Ut Humiliter Opinor

Ouch - now it’s really getting bad for Bush. From The Miers Blunder:

…so far the lesson we draw from this nomination is this: Bad things happen when a President decides that “diversity,” personal loyalty and stealth are more important credentials for the Supreme Court than knowledge of the Constitution and battle-hardened experience fighting the judicial wars of the past 30 years.

(Hat Tip: Captain’s Quarters)

I guess it’s time to pile on. The initial spin from the White House was that you don’t necessarily need great judicial experience on the Supreme Court. There is no Constitutional requirement to be a lawyer. Okay, that’s true. The assumption is that a person who can bring “real world experience” to the Court is a good thing.

I can support it under the following condition: that the nominee - instead of being an extraordinary legal mind - is an extraordinary citizen. Harriet Meirs’ background, while impressive, is not so extraordinary to place her above so many others in the country. I would expect someone to be a major national business or political leader to be considered over the many qualified jurists. Head of the Texas State Bar and being a one-term city council member just doesn’t impress me much.

For me someone “from the street” would have, for example, been a school superintendant for several years, been the a mayor of a major city for a decade or created and operated a large business. That would impress me a bit more, and make me think that a person from the street with have valuable insight the other Justices might lack.

Meirs hasn’t come across as impressive and just doesn’t seem like anything other that a stealth, crony pick.

Think this will be the end of the jihadist conspiracies at Powerline and Michelle Malkin?

Yeah, I’m kinda doubting it.

OU student wrote death note

Joel Hinrichs Jr. said he understood investigators found the message on the computer screen when they arrived at the apartment. “It was a single line of text on his computer,” his father told The Oklahoman. “The cursor was still blinking at the end.” The elder Hinrichs said he could not recall the exact wording but said his son used profanity in the message and was obviously very angry. “He wrote he was dissatisfied with the situation and was going to quit living,” the father said. Investigators have said they might never know whether the student wanted to get inside the stadium. The student did not have a season ticket. FBI officials also have said the investigation has not found any links between the student and terrorist organizations.

Now, Michelle is taking the University to task for publishing an evacuation plan. Can you imagine the response if they did nothing? By taking sensible precautions and telling people how to handle themselves (which they have been doing before games since 9/11), and they are hiding a plot. Doing nothing, however, would probably be seen as burying their head in the sand.

Okay, after a nearly a week of reports on the explosion last weekend, we still seem to know very little. Many of the blogs are already condemning Hinrichs as an American Islamic convert who turned suicide bomber. The MSM has not been following up very extensively.

Here’s what we know:

1) An explosion happened, killing Hinrichs 2) The explosive has been identified, but not the method (was it a pipe bomb? an explosive vest? a bottle? a timer?) 3) Hinrich was apparently seeking counseling for depression 4) Hinrich lived with a Pakistani roommate who was held and released 5) No ties to extremist groups have been identified 6) Like many engineers, Hinrich was very introverted, and liked playing with gadgets 7) An indeterminate amount and type of explosives has been found at his apartment 8) There is a sealed search warrant.

Putting all this together and you have a few options:

A) This was a serious accident from an experiment gone bad. B) This was an intentional suicide with no harm meant to others C) This was an attempt at mass homicide with a device that prematurely detonated. D) This was an attempt at a joint suicide/homicide with a devide that prematurely detonated.

C & D also have the possibility of political/idelogical motives.

Before 9/11, the assumption likely would have been A or possibly B. These days, B is considered the most likely and is the view most common in the mainstream media, with C/D being considered in many corners.

The parents consider B the most likely option, resisting all attempts to paint Joel as an extremist. I still wonder why A is not getting at least some consideration, however.

I suppose, on balance, I’m leaning towards B. The parents and the depression are compelling enough. I’m still not convinced enough by the rumor mill that this was an attempt at homicide as well.

Wizbang is discussing the possibility that the Oklahoma Suicide Bomber was really a failed terrorist. I still don’t buy it, though. I started seeing sites like Northeast Intelligence Network yesterday that proposed the same thing. However, looking at this picture, the “blast” doesn’t appear to have done much damage to the surrounding area. The grass looks worn from walkers, not explosives, and the pole doesn’t look like anything has happened.

Until the FBI releases a formal report, this is all idle speculation, and doesn’t seem to hold up to scrutiny.

We were out the OU-Kansas State game Saturday evening. During the game, a student - Joel “Joe” Hinrichs - sat down on a bench near the stadium and killed himself with some sort of homemade bomb. The explosion took place almost directly west of the stadium on the South Oval of the campus near the Microbiology building. The University of Oklahoma did an outstanding job of keeping things under control. No panic ensued. In fact, no one really knew what was going on, and the game continued.

During the second quarter, we heard the explosion. Deeper and louder than thunder, everyone knew there was something happening, but we couldn’t tell from the stands. The explosion was loud enough to hear and feel, but not something that shook people from their seats or made anyone nervous.

Let me add here that OU has an evacuation plan for the stadium that they announced before the start of each game. Had they felt the need to evacuate, most of the patrons should have known their route.

During the third quarter the announcer came on and requested that all bus drivers on the South Oval should report immediately. It was odd, but still, the game continued.

During the fourth quarter the announcer came on again and informed everyone that they could not go west of the stadium from Lindsey Street to the campus library. That covers a good chunk of the south side of the main campus. At that point, people became concerned. Someone next to us let us know about a “suicide bomber” near the Microbiology building but that no one was injured. I started tuning into to my radio to get more information. As you would expect the initial reports ended up being different from reality.

Initially we heard that a second device was found nearby and exploded. Also, that a parking garage on the northwest side of campus was restricted.

