Ralph Peters goes ballistic over the Pentagon’s report on the Fort Hood massacre.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It’s so inept, it doesn’t even rise to cover-up level.

“Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood” never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat “the alleged perpetrator,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they’re still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).

The report is so politically correct that its authors don’t even realize the extent of their political correctness — they’re body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian.

Reading the report, you get the feeling that, jeepers, things actually went pretty darned well down at Fort Hood. Commanders, first responders and everybody but the latest “American Idol” contestants come in for high praise.

The teensy bit of specific criticism is reserved for the “military medical officer supervisors” in Maj. Hasan’s chain of command at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As if the problem started and ended there.

Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn’t stop Hasan’s career in its tracks.

The answer is straightforward: Hasan’s superiors feared — correctly — that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today’s armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain’t many colonels willing to hammer the Army’s sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.

I thought myself that existing circumstances in which a fanatic can arm himself and simply proceed to gun down members of a crowd of completely unarmed uniformed military personal in the middle of an Army base in time of war speak volumes about contemporary American pacifism, hoplophobia, and identity problems in certain branches of the US Armed Forces. The US Army actually needed an armed female police officer to come to the rescue of soldiers being attacked by a single adversary.

They call them Armed Forces, don’t they? If US military personnel routinely carried sidearms, and knew how to use them, there wouldn’t be much chance of anyone succeeding in a massacre. An Islamic fanatic might draw a gun and shoot someone, but if everyone else had guns, his shooting spree would come to an abrupt halt very quickly.

Marshall Ramsey, Jackson Clarion Ledger

Janet Napolitano announced that is scheduled to deploy 300 additional advanced imaging scanners at U.S. airports in 2010, and may deploy more.

But, as Michael Crowley observes, in New Republic, X-rays machines do not detect PETN, and pat downs are unlikely to be effective, particularly in the case of explosives concealed in body cavities.

In the wake of the Abdulmutallab episode, however, standards will change. Pat downs will become more common—and more intrusive. We may not see the famous vision of the crazed dictator from Woody Allen’s Bananas—“Underwear shall be worn on the outside!”—but those searches by hand are likely to get a little more, shall we say, intimate.

Even a pat-down thorough enough to simulate foreplay, however, won’t protect us completely—not from a threat that sounds even more absurd than an underwear bomb and that is also more alarming: the butt bomb.

The concept is simple. Rather than sew explosives into his underwear, a terrorist might actually plant a bomb, which can weigh as little as a pound, inside his anal cavity. Like drug mules, would-be butt bombers could store the explosives inside a condom.

Sound crazy? Perhaps. Disgusting? Definitely. But security experts initially believed that a terrorist’s derriere nearly killed a top Saudi Arabian counterterrorism official last fall. Back in August, an Al Qaeda-connected militant named Abdullah Assiri offered to turn himself into Saudi authorities and enlist in a state-run terrorist rehabilitation program. Exhibiting a healthy skepticism, the Saudis reportedly subjected Assiri to two airport-style X-ray scans and other security checks. Finding no weapons or explosives on his body, security agents ushered Assiri into the palace of the counterterrorism chief, Prince Muhammad Bin Nayef, who is also the son of a likely heir to the Saudi throne.

Instead of surrendering, however, Assiri exploded. Nayef survived the blast, but the Saudis were bewildered by this incredible breach of their security. At first, they were convinced the explosive had been hidden in Assiri’s anal cavity—a scenario that other security experts didn’t discount. After further investigation, the Saudis concluded that Assiri didn’t have a butt bomb after all, but rather that he stashed the explosive in his underwear much like Abdulmutallab. (The device may have been detonated by a text message sent to Assiri’s cell phone; exactly how the phone triggered the bomb is unclear. Like Abdulmutallab, incidentally, Assiri appears to have gotten his assignment and materials in Yemen.)

