A Monster is Murdered, and Nothing is Gained

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

That childhood admonition stuck with me over the years, and was the first thought to pop into my head when I read that an infanticide practitioner by the name of George Tiller was gunned down in a Wichita, KS church this morning, and that a suspect was in custody.

I'm finding it harder than normal to find sympathy for this murder victim, but with reason.

He was a man who killed babies the age my daughter Kate was when she came into this world. To me putting a baby to death is simply unimaginable and tragic, and it makes him a monster. I cannot imagine the kind of man who would do such a thing, or easily imagine the circumstances in which such an act could be justified if the baby wasn't an immediate and life-threatening medical risk to the mother, but I do try to remind myself that it isn't my place to judge what happens to him, or his soul.

If you believe in God, you know that either Tiller is forgiven for his sins, or he is damned for eternity.

Sadly, there are some small-minded people who find a bit of satisfaction in the thought of an abortion doctor burning in Hell, and think that the only think wrong with this scenario is that the other few doctors nationwide that still practice this barbarity aren't also in morgues.

I don't think they grasp that the murder of this physician is merely the last tragedy of a life tragically led, and that politically-motivated murders rarely accomplish anything more than throwing away two more lives (that of the the victim and the murderer) without coming a single step closer to resolving the underlying disconnect that leaves the sides so far apart.

George Tiller was a monster. So is his killer. Neither should be made into martyrs or heroes, as it is quite clear that neither man was.

Simply pray they both find forgiveness, and hope that when our final day arrives, we find forgiveness as well.

Obama Holds Israeli Helicopters and Weapons Integration Hostage, Benefiting Hamas and Putting Civilians at Risk

In a move that a cynic might note may be designed to save their $900 million investment in Hamas, the Obama Administration has stepped in to block the sale of six Apache helicopters to Israel and also stopped the integration of the Spike missile system with the Apache's millimeter wave radar.

The Obama administration has blocked Israel's request for advanced U.S.-origin attack helicopters.

Government sources said the administration has held up Israel's request for the AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter. The sources said the request was undergoing an interagency review to determine whether additional Longbow helicopters would threaten Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

"During the recent war, Israel made considerable use of the Longbow, and there were high civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip," a source close to the administration said.

What a naked, ideologically-driven crock.

Obama's Administration, which apparently has little knowledge of or use for military systems, does not seem to grasp that the use of the Longbow's mast-mounted sensor suite enables it to more carefully select targets that other variants of the Apache, which in and of themselves are a better targeting, surveillance, and attack system than most alternatives.

Nor do they seem to grasp that the close air support function of helicopters with lighter weapons loads is less likely to cause the collateral deaths of civilians than other weapons systems that would have to step into the suppression role that helicopters typically occupy.

Artillery units (in Israel, typically 155mm self-propelled howitzers) fire salvos of "dumb" high explosive or incendiary shells that either burst above the target (spraying shrapnel over a wide area), point detonate on impact, or less frequently, on a time delay that lets them penetrate structures before exploding. But artillery is not designed to be a precision weapon, and Obama's decision could force the Israeli's to use this area weapon, directly putting civilian lives at risk.

The other option for the Israeli's if these Apache's are out of the picture are "fast movers" such as the F-15i and and F16i, fighter-bombers armed with bombs weighing hundreds or thousands of pounds. While they can be armed with precision weapons, the warheads on these munitions are typically larger than those of helicopter mounted weapons. Once again, this creates a situation where the Israeli's are boxed into a less-than-optimal weapons system and put civilians at greater risk of death because of an ignorant decision made by a neophyte's Administration trying to play hardball not with an enemy, but an ally.

The net result is that Obama's short-sightedness and inexperience is potentially leading to a situation that will increase the collateral damage of Israeli strikes, even if the strikes are carried out with the utmost care, because Obama has blocked the sale and integration of the most precise and surgical weapons system available to handle the threat.

Instead of being able to target a Hamas rocket team that has retreated into the garage of an apartment building with a Longbow's precision gunfire or a pinpoint missile strike, Obama's decisions may lead to Israel being boxed into a position where their options are to respond with artillery strikes that run the risk of bringing down the building and spraying everyone nearby with shrapnel, or bombing the building with fighter aircraft armed with bombs large enough to flatten the building and kill everyone inside it.

Obama stupidly thinks that by denying Israel precision-strike capable aircraft and precisions munitions integration that Israel might not fire on the Palestinian terrorists he's provided more money to than anyone but Iran. He thinks he's protecting his investment. Israel, however, does not suffer terrorist rocket attacks on it's neighborhoods and schools, nor should they.

