the Daily Mail bought into entirely.

The "anti-aircraft gun" in the picture is an old M1919 in what appears to be an A4 configuration, and is mounted on a low-tripod for its designed use, allowing infantry to take on ground targets, not aircraft.

Far from the 800-rounds-per-minute claim in the Daily Mail, the cyclic rate of fire was rate of 400-600 rounds per minute, but because the gun was air-cooled and would overheat if fired continuously, it was fired in short bursts, resulting in a rate of fire that was much less.

This is as much an anti-aircraft gun as Margaret Thatcher is a Victoria's Secret model. Sure, all the basic parts are there, but pressing this configuration into a role it was never designed for is a recipe for disaster, and the over-hyping Mexican Police should be ashamed of themselves.

(Via Instapundit.)

TEA Party Protests Today

Via What Bubba Knows, a letter from a British blogger regarding the hundreds of TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party protests that are taking place today across the United States:

To all of my dear and beloved American friends;

Tomorrow is a day which shall be remembered as the day when Americans decided to retake their country from the left, from Marxism, from appeasement and cowardice. It especially should be a day when Americans finally stand up and take back their country from the thieves who sought not only their money, but their freedom as well. I expect nothing less from Americans who have proven time and time again that they cannot be beaten or intimidated.

For those of you here locally, there is a Raleigh Tea Party from 6:30PM to 8:30PM in downtown Raleigh at the state Capitol, and if you are one of the 299 million Americans that live outside of Wake County, you can find your local protest here.

20/20 Blows Another Gun Story

No, ABC News didn't put explosives in a gas tank, but they certainly stacked the deck in creating Diane Sawyer's "guns are bad, guns are useless" self-fulfilling prophecy, which AWR Hawkins deftly exposes at Pajamas Media.

The scenario is worth watching, if only to point out the flaws in the contrived scenario, starting with neophytes playing the role of CCH holders, the CCHs being forced to wear a holster in a position where they could not draw their weapon in a sitting postion (and would not think of carrying a weapon in real life simply for reasons of comfort).

And of course, ABC rigged an outcome where the only possible outcome was the death of students in the scenario, with the only question being "how many?"

In real life, of course, there is never just one possible scenario or possible outcome.

As I noted in a comment at PJM, what ABC News pointedly didn't run is what I would dub the "Virginia Tech" scenario.

Have a student with a concealed weapons hear shots in another classroom, draw his weapon, and cover the door. Then tell me how far the shooter gets through that classroom door, compared to rooms without a CCH.

Alternately, think about the possible reaction of CCH to seeing an agitated man pull a weapon or enter the hallway brandishing the weapon on the way to a classroom. Frankly, if I was a student or faculty member with a CCH and saw an agitated man pull a weapon as he entered a class room in front of me, my immediate reaction would be to draw my sidearm and draw a bead on the back of his skull and close the distance.

It isn’t always that the CCH closest to the threat is immediately on top of it, or that in a mass shooting, the perp will always have the element of surprise on his side.

People who legally carry concealed weapons are not going to magically prevent attempted mass murders. There are simply too few of us in the general population, and well-meaning but ignorant people in positions of power make it far too difficult to carry in the very settings (schools, businesses, civic buildings) where such attacks are most likely to occur.

But just because a concealed carry permit holder can't be everywhere a shooting takes place or prevent people from always getting killed in these rampages doesn't negate their potential to alter or terminate a threat in some scenarios.

It's funny, but the same people who rail against concealed weapons because they are concerned about the rare instances of CCH permit holders becoming violent never seem to want to talk about the possible lives that could be saved by them.

It's almost as if they have an agenda...

Drowning Man

I was rather startled to pull up Memeorandum this morning to see that it was apparently Barack Obama, and not Captain Richard Phillips who benefited most from the sharpshooting skills of Navy SEALS off the African coast yesterday.

In the Washington Post, Michael D. Shear gushed in an article headlined An Early Military Victory for Obama:

For President Obama, last week's confrontation with Somali pirates posed similar political risks to a young commander in chief who had yet to prove himself to his generals or his public.