Prince Nayaf himself flew to Washington to warn Obama administration officials about this new underwear bomb threat, according to Newsweek—which also recently disclosed a joint report produced by the National Counterterrorism Center, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA, on the threat of both underwear and butt bombs. That report had both good and bad news about the alarming concept of explosive Al Qaeda asses. On the downside, the report found that even full-body-image scanners at airports might not detect anally stashed explosives.

Provoking this sensible comment from Jared C. Lobdell.

Recite after me: “The Christmas Day terrorist was subdued by other passengers who left their seats: this was during the approach to the plane’s destination, less than an hour to go in the international flight. Therefore, the TSA now prohibits passengers from leaving their seats during the last hour of an international flight.”

Looking like a deer in the headlights…

It seems the traveling public may not be “very very safe” after all, and the system didn’t really work. What do you know?

Janet Napolitano denied eating her words today on MBC’s Today show. No, it was CNN, you see, which took her out of context (!).

3:43 video

What a weasel she is.

BrickGun Semi-Auto

What I would consider a busybody Toronto neighbor saw an executive standing by a window holding what appeared to be a pistol, and phoned the local police who responded with a Swat team raid. The frightening weapon proved to be 277 lego blocks assembled into roughly the outline of a Glock 17.

Toronto Sun:

(Jeremy Bell a) partner at digital marketing company Teehan+Lax was surrounded by heavily armed tactical officers, cuffed and held against the wall of his Richmond St. W. office — until, that is, the cops found the gun he had been holding in front of the window about 90 minutes earlier was a pile of blocks.

The BrickGun Semi-Automatic gun (purchased online from BrickGun, “designers and builders of the world’s most realistic custom Lego weapon models”) arrived at Bell’s office Wednesday.

The lifetime Lego fan finished assembling his toy — complete with build-it-yourself magazine — at 5:40 p.m.

It was in one piece for about 10 minutes before it fell apart, he recalled yesterday.

But the tenant in an apartment about six metres across the way didn’t see that last part. And so the tenant called the cops.

At about 7 p.m., as Bell and some colleagues played a video game, the Emergency Task Force moved in.

“They were screaming in the hallway for me to come out,” Bell said. “When I went out there and I saw there was an officer kind of crouched down in the stairwell, it was clear what was going on.”

Despite the very real guns pointed at him, Bell said he didn’t fret.

“I’m not trafficking guns or selling drugs or anything like that, so as soon as I saw that these cops were legit, I was like, all right, this has got to be about this stupid gun.”

Pressed up against the wall, his hands thrown in cuffs, Bell directed the cops to the pieces of fake gun sitting in a box by the window. Moments later, he was free.

“At least you have a story to tell now,” he quoted one cop as saying.

I think this case is a classic example illustrating the exaggerated fear of weapons characteristic of today’s deracinated urban masses. Put a badge on someone and sprinkle the authority of the state upon his head and he suddenly magically is supposed to acquire powers of judgment and responsibility beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. It seems to me that Jeremy Bell came fairly close to proving, along with Amadou Diallo, just how foolish that theory is.

Rightwingliberal is extremely impressed with the success of the democrat’s stimulus package. The government’s own web-site (Recovery.gov) demonstrates that Washington has managed to figure out a way to spend money, and save jobs, in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

I really, really wanted to believe this was an Onion move; then I actually feared some clever lefty had laid a trap for over-eager center-right bloggers.

It is neither. The Stimulus tracking site really does tout – and proudly, money that goes to phantom Congressional Districts.

Bill McMorris (Watchdog.org) has the details on North Dakota.

On a whim, I took a look at Virginia.

Among other things . . .

Over $2.26 million was spent in the “12th Congressional District,” which only exists in the fevered recesses of Tom Davis’ ambition.