Those innocent Palestinians that may die as a result of this shortsightedness need look no further for a culprit that then man who hides behind the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

(h/t Bookworm)

End Run: Sotomayor is Obama's Attempt to Undermine the Second Amendment

I don't care if Sonia Sotomayor is a "wise Latina woman." I certainly hope that she is if she's in the running for a seat on the Supreme Court.

But one thing that should concern all freedom-loving Americans is Sotomayor's views on the Second Amendment, and why she was chosen by an anti-gun President that belonged to an organization that once attempted to the undermine SCOTUS itself.

When Self Defense Becomes Murder

If robbers come into your home or place of work, pull a weapon and threaten your life, you have every moral right to defend yourself and others as long as they pose a lethal threat. Pharmacist Jerome Ersland was therefore justified when he shot Antwun Parker in the head on May 19 before chasing his armed accomplice out the door.

Ersland crossed the line, however, when he re-entered the pharmacy after chasing away the armed suspect, retrieved another gun, and used it to shoot Parker five more times as he lay unconscious on the floor.

The district attorney has decided to charge Ersland with murder for the five shots fired into Parker as he lay on the floor that eventually killed him. While Ersland's lawyer is confident that a jury will find in favor of his client, there seems to be very few shades of gray here. An unconscious man laying on the floor with a head wound cannot be construed as a legitimate threat as anything much more than a trip hazard, and Ersland's lawyer is going to have to fight the dual battles of explaining why Ersland apparently lied to the police about what happened (his statement apparently does not match forensics or the ins-store camera footage of the event), and why, if Parker was a lethal threat, Ersland had the time to retrieve a second handgun from another location in the store to shoot him five more times, instead of using the gun he had at hand or a closer, makeshift weapon.

This pharmacists escalated what was apparently a justifiable case of self-defense into a seemingly clear-cut murder of an unarmed and unconscious man.

For that, there is no easy excuse.

Obama to Nominate "Me, Too" to Supreme Court

The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama is about to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

Like most Obama nominations thus far, she seems to have been selected with ideological conformity and demographic diversity being more important criteria than competence, and is more interested in implementing identity politics and legislating from the bench than strictly interpreting of the Constitution.

Intellectually, Sotomayor is said to be an inferior compared to those Justices already on the court regardless of their political leanings, and it is expected that if she is confirmed, she will do little more than be a "me, too" to the more competent left-leaning justices already established.

In short, the choice of Sotomayer is precisely the kind of disappointing selection Americans are coming to expect out of the current administration, meeting only lowered expectations.

Shocker: NY Muslim Terrorists Were Losers, "Intellectually Challenged"

More is coming out about the four Newburgh men who were arrested in a plot to carry out attacks on synagogues in New York City and shoot down C5 Galaxy transport aircraft at Stewart ANG base in Newburgh.

You'll hardly find it surprising that the terror team is bunch of dead-end convicts who converted to Islam in prison, and that none are a threat to join Mensa:

One is a petty criminal who spent a day in 2002 snatching purses and shooting at people with a BB gun from an SUV. His lawyer calls him "intellectually challenged."

Three have histories of drug convictions, one of them for selling narcotics in a school zone. The man prosecutors portrayed as the instigator of the scheme said he smoked pot the day he planned to blow up the temples.

In other words, if they hadn't decided to become terrorists, they would have fit perfectly in ACORN.

As it is, one of the uncles of the suspects feels that he knows where to place the blame:

"The Onta I know wouldn't do something like this, but the new Onta, yeah," said Richard Williams, an uncle. "He wasn't raised this way. All this happened when he became a Muslim in prison."

It's interesting how people who convert to just about any other religion in prison—say, Christianity as a popular choice—come out of prison and often use their newfound zeal as a convert to make something out of their lives.

A blogger friend of mine recently remarked in a private email (hence no name) about how her brother turned his life around after going to prison and finding God there. The one-time petty criminal and recreational drug user is now clean and sober and found a work ethic that has amazed his sister. He now owns a commercial landscaping company. He recently purchased ten acres of land with a pond, and just started building a dream home with his new bride. All of this occurred just six years after he walked out of the prison gates with nothing but his faith and support form his family. He gives all the credit for his phenomenal success in such a short amount of time to God.

If James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen has been successful in their quest to carry out murderous synagogue bombings in Riverdale and managed to bring down a C5 Galaxy carrying even part of its full fuel load of 332,500 pounds—enough to fill more than six railcars—and managed to burn a massive swath of their hometown to the ground—perhaps the massive jet veering into the 2,700 student Newburgh Free Academy (which is very near a landing jet's flight path) in the worst, worst case scenario—they would no doubt give all the "glory" of their massacres to Allah.