But the result -- a dramatic and successful rescue operation by U.S. Special Operations forces -- left Obama with an early victory that could help build confidence in his ability to direct military actions abroad.

Throughout the past four days, White House officials played down Obama's role in the hostage drama. Until yesterday, he made no public statements about the pirates.

In fact, aides said yesterday, Obama had been briefed 17 times since he returned from his trip abroad, including several times from the White House Situation Room. And without giving too many details, senior White House officials made it clear that Obama had provided the authority for the rescue.

"The president's focus was on saving and protecting the life of the captain," one adviser said. Friday evening, after a National Security Council telephone update, Obama granted U.S. forces what aides called "the authority to use appropriate force to save the life of the captain." On Saturday at 9:20 a.m., Obama went further, giving authority to an "additional set of U.S. forces to engage in potential emergency actions."

One of President Obama's favored cheerleaders in the Associated Press, Jennifer Loven, teamed up with Phillip Elliott to also sing Obama's praises in an article headlined Obama twice approved force to rescue hostage:

President Barack Obama twice authorized the military to rescue a U.S. captain who was being held by Somali pirates and whose life appeared to be at risk, administration officials said after Sunday's rescue.

The Defense Department twice asked Obama for permission to use military force to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast. Obama first gave permission around 8 p.m. Friday, and upgraded it at 9:20 a.m. Saturday. Officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the second order was to encompass more military personnel and equipment that arrived in the Indian Ocean to engage the pirates.

If is sounds like President Obama is being painted as a heroic leader for his role in this incident by his supporters in the media... well, yes, that's exactly what they are doing.

But as former Green Beret Master Sergeant Jim Hanson noted, Obama's heroic sign-offs were simple and perfunctory:

The standing authority gave them clearance to engage the pirates if the life of the captain was in imminent danger.

In other words, the decision to fire was an understood reactive measure by the on-scene commander to a provocative act taken by the pirates, not a proactive measure taken by the President.

In a crisis where an American citizen's life was on the line, President Obama got out of the way and let the professionals do their jobs. It's a nice change of pace from his Presidency thus far, but not screwing up shouldn't be grounds for exhorting him as if he had just planned and executed Operation Overlord.

So why is the media so eager to puff up the President's role in a matter in which he had no direct role or immediate authority?

It could simply be that the American media is hoping to latch on to a victory—no matter how tangential— for a President mocked overseas for non-scripted weaknesses, continuous gaffes of protocol, and his artless foreign policy naivety.

Barack Obama opted against the political suicide of not allowing the military to use deadly force to save the life of an American threatened by armed pirates. That doesn't make him Nimitz.

Instead, this too-eager response paints him him look like a politician drowning in a sea of incompetence, with his fawning press desperately tosses him anything they can to help him stay afloat.

As Only Clowns Can

Captain Richard Phillips escaped from his Somali captors and threw himself off the lifeboat once more, and this time, Navy SEALS were lurking in the water to receive him.

The results were predictable:

Three of the pirates were killed and one was in custody after what appeared to be a swift firefight off the Somali coast, the official said.

Initial reports indicate Phillips jumped overboard for a second time and the military was able to take advantage of the situation.

With cartoonish predictability, the "progressives" at Think Progress found common cause and sympathy not with the Captain, but the pirates.

For the Children!

And of course, if it's evil, you-know-who must have been involved:

I think it's more than just a little bit funny that Bush is at the root of all the evil in the world and yet is a knuckle-dragging moron, but then, what passes for progressive thought these days is more about innuendo and groupthink than anything resembling logic.

Meanwhile, In The Free (Less Beholden Media) Countries...

With the noted exception of (nearly real) libertarian flamethrower Glenn Beck and a gaggle of significant conservative critics I can count on my fingers, the American media that helped elect Barack Obama continues to act as his greatest support system. They filter out missteps, explain away gaffes, bury calamities and write disastrous choices out of history so that Americans that view the news with an uncritical eye may be forgiven for thinking that our President is somehow competent.

