He didn't get around to selling it; he was arrested before he could.

But he did try.

Apparently he's poor (lives in a trailer), massively in debt, and working in a low-level job, and just wanted money. No ideological or religious motivation.

I wonder how much material he actually had access to; maybe he drew attention precisely because he was nosing around in areas he didn't have clearance for. In that case, the system kinda sorta worked.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (16)
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Let a thousand lawsuits bloom!

“Democrats are trying to find any technical excuse to keep immunity out of the language of the bill to protect citizens, who in good faith, report suspicious activity to police or law enforcement,” Mr. King said in an interview last night.

“This is a slap in the face of good citizens who do their patriotic duty and come forward, and it caves in to radical Islamists,” Mr. King said.

“I don't see how you can have a homeland security bill without protecting people who come forward to report suspicious activity,” Mr. King said.

Republicans aides say they will put up a fight with Democrats when the conference committee begins at 1 p.m., to reinsert the language, but that public pressure is also needed.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (28)
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Or at least not illegal, from what is known. The automatic-style weapons are semi-automatic conversions, and the tenant isn't a felon and so isn't barred from owning them.

"They were legal, which means they were not fully automatic, and he was not prohibited from owning them, meaning he was not a convicted felon," Mr. Crowley said.

The grenades were hollowed out and thus inert.

Mr. Crowley did not have further details on the possible child pornography.

Chief Golbeck said, "Our child exploitation unit will follow up on that end of it."

It appeared Wednesday that the tenant may not face any charges for the weapons. Mr. Crowley said possession of the rocket tube might be a federal crime, but he wasn't sure.

"It still raises the suspicion: Why does a person have these types of weapons?" Chief Golbeck said.

Um, a Texan?

Eh. If he's clean, he's clean. If he's not, he's not.

Thanks to Snapped Shot.

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Comments (36)
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Well, I assume he's a fundamentalist Christian. They keep telling me those are the sorts of violent zealots who stock up on Armageddon levels of firepower.

Given that the tenant keeps traveling back and forth to the Middle East, I can only assume he's part of some sort of Biblical/Left Behind Christotourism travel package.

Anyway:

Federal sources tell CBS 11 News that law enforcement officers have confiscated a large cache of weapons found in an apartment near the federal building in downtown Dallas.

...

Police are still taking inventory of all the weapons seized. Among those discovered were two AK-47 rifles, an Uzi 9 millimeter submachine gun, a TEC-9 submachine gun, a 40 millimeter ordnance launcher, a handheld ordnance launcher, and about 500 rounds of ammunition.

Police seized the weapons even though they say it's possible for all of them to be legal.

Child pornography was also found in the apartment, which could lead to criminal charges.

..

Authorities tell us the tenant travels to the Middle East frequently and just returned from there this morning.

...

However, authorities say there is no reason to suspect terrorism as a motive.

Nah, no reason at all.

Thanks to Chuck.

Dots? The Holy Land Foundation trial jury selection just started. In Dallas.

Thanks to Drew.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (61)
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Not a big deal Not terrorist related, just an accident, but made headlines today. Direct from the Fark.com newsline.

Had To Edit... my "no big deal" line because one person died in the accident. The video at Hot Air is much better than the clip I linked. Scary stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 05:11 PM | Comments (15)
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I won't quote from it. It's that nasty.

The husband only got 24 years in jail for multiple counts of rape, production of child porn (they videotaped this stuff), etc.

Thank God he's taller than Bill Maher and Paul Krugman or else he might not be doing any jail time at all.

Posted by: Ace at 05:07 PM | Comments (31)
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Huh.

Incidentally, while she was the criminal in her sexual abuse of the 12-year-old, she was the victim of the 12-year-old's sexual abuse of her; both boy and girl were apparently prosecuted under the state law against having sex with minors, each the other's rapist.

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (27)
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Well, well, well. The case for war just got stronger to the tune of one hundred billion barrels' worth, eh, lefties?

Posted by: Ace at 03:10 PM | Comments (25)
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The New Republic has had a long and troubled past with too-ideologically-good-to-be-true, too-difficult-to-verify but too-juicy-not-to-run stories in the past. Now an anonymous "soldier" is reporting for them (illegally, one presumes) from Iraq, and is telling implausible stories that just so happen to portray his "fellow soldiers" as vicious monsters.

As "Steven Glass" recounted in Shattered Glass, "But there was a hole in their factual verification process -- stories posted by reporters in the field were only checked against the reporter's own notes for their accuracy."

