A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
'Be not overcome by evil' - A grieving president came to the shattered campus of Virginia Tech yesterday to reassure students, staff and faculty, reeling from the massacre that left 33 dead, that the country grieves with them, and stands ready with support. (READ MORE)
Muslim cabbies face license loss for refusing fares with alcohol - The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will begin suspending licenses of Muslim taxi drivers who refuse for religious reasons to provide service to passengers transporting alcohol. (READ MORE)
Afghan offensive to test NATO 'credibility' - The United States and its NATO allies are making progress in Afghanistan but face a critical test of the alliance's credibility from an expected spring offensive from the Islamist insurgency... (READ MORE)
For Clinton, Even Presidential Politics Is Local - On the same day that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced that he had raised $25 million in the first three months of his presidential campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) made her own $25 million announcement -- a federal grant to restore oyster beds in Long Island Sound. (READ MORE)
Charges Against Marine In Iraq Killings Dropped - All charges against a U.S. Marine accused of killing five civilians in Haditha, Iraq, have been dismissed, part of a decision that grants him immunity to testify in potential courts-martial for seven other Marines charged in the attack... (READ MORE)
Controversial Cambodian to Visit U.S. - A U.S. visa application by Cambodia's police chief provoked a rancorous argument inside the Bush administration because of the official's alleged links to an act of terrorism and to trafficking in women. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
IraqPundit: Moktada Makes a Move “So Moktada Al Sadr withdrew six ministers allied with his movement from the cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki. Al Sadr (or whoever writes his scripts) claimed that the move was a protest against Al Maliki's failure to set a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Naturally, according to the Western media narrative, this was ‘another blow’ to ‘Iraq's fledgling government.’ But Rend Rahim, a former Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., thinks otherwise. This move is not about Maliki or any withdrawal timetable, she told PBS Monday. Rather, it's about Sadr and his need to look like he's doing something.” (READ MORE)
Tully Mars: Well the days are counting down and the heat is g... “Well the days are counting down and the heat is going up. So far it's been quiet here for the most part. For some reason I am tired today and don't feel very motivated. Worked a little extra last night plus had another rocket alert but nothing serious. Hopefully I might feel up to checking in on some of the blogs tonite. I did read an excellent post by Subsunk on Blackfive today. Retired General McCaffery has completed his assessment of the current situation in and he pulls no punches in his report.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Michelle Malkin: Wanted: A culture of self-defense “There's no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated ‘safe spaces’ to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions -- while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).” (READ MORE)
Jacob Sullum: Virginia Tech's Gun-Free Zone Left Cho Seung-Hui's Victims Defenseless “Last year Virginia legislators considered a bill that would have overridden policies at public universities that prohibit students and faculty members with concealed handgun permits from bringing their weapons onto campus.” (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: A Minority View: Exploiting Ignorance “So many Americans graduate high school and college having learned what to think as opposed to acquiring the tools of critical, independent thinking. Likewise, they have learned little about our nation's history. As such, they fall prey to the rhetoric of political charlatans and quacks.” (READ MORE)
Kathleen Parker: Curtains for the Al and Imus Show “After more than a week of pandering, pontificating and supplicating in the wake of Don Imus' firing by CBS and MSNBC, we've shed little light on the gleaming nugget buried deep within the rubble of rhetoric. As is often the case, the truth was in front of our noses, captured in a single image: Imus and Al Sharpton facing off in Sharpton's radio studio the day the civil rights wrangler gelded the cowboy.” (READ MORE)
Jonah Goldberg: Political-Correctness Kabuki Theater “Everything worth saying about the Don Imus thing - which isn't much - has been said already. We've now moved beyond Imus to the ‘national dialogue’ phase of this familiar cycle. This is where we're supposed to tackle hard questions and deep truths about our society.” (READ MORE)