After all the media says he's doing such a great job, right?

The foreign press, however, did not tie their credibility to playing up Obama as a leg-tingling "lightworker" as the American press did, and the salvos directed against Obama's ineptitude, his classlessness, and his arrogance have been epic.

The latest bombs dropped on Obama from Gerald Warner in the UK Telegraph is an example of the kind of commentary that are becoming all too common:

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice.

Make sure to read to the final paragraphs for Warner's new nickname for our President.

Our oldest allies have taken the measure of our President, and find him sorely lacking. I'm sure our enemies noticed that even quicker than our allies. We can only hope that our foolish November decision to elect a slogan instead of a leader won't be a moral mistake.

An Ugly Beast and Fallen Knight

The falsehoods and untruths in Sir Harold Evans unhinged rant that I first noted earlier this week are even worse than thought, with him apparently making up statistics and attributing them to a Department of Justice study.

Can we call him Sir Beauchamp?

New Anti-Gun Meme: Cheap Ammo Causes Massacres

Say Uncle pointed me this morning to the an absurd new meme that ABC's William Kates is attempting to spin, that massacres could be prevented if we just listened to comedians.

Yeah, really.

Ballistics reports showed Jiverly Wong fired 87 times from a 9mm Beretta and 11 times from a .45-caliber handgun. If he bought the ammunition online, he could have paid as little as $40 for the rounds he fired.

Friends say Wong complained that he only received $200 a week in unemployment benefits.

"Chris Rock says in one of his routines — have all the guns you want but charge like $1,000 for every bullet," said Jackie Hilly of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. "I think if you raised the price, you would probably discourage the violence, but I don't think you would prevent it."

In other news, Eddie Murphy suggested that raising the price of cars to a minimum of $300,000 would increase carpooling while decreasing the number of people picking up transvestite streetwalkers.

But that's neither here nor there.

What I really want to know from ABC's Kates is just how much a massacre is supposed to cost. If Kates thinks the cost of the ammunition used in the massacre was too inexpensive, what would be an appropriate price to pay for the slaughter? If Wong paid $98,000 for the bullets he used in his massacre ($1,000/bullet x 98 bullets) would Mr. Kates have then found the cost in human lives acceptable?

Of course, we know that Kates and his allies couldn't care less about the specific cost of bullets used in this shooting or other gun crimes, because the cost is only secondary to their primary goal of establishing control over gun owners.

Gun laws have always been about establishing political control over a population and forcing them to rely on the government to protect them.

Can we think of any reason why typically left-leaning journalists and politicians might want to advocate for people being forced to rely on the government?

Yes we can.

FBI Lab Raises More Questions Than Answers About Nisoor Square Shooting

Frankly, it sounds like crap science geared towards a predetermined political verdict.

I think both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration would consider a show trial that results in across-the-board convictions to be in their best diplomatic interests in dealing with the Iraqi government, who have rather foolishly (IMHO) decided to push the issue as a matter of national pride.

It takes only a layman's understanding of ballistics and metallurgy to see the obvious questions that the FBI laboratory seems to have failed to adequately answer.

I'm not giving Blackwater blanket immunity for their actions in Iraq by any stretch of the imagination, but there are certainly enough questions about the quality of the investigation and the forensic research thus far released, the forensic evidence being withheld under the rubric of religious customs, the chain of evidence, and prosecutorial political influence to cast serious doubt on whether there can be a fair trail for the accused.

Beastly Lies

Harold Evans, editor and historian according to his bio, can now added "discredited crank" to his list of accomplishments, all thanks to a rant he published in Tina Brown's The Daily Beast.

The rant, Accomplices to Murder, attacks, well, nearly everyone as being an accomplice in the recent spate of mass shootings.

Indeed, Evans may have something when he accuses the society at large for creating an environment where such barbaric events are too commonplace. But Evans goes over the line in attempting to fix blame to certain people and groups in a rant howled into type.