It is interesting, and sometimes insane what adherents of different religions think brings glory to their God, and worth noting that what these converts would have lauded as the will of their God parallels what we would expect from the will of Satan himself.

As for Masjid al-Ikhlas, the mosque these men shared on Washington Terrace in Newburgh, I'd like to hope that they were not involved in the plot in any way, or were working with the authorities in bringing down this band of murder-minded misfits. If they were encouraging jihad, however, I hope the authorities shut them down.

There is a freedom of religion in this country, but that stops when the individual practitioners or promoters of the religion use it to destroy the lives of others.

Update: And radicals they are. Phyllis Chesler does some digging and reveals the radical Islamist roots fo Masjid al-Ikhlas.

Perhaps Peter King or another New York politician should consider finding a way to close such radical centers that seem to do little more than condone and organize criminals to become indoctrinated mass murderers.

These Are the Terrorists In Your Neighborhood

When I lived in Newburgh, New York I had a paper route that took me down Washington Terrace, an utterly forgettable section of road in an ugly part of worn-out town.

It's beena few years, but the mosque one source calls Masjid Al Jihad Al Akbar (the local paper calls it Masjid al-Ikhlas, but puts it at the same address) was a worn-looking Islamic Center on Washington Terrace that never seemed to have anyone around when I drove past. If news accounts are correct, the two-story building that may be the only mosque in Newburgh was most likely a link between four Muslim terrorists that were attempting to bomb synagogues in Brooklyn and try to shoot down aircraft with Stinger missiles at Stewart ANG base.

The FBI busted a homegrown terror cell late Wednesday night as the men sneaked around a Jewish temple in Riverdale planting what they thought was packages of C-4 explosives, sources told the Daily News.

The four African American men, three of whom were said to be jailhouse converts to Islam, also allegedly had what they believed was a working Stinger missile in their car.

Officials said they hoped to shoot down a plane at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh in Orange County.

Sources said the four men were arrested after a year-long investigation that began when an informant connected to a mosque in Newburgh said he knew men who wanted to buy explosives.

FBI agents posing as militants sold them what they thought was 30 pounds of C-4 and a plane-downing Stinger missile.

The weaponry was all phony.

The ANG plane most often flown out of Stewart is the massive C5 Galaxy, on a predictable flight path that would make the plane a relatively easy target as it came in for landings from any of a hundred possible launch sites along Route 17K or Route 300, with easy escape routes to nearby interstates just minutes away.

I remember that after 9/11 some locals grumbled about wanting to burn down Masjid Al Jihad Al Akbar. In retrospect, if it is the mosque where terrorists came to plot, then finding some way to shut the mosque down certainly seems like an idea worth considering.

Update: Confirmed. The mosque's imam is an ex-con who di d a 12-year stretch for robbery and is the protegee of another Imam who was fired for praising the terror attacks of 9/11.

A Tiny Lemur Didn't Murder God Today

If you've been online today you've probably stumbled across—or have been bombarded with—the story of "Ida," a 95-percent complete, 47-million-year-old fossil of a nine-month-old Darwinius masillae.

Ida is a lemur-monkey that has been declared the fabled "missing link" that proves Darwin's theory of evolution as a biological bridge between higher primates and other, less advanced cousins.

The Scientific team's Revealing the Link web site attempts to provide some context for what is assuredly one of the most important scientific finds in recent memory.

The presentation and implications of the find have made atheists like Allahpundit giddy with the thought that a find proving the theory of evolution somehow negates the existence of God. That sentiment, of course, has sparked a predictable battle between the Biblical absolutists AP was no doubt intending to goad, and his fellow atheists. It has spurred an epic 600+ comment thread at Hot Air.

Charles has spurred a similar thread (700 comments as I write this) at Little Green Footballs written with a less combative tone.

I'm obviously missing something central to the wars being held in these comment threads, so someone please help me out—how does the existence of lemur fossil prove that God doesn't exist?

It's an absurd argument, of course, and a complete non sequitur.

While Charles Darwin fell away from the creationist view of the world espoused by Christianity as a result of his findings and contemporary works such as Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, I see very little in his work that disproves God.

What Ida does is provide more support for a scientific theory, and in so doing, it erodes the absolutist view of the creation story told in the Book of Genesis. It doesn't disprove God. It simply once again highlights the failings of people.