Debra J. Saunders: Green Giant's Big Carbon Footprint “Today, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger boasts that he is a world leader in the fight against global warming -- but his advocacy shouldn't keep him from flying in private jets or driving a Hummer.” (READ MORE)
Adam D. Thierer: The Media Cornucopia “Too many choices! Or too few! The left can't make up its mind--but it wants control. Throughout most of history, humans lived in a state of extreme information poverty. News traveled slowly, field to field, village to village. Even with the printing press's advent, information spread at a snail's pace. Few knew how to find printed materials, assuming that they even knew how to read. Today, by contrast, we live in a world of unprecedented media abundance that once would have been the stuff of science-fiction novels. We can increasingly obtain and consume whatever media we want, wherever and whenever we want: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the bewildering variety of material available on the Internet.” (READ MORE)
WSJ - Review & Outlook: Cho's Madness “The Virginia Tech massacre, guns and pop sociology. The mass murder at Virginia Tech is the kind of traumatic event that unleashes a torrent of pop sociology and national psychoanalysis, so allow us to weigh in with a more fundamental explanation: There are evil and psychotic people in this world willing to do great harm to others if they aren't stopped. The dilemma in a free society is how to stop them.” (READ MORE)
Army Wife Toddler Mom: The Details....Healing. “As a Spouse I suppose when they come home, you know better than to expect the exact same life you had. We get close, oh so close. But things are a little different. Especially for the first couple of months home. Things are just different. I recall having helium balloons all over the neighborhood and the house when DH arrived home. Of course having children, a couple made the way into the house. And as the balloons floated from room to room.....one night while sitting on the couch my DH said ‘those fucking balloons keep freaking me out.’ For a moment I laughed, and then I noted they ended up being tied to something. I forget if I did it or he did it.” (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Healing “I've always been fascinated by the concept of "healing" as applied to public tragedies. Healing, it would seem, is what the people in the hospital are doing now. What other "healing" is truly possible must be left to time as memories dim and lives are restarted. But the term as commonly used today seems to describe the suspension of the cognitive faculties, the ‘time out’ after a catastrophe during which survivors are spared intrusive interview requests from tabloids (unless they are offered money in which case it helps the healing) and nominally responsible officials can refuse to answer questions by invoking the need to ‘heal’.” (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Fighting Back Was Not an Option, Part 2 “Three sober, responsible, respectable, intelligent gentlemen have made a very good case for not discussing so-called "solutions" (on either side of the aisle) for such terrible crimes as yesterday's massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt of HughHewitt.com and John Hinderaker of Power Line each says that there will come a time for understanding the macro-politics of the shooting spree; but that time is later. Now is the time for grieving, they argue -- and for healing. Hugh just said some hours ago that everyone should talk as if the parents who lost their children are listening. And I completely understand his point.” (READ MORE)
SubSunk: McCaffrey Report “This is a long post. Read it, think on it, then decide to achieve Victory, or be prepared to face an even longer and bloodier war in the not too distant future. GEN Barry McCaffrey has reported on the current situation in Iraq, the progress of the "Surge" and the possibilities of success in the future. His report is a grim assessment of the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces and political establishment. It is also a grim assessment of the possible future state of the US Armed Forces.” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Obama: Insults, Outsourcing 'Violence' “The culture of victimhood has a new champion, according to the Texas Rainmaker, and that champion is Barack Obama. Faster than someone can say ‘Ismail Ax’, Obama used the Virginia Tech massacre to decry violence in American lives -- but as it turns out, ‘violence’ covers a lot of ground in Obama's political lexicon:” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: Reinforcing Baghdad's Outer Belts “A crucial element of the Baghdad Security Plan is the establishment of security both inside the Baghdad neighborhoods and in Baghdad's outer belts – the regions about 30 miles outside of the city, where over 80 percent of the violence in Iraq occurs. This belt region is where al Qaeda is staging attacks into Baghdad, particularly the portions of the provinces of Anbar, Diyala, Babil and Salahadin, all which border Baghdad province. Over the past month, the Iraqi and U.S. security forces are beginning to build new Combat Outposts in the outer belts to disrupt al Qaeda and insurgent activity in the belts. This week, U.S. Marines built a series of Combat Outposts in the Amiriya-Ferris region, which is about 30 miles southwest of Baghdad, and 12 miles south of Fallujah.” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Not so fast, Blogometer “Democrats are not calling for gun control and Blogometer wrongly credits bloggers: ‘The VA Tech shootings are serving as an albeit tragic marker in demonstrating just how different Dems are in ’07 than they were in ’99. With bloggers in the lead, Dems have gotten past the gun-control issue and helped reclaim majorities…’” (READ MORE)
Major Z: Virginia Tech: A prime example of why gun control doesn't work “32 people dead. I won't go into the fact that seven soldiers died in Iraq that same day, and it barely made the bottom of the screen news ticker. One person's death isn't any more or less important than anothers' (unless, that person prays to a false god residing in meccah, and takes it upon themselves to become a martyr--then I don't really care.) 32 dead. Students and faculty, who began their day just like you and I, expecting little more than a few classes, a cup of coffee, and making plans for the summer.” (READ MORE)
Dymphna: The Murderous Repetitions of the Historically Ignorant “It’s a long, long way from 1966 to 2007. Too long for the MSM to remember anything useful. As they blather on today about the need for more gun control, look at the remembrances from last year at a Texas television station: ‘Gordon Wilkison is retired from the news business now, but in 1966, he was a photographer for KTBC, the only television station in town. It hadn’t been that long since Wilkison had left the Army. That’s why when Charles Whitman opened fire from the University of Texas Tower on Aug. 1, 1966, Wilkison wasn’t afraid as long as he had cover.’” (READ MORE)
Ian: (Video) Olbermann blames Bush for Virginia Tech massacre “And so the blame game begins. Keith Olbermann tried to blame President Bush and the Republican Congress for yesterday’s massacre because they ‘allowed’ a ban on 9mm clips like the one used to murder 32 people to expire. Transcript:” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: PC Racists “It’s worse than I thought. What we did to the German people, I mean. Here’s that Bundeswehr training vid.* The sausage-eater sergeant actually says ‘drei Afro-Amerikaner.’ So the reported comments weren’t sanitized after all, though the quote was truncated for reasons of taste. Spike-top NCO instructs cabbage-gobbling trainee to shout aggressively ‘Motherfucker!’ In English. Which Pvt. Kartoffelmasher shouts obediently and repeatedly like a good German, in a delightful Kraut accent, as he fires his machinegun.” (READ MORE)
Amy Proctor: Dems and Anti-American al-Sadr Agree on Troop Withdrawal “Bottom Line Up Front: It looks like the Democrats have more strange bed-fellows: anti-American al-Sadr followers. Six Iraqi cabinet members loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr quit the government Monday because Prime Minister al-Maliki has refused a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. 30 other al-Sadr supporters in the cabinet refused to resign.” (READ MORE)
Most Certainly Not: What Has Touched Me Deeply “I have watched with abject horror and deep sadness the events that unfolded at Virginia Tech yesterday. With furrowed brow, I have taken in news reports and watched young people and parents grieve for their lost loved ones. But, I didn't cry until this evening. Throughout the day, news trickled out concerning one particular professor. Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, survived the Holocaust. His curriculum vitae reads like an academic version of a sports record book. He died yesterday in a valiant and successful attempt to shield the young people in his classroom from being shot...” (READ MORE)
Greyhawk: The Extension “Or "Leaking on the Troops"... For those who weren't aware: someone leaked the story: ‘Q Could you just clarify, you're changing the policy establishing an upper limit of a deployment. But does that mean that all the units that are deployed to Iraq are now extended -- all the Army units are now extended to 15 months?’” (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
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