Thursday, July 24, 2003

We have a group of high school students filing through security for A Day With the US Marshals Service. Somehow our district (and The Marshal) was chosen to give this briefing of sorts for the kids (from around the country) who are interested in law enforcement. The guy who’s coordinating from HQ is a bit stiff (Mr. Personality as we call him) - and has been driving The Marshal a little bit nuts over the past month leading up to this glorious day.

LW and I have been personally invited to crash the party up there (they’re in a jury assembly room) - so we’re going to do that after we eat lunch. We promised not to heckle him too badly.

LATER (3:50pm): I just spent the past couple of hours in the sessions with the kids - they’re pretty sharp. Pretty clearly they have studied government and law enforcement from the questions they asked.

The first session was with The Marshal. He explained a lot of what the USMS does in a district. Ours is a little unique because of our involvement in the terrorist and spy trials (Hanssen, Aldrich, Walker-Lindh, Moussaoui to name a few). He also explained our fugitive efforts, which is what’s mostly portrayed in movies like The Fugitive and US Marshals, although they are movies and only loosely based on reality.

Then we went up to Judge Brinkema’s courtroom (she’s presiding over the Moussaoui case, in case you didn’t recognize the name), where she explained the federal courts system a little bit. She only talked for about 10 minutes and then she opened it up for questions and they came at her for a solid hour. They were really good questions and she was great at explaining stuff at a level they (we) could understand without being overbearing about it. She was great - I think I’ll have to go visit her courtroom on sentencing day sometime soon.

My father emailed me this link. Hilarious…

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

I’m watching the rerun of the Centcom briefing from this morning on C-SPAN right now. I didn’t catch who and where one reporter was from but he asked a convoluted question about why our guys didn’t just wait out the Hussein Bros. & Co. at that villa like in a hostage situation. After all, they only had AK-47s against the much more powerful arms the US forces had, yadda yadda yadda…

C-SPAN just cut off the General’s answer to go to live coverage of the House. But I’ll be happy to answer it.

1.  Did you not listen to what the General just rattled off for you? He was pretty explicit in the events that lead to the shootout.

2.  While our military call those AK-47s “small arms,” they’re still pretty powerful weapons. Gun people with better knowledge can correct me, if I’m wrong. Plus the house they were in was heavily fortified.

3.  Our guys tried to talk to them first, using a bullhorn and knocking on the frigging door. In the first attempt at knocking and entering, four of our guys were injured when shot at. This bullhorn & knocking thing was tried two more times, with no success.

4.  The Hussein Bros. & Co. shot at our guys first. In the Rules of Engagement, that means our guys have the right to fire back.

5.  The whole thing took four hours, even after our guys unloaded a pretty substantial artillery into the house.

6.  After the three adults were killed, the kid was still shooting as our guys went into the house.

Those guys went down as the evil, war-mongering, ruthless, sons of ******* they were. Do I wish we could have taken them alive? Sure...it would be easier to convince the Iraqi people we had them if they were alive, I think. They could have led us to Daddy. Their trials would have given the Iraqi people the justice they deserve for the atrocities these men perpetrated on the people. I would have preferred to see them swinging from the neck in the square where that famous Saddam statue was taken down, after having been convicted by a war crimes tribunal. But the end result is the same, death - it just came sooner than we may have hoped for.

UPDATE: Sgt. Hook has some thoughts on this.

Again, the good gentlemen at Thinklings have a really thought-provoking post against the popular book, The Prayer of Jabez.

It raises questions I had never considered when I read it...and I’m starting to rethink my opinion and endorsement. If you’ve read the book, go take a look.

The good gentlemen of Thinklings have a post on your sermon about WAH. As of this writing, there are already 10 comments.

IMMEDIATE UPDATE: I just checked the comments - they’re hilarious, but not serious...yet. If you scroll down to the post about profanity and read those comments first the comments on your sermon will make a lot more sense. And make you chuckle.

I think I’m going to have to make this it’s own category - What Bryan McAnally Posted Today That Made Me Laugh Out Loud.

Here’s today’s Clarity Amidst Chaos link. Today’s topic - the haircut.

Rep. Charlie Rangel needs to muzzle himself.

“We have a law on the books that the United States should not be assassinating anybody,” Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY, told Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.”

[...]

When an incredulous Sean Hannity expressed dismay at Rangel’s comments, the Harlem Democrat shot back, “How can you get so much satisfaction that two bums have been killed? We got bums all over the world and some in the United States.”

Then Rangel mocked the U.S. military’s success in killing the two Hussein heirs, saying, “I personally don’t get any satisfaction that it takes 200,000 troops, 250,000 troops, to knock off two bums.”

In addition, it’s hardly an assassination when the “two bums, but bodyguard and son” are in a four hour battle, firing back with “small arms” (which turned out to be AK-47s, yeah, that’s small) from a fortified hide out.

