Lifenews.com reports that pro-Life activist James Pouillon was gunned down this morning outside a school in Owosso, Michigan

While Pouillon was active in protesting abortion — and his death will bring up the issue of abortion and violence again in the wake of the shooting of late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller — he always condemned violence as a solution to the violence of abortion.

“Jim was completely non-violent and he condemned violence,” Zastrow said.

Judy Climer, president of Flint Right to Life, described Pouillon to the Flint Journal newspaper as “just a nice, elderly gentleman who was disabled, used an oxygen tank and wore leg braces.”

Furthermore, According to Sara Edwards, the chief assistant prosecutor for Shiawassee County,

Pouillon’s pro-life stance was the reason he was targeted and said the suspect officials have in custody disapproved of his abortion protests outside the schools.

So, this wasn’t just some random shooting. Some gutless, pro-abortion thug intentionally targeted an old disabled man on oxygen who was exercising his first amendment rights. Keith Olbermann must be so proud.

The New York times revealed today that one of its reporters, David S. Rohde, escaped from his captors after being held for more than seven months by the Taliban. But, apparently this is the first time anyone has heard of it:

From the early days of this ordeal, the prevailing view among David’s family, experts in kidnapping cases, officials of several governments and others we consulted was that going public could increase the danger to David and the other hostages. The kidnappers initially said as much,” Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, said in a story posted on the Times’ Web site.

So, if I understand this correctly, if one of its employees gets kidnapped by the terrorist thugs, the Times stays mum about it in order to “not increase the danger” to said employee. However, when it comes to going public with information that can potentially put thousands of American citizens in danger, well Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger are just fine with that.

From the diaries by Erick

I think the term “Vichy” is appropriate to describe ersatz Republicans like Colin Powell and Tom Ridge (thanks Eric).   They also remind me of some of the leading lights in the Italian Christian Democracy (DCI) party that dominated every Italian government from 1948 until its eventual demise during the mani puliti (clean hands) investigations of 1992.  Although starting in 1948 from a position of great political strength under the charismatic Alcide DeGaspari, the DCI steadily declined in influence and power throughout the subsequent decades.  This decline was due in great part to the practice of trasformismo (transformism), which the noted Italianist Norman Kogan defines as the “sacrifice of political convictions in the scramble for power, possessions, and honors.”  I think Kogan could have been writing about certain prominent members of today’s Republican party when he observed in 1962 that

“The avoidance of qualification [as left or right wing] may have the utility of escaping ideological identification; it has the disutitlity of providing an escape from making hard decisions.  No decision is a decision itself, of course; a decision in favor of the status quo.  This is tactically the easiest thing to do, but when the status quo involves perpetuating a ‘fractured’ society, such a choice has obvious long-run dangers.  Whether pleasing or not choices must be made, for change is inevitable.  The choices will have to cumulate to indicate some kind of political direction, and it is usually sensible to identify, at least vaguely, the direction.”

“The worst diminutions of freedom come from people who feel they can do no wrong, that they are morally correct.” - Daniel Hannan, British Member of the European Parliament tonight on Hannity, commenting on FDR and Obama.

This guy always nails it. I really wish he was one of ours.

Tonight I’m watching the CBS Movie The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.  For those of you not familiar with her story, Ms. Sendler was a Catholic social worker in Warsaw, Poland during WWII.  She, along with about a dozen other members of the Zegota resistance group, saved the lives of over 2500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto.  Now, you may recall that Ms. Sendler, who died last year at the age of 98, had been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.  Of course, Al Gore won the Prize that year for his work on “raising awareness” of climate change.  Putting aside for the moment the many half truths and outright lies contained in “An Inconvenient Truth,” the fact is Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for making a frickin movie!   Yes, five learned Norwegians actually believed a snake oil salesman the likes of Al Gore was more deserving of humanity’s honor and gratitude than a woman who saved thousands of children from certain death at the hands of the Nazis.  The liberal capacity for moral relativity never ceases to amaze me.

I’ve been switching back and forth for about the last four hours between the Senate coverage on CSPAN1 and House coverage on CSPAN.  No I’m a not that much of a political geek, but I am very interested in my senate confirmation to Lt Col in the Air Force which a senate staffer in Sen. Shelby’s office assured me would be done on a unanimous consent vote tonight. Of course with all of the budget stuff going on they never got to nominations and now it looks like everyone is going home for the night.  Maybe tomorrow.  Looks like no Republicans voted for Barry’s budget, which is good. Picked up maybe two Dems.

On CSPAN Banking Queen Barney Frank was yammering for about a half hour about hour the housing meltdown was all the Republicans fault because they were opposed to regulation.   A couple of Republican congressmen then got up and tore him a new one (which he probably needs by now).

CSPAN then switched to Barry’s presser in London.  He is absolutely lost without TOTUS.  What a bumbling fool.  He just said that he wanted to call on another “foreigner.”  Yes, he actually said foreigner.  In London.  Then he caught himself and said “you see I’m laughing because I’m actually the foreigner here.”  I can’t believe we elected this rube.