If you believe that every single word in the King James/Good News/NIV Bible that you own is the absolute, undiluted and infallible utterance of God complete in every way and accurate in every detail without ambiguity or literary device, then frankly—and I mean this will all brotherly love—you're a bit touched in the head.

You're also historically illiterate.

We know for a fact that there were three separate views regarding the substance of Christ 325 years after his death among Christians and that the modern view of the godhead was only cemented by a series of vote during the first Council of Nicea, three centuries after his death, not as the result of a divine act.

We know of the apocrypha (which may or may not have been inspired, but are certainly excluded) and we know that Paul's first first letter to the Corinthians, dealing with sexual immorality, was lost to the sands of time.

The Bible, translated and mistranslated through various languages, edited in subtle ways and subject to a wide range of all-too-human failings, is the best of the Word of God we could retain. It is not perfect. It is full of allegory and allusion and prone to our misinterpretation of what it means in our all too finite and convoluted minds.

So Genesis says the Earth was created in seven days, and describes the creation of the universe and our way in it, and a fervent literal belief in that account is incompatible with the most commonly held theories of evolution.

We're left with the choice that the choice to interpret Genesis literally is wrong, that the very text of Genesis is wrong, or that the theory of evolution is wrong. At least, those are the choices most arguing the issue like to frame.

But I have a nagging doubt that like so many human arguments, that this is an argument of false choices and that the reality is probably both far more complex and infinitely more simple.

I believe in God unreservedly. I also believe in evolution and plate tectonics and the fossil record. I do not find these to be incompatible, simply because some of my fellow humans declare I must believe either/or.

As great as the Bible is, it isn't perfect, and it is sometimes contradictory, and while to believe as I do is self-serving, I want to make clear that I question the various stenographers, translators, and publishers, not the author.

As for evolution, I find it is a great theory to explain how species adapt and persevere and thrive, and utterly consistent with the world I can touch and feel.

But science, as wonderful as it is, is far from perfect and is as full of holes as any religious text.

The best scientific minds cannot begin to explain how randomly occurring minerals and elements found in the mud of the universe formed molecules and those molecules randomly formed themselves into nucleotides and then into RNA and DNA and then into even the most basic single-celled life.

We see no scientific evidence of life having ever simply erupted from rock or sand or mud or water, and yet all of biology hinges on the very very fact that at some point in history, such a transaction must of have occurred. Physics, chemistry, geology, and all other scientific fields similarly fail to explain our origins. Does this mean that science doesn't exist?

Science, as wonderful as it is, can tell us only that the universe we know is roughly 4.6 billion years old, and that it probably started with a big bang. But it cannot tell us what existed 4.61 billion years ago, and offers no workable hypothesis about where that matter was prior to it's dispersal or where it came from, or how it got there, any better than when God simply spoke:

L E T   T H E R E   B E   L I G H T

...and there was.

Science helps explain the world around us, and our place in it. So does religion, and the two are often at war as men seek to use one or the other to explain the world in a way that best advantages them.

That assuredly has no bearing on God, who must be terribly amused at all our theatrics. He must sometimes wonder about what his favored creation has done with the massive computational and emotional engines he gave it, to conjure the thought that He could be undone by the mere revelation of another of his creations.

How silly we must seem.

And roughly as consequential as a primate frozen in stone.

Blackfive Introduces the Warrior Legacy Foundation

Non-partisan, and designed to honor those who have honored us with their sacrifices.

Let Matt explain it to you himself, and then join up.

If I'm Ever Caught Plagiarizing...

...please at least let it be memorable copy.

Don't let it be the pedestrian regurgitation of a shallow political talking point.

A Response to Susan Gill

Glenn Reynolds linked to an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the growing prominence of gun-bloggers among the old media and how these sometimes cranky and contrary souls [We don't know anyone like that, do we?] are even forcing the hand of the NRA on occasion.

The very first comment on the article was from someone using the name Susan Gill. I'm sure you'll recognize someone you know in her reply:

My goodness, it's hard to know where to begin. In Seattle, there is an increase of gang shootings, often by teenagers, right out in the open on the University of Washington Ave., Alki Beach, Golden Gardens, the South end at bus stops, etc. Kids should NOT have guns. Nationally, we have people in the same families shooting one another. People go off the deep end and shoot fellow workers or students with machine guns they should NEVER have access to.

The logic is we all have the right to protect ourselves. But, maybe we need to be thinking through the best way TO protect ourselves. Some good ways are living a wise lifestyle, trying to be harmonious with all, listening to your intuitions, staying out of trouble spots, leading a good purposed meaningful life and providing opportunities for others to do the same.