Another $2M- plus went to the “00 Congressional District” (creating or saving exactly 2.5 jobs in the process)

More than $2M went to such venerable Virginia Districts as the 36th and 26th (neither seen since the 19th Century), plus the 79th (which can only mean Obama has created a new and more perfect dimension to spend the money)

Hat tip to Adam Bitely.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein would describe it as a species of linguistic confusion when school administrators confuse a harmless dining utensil with a weapon.

AOLNews:

Zachary Christie, 6, was happy about joining the Cub Scouts and was excited about a new camping utensil that functions as a spoon, fork and knife — so excited that he took the tool to school to use it at lunch.

But the Newark, Del., boy’s enthusiasm got him kicked out of school for violating a zero-tolerance policy on weapons. …

The first-grader faces 45 days in reform school after officials determined the camping utensil violated the Christina School District’s ban on knives. His mother is home-schooling him while his family appeals the punishment.

But the New York Times explains that another factor is in play in promoting this kind of irrationality. Racial politics come into play when the youth who brought a knife to school to rob other children of their lunch money is disarmed and punished, so it becomes necessary to send the six-year-old cub scout with the camping kit to reform school, too, to prove that you are not racially biased.

Spurred in part by the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, many school districts around the country adopted zero-tolerance policies on the possession of weapons on school grounds. More recently, there has been growing debate over whether the policies have gone too far.

But, based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, “regardless of possessor’s intent,” knives are banned. …

Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing students, but were applied in a discriminatory fashion. Many studies indicate that African-Americans were several times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students for the same offenses.

“The result of those studies is that more school districts have removed discretion in applying the disciplinary policies to avoid criticism of being biased,” said Ronnie Casella, an associate professor of education at Central Connecticut State University who has written about school violence. He added that there is no evidence that zero-tolerance policies make schools safer.

Fort Oglethorpe cheerleaders with banner

When high school football players run through a banner with Bible verses on it, does that violate the US Constitution?

The school board attorney stopped them from doing that in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, telling them they were “violating federal law.”

2:15 video

It is remarkable how the Constitution’s prohibition of a federally established church (state established churches still existed when the Constitution was adopted) has evolved first into a wall of separation between church and state, and ultimately into widespread bans on public expression of religious sentiment.

Washington Post story.

A Kern County Animal Control crackdown on unlicensed pets targeted 83-year-old Dottie Elkins over her dog Wolf.

Unfortunately, the dog authorities spied sitting near her door was a stuffed toy.

1:45 MSNBC video

Hat tip to Smartdogs for the better link.

Wendy Willard and the Murder Hollow Bassets at the National Beagle Club in Aldie, Virginia (photo: Karen L. Myers)

Following packs of beagles or bassets afoot in hunting club uniforms in pursuit of the cottontail rabbit is, like croquet, one of the recherchée passions of the old school gentry.

The Murder Hollow Bassets of Philadelphia (a private pack* founded in 1986) is one thirteen organized packs of basset hounds recognized by the National Beagle Club hunting in the United States.

In 2006-2007, Murder Hollow had 7 1/2 couple (15) AKC English-French cross basset hounds. They hunt on private land in Montgomery and Bucks Counties from September to March.

The sort of people who go in for basseting are typically well-educated, upper middle-class animal lovers of a preparatory school sort of background. In other words, the very last sort of people imaginable to be dog abusers or law breakers.

But neither gentility nor middle-aged respectability was sufficient to protect the Murder Hollow’s Master Wendy Willard from a full scale raid by Philadelphia police, nor did it prevent 13 hounds from being taken from their kennels and turned over to a private animal rights organization hostile to hunting.

This incident has so far attracted no blog or media coverage, but was mentioned on a fox hunting list yesterday, and reported today on the Border Collie Bulletin Board.

The local SPCA raided Wendy’s Willard’s kennel where she keeps her Murder Hollow Bassets on Monday night. They arrived with seven trucks and two police cars & informed her that one of her neighbours had complained about noise.

Neither the neighbour nor the SPCA had previously complained to her, yet she has been there for 22 years.

