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Politics : BuSab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (2934)	12/5/2009 12:39:29 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 23934

The enemy at West Point washingtontimes.com EDITORIAL--- THE WASHINGTON TIMES Dec. 4, 2009 Insults against West Point by MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews are part of a pattern of left-wing denigrations against Americans serving in uniform. It's a motif indicative of an anti-military mind-set that is as dangerous as it is rude. Discussing the West Point audience's response to President Obama's speech about Afghanistan, Mr. Matthews quipped on Tuesday: "I saw a lot of, if not resentment, skepticism. I didn't see a lot of warmth in that crowd out there that the president chose to address tonight. And I thought that was interesting: He went to maybe the enemy camp tonight to make his case. I mean that was where Paul Wolfowitz used to write speeches back in the old Bush days. That's where he went to rabble-rouse the 'we're going to democratize the world' campaign back in '02. So I think it was a strange venue." So, when did our brave military cadets become "the enemy camp"? If Mr. Bush or Mr. Wolfowitz went to West Point to "rabble-rouse," does that make the cadets a rabble? And why would it ever be a "strange venue" for any president to go to the U.S. Military Academy to talk about a war? Mr. Matthews at least apologized to cadets for his stupid comments the next day without weasel words, but it's troubling that he even expressed such sentiments - which are shockingly common among some liberal Democrats. In 2006, Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." At another point, the obtuse Mr. Kerry accused American soldiers in Iraq, in the "dead of night," of "terrorizing kids and children, you know, women. . .." In 2005, Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, compared U.S. treatment of prisoners to that "by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings." In 2006, Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, falsely accused Marines in Haditha of "murder" and said there was "no doubt in my mind" about that judgment. In 2007, there was the notorious "General Betray Us" ad from MoveOn.org criticizing Gen. David H. Petraeus, which continued a leftist routine of verbal assaults on our fighters that goes back to Jane Fonda's slur that our soldiers in Vietnam were war criminals. To set the record straight for confused Democrats, our armed forces are not criminals and not the enemy. They are heroes. Back to you, Chris ...

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (2934)	12/5/2009 10:49:30 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 23934

