New York City flyby ill advised, to say the least

Via CNN.com, Official who OK'd N.Y. flyby accused of 'felony stupidity'

After a YouTube video showed panicked New Yorkers scrambling as a Boeing 747 flew frighteningly close to the lower Manhattan skyline, a former Homeland Security adviser questioned whether the man who approved the flyby should remain in his White House office.

Fran Townsend, who advised President George W. Bush for more than three years, called the move "crass insensitivity" in the wake of 9/11.

"I'd call this felony stupidity. This is probably not the right job for Mr. Caldera to be in if he didn't understand the likely reaction of New Yorkers, of the mayor," Townsend said Tuesday on CNN's "American Morning."

Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, quickly apologized for Monday's incident after the planes prompted workers and residents to evacuate buildings in New York and New Jersey.

I have to say that I agree, felony stupidity is an appropriate descriptor here. If it is not stupidity on the part of the person authorizing it, then it is sadistic. Let's hope for stupidity.

The end of the strike

Via CNN - Strike over, Hollywood writers head back to work

Striking Hollywood writers will be back at their keyboards Wednesday after voting overwhelmingly to end a 100-day walkout that essentially shut down the entertainment industry.

[...]

"The strike is over. Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work," said Patric Verrone, president of the WGA's West chapter.

[...]

It's unclear how soon new episodes of scripted programs will start appearing, because production won't begin until scripts are completed, the AP reported.

It will take at least four weeks for producers to get the first post-strike episodes of comedies back on the air; dramas will take six to eight weeks, the AP said.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about the strike being over. On the one hand, there are some shows that I will be happy to see return with new episodes, but on the other hand, I have so little time to watch t.v. as it is, it will just put me that much farther behind. Good thing I have TiVo!

Standoff at Clinton office ends peacefully

Via Yahoo News and AFP - Hostage-taker at Clinton office surrenders

A man claiming to be armed with a bomb took over one of US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's campaign offices for more than five hours Friday before surrendering to police.

The man, believed to have a history of mental illness, walked into the New Hampshire office at around 1:00 pm (1800 GMT), taking three women, a man and a baby hostage and reportedly demanding to speak to the former first lady.

[. . .]

US media said that Eisenberg was well known locally, had a history of mental problems and wanted to draw attention to the state of psychiatric health care in the United States.

One has to wonder about such a stunt. What exactly is the point of pretending to (the articles says it was actually road flares not a bomb) try to blow up the campaign office of a presidential primary candidate that is more likely to actually do something about his supposed issue of concern than what the current administration is doing? Well, I guess if he really is mentally ill then logic might not be the place to look for an explanation.

Sean Taylor dead at 24

Via the Chicago Tribune - Redskins' Taylor Dies Day After Shooting

Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor died early Tuesday, a day after he was shot at home. He was 24. Family friend Richard Sharpstein said Taylor's father told him the news around 5:30 a.m.

[. . .]

Taylor was shot early Monday in the upper leg, damaging an artery and causing significant blood loss.

When you first hears that someone has been shot in the leg you don't normally think of it as being a potentially fatal wound if treatment is received right away, but obviously it can be. My prayers go out to his family and friends, especially his baby daughter who will never really get the chance to know her father. What a tragic loss.

Redskins' Sean Taylor shot in the leg

Via WaPo - Redskins' Taylor in Critical Condition After Shooting
Redskins' safety Sean Taylor was shot at his Miami home early this morning and is in critical condition. The motivation for the shooting is still unknown. I'm sure there will be regular updates at WaPo and other news outlets.

FOX News and the "Don't Tase Me Bro" video

On Thursday I was at a local auto dealership having my new car serviced. I was waiting in the waiting room reading a book while they serviced the car. Like most local establishments in my hometown that show news channels, the television was tuned to FOX News (Ugh!). I was generally trying to ignore the TV and read, but then a news story came on about the "Don't tase me bro" incident in Florida and it caught my attention. The story was about the fact that the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement had found that officers to be within their rights to use a taser on the student (Andrew Meyer). As part of the story they replayed the latter part of the video where Meyer is being dragged off and then shocked with the taser. The news caster (I don't know who he was, but it was around 10:15ish in the morning) who was telling the story commented that he could just watch that video all day long and commented that Meyer should have "taken it like a man" instead of yelling like that. I was thoroughly disgusted. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the video (or are just like the news caster and enjoy watching it) here is the whole video:

Now I know that the video went viral and obviously many, many people enjoyed watching it, but I certainly couldn't imagine watching it all day long or even over and over multiple times. And particularly the tasing scene is something I don't want to watch again. What strikes me about the commentary is that if that guy were to be tased I have a hard time imagining that he would "take it like a man". My guess is that he would be suing the cops that did it just like Meyer is doing.