As the game concluded, we stayed in the stadium for a while. You could see from the stands that foot and car traffic was already at a standstill. I saw little reason to rush out with a crowd of people into an unknown situation. An empty stadium seemed safer. We stayed for at least a half hour after the final gun and the crowds were noticably thinner. No new information was coming out beyond what we had heard in the first few minutes, so we walked across campus to our car and drove off.

It turns out that the second “device” was just a suspicious backpack detonated per police procedure. The parking garage that is adjacent to the stadium was searched, but the northwest parking garage was never an issue, apparently.

Reading today’s media reports, Michelle Malkin and Flopping Aces, Joe appeared to be a disturbed young man. I really hope that’s all there is to this. Powerline is linking to a site that claims Islamic literature was found in his apartment.

From afar, my gut feeling (and fervent hope) is that Joe was a lost young man with an unfortunate flair for the dramatic. My thoughts and prayers are with his family right now. His father gave a brief interview to the Daily Oklahoman:

“I don’t want him defined by whatever limitations led him to this,” said Joel H. Hinrichs Jr. of Colorado Springs. “He was quite introverted. He was a very quiet, introverted, intelligent young man. I can’t approximate what led him to make such a final decision.”

As the MasterBlogger himself would say, “Heh”:

Millers Big Secret

Note to reporters: There is nothing intrinsically noble about keeping your sources’ secrets. Your job, in fact, is to expose them. And if a very senior government official, after telling you something in confidence, then tells you that you don’t have to keep it secret anymore, the proper response is “Hooray, now I can tell the world” — not “Sorry, that’s not good enough for me, I need that in triplicate.”

The Associated Press has an article detailing the problems with getting that National Guard to Louisiana: National Guard Delay Likely to Be Examined

From the outside looking in, this has been a failure on multiple levels. Guard troops waiting for paperwork to be filed in Washington? Troops waiting for a phone call from the state of Louisiana to deploy? Blanco was apparently fearful of a political motive when Bush requested federal control of the situation. Add to this that New Orleans didn’t follow the city hurricane disaster plan, and you have a failure at every level of government.

Many people want to fault Bush, Blanco or Nagin (usually depending on their political affiliation). It will likely be some time before the paperwork is sorted out and the problems analyzed, but that’s what I think is really frustrating. If the bureaucracy is the reason for the delays, then steps need to be taken to remove it. We have FEMA and Homeland Security for a reason. Red tape isn’t it.

Two things jumped out at me today: one good, one not:

1) Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that evacuees from Hurricane Katrina staying in the Astrodome will be able to attend Texas schools for the duration of their stay. Perry’s never been much of a governor, but this was a class act.

2) Gas prices. What can I say? Yesterday, the Chevron by my office was $2.62. This morning, it was $2.69. This evening it was $2.89. Virtually every station on my commute home had the same price as well. Ten percent in 24 hours. That’s just obscene. I know there’s a loss of capacity from the hurricane, but I have a hard time believing we lost that much. We keep hearing about China, cars, refineries, formulations, etc. but it’s hard to justify a 200% price hike in five years.

Ramzy Baroud (editor of The Palestinian Chronicle and researcher for Aljazeera.net English has written a piece on Cindy Sheehan entitled She speaks for all of us:

While the clichéd understanding of the media’s role in the US is that it is an open, unhindered and evenly representative forum, the sad, albeit unsurprising truth is that the US mainstream media has always been a one-sided, drum-beating, chest-pounding, war-mongering medium

Somehow, I don’t think he’s ever read the New York Times.

What’s also remarkable is his attitude towards Sheehan - the “ordinary woman”:

while some champions of the anti-war movement are incapable of articulating a decisive and uncompromising agenda on ending the war in Iraq, Sheehan, this ordinary woman with a small tent, a few sandwiches and a cell phone has proven more unshakable than anti-war groups who claim tens of thousands of members. “We’re over there and we need to come home,” she told reporters on August 16. She contested the claim that ‘leaving Iraq in chaos’ is a non-option. “We need to let the Iraqi people handle their own business,” she said, arguing, according to Salon.com that “the US presence is the source of all violence there.”

Sheehan has been part of the anti-war movement for quite some time - a fact that is easily verified with a simple Google search. While she may have been “ordinary” a couple of years ago, she is now a part of a political movement.

My heart goes out to Sheehan for her loss, however, she does not speak for all Americans, nor all parents of those killed in action. For Baroud to portray her as such is just as biased as the media he tries to paint with broad strokes.

Here’s a neat story from today’s USA Today: Japanese-Americans interned in WW2 get diplomas. I particularly like the first quote. In my own experience, high school graduation was a much bigger deal to me than college graduation. Graduating in a class of a few hundred versus a few thousand makes a big difference. Also, the demographics are a lot closer, and the school experiences are much more common than college. I love my university and still have good friends from there, but high school graduation seems to live up to its billing: it’s the beginning of adulthood. Not everyone chooses college, so it’s not a cultural milestone the way high school graduation is.

I’m glad these men and women received their dimplomas from their original schools. It’s a dark chapter of our history and one I hope we never repeat, but at least this shows that we can try to correct ourselves.

“Some may consider a high school diploma just a piece of paper, but it’s a symbol to me,” Hoshizaki told the audience of several hundred. The diploma project is the result of legislation sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber allowing school districts to bestow diplomas to students interned by the government during World War II. Some 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them from California, were forced into camps. Since Lieber’s legislation passed last year, more than 400 people have received diplomas, some posthumously. In 1988, the U.S. government officially apologized for the internments and offered $20,000 to eligible survivors, but the diplomas have helped survivors make their experience relevant to the younger generations.