Unencumbered by his former roles as a historian and editor, Evans has now descended to printing blatant falsehoods to support his position, acts which should result in a retraction of his article, and perhaps a re-evaluation of his relationship with the Beast.

He rants:

All these gun killings—43 in total—occurred over the last 26 days. All harvest profuse expressions of sympathy and prayers for the families and the communities. The detestation for the killers is universal. How could it not be? These are crazed and evil people. They merit our detestation.

But they are not alone in their guilt. The people who put guns into the hands have a share of that ignominy. Who are they?

The guilty are the gun dealers at flea markets and state shows who will sell any number of weapons to anyone—juveniles, criminals, nuts—without any background check or records.

By federal law, licensed gun dealers must have perspective purchasers fill out ATF Form 4473. Dealers then must check a government issued photo ID and then must call the FBI-run NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) for a background check of the buyer.

This background check must be performed by gun dealers for all firearms transactions, at their primary business front location in a guns store, a flea market, or a gun show. There are no exceptions, and form 4473 specifically includes question #17 on the form that asks "Location of sale if at a gun show. (city, state)".

Only individuals who are not gun dealers may sell their private firearms without a background check according to federal law, though that varies according to the laws of individual states.

Mr. Evans flatly lies when he says dealers are not required to perform a background check, as direct links to the government web sites and documents above clearly shows. This lie is pervasive enough throughout his screed, and forms enough of the underlying thesis, to demand that the rant be retracted in its entirety.

But Evans is just warming up, and he is likewise deceptive when he implies the Mexican cartels are heavily-armed because of lax U.S. gun laws.

83% of the firearms captured by Mexican law enforcement in the past two years –more than 20,000—came from sources other than the U.S civilian market, and most come primarily from the international black market.

Mexican cartels are often armed with hand grenades, automatic weapons, and anti-tank rockets—weapons unavailable on the U.S market at any price.

But nowhere does Mr. Evans display his ignorance more than when he discusses the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

The assault weapons "ban" did not ban assault weapons. The popularity, sale, and ownership of semi-automatic military-style weapons grew over the ten-year course of the ban, all quite legally. Several American gun companies that build "assault weapons" exclusively grew over the course of the ban, and the already low rate of crimes committed with such weapons never deviated substantially from the roughly 2% that it was before, during, and after the ban.

The actual net effect of the ban was no reduction in crimes committed with the class of firearms covered in the ban, an actual increase in the distribution and popularity of so-called "assault weapons," and the creation of an entirely new class of ultra-compact and powerful handguns designed for concealed carry, which brought even more specialized gun manufacturers into existence.

The Department of Justice study Evans sought to cite as evidence of a drop in gun crime as a result of the ban also seems utterly irrelevant to his argument, and a bit of a purposeful red herring. We don't know precisely which report he refers to because he omits that detail, but by Evans' own description, the DOJ study was for automatic weapons, not the semi-automatics covered in the ban. Evans can't even plead ignorance of the difference in the terms, as he explains the difference between automatic and semi-automatic himself:

...semi-automatic fire (one trigger pull per shot but with magazines enabling the user to fire hundreds of rounds in a minute).

He knows the difference, but appears intent on conflating the terms on purpose. Is he being purposefully deceptive? It would appear so.

The only person "guilty" in this shameful display of collapsed ethics is one Mr. Harold Evans, who commits the journalistic sin of deceiving and misleading his readers, massacring truth along the way.

Update—A Nepotistic Beast? As "happyfeet" points out in the comments, the head of the Daily Beast, Tina Brown is married to Harold Evans.

Will she chose to retract her husband's sloppy rant, or risk the integrity of her latest venture and her life's work as an editor, along with Barry Diller's investment in her leadership?

Kos Has a Short Memory

Treacher and Hot Air have caught the face of the liberal blogosphere with a bad case of foot-in-mouth, and a serious case of amnesia.

First, the cringeworthy tweet:

When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparent, prefer to talk "revolution" and kill cops.

Last I checked, radical neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists aren't exactly in the conservative mainstream.

