2 dead, 2 wounded.

Even the NY Times admitted the Allahu akbar shout (safe link to PJ Media).

The "alleged" shooter is from Kosovo. I guess this is his way of saying thanks to the infidels who saved Muslims there from being killed. Too bad the Serbs didn't get this one when they had the chance.

Obama is of course "saddened and outraged" but this "tragic event". Yeah, an "event" (and he called it an "attack"). Not mentioned: "terrorism" or "Islam"/"Muslim".

Posted by: DrewM at 01:31 PM | Comments (263)
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CNN actually calls him an abortion doc in the headline, which you may think is a no-brainer, but in fact the left has been pushing the idea that he wasn't an abortionist at all, because they decided to define abortion as "not something Gosnell did," or something.

I doubt they'll seek the death penalty. The same political nonsense that enabled the murderer will wind up keeping him from being aborted himself.

But one can always hope.

Prosecutors "did preserve the right to seek the death penalty at a later date by giving a notice of aggravating circumstances in court today," said Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, in a statement released Wednesday. The circumstances in this case are the deaths of people under age 12 and multiple murder charges

"Reserving the right" is an appeasing move. No one can say they're not seeking the death penalty, because they're "reserving the right." And yet-- not actually seeking it.

The aggravating circumstances are already well known. If the current circumstances are not aggravating enough for the death penalty, what additional information do they think will come to light?

Update: As my article had a date-stamp of 58 minutes ago, I thought it was the freshest word.

Ed at Hot Air seems to believe the death penalty is being sought, not "might be."

Looking at his cites, I find it sort of ambiguous -- one of his cites talks about considering the death penalty, not having made that decision. Another cite talks about delaying the decision.

I think for once I'm right.

AP Says Seeks: Maybe I'm wrong.

I think I'm probably right, though, because my cite was more specific on the point.

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (101)
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And here's the thing: This is the sort of war that will become nuclear quickly. Hell, it will probably start nuclear: Our notice that we now have a war in Pakistan will be one of these maniacs detonating a nuke someplace.

The horrible thing is that we all see this coming, and we can only pray: I hope it's India that gets it and not us. And that's a horrible thing, eh?, wishing that the Pakistanis will nuke India, huh? But that's where we're headed, because they're going to nuke somebody, eventually. And there seems to be no plausible path to avoid this, which leaves me making hellish prayers that at least someone else will be the surprise first victim, and we'll just be the ones sending over relief packages.

And then, after the calamity, it will be gut-check time. What is the appropriate level of force in return? I know I'm not exactly a turn-the-other-cheek sort of guy so I can already imagine what my position will end up being.

A Christian minister was killed for opposing the blasphemy laws, and of course his death is celebrated by the jihadis, which is like, my guess, 70% of the country.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (192)
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Key quote:

“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.

...

“The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq — invading, pacifying, and administering a large third-world country — may be low,” Mr. Gates said, but the Army and the rest of the government must focus on capabilities that can “prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises..."

He also talks about "reshaping" (that is, cutting) the Army's and Marines' budget because he thinks a large conventional mechanized-units-vs.-mechanized-units war is unlikely.

I don't know about that last part. I'd say we'll have few of those wars. And more of the smaller-unit/guerilla war. But I'd say the likelihood of either is pretty high. The former's at like 70% and the latter's at 100%. Just because most fights will be small-unit engagements doesn't mean large-scale warfare isn't going to happen.

Back when Bush was running in 2000, conservatives were united, almost universally, behind the proposition that the nation-building of the Clinton years was a bad use of the military, using it for a purpose it was not designed for, putting troops into a bad spot as they were in a position to be shot by any illegal combatant hiding a gun beneath his robes. We all agreed on that, pretty much.

Somehow it happened that Bush reversed his belief on this, and we (and by we, I mean I, definitely) bought into the idea that nation-building per se wasn't bad, a lot of times it was needed and morally required (Powell's "you break it, you bought it" doctrine), and maybe we just needed to do it differently than Clinton did. Perhaps the complaint became just that Clinton used nation-building in situations not truly vital to the national interest (Haiti, Kosovo) and maybe we just needed to be careful about committing to such a large, ongoing proposition, restricting ourselves to only attempt this in situations where the national interest was directly implicated (Iraq, Afghanistan).

After eight years of pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm not at all sure we were right to depart from the basic idea that nation-building was a bad idea.

This is less about Iraq and Afghanistan and more about the next war, which just might be Iran. Personally, I'd be on board for military action, but I would strongly prefer to leave the pacification and nation-building to the Iranians. Pay 'em, arm 'em, give them targeting lasers to paint targets for jet strikes, but I wouldn't support a massive, decade-long police action in a country with more than twice as many people as Iraq.

