Horrible.

Here's a live feed of local coverage.

Earlier today TPM attempted to make political hay over a deranged man in Massachusetts:

The Massachusetts man charged this week with stockpiling weapons after saying he feared an imminent "Armageddon" appears to have been active in the Tea Party movement, and saw Sarah Palin, who he said is on a "righteous 'Mission from God,'" as the only figure capable of averting the destruction of society."

Now, if the Huntsville shooter turns out to have the politics I'm guessing she does (meaning: Her politics will never be mentioned in the media at all), do I get to politicize this tragedy?

Or is that only kosher for supposedly "respectable" sites like TPM?

The Harvard-Trained Murderer: Amy Bishop, a neuroscientist profiled last year in the NYT for a cell-generation technology she developed with her husband. A proud graduate of Harvard.

So... does TPM have any snide insinuations about Harvard?

Her husband was also detained -- not sure if he was a shooter too.

Liberal? Splunge posts this from RateMyProfessors.com -- this review of her was posted in April, long before anyone could have known she'd shoot up the school, of course. (Assuming no hijinks going on -- people are posting like mad in her comments today.)

Neuroscience essentially turns into a bioethics class. She's a liberal from "Hahvahd" and let's you know exactly how she feels about particular subjects.

Again, I only point this out because no one in the media ever would. It's only Krazy Kristian Konservatives' misdeeds which become grist for the political mill.

Posted by: Ace at 03:23 PM | Comments (109)
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The genius president, who never makes a mistake, is reconsidering his Eric Holder's decision.

White House officials sought on Friday to stem mounting criticism of President Barack Obama's handling of terrorism cases, saying they would not rule out using a military court to try accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Both Attorney General Eric Holder and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs did not rule out a military trial when asked about the Obama administration's options.

Trying Mohammed in military court would mark a further political retreat from Holder's announcement last year that the five Sept. 11 suspects now held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be tried in federal court in New York.

The Obama administration is trying to head off a possible vote in the Senate that could stop any terror suspects currently held at Guantanamo from being brought to the United States to face a civilian trial. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is offering such legislation, after losing a vote last year on the issue.

I honestly do not know what this guy was thinking. He seems at least moderately intelligent. Did he really buy his own press clippings? Did he really think that just because Chris Matthews was in full swoon the rest of the country had reversed itself completely on these issues?

I think he really thinks all he needs to do is talk to people -- the Russians, the Iranians, the Taliban, and, even worse, the conservatives -- and we'll all be just so blown away by his charisma and intelligence and wisdom (and strength and dexterity and constitution, too) that we'll do whatever he wants.

Once again I am also baffled at how carelessly, an shamelessly, Democrats discuss life-and-death issues as matters of pure political posturing with reporters (and yeah, I think the reporter is getting this straight from a Democratic operative, but is just not attributing it to him) and how no one in the press even thinks that maybe they should maybe comment upon that.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (65)
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Enduring pain and embarrassment, just to give her husband a special Valentine's Day gift.

She wanted to cut and dye her "lower hair," as she calls it, into the shape of a Valentine. Hey, it's her husband. She's allowed (and encouraged) to be kinky.

Andrew Sullivan does that with his backhair, I hear.

I think she got the idea from The Man With Two Brains. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:31 PM | Comments (127)
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Prayers for our boys. Kick their asses and be safe.

Roughly 15,000 American, Afghan and NATO forces began an assault late Friday on the Taliban in the central Helmand town of Marjah in what senior military commanders are calling the largest operation since the start of the Afghanistan war.

Officials in the area have been signaling the offensive for weeks with hopes that innocent civilians and dispassionate Taliban fighters would flee the area. Commanders are stressing the importance of protecting the population rather than simply killing the resistance. Yet there have been reports civilians are having trouble getting out. "They (Taliban) don't allow families to leave. Families can only leave the village when they are not seen while leaving", Qari Mohammad Nabi, a Marjah resident, said Friday shortly before the invasion.

The objective of Operation Moshtarak, which means "together" in Dari, is to secure the region from narcoterrism and establish basic services under supervision of the Afghan government, a senior defense official told Fox. To do that, Afghan and NATO forces need to defeat the remaining insurgents and drastically reduce the number of heroin producing crops that fund the Taliban. U.S. commanders are confident they'll win the fight, but removing the poppy will prove harder than the battle.

I've never understood why the hell we're not just buying the poppy crops. Expensive, yes, but a small price against the costs of war.

Thanks to TCLS.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (93)
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Knee-jerk arch-liberal, statist, and judicial radical on every single issue.

More reports are confirming the Obama administration is preparing for a potential Supreme Court vacancy in the next few months. Reports surfaced weeks ago that pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens was considering retiring and today, CNN said more recent reports indicate that as well.

CNN indicates the White house has begun "quiet preparations" for a high court vacant but cautions that top Obama officials have not named any names of potential Supreme Court retirements.

The latest session of the Supreme Court ends in June and the most likely scenario is that one of the justices would announce a retirement this Spring or Summer so a newly-confirmed replacement can join the court when its next term begins in October.

...

Most of the speculation about potential retirement surrounds Stevens, one of the five members of the court's current pro-abortion majority.

Stevens is 90-years-old and speculation reached enormous heights that he would retire when news surfaced that he had hired just one law clerk for the October 2010 term. Retiring judges usually have one clerk while sitting Supreme Court members have four.

The only good thing is that you can't do much worse than Stevens -- except put in a much younger man. Or better yet a woman, as they live longer.