As it turns out, Philadelphia County had recently passed an ordinance where no more than 12 animals may be kept on any property. The Murder Hollow kennels contained 23 bassets, less than the requirement to obtain a (US) Department of Agriculture kennel licence, but the kennel is just inside the city limits.

Under this law, the local SPCA have managed to acquire the power to seize people’s dogs without warning, by force and by night, and then to take them away to an unknown destination without any accountability.

The police took 12 hounds and delivered them to an SPCA animal rescue “shelter” in Philadelphia. From there the hounds were dispersed amongst other “shelters”.

Basset packs in the area have contacted a Mr. Little who runs the SPCA shelter, seeking to place the hounds before they are put down or neutered (thereby destroying 20 years of Murder Hollow’s breeding programme). After a week, Mr. Little has failed to respond to any of these contacts.

So far, the only response from Mr. Little has been a statement to the effect that that the hounds tested positive for Lyme’s disease but were asymptomatic and are now being treated for Lyme’s and a skin condition. On the face of it, his organisation seems to be trying to rack up a bill for these animals, though one is not sure whether this is to deter Mrs Willard trying to recover her hounds or because his rescue operation has a right to recover its costs from an errant kennel owner. In this context it is relevant to point out that most of those who keep dogs & hounds in south central or south east Pennsylvania will have hounds that test positive to some degree for Lyme’s.

This whole episode seems a totally disproportionate & inappropriate way to deal with a middle-aged woman with no criminal record, who just happens to keep a pack of hunting bassets. It would surely have been appropriate to notify the owner of the new ordinance before conducting such a raid.

To further complicate matters, some of the hounds taken were on loan from another pack in Tennessee (presumably the Upper Bay Bassets of Strawberry Plains, Tennessee) and, despite the Tennessee owner (Eugene and/or Richard Askins)’s pleas, the PSPCA will not tell her where to find her hounds.

* A private pack, unlike a subscription pack, has no membership dues and holds no fund raising events. Subscription packs are incorporated entities. The master of a private pack owns the hounds personally, and simply pays for food, veterinary care, kennel upkeep, transportation, and all other expenses directly out of his (or her) own pocket.

——————————————-

UPDATE, August 6:

Mr. James Scharnberg, Master of the Skycastle French Hounds, writes:

Please contact by phone and e-mail the following officers of the PSPCA (Pennsylvania Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), headquartered at 350 E. Erie Ave., Phila., PA 19134, to ask about the location of and about adopting the 11 Bassets that were seized from Ms. Wendy Willard, master of a nationally registered Basset pack in Philadelphia County, on Monday night, 27 July:

Ms. Harrise Yaron, Chairman of the Board, PSPCA E-mail: hyaron@aol.com

Ms. Susan Cosby, CEO of PSPCA Erie Ave Shelter E-mail: scosby@pspca.org
TN: 215-426-6300, Ext. 214

Mr. Ray Little, Director of Adoptions and Foster Care/Rescue Groups
E-mail: rlittle@pspca.org TN: 215-426-6304, Ext. 251 Cell: 215-816-5301
Fax: 215-426-4517

Ms. Gail Luciani, Chief Public Relations Officer, PSPCA E-mail: gluciani@pspca.org
TN: 215-426-6300, Ext. 213 Cell: 215-901-9706

Ms. Willard was raided by the PSPCA and police due to a first time noise complaint, and told that unless she released 11 of her 23 hounds to them they would seize them all, under a new 12-dog-limit city ordinance. Since that night, despite countless calls and e-mails to the PSPCA, they have refused to reveal the fate or location of the hounds, or let a large number of licensed local basset hound packs and individuals, and several veterinarians, in the five county area take in the hounds. We have been told only that they have been “sent to rescue” to an independent care facility, and that they are under no obligation to tell us anything.