Kos' amnesia?

Left-wing progressive and Indymedia contributor Andrew Mickel is currently on death row for his 2002 assassination of Red Bluff Police Officer David Mobilio.

But unlike yesterday's reactionary murder of three Pittsburgh, PA policemen who responded to a domestic violence call that escalated into an ambush, Mickel purposefully planned his murder in advance, picking the time, the place, and the victim.

He was caught for the murder because of his desire to promote his crime in hopes of starting a violent revolution against the government.

Six days after the shooting, a manifesto appeared on more than a dozen Web sites operated by the left-leaning Independent Media Center.

It began: "Hello Everyone, my name's Andy. I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I'm coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility."

Mickel, whom his parents compared him the Unabomber according to Wikipedia went to school at Evergreen State College, the same radical leftist institution that produced Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist. The ISM works closely with terrorist organizations in Gaza, and Corrie was killed while apparently defending a terrorist smuggling tunnel.

Kos can make sweeping condemnations based upon alleged ties between his political opponents and criminals, but conveniently forgets the blood his direct peers spill.

I guess we should just be thankful Kos didn't tweet that he felt the same way about Pittsburgh police officers as he did contractors in Fallujah.

The Right Wing Paranoia That Drove Richard Polawski To Commit Murder

The best minds progressive politics has to offer have apparently met on their little list and determined that—eureka!—it is the fault of the evil right wing neocon media that an unemployed sociopath ambushed and killed three police officers in Pittsburgh that were responding to a domestic violence call placed by his mother.

Explains the Neiwert:

We're gathering more information about Richard Polawski, the 23-year-old man who decided to kill three Pittsburgh police officers and wound three others because it appears he was afraid they -- at the behest of the Obama administration -- were going to take his guns away. (Dude, they definitely are now.)

Seems he was laying in wait in a carefully planned ambush:

Richard Poplawski, 23, met officers at the doorway and shot two of them in the head immediately, Harper said. An officer who tried to help the two also was killed.

Poplawski, armed with an assault rifle and two other guns, then held police at bay for four hours as the fallen officers were left bleeding nearby, their colleagues unable to reach them, according to police and witnesses. More than 100 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and Poplawski, Harper said.

And he was paranoid about the Obama administration taking people's guns away -- even though, of course, there have been no indications of any such plans beyond NRA rantings:

Of course there have been no indications that the Administration wants to put in place additional restrictions or bans.

Not here, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

All of those plans to further restrict the rights of Americans—and threaten the safety of police officers— on President Obama's official Presidential agenda have been previously been debunked. Police groups are against the repeal of Tiahrt Amendment, the gun show loophole is a myth, and the net result of the Assault Weapons Ban was to create and entirely new class of ultra-compact centerfire handguns, with no measurable impact on crime and an increase in gun availability and popularity.

The only reason to favor any of the measures Obama does above is the incremental encroachment of the Second Amendment, which has been a constant theme of his entire political career.

More of those "NRA rantings" have come from Attorney General Eric Holder, who said:

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

Holder's statement was immediately downplayed by the White House, but it was never disavowed, as it an accurate reflection of Obama's official policy.

As for the story being spread by the Administration—including President Obama, AG Holder, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—that 90% of guns recovered from the Mexican cartels had their origins in the United States and therefore justify more gun control, that has also been exposed as a total lie.

The Mexican government only turns over to the U.S. government guns that they think had the possibility of being traced to America. The vast majority of the weapons they've recovered from the cartels in the past two years—more than 20,000—were from other sources including the Mexican military, and included weapons not available on the U.S. gun market at any price.

None of this, of course, is an excuse for this thug's ambush of police officers trying to uphold the peace. Not his job loss, nor his dishonorable discharge in Marine Corps boot camp, nor his Klannish (nearly progressive) hatred of Zionism, nor his psychological defects or fears.

Anger, is an emotion. It is apolitical and amoral, neither right nor wrong nor identifiable with a party affiliation. It is how a person choses to channel anger into action that defines him as good or evil or benign.