Rangel should be ashamed of himself.

LATER: LT Smash has an interesting list of the “two bums’” accomplishments.

I’ve had several people apologize for posting lengthy or many comments. Let me say this, I welcome all comments, even (or especially) if you happen to disagree with me or feel the need to correct me. This happens a lot, actually. It’s to be expected when a strong opinion is expressed.

So bring it on…

My only caveat is that I do not welcome profanity or personal attacks to me or other commenters. Respect is the key - you can disagree, but don’t disrespect me or anyone else. Got it?

We had some thunderstorms come through last night. I was online and considering shutting everything down when there was a bright white flash of lightning, the immediate boom of thunder, and the all-consuming darkness of the power going out.

Whelp, that took care of that question…

When the power came on about 15 minutes later (just after I located and lit the candles to read by), I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to log back on. So I reset my clocks and read for a little bit before going to bed.

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

LT Smash has another great post, this one his analysis of the Blair speech. Yes, he’s a little late on this, but give him a break - he’s fighting a war.

Snippety snippet:

It occurs to me, upon reading these words, that the current British Prime Minister is indeed a rare specimen among modern politicians:

Tony Blair is a liberal.

Well of course he’s a liberal, you say. After all, he’s the leader of the Labor Party in Britain, and they are the party of the left, and as we all know, liberals are leftists, right?

This is where the meaning of words becomes important. “Liberal” does not mean “leftist.” Indeed, most leftists aren’t liberal at all. The word “liberal” comes from the same root as the word “liberty,” which is synonymous with “freedom.” In the Eighteenth Century, when it first came into popular usage, it described those brave souls who struggled against authority to achieve greater freedoms for their fellow men. Visionaries like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.

UPDATE (Wed AM): Sorry about the lack of the link. It’s been fixed…

Who do you think makes the best tortilla chips?

I think it’s Utz - preferred variety is the Round White Corn Tortilla chip. They are, to me, the perfect chip.

Here’s where you can get ‘em. If you live outside of that blue area you may be able to get select varieties of the Utz product. For instance, I was able to get just about all of their products in New Hampshire, except for the Round White Corn Tortillas. So when I came home to Virginia, I would stock up on the jumbo bags that I would hoard, slowly opening a bag on the rarest of occasions (and never when other people would be around, I was that selfish with them) to make them last until my next trip home.

The good news is that you can order their products online, although it looks like you’re limited to “bundles” of products. I don’t have a need for the online ordering option, I have access to them at all stores in my vicinity. *gloat*

Phern of Damaged Goods posts about the death of the creator of the Starship Enterprise. I thought my Dad would want to know.

...is crap.

Fairfax County government officials said yesterday that they oppose a D.C.-government-proposed commuter tax and demanded an apology from a D.C. Council member who last week called Virginians “backward” and “greedy” for not supporting the levy.

[...]

“Our neighbors to the north intend to exact a new source of revenue out of the pockets of thousands of Fairfax County residents employed in the nation’s capital in order to compensate for their own financial mismanagement,” Supervisors Michael R. Frey and Stuart Mendelsohn, Sully and Dranesville Republicans, said in a joint written statement.

Virginia has it’s own financial problems as does Maryland. We don’t need to be subsidizing the District’s failed budget. Now, there are some in DC who claim that the commuters are a drain on DC funds - I bed to differ. Rather, they help or balance it out because they pay for parking, taxis, food, supplies, etc within the city limits in a work day. Many of the things the commuter pays for are taxes already. They shouldn’t have to be taxed again.

Ok, I’m going to say it again, if you haven’t visited Clarity Amidst Chaos, you must. Today’s gem:

ode to a highway shoe
from afar i saw you
crumpled, mangled in the road
i barely knew you highway shoe
never heard the story you told

how you got there I do not know
brown, abandoned, and laceless
a speedbump in the traffic flow
commuters can be so graceless

is your mate covering a foot
while you lay on the road in state
once a proud strong leather boot
unknowing your inevitable, unfortunate fate

who did you know while you trod on the earth
Doctors Scholl and Martin, or maybe Buster Brown?
your Easy Spirit making room for extra wide girth
cushioning the heel as you strode around town?

your owner searches for you in his room
hopping around with one foot unshod
perhaps unaware of your horrific doom
eventually giving up with a discouraged nod

how many miles did you travel to and fro
what did you step in that needed a cleaning
what adventurous places did you reluctantly go
have you discovered your sole’s deeper meaning

you are now just a speck in my rearview mirror
you’ll be saved by a highwayman, part of a crew
picked up and set apart - you’ve nothing to fear
I will sorely miss you, lone brown highway shoe

This is why I have a coffee pot with a timer.

It’s also why I have a hard addiction to Venti White Mocha from The Evil Empire. It kills me that I so happily hand over my $4.18 in the morning for something I can get for next to nothing at home.