We used to do this a lot. We would arm indigenous fighters, train them, feed them intelligence, offer assistance. After 9/11, I think the decision was made that we had to show a very, very bright-line distinction between the real soldier -- professional, uniformed, acting under orders, scrupulously avoiding (to the extent possible) civilian collateral damage -- and the terrorist, and that led us to conclude, I think, that we couldn't just depart Iraq after smashing the Baathist state and let the Iraqis fight it out. Because there would be a whole lot of terrorist, civilian-targeting attacks, and we'd be on the hook for that. Even the more civilized groups we might have chosen to ally with would perpetrate the occasional terrorist horror -- Muslims don't seem to really buy into the civilian/soldier distinction very much.

But going forward in Iran, if it comes to that (and unless President WeakKnees becomes more proactive in undermining the regime and not propping it up, it will come to that), I am personally not on board with Colin Powell's you break it, you bought it edict.

American troops are of course the most disciplined, ethical, and heroic in the world. So heroic, in fact, we typically expect them to put their own lives in danger for the purpose of reducing the chance of collateral damage. Few other troops would even consider such rules of engagement; our guys might complain about it, but in the end, they follow orders.

So if American troops are the primarily force in a country, we can expect the lowest possible number of civilian collateral casualties. But the question I'm asking myself now is: How much do I really care about the fewest number of civilian collateral casualties? In Iraq, if the deaths of 3000 American soldiers (in the later post-war campaign) saved, let's say, 60,000 Iraqi civilians -- was that a good trade? Or, more importantly, because the more important thing to me is the doctrine going forward: Would I be willing to make that trade in a hypothetical pacification campaign in Iran? Would I trade 3,000 US soldiers to make sure the fewest Iranian civilians died in the chaos that ensued after a decapitation of the state?

I think I'd say the Iranians will have to fight it out themselves. Again, we'd be there, somewhere, in case of emergency, and to take high-impact action against factions we weren't fond of (an airstrike coordinated with Iranian ground fighters against a pro-mullah stronghold, for example).

But I wouldn't support an Iraq-style American-troops-as-primary-combatants pacification.

And I don't even think that it matters what I think -- I don't think any President, Republican or Democrat or Tea Partier, is going to propose such a thing. Which makes this question very important, because unless the country can accept that arm-your-proxies style of limited warfare, I think we're going to have a Vietnam Syndrome going forward. Given the choice between no military action at all and full-scale invasion plus pacification/nation-building, I think the country will select, by large margins, "no military action at all," and I think that is very dangerous.

We will need to fight another country again, most likely sooner rather than later. We need a doctrine about such a war that can actually gain popular support.

I just don't believe the country will undertake another Iraq or Afghanistan you-break-it-you-bought-it plan, at least not for a long time. So I think those who believe that warfare must always be a possible tool available to us (even if only occasionally used) must formulate a doctrine in which the post-war pacification campaign is specifically ruled out and our goals in the post-war scenario are achieved by means other than heavy presence of American troops as primary combatants.

I just don't think the Iraq model of post-war pacification is an option in the next five to ten years, at least, for political reasons. (For prudential reasons, I'm not sure we should be get into that sort of pacification program even after it becomes politically viable again, either.)

So to me, if we actually want to credibly threaten a country like Iran -- and do more than merely threaten, should it come to that -- we need a doctrine that has a chance of getting the nation behind it, and we have to begin conditioning the nation to realize what happens when disciplined, heroic American troops are not the primary combatants -- a lot of civilians are going to die, most likely, because only American troops (and some other professional Western-tradition troops) are brave enough to put the lives of civilians before their own. Pretty much everyone else (including, alas, the good guys we support, or more accurately, the less monstrous guys we're forced to support for lack of better options) have no compunctions about blowing up a schoolbus filled with kids.

I don't imagine that will be an easy sell. But unless that sale is made, I think our military threat is effectively off the table for a long time to come.

It's my sense at the moment that if we stick with the idea this sort of war makes sense and we'll keep the same doctrine going forward, that sounds great and all, but no one is actually going to really behave in that manner, and no president is likely to call for war with that announced doctrine. So sticking to that doctrine just means we can't go to war.

I'm not eager for the country to go to war, but if you assume (as I do) that sometimes war is a necessary evil, you need that option to always be available.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (214)
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$100 per day away (after one day grace absence), plus the threat of collecting from them all costs associated with attempting to track them down.

Plus this will be deducted from their per diems, to which I can only ask: Why are people who aren't working receiving a per diem in the first place?