A person could channel his anger and fear of an Administration's clear desire to restrict Constitutional rights in a good way by becoming politically active and working to make sure others know of the infringements the President desires.

Or a person could use his anger and channel them into evil actions, such as murdering police officers... or use the story about those murders, along with willful lies and half truths, to attack others for a momentary political advantage.

Both are evil acts.

It's simply a matter of degree.

How Many People Died Because of the Binghamton Police Response?

By all accounts, there were 14 dead (including the shooter) and four wounded when police finally entered the American Civic Association in Binghampton, NY yesterday, at least an hour after a three-minute rampage had ended with the death of the shooter.

If autopsies determine that even one of the 13 victims died after the "golden hour" and could have been saved by police immediately entering the building and getting them medical care, instead of forming a perimeter and just waiting, then I hope the citizens if Binghampton call for Chief Joseph Zikuski's ouster.

Why do I have a CCH permit? Because when seconds count, police are just seconds 25 yards and several hours away.

Binghamton Shooter Recently Laid Off From IBM Shop Vac

More information is already coming out about the man who went on a shooting spree inside the American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY today.

Jiverly Voong, 42, was a nationalized naturalized Vietnamese-American who has been in the United States for 28 years. He began his rampage at 10:31 AM, killing 13 others and himself by 10:33 AM. There is still some uncertainty about the number of people who were wounded during the shooting who are in area hospitals.

Voong is said to have used a pair of semi-automatic handguns in his assault, once chambered in 9mm and one chambered for 45 ACP (Kudos to the ABC News staff for using my rewrite of that paragraph to report the story more accurately; they had originally used a sentence that described the weapons used inaccurately as heavy caliber automatic pistols).

Police have no known motive for Voong's attack, but some media are suggesting that his recent layoff from IBM may have been part of the reason for the for the shooting. An account of last week's layoffs from WBNG suggests a thin motive for attacking the Civic Association:

Big Blue plans to layoff 5-thousand U.S. Employees today.

IBM headquarters has not responded to calls about whether there are cuts at the Endicott site.

Conrad says Alliance has been told layoffs are taking place in Global Business Services, Systems Technology Group, and Global Technology Services.

"We are hearing that these jobs will be eliminated here in the United States and the work shifted to India, China, Asia-Pacific and Latin America." says Conrad.

It is thin and perhaps irrational reasoning that would lead an immigrant to attack other immigrants for jobs that are leaving this country, if this was indeed Voong's motive. Sadly, that is all the motive we have at this time, and no motive could every justify such a senseless act.

I would caution Americans on the left not to use this senseless tragedy to push for more gun control (New York has restrictive gun laws that obviously failed here), just as I'd advise my fellow citizens on the middle and right not to blame the current or former Presidential Administrations for the recession that led to IBM's layoffs. Congress?

That's a point that may well be worth discussing...

Update: As they so often are, earlier media reports were wrong. Voong (formerly Wong) hated America, was obsessed with guns, and hated having poor English skills.

Illiteracy kills?

Zikuski said Wong was depressed about his poor English-speaking skills, which he was teased about, and his recent unemployment.

"He was terminated from his job at a place called Shop Vac, and he was very upset about that also," Zikuski said.

Zikuski told NBC's "Today" show that people "degraded and disrespected" the gunman over his inability to speak English well.

As a result, said Mayor Matthew Ryan on ABC's "Good Morning America," he was upset about his problems with the language.

This makes his decision to attack a room full of recent immigrants, many who we can assume also faced the challenge of adopting to a new language, even less understandable.

Massacre at American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY

Breaking news is that the American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY today has been attacked. Casualty accounts vary depending on source, but it appears a minimum of 13 people have been killed and more than 20 have been wounded.

ABC News reports that the shooter committed suicide.

Please remember to take all early media accounts (including this blog entry) with a grain of salt until details are confirmed, and pray for the victims and their families.