Now I can see that Meyer was over stepping the bounds a bit with his questioning (or his introductory commentary as it were), but John Kerry said that he wanted to answer the question. Plus, if his commentary was totally out of bounds then people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh ought to be tased as well. They talk over people and make wild accusations all the time. If anyone who is rude or just has ideas that conflict with the mainstream should be arrested and tased then shouldn't we all just get to walk around with tasers all the time and tase most everyone we see?

It seems to me that if Meyer wants to be a journalist some day he is going to have to refine his questioning skills, but it hardly seemed like behavior that deserved being arrested for. Plus, if they weren't arresting him for it, how could he be charged with resisting arrest?

RIP - Leona Helmsley

Via the BBC - US property tycoon Helmsley dies

US property tycoon Leona Helmsley, who was famously quoted as saying "only the little people pay taxes", and was later jailed for tax evasion, has died at 87.

Mrs Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Connecticut, her publicist said.

A bad situation gets worse

Via WaPo - 3 Mine Rescuers Die, 6 Others Hurt

A cave-in Thursday night killed three rescue workers and injured at least six others who were trying to tunnel through rubble to reach six trapped miners, authorities said. Mining officials were considering whether to suspend the rescue effort.

It was a major setback on the 11th day of the effort to find miners who have been confined at least 1,500 feet below ground at the Crandall Canyon mine. It is unknown if the six are alive or dead.

It is such a tragic situation when those who are trying to help rescue others get injured or killed during their efforts.

This whole ordeal seems to underscore the danger that is still very much associated with coal mining. I am reminded of a commercial that ran a year or so ago advertising coal. The commercial featured young, hard-bodied men and women, scantily dressed, and working in a coal mine. The tag line was something like, "Coal (or coal mining, I forget) never looked so good" and the point was to promote clean-burning coal. My husband and I both found it greatly ironic that the song they chose to use in the commercial was "Sixteen Tons".

Now while it may be true that coal burns cleaner now than it once did, mine safety rules have increased and I assume miners no longer have to live in mining camps and "sell their souls to the company store", it seems hard to imagine that coal mining could even come close to the glamor that commercial implied. These recent mine collapses would seem to bolster my position on the subject.

And of course I'm aware that the commercial was never intended to be an accurate representation of coal mining, nor is it likely that it was intended as a miner recruiting tool. It was simply a way to make the consumer feel less guilty about over-consuming fossil fuels. I wonder if recent events will have any affect on the consumer mind-set.

Ask and ye shall receive

Yesterday, over at Poliblog, Steven Taylor noted an article that mentioned the fact that many of America's bridges received the same rating (structurally deficient) as the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota. In a comment to the post I wondered which bridges they were. Well, today my sister emailed me an answer. Via MSNBC - State by State: 'Deficient' or 'Obsolete' Bridges. The linked page features an interactive map of the US with each state color coded by the percentage of bridges rated 'deficient' or 'obsolete'. If you click on a state you are then directed to a list of the major bridges in that state that received either of those ratings. It is very interesting.

Irony Anyone?

Via WaPo - Outsourcing the Picket Line: Carpenters Union Hires Homeless to Stage Protests

The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.

[. . .]

Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.

They're hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.

[. . .]

The carpenters union is one of the most active picketers in the District, routinely staging as many as eight picket lines a day at buildings where construction or renovation work is being done without union labor.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in using non-union labor to protest the use of non-union labor?