TNR claims to have plugged that hole, but how could they? There is simply no possible way TNR has a second source for this "soldier's" illegal "reportage," presumably done anonymously not only to avoid a court martial, but so as not to alert his fellow soldiers. So how can TNR claim any of these lurid, troop-bashing stories have been verified in any meaningful way?

Incidentally...

[E]ventually, we reached the bones. All childrenÂ’s bones: tiny cracked tibias and shoulder blades. We found pieces of hands and fingers. We found skull fragments. No one cared to speculate what, exactly, had happened here, but it was clearly a Saddam-era dumping ground of some sort.

One private, infamous as a joker and troublemaker, found the top part of a human skull, which was almost perfectly preserved. It even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt. He squealed as he placed it on his head like a crown. It was a perfect fit. As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter. No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

The private wore the skull for the rest of the day and night. Even on a mission, he put his helmet over the skull. He observed that he was grateful his hair had just been cut—since it would make it easier to pick out the pieces of rotting flesh that were digging into his head.

...

I know another private who really only enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles because it gave him the opportunity to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs. Occasionally, the brave ones would chase the Bradleys, barking at them like they bark at trash trucks in America—providing him with the perfect opportunity to suddenly swerve and catch a leg or a tail in the vehicle’s tracks. He kept a tally of his kills in a little green notebook that sat on the dashboard of the driver’s hatch. One particular day, he killed three dogs. He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road. A roar of laughter broke out over the radio. Another notch for the book. The second kill was a straight shot: A dog that was lying in the street and bathing in the sun didn’t have enough time to get up and run away from the speeding Bradley. Its front half was completely severed from its rear, which was twitching wildly, and its head was still raised and smiling at the sun as if nothing had happened at all.

Compare with John Kerry's Winter Soldier false testimony:

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...

Second verse same as the first, a little bit slower and a little bit worse.

Are you mad at me, Chuck? Chuck, are you mad at me? Why won't you answer me, Chuck?

The Weekly Standard is calling all servicemembers, milbloggers, and embeds:

[W]e believe that the best chance for getting at the truth is likely to come from the combined efforts of the blogosphere, which has, in the past, proven adept at determining the reliability of such claims. To that end we'd encourage the milblogging community to do some digging of their own, and individual soldiers and veterans to come forward with relevant information--either about the specific events or their plausibility in general.

Does anyone who has served at FOB Falcon remember hearing about or seeing the humiliation of this woman [mentioned earlier in the piece]? Do they know her name and how we might get in contact with her to confirm the author's account of the events that day?

Is anyone familiar with a combat outpost a few miles south of the Baghdad airport where a mass grave of Iraqi children was discovered? What about the other parts of the story? And does anyone else know of Bradleys careening wildly through the streets of Baghdad?

Please email any information, thoughts, and suggestions for further lines of inquiry to the WORLDWIDE STANDARD at wws@weeklystandard.com. We'll report back as information comes in.

Thanks to The Editor.

Bonus Steven Glass Comparison! How did Glass get away with filing dozens of obviously fraudulent report, and getting them all published?

Well, simple, really: He went for "colorful anecdotes" involving unnamed and unidentifiable people, the sort of thing that by its very nature could not be verified. And further, would never draw a single complaint from a maligned subject, because his subjects were simply entirely fictitious.

It's dangerous to put fake words into the mouths of real people. It's less dangerous to put fake words into the mouths of fake people, who work for fake organizations, discover fake mass graves, etc., because who is there exactly to write in a letter of complaint saying "I never said that"?

In one article, Glass claimed that he had encountered fanatical members of a new church worshipping a new deity, the Church of George Herbert Walker Christ, which held that the elder Bush ("Wouldn't be prudent") was in fact the second coming Jesus Christ Himself. And the TNR proudly published this. They never seemed to question why the Prince of Peace Himself couldn't miracle himself up a second term.

After all, Glass' own notes confirmed he'd met such people! And not a single member of the Church of George Herbert Walker Christ ever demanded a retraction, soooo...

Posted by: Ace at 03:06 PM | Comments (105)
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Am I reading this right? The article drops it casually as if it's old news. I guess it must be.

The actual false paw is made of laminated carbon fiber.

Previously used only in human fingers, the high-tech implant actually allows the dog's skin to grow into the metal, making it more like a real limb. Fitzpatrick hopes it'll act as a model for human amputees in the future.

Posted by: Ace at 02:53 PM | Comments (17)
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