——————————————-

SECOND UPDATE, August 6, 1:45 P.M.:

I spoke on the telephone with Ray Little and Gail Luciani, identifying myself as a blogger from Virginia covering the Murder Hollow Basset situation.

Mr. Little was completely unwilling to discuss the bassets. He told me he was not involved in this matter, referred me to Ms. Luciani, and got off the line as quickly as possible.

I was able to reach Ms. Luciani after several attempts. She declined to provide any substantive answers, telling me the case of Ms. Willard’s basset hounds was “under investigation.”

I asked what could they possibly be investigating for over a week in connection with a minor technical violation of a new ordinance unknown to the dogs’ owner. Ms. Luciani promised that information would be provided at the PSPCA web-page at some indeterminate future time. She specifically refused to identify how long it would be before they were prepared to publish that promised information, or what information would be forthcoming.

Ms. Luciani repeatedly said the hounds were “in rescue,” relying consistently on stony-faced invocations of official jargon as a means of avoiding responsive meaningful answers to legitimate questions concerning the hounds’ current condition and location or the PSPCA’s intentions and refusal to communicate with the hounds’ owners, outside veterinarians, and concerned friends of Wendy Willard and the Murder Hollow Bassets. She seemed a bit upset, when I demanded to know whether she was a dog owner herself, and asked how she thought her dogs would react if taken forcibly from her and confined in strange surroundings in a small cage.

Attempts to appeal to Ms. Luciani’s humanity were, nonetheless, not productive. She rapidly composed herself and resumed stonewalling, finally excusing herself rapidly to deal, doubtless similarly, with other callers.

These days, a mass-murdering terrorist can invoke habeas corpus or like Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, force the government to modify the conditions of his confinement. There is no habeas corpus though for animals that fall into the clutches of self-appointed guardian organizations like the PSPCA.

—————————————-
Some Corrections, 8/11:

Three bassets seized by PSPCA had come from the Sandanona Hare Hounds. One was a stud fee puppy, one a drafted hound given to the Murder Hollow pack, the third was a retired basset given to Wendy Willard to live in retirement as a pet. Sandanona hounds are given with a contract retaining ownership, and requiring their return to Sandanona if they cannot be cared for, specifically in order to prevent them ever winding up in an animal shelter’s cages.

Some hounds from Upper Bay were at Murder Hollow, but the Upper Bay Hounds were not surrendered.

Ms. Willard evidently erroneously accepted PSPCA Officer Loller’s assurances that Mrs. Parks of Sandanona would be permitted to reclaim her hounds.

————————

A truculent and self-congratulatory individual named Patrick Burns, who blogs over at Terrierman’s Daily Dose, has a nasty habit of bashing other sportsmen in order to make himself feel good.

Burns came hurrying to PSPCA’s defense not long after this posting appeared, gleefully accepting the PSPCA version of events as definitively establishing that those Murder Hollow basset hounds were neglected and abused, Wendy Willard was a confirmed violator of the law, and a crazy old lady whose hounds should be taken away from her. I am a paranoid right-wing blogger irresponsibly misreporting all this, according to Burns.

The original anonymously posted account of the raid above said: As it turns out, Philadelphia County had recently passed an ordinance where no more than 12 animals may be kept on any property.

Burns is correct that the anonymous poster was mistaken. The Philadelphia Code § 10-103(8) which says:

Maximum Number of Dogs and Cats Allowed. No residential dwelling unit shall keep a total of more than twelve (12) adult dogs or cats combined, of which no more than four (4) may be unneutered, unless the Department of Public Health has been notified and granted a waiver.

This section of the Philadelphia Code was added in 1986, and amended in 1992.

Wendy Willard might have been in violation of that limit. I will discuss why I say “might” in another new post.

photo: Elizabeth W. Harpham

The 911 emergency call system is central to the modern American’s relationship to government and society. Centralized planning has eliminated RFD addresses, denied mail delivery to named houses, and re-numbered streets widely to assure conformity to the 911 system’s best convenience.