On the one hand, it is nice to see that there are groups out there that are willing to hire the homeless and ex-cons. On the other hand, I feel like this whole thing says something not too good about our society at the moment. The bottom line here seems to be all about the bottom line. In other words, they don't want to have give up their own paid time to go protest. They just want to pay someone else to fight their battles for them while they continue with life as usual. To me at least, that does not say anything good about them.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will say that my father-in-law was a union carpenter for much of his career in carpentry. His local union was very good to him and has continued to be very good to my mother-in-law since his death.

Libby NOT going to prison after all

Via WaPo - Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence

President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case. Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.

I suppose this shouldn't come as a surprise. In reality, Bush had no reason not to pardon him. It's not he's worried about it affecting his approval rating or anything.

Paris is not out of the woods yet

Via the BBC - Paris Hilton must return to court

A Los Angeles judge has ordered Paris Hilton to appear in court on Friday morning to determine whether she should be returned to jail.

The celebrity heiress was allowed to leave jail on Thursday, only three days into a 45-day sentence for violating probation on a drink-driving ban.

She was given an electronic tag and ordered to remain under house arrest for the remainder of her sentence.

Her release on unspecified medical grounds sparked widespread criticism.

She is due in court at 0900 (1600GMT) on Friday, where Judge Michael Sauer, who sentenced her to jail at her trial in early May, will hear the case.

[. . .]

When Hilton was originally sentenced to 45 days for violating probation on a drink-driving conviction, she was told there was no prospect of early release.

Judge Sauer had also specifically ruled that she could not serve her sentence at home under electronic monitoring.

Even if she was suffering from some medical condition (most likely claustrophobia), I'm not sure why it should be a get out of jail free card. If so, is it a get out of jail free card for any poor schmuck who comes along? I have to agree with Al Sharpton on this one:

Civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton condemned the release as showing the "double standards" of the US legal system.

"This early release gives all of the appearances of economic and racial favouritism that is constantly cited by poor people and people of colour," he said. "There are any number of cases of people who handle being incarcerated badly and even have health conditions that are not released."

I certainly hope the judge makes her do her full time in jail.

Rest in Peace

Via WaPo - Television Evangelist Falwell Dies at 73

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.

The videos and the backlash

Via the NYT - NBC News Defends Its Use of Material Sent by the Killer

NBC News fought back yesterday against a growing backlash over the way it handled the pictures and writings of the student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech.

Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, strongly defended the network’s decision to broadcast the material.

I watched some of the videos yesterday and I will admit I had mixed emotions about NBC's use of them. My initial response was similar to Rosie O'Donnell's. I saw a video clip of her saying that by airing the video they were playing into Cho's plan. They were helping to make him famous. However, my next thought was that people want to see it. People want to know why he did it and if the media has access to information that can help people figure that out, they have the right to show it.

There was more to the story than just the fact that NBC aired the video. What struck me after watching some of the video clips from NBC was how they were using them. There was one video I watched yesterday (and I would link to it but I can't seem to find it this morning) of Chris Matthews talking to someone and the still pictures from the manifesto are just looping on screen behind them. To me this just seemed to be in poor taste. Okay, maybe show them, but why keep looping them?

Maybe the video confession/manifesto should have been saved for the experts only. Maybe we should focus more on the victims and less on the killer (and that thought actually occurred to me early on Monday). Maybe that would remove some of the motivation of future mass murderers if they knew it wasn't a way to get their stories told. But that just isn't the way the human mind works, or at least the American mind. We want to know and we think we have the right to know.

The rest of the world reacts

WaPo - Va. Killings Widely Seen as Reflecting a Violent Society

Officials, newspaper columnists and citizens around the world Tuesday described the Virginia Tech massacre as the tragic reflection of an America that fosters violence at home and abroad, even as it attempts to dictate behavior to the rest of the world.

From European countries with strict gun-control laws to war-ravaged Iraq, where dozens of people are killed in shootings and bombings each day, foreigners and their news media used the university attack to condemn what they depicted as U.S. policies to arm friends, attack enemies and rely on violence rather than dialogue to settle disputes.

