The Clock is ticking...tick, tick, tick...

As of 7:30 this morning I have not yet heard anything "official" as to whether Tiger Woods' accident was caused by a marital "conflict", some kind of medical impairment, or just plain dumb bad luck. So far he and his wife have refused to comment to police so there is no official word.
If it develops that he DID have a fight due to the tabloid rumors, how long before someone (most likely NOT Tiger or his advisers) pulls the "race card" in his defence?

I hope this just fades away as he has been a true class act throughout his career.

Hope-n-change, again and again and again...

With full admission, I am cutting and pasting this from National Review Online's "The Corner" as I cannot think of anything better to say on this one.

Unseriousness, Again [Anthony Dick]

The strange thing about the Obama administration's decision to hold these civilian al-Qaeda trials is that the project is flawed even based on the premises of its staunchest defenders: They talk about due process and the rule of law, but the trials can't possibly provide anything close to the level of objectivity that applies in an ordinary criminal-law setting. There is no way the defendants will get an impartial jury in New York, and there is no way the government will actually release the terrorists if they are acquitted. Thus the courtroom proceedings in Manhattan will be, in a very real sense, show trials. They are designed purely for PR purposes, so that the Obama administration can pay lip service to the ideal of due process while implicitly rebuking the Bush administration for failing to respect the rule of law.
Meanwhile, it is the Obama administration that is truly making a sham out of the rule of law, by politicizing the trial process and pretending that these enemy combatants will be getting normal, neutral, dispassionate trials, as if the larger strategic context of the War on Terror will not affect the judge, the jury, or the actions of the government, which is sure to retain custody of the defendants in the off chance they are acquitted.
This reflects the fundamental unseriousness of the Obama administration in the face of terrorism. (Italics mine) We saw the same thing with the foolish announcement that Gitmo would be closed by January, which was the first iteration of the administration's fantasy-land effort to sidestep one of the core dilemmas of the post-9/11 world: We have a significant number of detainees whom we know with operational certainty to be dangerous terrorists, but, for various reasons, we can't prosecute or convict them according to normal procedures. This is another way of saying that there is no way we can prosecute the War on Terror while providing the full panoply of ordinary due-process protections to enemy combatants. And no amount of hope can change this reality.

Time to quit the charade...

"...His name wasn't Smith..." Diane Sawyer (paraphrased).

REALLY?!? Why is that pertinent? If he HAD been named Smith or Jones or Roberts or any other "English" sounding name would it have made a bit of difference?

While I have to admit that as soon as I heard the Ft. Hood shooter's name "sounded" Islamic; a part of my mind thought, "we must not rush to judgement" especially because I know of people from the Middle East who have names just enough different than mine that I would expect them to be Muslim only to discover they are actually not, part of my mind thought, "Here we go again!"

I have some friends who are Muslims. I seriously doubt that any of them would act as Major Hasan did.
Most of them seem pretty "normal" in the way my fundamentalist neighbor is "normal", they pay taxes, work at their jobs, love their children and act as normal people do.What is "different" about them is what they don't do. They don't drink, they don't go to church (they attend Friday service at the Mosque), some of them don't wear ties (I don't understand that one) but none of them are ranting Islamic fundamentalists with weblogs where they call the American Military "the enemy". (or if they are, they certainly hide it very well).

That said, this guy was a bad egg. It would appear that his acts constitute treason and/or are the equivalent of desertion in a state of war. Let's stop the handwringing of "looking for root causes" and "worrying about a backlash against Muslims of all stripes" and just punish this joker.