This pressure and lobbying from the NRA has been escalating for years. I don't like it at all. I'm to the point I'm more opposed to the pressure than the availability of guns. Why not more pressure for a harmonious society? Why not more pressure to provide for larger police forces? Why not more regulated laws that oversee gun sales, and limit gun sales to the appropriate parties, those who are professionals in the service of protecting our cities and country? (I won't even try to talk about the "hunting" aspect. I cannot in a million years imagine shooting an animal!)

I simply cannot believe our Founding Fathers' intent with the 2nd Amendment was to indiscriminately pass out guns to anyone who wants one. There MUST be more intelligent scrutiny and stricter laws on who may carry a fire arm.

Let us for a moment look past her sincere ignorance and the fact that there have been precisely two murders documented with legally-owned machine guns since 1934, that children are already barred from purchasing all manner of firearms, that "harmonious living" never stopped a hardened criminal, and that criminals should not circumscribe your freedoms. We'll look past all that to focus on what all too many outside of her moonbeams-and-unicorns world view also misunderstand about what our nation is, and the role firearms were intended to play.

To her and others like her I would write:

Ms. Gill,

I'd like to direct you to The Federalist Papers and other documents written by our Founding Fathers. They did indeed mean for every law-abiding reasonable man be armed with small arms suitable for military use. They created the Second Amendment not to sanctify pheasant hunting or target shooting, but to make sure American civilians always had access to small arms for the defense of their communities and against tyrannies foreign and domestic.

They recognized the militia as the citizen, not the National Guard, and the contemporary use of the phrase "well-regulated" in their time meant "well-trained."

The Founders wanted America to be a nation where the citizenry itself was a well-trained deterrent to tyrants abroad and would-be tyrants at home, recognizing that blood needed to be shed from time to time for liberty to remain and free men to remain free.

What the media glibly calls "assault weapons" today are the very arms that most closely mirror what the founders would have regarded at the proper armament for a free American citizenry. Our Founding Fathers, Ms. Gill, were what you would regard as right-wing extremists.

They wanted us armed and well-trained with those arms, knowing that any government security force sufficiently large and powerful enough to protect us from any crime is large and powerful enough to strip us of our freedoms. There is, after all, a reason why totalitarian nations are known as "police states."

Our Founders were men of action, and require action from us. They do not expect us to shirk our duties and responsibilities, and would be ashamed of those of you who think so much of your own self-worth that you would put another person's life on the line to assure you safety.

If you truly love your nation and your God, procure a weapon, and learn how to use it to defend the one sacred life that your Father gave you to lead, and freedoms that our Founding Fathers hoped to enshrine on parchment three centuries ago.

Thank you for your time.

Bob Owens

The Psychophantic Left

Earlier this month I wrote:

That there is a torture "debate" shows that we have both immature and immoral intellects in positions of power. "Enhanced interrogation"—and indeed, outright medieval torture tactics (if they were actually effective, and I don't think they are)—are of course morally justified to save the lives of hundreds or thousands.

Immorality as it relates to the use of torture to extract information from known terrorists regarding imminent threats is easily defined as hiding behind abstract ideals and culturally-comfortable moral constructs to justify doing less than everything possible to save Americans lives. Period. It is the leftist position, commonly cited as the "anti-torture" position that is morally bankrupt here, without question.

Any logical person abhors torture, but recognizes that in extremely rare or dire circumstances that it may be the only moral option.

Is anyone really going to argue that if authorities had been tipped off April 17, 1995 that Terry Nichols was involved in a plot to detonate a truck bomb somewhere in the American midwest within 48 hours, that the federal government would have been wrong to waterboard Nichols to learn the location of the building targeted? You simply cannot rationally argue that Nichol's right not to be tortured exceeds the simple right to live for the hundreds at risk in this hypothetical situation (not to mention the very real 168 men, women, and children who died because such a tip never materialized).

Such an absolutist position is clearly asinine, but it is the position of the left wing of the Democratic Party and their psychophants (I'm coining that phase as an amalgam of psychotic and sycophant, and defining it as an ideologically servile person who avoids an uncomfortable reality to maintain a logically untenable position).

Stand up and be counted, psychophants: proudly declare that your "moral outrage" is more important than the lives of others.

Loudly insist that your idealism is more important than the bonds of family, and the crushing loss of senseless deaths. Please explain that your detached ideological angst and politically-driven fantasies of frog-marching George W. Bush to prison are more important than the lives of husbands and wives, daughters and sons.