Virginia Tech Report Details Missteps By TOM BREEN and ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON Dec. 5, 2009 news.aol.com\|main\|dl1\|link4\|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fva-tech-report-details-new-fumbles-in%2F801490 BLACKSBURG, Va. (Dec. 5) -- The prelude to the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history began with the shootings of two students in a dorm room at Virginia Tech. New details revealed Friday about the university's response — from the time the victims were found to when they alerted the campus of a gunman on the loose — brought angry reactions and questions from some victims' families about leadership during the massacre that ended with 33 people dead. A revised state report released Friday offers new details on the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, stating that some school officials warned their own families and the president's office was locked down well before a campus-wide alert was issued. At least two administrators told family members about the dorm shooting well before the rest of the campus was notified about the gunman. Even garbage service was canceled before that. The report adds to the long list of apparent missteps by university officials before, during and after the 2007 rampage by Seung-Hui Cho. The mentally ill student shot two students to death in the dorm, then three hours later chained the doors of a classroom building and killed 30 more people before committing suicide. Dennis Bluhm, whose son was killed in the rampage, laid the blame on President Charles Steger, who has faced calls to resign from Bluhm and other families. "He's got to live with himself," Bluhm said. "If he's got any heart at all, and I'm not sure he does, he's got a long life to live with this on his brain." The two administrators notified their families about the dorm shootings around 8:05 a.m. — an hour and 20 minutes before a campus-wide e-mail warning was sent to staff members, faculty and students. The massacre in the classroom building began at 9:40 a.m. One of the administrators who notified a family member was Steger's chief of staff, Kim O'Rourke, said Phil Schaenman, the president of TriData, the outside firm that put together the report. She often called her son, a Tech student, to make sure he went to class. She told him about the dorm shootings but still told him to go to class, which he did. "I did tell him what had been happening, and I told him to go to class," O'Rourke told The Washington Post. "He was in class at the time of the shooting in Norris Hall." "It's been taken that their families were given advance warning," Schaenman said. "But in her case, she said it was safe to come to school." The other administrator, then-assistant vice president of administration Lisa Wilkes, was dropping off her children at her mother's house when she got a phone call about the dorm shootings and telling her to come into work. She then told her mother about the shootings. The two administrators' actions clearly "do not comprise a concerted effort by University staff to notify their own families of danger in advance of notifying the campus community," school spokesman Mark Owczarski said in a statement. Gov. Tim Kaine said if there was an effort by the school's administration to notify family members before anyone else, it would be "inexcusable." "There is almost never a reason not to provide immediate notification," Kaine told The Associated Press. "If university officials thought it was important enough to notify their own families, they should have let everyone know." Later, Kaine spokeswoman Lynda Tran said his office had spoken with Tech and TriData officials about the report's findings and it "does not sound like there was wrongdoing" by the two administrators. Steger's office said Friday he was unavailable for comment and referred questions to the university spokesman, Owczarski. Calls by the AP to multiple phone listings for O'Rourke and Wilkes rang unanswered Friday. On campus Friday, Student Government Association president Brandon Carroll said he does not think the revised report damages the administration. "Hindsight is 20/20," he said. "It really upsets me that they're trying to bring back something bad that really hurt our community." The updated report includes additions and corrections requested by family members along with new information, including details from Cho's mental health records. Those records had been missing from the school counseling center even before the massacre, but the center's former director found them in his home in July. In other new findings in the report: — It took 17 minutes for the chief of the Virginia Tech Police Department to get through to the executive vice president's office after he learned of the dorm shooting. — Campus trash collection was canceled 21 minutes before students and teachers were warned. — Virginia Tech's government affairs director ordered Steger's office locked around 8:52 a.m. Two classroom buildings were also locked down well before the notification went out. But Owczarski said the office was never locked. — One student killed in the dorm, Emily Hilscher, survived several hours after being shot, but no one bothered to notify her family until she had died. A call to her parents Friday wasn't immediately returned. — An administrator who was a member of a policy group dealing with the shooting mailed a colleague in Richmond around 8:45 a.m. that a gunman was on the loose, but warned the colleague to make sure that information didn't get out because it was not yet "releasable." — Virginia Tech had two different emergency-alert policies in effect at the time, and that led to the delay in issuing the university-wide alert. The original report criticized the university's failure to act on warning signs from Cho that included violent, twisted writings and sullen, hostile behavior. It also criticized the communications failures and other problems that allowed nearly two hours to elapse between the first gunshots and the campus-wide notification. The updated report did not revise the original report's conclusions and recommendations. Sampson reported from Richmond. Associated Press Writer Bob Lewis in Richmond and P.J. Dickerscheid in Charleston, W.Va., contributed to this report.

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (2934)	12/7/2009 11:41:55 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 23934

ACORN Investigates Itself--Finds No Illegal Actions And of course the ASSOCIATED PRESS is there to Sell ACORN'S "Vindication" _________________________________________________________ ACORN prober finds no illegal pattern on videos By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Pete Yost, Dec.7, 2009 news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – An internal investigation of the community-organizing group ACORN found no pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staffers on undercover videos shot by conservative critics of the group. In a 47-page assessment that former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger was commissioned by the organization to do, he criticized ACORN's management as not moving fast enough to institute reforms after an alleged eight-year coverup by ACORN founder Wade Rathke of an embezzlement by his brother. ACORN's leaders are "now reaping what Rathke sowed," wrote Harshbarger, who was brought in to investigate. The organization's leadership has made reforms in finances and governance a priority, the Harshbarger report stated. However, it added, this focus has not yet been matched by similar attention to delivering services to ACORN's clients. The videos of ACORN staffers offering advice to a woman and a man posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend triggered a firestorm of criticism this fall, with some ACORN employees appearing willing to support illegal schemes involving tax advice, misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children. The videos "feed the impression that ACORN believes it is above the law," stated the Harshbarger report, intended as an independent examination of the issues. "We did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff involved; in fact, no action, illegal or otherwise, was ever taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers," Harshbarger said in a statement. "Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN's longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures and a lack of on-site supervision." Harshbarger's report says ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, should return to its roots, focusing on community organizing and should hire an independent ethics officer to oversee an internal governance program that is already under way. ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis called the report "part vindication, part constructive criticism and complete roadmap for the future" on behalf of "the interests of the communities we represent — low- and moderate-income, African-American and Latino families."