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (204)
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Maryland now has a law imposing restrictions onfuneral picketing, Md. Crim. Law Code Ann. §10–205 (Lexis Supp. 2010), as do 43 other States and the Federal Government. See Brief for American Legion as Amicus Curiae 18–19, n. 2 (listing statutes). To the extent these laws are content neutral, they raise very different ques-tions from the tort verdict at issue in this case. Mary-land’s law, however, was not in effect at the time of the events at issue here, so we have no occasion to consider how it might apply to facts such as those before us, or whether it or other similar regulations are constitutional.

Well, that's something, I suppose -- but it appears this court is so hostile to the thought of limiting the freaks' supposed "rights" they'll strike those laws down too.

I don't believe they have this right. I base that on the next paragraph:

We have identified a few limited situations where the location of targeted picketing can be regulated under provisions that the Court has determined to be content neutral. In Frisby, for example, we upheld a ban on such picketing “before or about” a particular residence, 487
U. S., at 477. In Madsen v. WomenÂ’s Health Center, Inc., we approved an injunction requiring a buffer zone between protesters and an abortion clinic entrance. 512 U. S. 753, 768 (1994).

So the right to picket on a street is not so absolute, eh? It can be restricted in front of a residence; it can be restricted at an abortion clinic.

What do these things have in common? Well, someone's home is not really public; the theory is that a man's home is his castle. But going beyond that, it appears the court is ready to recognize that if protests follow a person to his home, he literally has no escape from the often-brutal sloganeering of the picketers, and would go mad: he simply cannot escape it, except, I suppose, by suicide.

And an abortion clinic? I suppose they are extending the "must have a place of refuge at home" to an abortion clinic, figuring that a woman seeking an abortion must go to the clinic, and so has no way to escape it. I realize that doesn't really make much sense, but the point is whatever they're protecting in extending the protection against free speech demonstrations at abortion clinics, it must of course apply equally to funerals: If their theory is that people cannot be interfered with and have the protest inflicted upon them when they must be at a certain place and hence have no way to escape, of course that applies 1000 times as much to a funeral. You can always choose another abortion clinic, after all. It is much harder -- bordering on impossible -- to cancel a funeral at the last moment and reschedule it.

Note the vicious, liberal double-standard the court imposes here: You can be protected from hassle at an abortion clinic, but not at your son's funeral. How much more important the court seems to believe abortion is than children.

If I had to guess what's going on here -- Scalia probably found that in both situations, free speech rights prevailed, and that it's only the liberals on the court who flipped, deciding that abortion-seekers should have protection, but that a man seeking to bury his war-hero child should have none.

If one case deserves special protection, I find it difficult to imagine how the other does not deserve it even more. But the court has a well-considered, well-reasoned answer to that:

The facts here are obviously quite different, both with respect to the activity being regulated and the means of restricting those activities.

Simply put, the church members had the right to be where they were.

Ah, they say it's quite different, therefore it is quite different. Simply put, they had a right to be where they were. Because.

I'm a bit confused by this passage, because they begin by talking about the present case (which doesn't involve violation of a content-neutral law, but instead a private suit for emotional distress pressed in absence of such a law) and then go on to discuss cases in which a law governing these situations have been found to be constitutional. They may, it seems, be trying to reassure people that now that such laws are on the books, they will be found constitutional, but are forbidden from saying so because courts are not supposed to rule on matters not before them: So instead they may just be hinting here.

But even by the terms of the Maryland law now in effect, the court notes the Westboro Satan-Fags would still be found to have acted lawfully, as that law only requires 100 feet (one hundred feet? I can throw a Nerf football that far and I suck) of distance, and these guys seemed to have been 1000 feet away.

On one hand, free speech is permitted, but on the other hand, stalking and harassment are not; the court seems to be unwilling to consider that while first amendment rights have long been protected by the Constitution, harassment has long been criminalized by law.

When does speech become harassment? How about when you're mobbing a specific individual or family? How about when the only reason your free speech is being broadcast on the airwaves is specifically because you chose to harass a private individual with it? That is, no one would carry footage of these people if they had a regular protest in front of, say, the local Army recruiting station; no, it's that they're specifically choosing an outrageous and brutal means to inflict their message on a grieving family that makes it newsworthy.

The thing that makes their message remarkable from a news perspective is that it is in fact harassment.

So should that be the rule? I guess those union protesters can physically menace people so long as they're chanting slogans as they do so.

Oh wait; that is the rule, isn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (149)
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We often get caught up in the heated political battles over people like Fred Phelps or Cindy Sheehan. It can be easy to forget that behind those well known names and heated debates are heroes like Casey Sheehan and Matthew Snyder.

So instead of writing any more about the Phelps family freak show, I think it would be better to take a moment and remember Lance Corporal Snyder.

Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, of Westminster, died March 3 after an accident in the Anbar province of Iraq. The accident did not involve combat, the Defense Department said.

Snyder, 20, was assigned to Combat Service Support Group-1, 1st Marine Logistics Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Family members are still reeling from the news of his death.

Julie Snyder, MatthewÂ’s mother, was too saddened to talk, but she allowed her sister, Cathy Menefee, to speak for the family. She told The (Baltimore) Sun of his keen sense of humor and an unwavering sense of responsibility, which culminated in his decision to join the military.

“It’s sounds so cliche, but he died doing what he wanted to do,” Menefee said. “He always wanted to be a Marine.”

Snyder enlisted on Oct. 14, 2003. He had been based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., before being assigned to Twentynine Palms in August 2004 as a generator mechanic.

He was the middle of three children, with sisters Sarah Snyder, 22, of Hanover, Pa., and Tracie Snyder, 18, who lives with their father in York, Pa.

From his obituary.

LANCE CORPORAL MATTHEW A. SNYDER USMC, 20, of Westminster, was killed instantly March 3, 2006 while on assignment in Al Qaim, Iraq. Stationed out of Twenty Nine Palms, CA, Matt was on a convoy mission for which he volunteered when the Humvee he was traveling in overturned. LCPL Snyder was born July 18, 1985 and lived in Carroll County until he followed his heart and chose to enlist in the USMC upon graduating in 2003 from Westminster High School. After completing training at Parris Island and Camp LeJeune, he was stationed at Twenty-Nine Palms in CA until his deployment to Iraq in February of 2006. Matt was a young man who truly loved and embraced life and he lived his twenty years to the fullest. He attended Sandymount Elementary School and loved sports. He played soccer and baseball for many years through various recreational programs. He also loved everything outdoors, including fishing and being at the beach. He loved hiking and spent many days growing up at Cascade Lake at the Skate Park. Matt was a devoted brother and cousin, who enjoyed family parties, playing football games and swimming in the pool. He was a wonderful role model to his younger cousins. Matt was proud to be a Marine and filled the position with dignity. Just before his deployment, Matt said he volunteered for convoy escort security because in his words, "there was a position that needs to be filled and I'm a Marine".

Snyder's family maintains a website here.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:51 AM | Comments (24)
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Not a lot of details at this point.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a shooting at Germany's Frankfurt airport, according to Sky News. Two other people were reportedly injured.

A man reportedly opened fire on a bus carrying U.S. soldiers.

The BBC is reporting that police arrested a 21-year-old suspect from Kosovo.

Update: Still not a lot detail but it looks like the victims were in the Air Force.

CNN was reporting that the troops killed and injured are U.S. Air Force airmen from Royal Air Force Lakenheath base in the United Kingdom, emphasizing that the information was preliminary.

Fuellhard said the shooter is believed to be a young man from Kosovo, who had opened fire from inside the bus. He is in custody of airport security forces, Fuellhard said.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:44 AM | Comments (233)
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I can't say I'm surprised. Freaks have First Amendment rights too it seems.

The justices by a 8-1 vote on Wednesday said members of the Westboro Baptist Church had a right to promote what they call a broad-based message on public matters such as wars.

The father of a fallen Marine had sued the small church, saying those protests amounted to targeted harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress.

"Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and– as it did here– inflict great pain," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. "On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker."

Here's the pdf of the decision. Alito was the dissenter. A case where you get Thomas, Scalia and Roberts agreeing with the liberals is pretty much a no brainer. Emotionally, yeah, you want to stick it to the freaks but when you step back, the implications if the outcome had gone the other way could have been pretty ugly.

Does the Westboro "Church" actually have a building or are they simply a traveling freak show with no base? Maybe it's time to take their brand of "political action" to them and make their lives a living hell for awhile. Why just limit it to counter protesting them? Why not take it to the bastards where they "worship" or maybe even live? It's all protected speech, right? Goose, gander, etc.

Wherever these bastards show up people from the community generally turn out to counter protest and shield the families from having to see them. In addition to honoring the fallen even when Westboro doesn't show up, the Patriot Guard Riders do a great job in countering the freaks. Kudos to them and all who stand with the fallen and their families.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:41 AM | Comments (182)
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That's what the Department of Defense Spokesman suggested today's Washington Post Profile of Marine LT. General John Kelly should be. He's right. Please take a few minutes to read it. Charlie Sheen will still be a clown when you get back (I'm as guilty as anyone on that front).

The story is here.

America isn't the first or sadly last country that doesn't pay enough attention to those that serve, have served or have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. We can never do enough but we can always do more.

I honestly don't know what the answer is, there probably isn't an answer.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:30 AM | Comments (52)
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