It is immoral to take such a position, and a position that I don't think I ever recall hearing from the left in earlier times. I somewhat suspect that the rabid and recent adoption of this absolutist psychophantic position actually developed out of a perceived opportunistic chance to undercut a Presidential Administration that leftists hate with an unreasoning primal fury. It is moral absolutism adopted as a means to a political end, every bit as dangerous as the extremism they seek (for the moment) to protect.

Charles Krauthammer re-addressed the torture debate today in the Washington Post, citing another instance where torture gave authorities the information they needed to attempt to stop a terrorist network that had captured an Israeli soldier. Krauthammer picked a horrific example. Soldiers face the possibility of capture as simply part of being soldiers, and the very snatch-and-grab tactics taught to military units around the world to capture prisoners for intelligence gathering purposes simply cannot justify a rationalization for them to be tortured if roles were reversed.

But we're not talking about military operations.

We're discussing admittedly extreme and very rare circumstances, where the lives of many may be saved by using all available methods to extract intelligence from someone known to have murderous intent. It is a thankfully rare situation, but it is a situation where acting to save the lives of the many is clearly the only moral choice.

The radical left, in their opportunistic rage, refuse to see that. Nancy Pelosi and others in the Democratic Party that made the conscious calculus to try to use this immature absolutism as a political weapon are now becoming the collateral damage of their own insincere machinations.

They always knew that in extreme cases, countering extreme events requires extreme actions. They knew that then as they allowed it, they knew it later when they spoke out publicly against it as part of their political theater designed to assuage an an unstable base, and they know it now as they attempt to deny and shift blame away from the truth of what they've always known.

Torture is a horrible thing, but it is not the most horrible thing, and on rare occasions, condoning torture may be the only moral option.

Nancy Pelosi and her liberal allies in the Democratic Party clearly know this. It is too bad they lack the moral courage to stand up and declare it to the irrational extremists in their midst.

I think they'd rather be tortured.

Bank of America's Squeegeemen

I was expecting a call from a relative and so I didn't check the number on my phone before answering this evening, only to find myself on the line with a telemarketer representing Bank of America.

He told me how I would be getting a "free" credit report from all three credit reporting agencies through Bank of America in weeks to come, along with a packet on how to increase and protect my credit rating.

Along with that "free" information, I would be enrolled in a credit monitoring service provided by Bank of America. The service would be free for the first month, and thereafter I would be billed roughly 40 cents a day, or $12 and change a month, if I didn't opt out of the program within the free period.

I politely told the young man on the phone that I found opt-out scams to rook customers both immoral and unethical, and told him I had no interest in being part of the program.

Repeatedly.

He responded by continuing with his script, never acknowledging that I desired to opt-out of this involuntary opt-in program, one designed to take advantage of busy people who would doubtlessly see free credit reports show up in the mail, and either shred them or throw them away without finding the fine-print legalese that will allow them to opt out of a program they never signed up for.

This is robbery. To be sure, they walk just inside the line of legality, but when someone starts providing you with a service that you don't want, and then extract payment for it, it is coerced, and it is wrong.

Bank of America has become little more than squeegemen, using trickery to extract payment for an unwanted service.

I doubt they'll get the $33.9 billion that Tax Cheat Timmy requires, but they seem desperate enough to try any and all measures to raise the funds the Obama requires, no matter how vile or unethical.

Empty Head Resigns as Empty Suit; Blogger Decides Gay Nazis Are Worse than Illinois Nazis

I've tried to ignore the entire Perez Hilton/Carrie Prejean saga, where we learned that fascism is both alive and accessorized and that having a personality more individualistic than that stamped from a Barbie mold isn't accepted in a bizarre industry where forcing people into pretty plastic pigeonholes is the order of the day.

The entire controversy simply shows that those who trumpet "tolerance!" the loudest have mastered only the pronunciation of that word and not the application. When slanders, slurs, and personal attacks failed to dislodge the object of their ire, one of the leading figures of the smear campaign resigned today for not having her own miltant prejudices affirmed. Sadly, she thinks she has the moral high ground.

It's all very surreal and instructive, though perhaps not in the way that so many of the most outspoken players in this poor bit of theater must have hoped. We're becoming quite a bizarre little nation, and I'm starting to wonder if those railing the loudest for such activist causes will ever accept anything less than the total, unquestioned dominance of their preferred narrative.

Tolerance, indeed.

Done Broke

Fred Kaplan thinks that the firing of Gen. David McKiernan in Afghanistan in favor of Gen. Stanley McChrystal will "make—or break" the Obama presidency.

I've got news for you, Fred.