When faced with an attacker or an emergency, the official viewpoint commonly asserts that you should call 911. Defending yourself or taking independent action in an emergency has been known to get people arrested. These kinds of things are supposed to be left to experts and persons in authority.

17-year-old Adrainne Ledesma of Lincoln Park, Michigan found her father, recovering from recent brain surgery, collapsed and having a seizure on the kitchen floor. She dialed 911.

Emotionally wrought, and clearly not the best brought up young lady, she grew frustrated when 911 failed to answer, and when her second call was finally, after an interval, picked up, exclaimed, “What the f**?”

The 911 dispatcher, one Sergeant Robert McFarland, was far more concerned with making sure the caller spoke to him politely than inquiring into the reason for her call. When the young lady yelled for a f****** ambulance, McFarland simply hung up on her.

Three more calls took a similar form, and when young Adrianne finally gave up and ran in person to a nearby police station seeking assistance, she found that McFarland had already alerted them, and she was arrested for “disorderly conduct.”

7 Action News 4:10 video

As we rely more on more upon centralized systems for our fundamental needs, we are going to find that the operation of remote and impersonal systems has a tendency to prioritize the convenience, and even the amour propre, of ordinary, and sometimes pompous and self-infatuated, human beings more concerned with their own perquisites and authority than with our problems.

Bridget Kevane, a professor at Montana State University and resident of Bozeman, left three younger children in the charge of her twelve year old daughter and a girlfriend at the local mall. The two older girls went to try on clothing in a dressing room leaving the younger siblings, aged 3, 7, and 8, alone and unattended by a store counter. Store employees seeing the children alone called mall security, which in turn summoned the police.

The professor soon found herself charged with child endangerment, being prosecuted by a city attorney determined to teach someone like herself a lesson.

The city attorney made no secret of the fact that her own parenting choices informed her decision in backing up the police officer. She told my lawyer in their first meeting that she also had a daughter and would never have left her at the mall. She also said she believed professors are incapable of seeing the real world around them because their “heads are always in a book.” Her first letter to my lawyer ended on a similar theme: “I just think that even individuals with major educations can commit this offense, and they should not be treated differently because they have more money or education.” Despite the fact that Montana professors are among the lowest paid in the nation, and that undoubtedly the prosecutor has a law degree herself, she nevertheless categorized me as someone trying to receive special treatment.

My lawyer and I came to understand that, more than anything, the city attorney wanted me to plead guilty, to admit that I had “violated a duty of care.” She wanted me to carry that crime with me for the rest of my life, a scarlet A that would symbolically humiliate me, teach me a lesson, and remain etched in my being.

I now realize that her pressure—her near obsession with having me plead guilty—had less to do with what I had done and more to do with her perception of me as an outsider who thought she was above the law, who had money to pay her way out of a mistake, who thought she was smarter than the Bozeman attorney because of her “major education.” This perception took hold even though I had never spoken one word to her directly. Nor did I ever speak in court; only my lawyer did. I was visible but silent, and thus unable to shake the image that the prosecutor had created of me: a rich, reckless, highly educated outsider mother who probably left her children all the time in order to read her books.

In our contemporary media-driven culture, stereotype images of wrong-doing identified by news programs and television dramas as pandemic problems float abundantly in the national subconscious ready to be applied. The progressive ideal of public activism and aggressive ameliorism promotes doing something about these supposed “problems,” treating the impulse to do things, to act in such a context as enlightened and responsible, even heroic.

Even a basically trivial incident like the one involving Professor Kevane’s children can easily today become the pretext for an avalanching tragedy of exaggeration and paranoia. In this case, ironically, we seem to find what should be expected to be the more conservative native residents, in a man-bites-dog situation, bringing the heavy burden of statist paternalism down upon a liberal university professor, who this time finds herself on the defensive and losing in the culture wars.

Hat tip to Judith Warner.