Unfortunately this means that while Obama isn't gaining ground in the Court -- not trading out conservatives for liberals -- he's replacing his oldsters with (relative) youngsters who will screw up the country for years to come.

Posted by: Ace at 01:21 PM | Comments (100)
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"He's beginning to become not believable to me," Sen. Rockefeller says, regarding Obama's record of broken promises, specifically, in this case, assurances that West Virginia's vital coal industry would be protected.

Obama says a lot of things, buddy.

The statement begins at 5:00.

One thing I (and you) have been asking is "When do Democrats start to distance themselves from Obama?"

This is a fairly significant statement, I think. Rockefeller could have asked for reassurance on coal any number of ways. He chose to do so by suggesting Obama's words do not match his deeds.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (56)
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Thanks to ArthurK for this. Yup, stolen from the sidebar.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (22)
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Unbelievable.

Truly, unbelievable.

Note that he seeks warrantless access to cell-tower triangulation which pinpoints your every move.

I have no problem with getting this information with a warrant.

But warrantless? He thinks the government should be able to compel a service provider to turn over its records of your every movement, as figured (within 50 meters, and surely that will only get more precise) by triangulation, with no warrant whatsoever?

Just because a government investigator wants that information?

Bear in mind this is the same crew that screams about the Patriot Act -- and now they want to follow every citizen in real-time without a warrant?

Are you kidding me?

I have a right to not have my property rifled through, but I have no right to expect I can walk around freely without constant government monitoring? That's a right I don't have?

Thanks to Curtis, with more here.

That site notes that Barack Obama was, supposedly, a constitutional law lecturer at one time. (I say "supposedly" just because the gig was set up, I'm sure, by his friends in high places, and I doubt he was actually talking about the real American Constitution much, except inadvertently.)

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (133)
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As I always say, I don't know if this is real or just kabuki for the nutroots who desperately want to "win," no matter what "winning" might look like.

Hopefully the latter.

If it's the former -- again, it's my understanding that there are a lot of procedural votes that take place before the reconciliation vote, and those votes take 60 for closure.

Senate Democrats may go into the bipartisan health care reform summit later this month holding a legislative gun to Republicans' heads.

Some Democrats are readying a health care reform "Plan B" in case negotiations at the half-day televised forum on Feb. 25 go nowhere. The plan would involve passing part of the imperiled health care bill using reconciliation, a controversial procedural maneuver that would allow the package to pass with 51 votes, as opposed to the usual 60 required to overcome a filibuster.

"I think a decision has just been made — we're just going to go ahead" with a reconciliation bill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told reporters.

A senior Democratic Senate aide clarified that Democrats are heading in that direction, though they are waiting to see what happens on Feb. 25 before making a decision.

Under the Plan B, the House would pass the version of the health care reform the Senate passed on Christmas Eve. From there, the Senate would use reconciliation to pass certain changes to the health care bill to keep it more in line with House Democrats' wishes. Finally, Congress would tackle other non-budgetary issues, like abortion funding, that cannot be addressed in the reconciliation process.

Ben Nelson has already threatened this crap, saying, basically, "Pass this the easy way by just voting for us or we'll go the hard way with this reconciliation."

To which I can only say, along with Ryan from the Office: I think I'm going to need you to go ahead and do it the hard way.

Dwight Schrute: Okay, I'm gonna need to search your car. Give me your keys.

Ryan Howard: I am not giving you my keys.

Dwight Schrute: Don't make me do this the hard way.

Ryan Howard: What's the hard way?

Dwight Schrute: I go down to the police station on my lunch break. I tell a police officer - I know several - what I suspect you may have in your car. He requests a hearing from a judge and obtains a search warrant. Once he has said warrant, he will drive over here, and make you give him the keys to your car, and you will have to obey him.

Ryan Howard: Yeah, let's do it that way.

Posted by: Ace at 12:33 PM | Comments (47)
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Thanks to Obama's canceling of NASA's Moon program, we'll be boldly going nowhere unless we can hitch a ride with the Russians.

Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASA's efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.

This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It's too expensive. It's too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.

Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative "clean energy." Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.

As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can't afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?

Meanwhile what will Obama fund NASA for? Climate change research.

I get that government run space programs can be something of a conservative/small government heresy and in this case I'm a heretic. As Krauthammer points out a private sector space program is decades away. The costs are simply to high as are the challenges in terms of recouping an return on investment in terms of exploration. The low earth orbit taxi/sightseeing stuff may payoff soon but that's not the same as going to the moon or Mars.

I'm also aware NASA isn't the bold, cutting edge organization it was in the 50's and 60's. That's not an argument in favor of giving up manned exploration, it's an argument for blowing up a bloated bureaucracy and starting over.

I'd love to see a viable and vigorous private space exploration industry but does anyone seriously argue it exists or will anytime soon? To me this is a case where government isn't the best answer but alas, it's the only handy with any track record of success.

To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you go to space with the space program you have, not the one you want.

I'm not going to make some case about great spin-off technologies, national security or increasing the number of people who go into math and science (a supposed goal of this administration) because I don't know how true they are. Nor do I entirely care. Not everything in life has to be rational or square up on some accounting ledger. Some things are important because, well they are. Great nations have always funded exploration. It's part of what makes them great. Obama, as is his won't, is ceding American greatness and letting others fill the void.

As I said, it's something of a conservative heresy and I'm okay with that.

Of course, no space related post would be complete without Buzz Aldrin punching the Moon Truther in the chops. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 12:11 PM | Comments (137)
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