With ballooning budgets, unrealistic economic projections, and a quiver full of new taxes on the way to finish off the economy, I think we can already claim with a fair degree of certainty that the Obama Presidency is already broke.

And so are we.

Tomorrow Belongs to Meh

In the interest of "going Galt" I've done away with my spellchecker. From now on, all typos are to now to be considered subversive activities.

Someone infomr DHS.

Who Was on Scare Force One?

That seems to be Ann Althouse's main question in this post, to which I can only answer with what the Air Force told me:

Mr. Owens--

Documents related to your inquiry may be requested through
the Air Force Freedom of Information Act office: request options and
instructions are available at http://www.foia.af.mil/. However, the flight in question occurred as part of a scheduled training mission, so there were no passengers on board. Requested documents therefore will only list military personnel.

Lt Col Tadd Sholtis
Deputy Chief, Current Operations
Secretary of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs

No passengers = No VIPs = No conspiracy theory (or... a bigger one!).

Too Far, or the Usual?

This Monday morning The Drudge Report features a menacing picture of former Vice President Dick Cheney looking at President Barack Obama (his back to the camera), with the headline, "Cheney: Obama Endangers the Nation."

The text links to this article, which does indeed cite Cheney as stating that President Obama is rolling back measures taken by the Bush Administration that Cheney felt were responsible for saving American lives by preventing another terrorist attack on American soil after 9/11.

Cheney's statement is hardly surprising, and for anyone who follows national security, not that controversial. Like him or loathe him, Cheney has been Secretary of Defense and Vice President for longer than Barack Obama has been in politics. He is correct in noting that President Pollyanna's return the failed 9/10 policies of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter is likely to get innocent Americans killed in attacks here at home.

That said, I wonder about the wisdom of Drudge's inflammatory image, and what sort of feeling it is meant to evoke. Mike Potemra says it has a Seven Days in May vibe to it an I won't disagree that the mood is sinister, but I doubt there is any reason for Naomi Wolf to descend into another unhinged rant, either.

And perhaps such dark questioning of a President is simply old hat but new to my eyes... when focused on an incompetent Democratic President instead of a Republican.

Linda Sanchez' Dirty Attack on Free Speech

Linda Sanchez seems very interested in introducing and then defending a bill written so broadly that it can be used for imprisoning online critics such as hostile bloggers.

You and I understand that Congress is full of less-than-stellar intellects that put up horribly-written bills as a matter of course, but what makes this particular bill of interest is that Sanchez is willing to defend it, and that she doesn't seem to have any interest in re-targeting the language of the bill so that it narrowly focuses on the cyber-bullying of children.

Instead, Sanchez seems to be fighting to justify the much broader language that has the potential of be used abusively as a procedural weapon against legitimate criticism. When politicians attempt to justify bills written so broadly they often do so with ulterior motives.

With her unwillingness to consider more tightly-focused language, there is no reason to assume that Sanchez' involvement is anything other than the censorship bill that Wired blog Threat Level suspects it may be.

The Pro-Torture Obama Justice Department

"We're against torture and for going after those who advocate it—except when we feel justified in using the same argument, of course."

That there is a torture "debate" shows that we have both immature and immoral intellects in positions of power. "Enhanced interrogation"—and indeed, outright medieval torture tactics (if they were actually effective, and I don't think they are)—are of course morally justified to save the lives of hundreds or thousands.

Immorality as it relates to the use of torture to extract information from known terrorists regarding imminent threats is easily defined as hiding behind abstract ideals and culturally-comfortable moral constructs to justify doing less than everything possible to save Americans lives. Period. It is the leftist position, commonly cited as the "anti-torture" position that is morally bankrupt here, without question.

Since it apparently needs to be said: YES, our lives are more important than the rights or lives of terrorists.

When terrorists embrace a belief system and moral code that defines civilians as legitimate targets, they forfeit their their rights.

As someone said elsewhere, if you want a true definition of torture, make someone choose between burning alive or plunging 80 stories to their death. If such a choice can be avoided by waterboarding a terrorist, then the only moral thing to do is to waterboard him, and it is the people who argue otherwise who are morally-stunted children.

College Student Uses Gun to Prevent Potential Mass Homicide, Rape

When I was teaching freshman comp as a grad student at East Carolina University, I always felt safe because I knew one of my most responsible students broke the law, and carried a concealed handgun to class every day. I also suspected other students carried firearms. The simple fact of the matter is that as long as there have been night classes, distant parking lots and crime associated with college communities, there have guns on campus, ans much as some like to keep the illusion that they do not exist.