A Call to Arms in Mexico

The solution to the expanding drug cartel violence in Mexico isn't for our anti-gun President and Attorney General to pass even more restrictive gun laws in the United States, but instead change Mexican laws to increase the flow of guns into the right hands in Mexico, paralleling the success of the Sawa or "Awakening" movement in Iraq that drove a similarly violent Sunni insurgency out of al-Anbar.

Read my latest, A Call to Arms in Mexico, at Pajamas Media.

KA-BOOM: "Ninety-Percent" Lie Goes Up in Smoke

I've said before that the anti-gun forces in this country must lie about the horrors of firearms, because reality won't to stoke a level of fear that would convince the American people to give up their Constitutional rights.

An anti-gun lie being pushed hard recently is that 90 % of the guns used to commit violent crime in Mexico come from the United States. Democrats favoring more gun control have been hammering that claim repeatedly, claiming the violence in Mexico justifies further restrictions here in the United States.

That lie, favored by our media, our Attorney General, and our President, is now circling the drain.

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

So where are the 83-percent of guns coming from, if they aren't coming from the United States?

Shockingly, cartels that exist to smuggle large quantities of illegal drugs internationally also have the ability to smuggle large quantities of illegal weapons internationally as well. Who knew?

Well, anyone with the slightest bit of integrity.

The super-majority of firearms that have turned up in the hands of Mexican cartels came from black market sources, Central and South American revolutions, are smuggled in from Asia, or come from deserters of the Mexican military.

We should hope that President Obama's administration, members of Congress, and media outlets that reported the 90-percent lie will be as honest as Fox News was, and put this myth to rest.

I have hope, but not expectations.

Update: An interesting take on Mexico's gun laws and gun culture from the inside.

Simple Logic in a Time of Madness

Republicans have now offered an alternative budget that is based upon a very simple truth that seems to elude both the President and Congress, that a nation cannot spend its way out of debt.

It proposes stopping all non-stimulative "stimulus" spending, freezing most discretionary spending for five years, and implementing a simple, common-sense tax structure so simple that even an Obama Administration appointee can figure it out.

Will Congress or the President embrace the entirely rational approach of lessening the growth of government spending in troubled times?

Of course not.

It took years of dedicated, concentrated self-deception for Democrats to finally reach the point where they could create a "reality-based community" so logically damaged that they could reassure each other that government-by-Ponzi-scheme was a viable economic model.

They will not let such a grand self-deception go down without a fight, and you can bet your last Yuan that the more brutal reality intrudes, the worse the cognitive dissonance of their fellow travelers will get.

Democrats will continue to spend money we don't have at an ever increasing pace until they are either thrown out of office or the country itself is bankrupted.

The President and his Congress are crashing.

It may be too late the stop the car, but if we can act quickly enough, strongly enough, we might be able to lessen the inevitable impact.

NFA 1934 Overturned; Machine Guns Legal Again With Fewer Restrictions

Via The Gun Source:

That NFA laws have been repealed through a long standing court battle in the 7th US Circuit Court. The president of TGSCOM had sued the federal government on the grounds that the NFA law violated the Second Amendment of the Constitution. After heated and lengthy oral arguments, TGSCOM is now able to sell fully automatic weapons to the general public without tax stamps and the additional background check. The one stipulation to the agreement is that fully automatic rifles will be treated like handguns in that they will require a purchaser of 21 and older, the firearm must be transferred in the state of their residence (same as handguns) and that the buyer must submit to all regulations in the state of their residence.

I'd been watching this in the court system and had hoped for this outcome, but frankly was surprised TGSCOM prevailed in such a manner, and with so little fanfare. Since I'm a registered gun writer because of my work for Pajamas Media I was able to order a Glock 18 machine pistol during a writer's only sale last night. With spare 33 round magazines, it will probably become my new concealed carry pistol.

Once I saw up the money from the Obama stimulus, I'll also be picking up the 100-round G36K for "squirrel and rabbit hunting" and the FN M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) I've always wanted.

Frankly, I don't think I'd use it for hunting, but it might make parts of Durham accessible again.