It is difficult to know how to react to such reactions. On the one hand, it gives some insight into how the citizens of other countries feel about the U.S., that their condolences are tempered with a dose of "but it was your own fault." But to some degree I have to agree. Our culture is awfully violent and some of the blogospheric reaction to Monday's events shows that our view of reality has become skewed by exposure to movie violence (Poliblog has some good commentary on the subject with links to examples). And I personally am in favor of stricter gun laws.

However, on the other hand, the article quotes an Iraqi who makes a good point, but not the point that I think he intended to make:

"We did not have this violence in the Saddam era because the law was so tough on guns."

No, they didn't have that violence, they had a ruthless dictator. And although I do not believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution should be interpreted as broadly as it currently is, I think it was designed to defend against situations exactly like what existed in Iraq under Saddam.

More info on Cho

Time has an article with some more info on Cho - The Making of a Mass Killer

H/T: Poliblog

Gunman Identified

Via the Chicago Tribune - Va. Tech Gunman Was Student From S.Korea

A Virginia Tech senior from South Korea was behind the massacre of at least 30 people locked inside a campus building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, the university said Tuesday.

Ballistics tests also show that one of the guns inside that building was used in another shooting two hours earlier, at a dorm, Virginia State Police said.

Police identified the shooter as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior from South Korea who was in the English department at Virginia Tech and lived on campus.

"It's certainly reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both cases," but authorities haven't made the link for sure, said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police.

I'm sure more updates will follow.

Virginia Tech the day after

Via the NYT - Drumbeat of Shots, Broken by Pauses to Reload

The article has some first hand accounts from students, faculty and staff who were in the building during the shooting. There were a few things in the article that particularly struck me.

Here's the first:

Some students on campus took refuge in the library, searching the Web to find out what was happening. No one knew.

It is interesting to me that even when something is happening right where people are, they immediately look on the internet to find information. True that was safer than going to investigate, but still I think it says something about our society that we turn to cyberspace to find out what is happening just outside our own doors.

Second,

The school did not notify students by e-mail of the first shootings until 9:26 a.m., said Matt Dixon, who lives in the dorm. Mr. Dixon did not receive the e-mail message until he returned from his 9:05 class. When he left for that class, he said, a resident adviser told him not to use the central stairs, so he left another way.

On dry erase boards, advisers had written, “Stay in your rooms,” Mr. Dixon said.

Other students and faculty members said they had only a vague notion that there had been a shooting at the dorm.

It does seem that the campus police should have made more of an effort to get the word out, a gunman loose on campus, even if he was only shooting in a domestic violence-type situation, was something that the campus should have been notified of. It seems to me that this indicates just how lightly law enforcements takes domestic violence situations. It was like "oh, he only shot his girlfriend (or whatever), he's not really a threat to society." To me that is just wrong-minded.

It also surprises me that the news did not spread by word of mouth. I'm on campus (at a different University, of course) all the time and students are ALWAYS on their cellphones. I would think that if there was a shooting in the largest dorm on campus people would be talking about it. I guess people just aren't paying enough attention to the world around them.

Deadly shooting a Virginia Tech

Via the BBC - Deadly shooting at US university

At least 20 people have been killed and more injured after a gunman went on the rampage at the campus of Virginia Tech university in Virginia, US.

Police say there were two separate shooting incidents - one at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a student dormitory, and Norris Hall, an engineering building.

The incidents were about two hours apart. Police say that the gunman at Norris Hall is dead.

The state university in the town of Blacksburg is home to 26,000 students.

That is the whole article at the moment, but I'm sure the linked article will continue to update as more info becomes available.

Imus Fired!

Via the Chicago Tribune - CBS Fires Don Imus From Radio Show

CBS fired Don Imus from his radio program Thursday, the finale to a stunning fall for one of the nation's most prominent broadcasters.

Imus initially was given a two-week suspension for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" on the air last week, but outrage continued to grow and advertisers bolted from his CBS radio show and its MSNBC simulcast.

"There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society," CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. "That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision."

One has to wonder how much of the decision was based on ethics and how much was made on economics, but I'm glad to see that he's bearing the consequences of his actions. I'd be surprised, however, if he doesn't get a new job somewhere else once the dust settles. Shock jocks make their living by saying outrageous things and getting away with it. And eventually someone will decide it's okay for him to get away with it again.