A studnet like my own former student carried a gun in his backpack (and presumably to class) as my former student did, and if he hadn't, this story might have ended much differently:

"Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all," said student Charles Bailey.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

"They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, 'Give me your wallets and cell phones,'" said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. "The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough," said Bailey.

That's when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

One would-be rapist died, and the other suspect is being hunted down. One of the party-goers would wounded in the crossfire and is expected to fully recover.

This is a mass murder—they were counting the bullets to see if they had enough—that didn't happen because a college student was armed with a gun.

Don't expect to see it get near the attention from the media that it deserves.

No Pics, No Perks, and an F-16 a Long Way From Home...

The New York Post is reporting that the $328,835 photo op organized by the White House that terrified New Yorkers will not be released. Apparently an Administration willing to release classified interrogation photos that will be used for terrorist recruiting and inciting attacks against deployed soldiers can't bring itself to release photos of a public event for fear of causing President Obama some indirect personal embarrassment.

Ther is some good news, however, about the flight. Lt Col Tadd Sholtis, of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs, confirmed via email this morning that "the flight in question occurred as part of a scheduled training mission, so there were no passengers on board." Some of my fellow bloggers had wondered if perhaps President Obama's campaign contributors might have been about the VC-25A's strafing of Manhattan, but that was apparently not the case.

As for the F-16 that accompanied the VC-25-A, some people have noticed that the bright-red-tailed plane that accompanied the 747 as it banked above New York Harbor looked very much like the markings of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

The plane in that photo certainly resembles the F-16s of the 100th Fighter Squadron attached to the 187th Alabama Air National Guard, which carry those distinctive colors as a tribute to the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

It is a long haul from Alabama to Washington to New York and back again, and there are other Regular Air Force units far closer to both DC and New York that could have flown escort for the President's plane if escort was their actual duty. Perhaps the plane from the 160th—if that is indeed what it was—was there as part of the photo op. Captain Cambarella, PAO of the of the 187th has so far declined a request for comment.

If the Alabama ANG fighter did participate, refueling fuel costs alone would seem to warrant nudging the $328,835 cost of the White House debacle further upward.

YES: You Too Are an Extremist

This one was recalled, perhaps because almost any human capable of forming an opinion was declared an extremist:

A "left-wing extremist" is described as someone who opposes war or is dedicated to environmental and animal rights causes, while a "right-wing extremist" is someone who is against abortion or for border enforcement.

I've got an idea: why don't we go ahead and correctly label the employees of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis as hyperbole extremists?

Daily Beast Lies Again

More outright fabrication from The Daily Beast (my bold, of course):

At the gun show in Reno, I witnessed the sale of rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and bazooka guns; I watched a California-based dealer demonstrate how rapidly he could field strip his .308-caliber sniper rifle, then stash it in a deliberately innocuous-looking backpack and a briefcase that "looks just like a camera case."

Mr. Blumenthal, I'll make you a deal.

Produce a functional gun show-purchased RPG-7 launcher and grenades or a functional "bazooka gun" (whatever that is), and I'll either eat it, or let you shoot at me with it. The simple fact of the matter is that such weapons are not available at guns shows, though replicas— non-firing essentially 1:1 scale models—sometimes are.

The take-down rifle design he shows with forboding isn't particularly innovative and has been around for over a hundred years. I just watched the Clint Eastwood classic Joe Kidd over the course of a weekend, where a western set in 1900 featured a scene where the title character assembled a similar weapon transported in a compact presentation case, and then used it to kill a rifleman sniping from a ridge hundreds of yards away.

As for Blumenthal's crockmentary, I'm less than impressed with tired leftist tactic he used of finding a small number of crackpots from multiple events and presenting them as being a fair representation of the overall group. Whether used by Blumenthal or Riefenstahl, it is purposefully dishonest.

You'll note that though he claims to have attended two shows, he came back to the same 2-3 guys for the bulk of his interviews, most prominently the old Alex Jones fan and the young Paultard. Those interviews were culled from out of what must have been thousands of potential attendees he could have chosen to talk to. I have little doubt his intention was to isolate and fixate upon those he thought would be most useful fodder for a smear out of what was sure to have been thousands (for example, there were 8,000 people attend a gun show in Raleigh over the course of the weekend, and I suspect I could find several dozen conspiracy theorists or more that would give similar stories to what he culled, but that doesn't make them representative of the larger group).

It's a smear job from a shameless propagandist, and yet another blow to the credibility of Tina Brown's Daily Beast, which seems to be trying to emulate the kind of journalism that is leading the New York Times into both irrelevancy and bankruptcy.