Category: General

Think Progress » Rep. Rohrabacher: ‘I Hope It’s Your Families That Suffer’ From A Terrorist Attack:

At one point, Rohrabacher argued that imprisoning and torturing one innocent person was a fair price to pay for locking up 50 terrorists who would “go out and plant a bomb…and kill 20,000 people.” When members of the audience groaned, Rohrabacher said, “Well, I hope it’s your families, I hope it’s your families that suffer the consequences.”

I guess I’m glad one of them’s willing to come out and say what they’ve been doing, and advocating, all along.

When Others Were Silent – Kucinich for President – kucinich.us:

Video worth watching.

Kucinich has been proven right again, and again, and again. He’s always dared to speak the truth when nobody wanted to hear it and his fellow Democrats didn’t dare to say it.

Why do people not take this man seriously again?

The Copycat Effect: School Shooting Seasons: (Mar 28, ’07)

During the spring of 2007, school professionals and paraprofessionals, law enforcement officials, and mental health personnel should be aware we are entering the most active “School Shooting Season” since 9/11. From the end of March through the end of May, this window of time could be very deadly. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

He’s not spot-on. He expected shootings of students by outsdiers, where “outsider” could include former and/or expelled students. By that definition, Cho was not quite an outsider. Interesting though.

Loren Coleman is also known for his work in cryptozoology; his work often enters the blogosphere through his friends at BoingBoing.net.

Via reddit.

Before the blood was dry on the ground in Virginia, the esr-style gun nut computer nerds on reddit.com were revealing portentously that VT had recently banned their students from carrying guns — the implication being that things would have been much better if there had been a firefight instead of a mere massacre.

A good response to that, by someone who should know, is found here.

I’m tired of listening to gun-nut’s wish-fulfilment fantasies about being the hero of the day.

One of the first rules established in the old west was that nobody carries in town. It took about three days for that rule to pass in every town, right after the first drunken brawl when someone got shot or killed. It was very much NOT like we see in westerns.

The constant, TV- and movie-fueled fantasies of the gun crowd really get to me. We know what happens when war planning is based on chicken hawk fantasies learned from the 4:30 movie rather than the war college. We get Iraq. Why should we set public policy based on Gunsmoke or Dirty Harry? It’s insane.

And by the way, I’m former co-captain of my school’s rifle team, a damn good pistol shot, a former war games designer for the DOD and have researched and written extensively about black powder, guns and their history. I’m not anti-gun. I like guns. I’m just tired of the Dirty Harry bullshit.

A horrible thing happened in Virginia to 32 innocent students yesterday.

Meanwhile, the body count during the American military occupation of Iraq is well over 60,000, with about 500 civilian deaths in the past week, including 21 children.

I hope I can suggest without disrespect to the dead in Virginia that the incident ought to wake us up to the reality of what we have inflicted on Iraq, and make us consider whether the violence in iraq can be ended by the same military occupation which created it in the first place.