INVESTED IN DEFEAT, INVESTED IN AMERICA'S HUMILIATION

How's this for supporting our troops? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat (of course) has now declared that the United States has lost the war in Iraq. He told President Bush that the war could not be won through military force ... in effect saying that the U.S. military is incapable of defeating the Islamic fascist enemy.

Know this ... there is no way in hell that you can say you support our troops when you say that our troops cannot win the battle. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it well: "I can't begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost,"

I might put it a bit differently. What do you call a political leader in this country who declares a war to be lost while our men and women in uniform are putting their lives on the line to win that war. What do you call a highly placed political leader who puts a smile on the faces of the Islamic terrorist bastards who are out there trying to kill our soldiers. There's a word for it .. and it's a word that those of you who listen to my show will know that I don't use. That word is traitor. Dictionary.com has a few definitions for the word. See how you like them:

1. A person who betrays another, a cause or any trust.
2. A person who commits treason by betraying his or her country

So ... what is treason? Giving aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war. Did Reid's comments give aid to the Islamic fascists trying to kill our soldiers? How can anyone not say that Harry Reid's words did just that? The only question then is whether, in the definition of treason, we can be said to be at war.

This may be Reid's escape. For my part, he has not only given aid and comfort to the enemy, he has emboldened them. I feel certain that American men and women in Iraq will die as a result of Reid's words encouraging the people who want to kill them.

Bastard.

Know this .... Democrats are absolutely invested in our defeat at the hands of the Islamic insurgents in Iraq. Good news in Iraq is bad news for the Democrat Party MoveOn.org crowd. They watch the news every day looking eager for more stories of violence in Iraq aimed at innocents and our soldiers. The absence of those stories makes them sad. The presence of those stories lift their spirits.

Never in the history of this country has a political party been so dedicated to our defeat in armed conflict.

PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION BAN AFFIRMED

by Rep. John Boehner

This week Americans were shocked over the methodical murder of 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty at the hands of a suicidal lunatic. These brutal murders are a tragic reminder that life is a precious and fragile gift. But another development this week provides a ray of hope: the U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding the 2003 ban on partial-birth abortions.

In 1995 then-Congressman Charles Canady of Florida began what has now turned out to be a decade-long struggle to prohibit a gruesome and barbaric type of abortion. My colleagues then, as now, associate this antiseptically termed "procedure" as an emblem of what the late Pope John Paul II called a culture of death.

The procedure calls for the torso, arms, and legs of a live baby to be born and its brains siphoned off to more easily crush the skull for extraction.

Americans and Members of Congress alike were disgusted to learn these disturbing details in the mid-1990s. We wondered why anyone with a conscience would allow something this abhorrent to be done in a civilized society. Even supporters of early-term abortions were troubled. Opinion polls consistently showed overwhelming support for a ban on the procedure.

Twice the House and Senate sent bipartisan legislation to then-President Bill Clinton to prohibit partial-birth abortions. Twice he vetoed these attempts. And when the ban was finally signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003, venue-shopped liberal judges overturned the law on frivolous grounds.

Americans were rightly frustrated that the will of the people was callously ignored, first by a liberal President, and then by activist liberals judges. There was a sense little could be done to stem the tide against a clear assault on the basic idea of life, even when the offending action was so obviously repugnant. Liberal activism seemed to be covering the flanks of America's culture decline.

This decline is further seen in family breakdown, the rise of the drug culture, violence against and by children, child pornography and sexual abuse, school shootings, and teenage suicide. And while America enjoys immense material prosperity, there is a feeling our society is courser and more profane, and that there has been a major breakdown of civility over the last generation with children as its target. It is against this background we learned the sad news from Blacksburg, Virginia.

But this week's 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court is good news for several reasons. First, it is a victory for the legislative process. The bipartisan majority for banning partial birth abortion persisted across five different Congresses. It survived two presidential vetoes and now has survived challenges from several Federal courts, including a previous Supreme Court ruling.

Second, the ban is now unambiguously the law of the land, as determined by elected representatives, not activist judges. This contrasts with the Roe v. Wade decision, which has always been a ruling, not the expressed will of the people as demonstrated in Congress.

Third, it is a victory for the sanctity of and respect for life. Partial-birth abortions are hideous and now they are on the way to being history. The ban emphatically says you cannot use this repulsive method to end the life of a live baby.

Fourth, this decision is further confirmation Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, President Bush's two successful appointments to the high court, are who we hoped and thought they were -- Justices committed to a fair and just interpretation of the Constitution.

The broader fight over abortion will doubtless continue for some time to come and it must until the life of every unborn American is protected by law. The Supreme Court ruling is cause for renewed hope and it comes during a week when Americans needed it most.

NOW IT'S FAIR TO SAY THE SCHOOL FAILED THE STUDENTS

Earlier this week I was critical of people who were trying to blame the administration of Virginia Tech for the tragedy that occurred on Monday. At that time there seemed no rational basis for the criticisms.

Well, that was then. This is now.

And now we know that the Virginia Tech killer was a psycho. He was mentally disturbed. Not only was he mentally disturbed, with suicidal thoughts, but the university knew it! One professor had expelled the killer from her classroom. At one point he was sent to a mental health facility ... later to be released.

Did political correctness play a role here? Is it at all possible that strong action was not taken against him because he was a member of an ethnic minority?

Did you know that both houses of the Virginia legislature unanimously passed legislation within the past year or so that barred Virginia colleges and universities from expelling a student on the basis of mental instability? Virginia colleges and universities were also banned from suspending or expelling a student because of an attempted suicide or the expression of suicidal thoughts? Cho committed suicide on Monday. He took 31 people with him. The university knew he was a threat. Nothing was done.

Who to blame? The university? The Virginia legislature? How about the student at another Virginia university who was sent home after he expressed suicidal thoughts? He filed a lawsuit .. the lawsuit that led to the Virginia legislature telling government schools that they must harbor people --- potentially dangerous people --- who speak and dream of violence.

Are these educational institutions or mental health wards? Why should we expect them to fulfill both functions?

WANTED: A CULTURE OF SELF-DEFENSE

By Michelle Malkin

There's no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated "safe spaces" to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions -- while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).

Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.

And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.

Yesterday morning, as news was breaking about the carnage at Virginia Tech, a reader e-mailed me a news story from last January. State legislators in Virginia had attempted to pass a bill that would have eased handgun restrictions on college campuses. Opposed by outspoken, anti-gun activists and Virginia Tech administrators, that bill failed.

Is it too early to ask: "What if?" What if that bill had passed? What if just one student in one of those classrooms had been in lawful possession of a concealed weapon for the purpose of self-defense?

If it wasn't too early for Keystone Katie Couric to be jumping all over campus security yesterday for what they woulda/coulda/shoulda done in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and if it isn't too early for The New York Times editorial board to be publishing its knee-jerk call for more gun control, it darned well isn't too early for me to raise questions about how the unrepentant anti-gun lobbying of college officials may have put students at risk.

The back story: Virginia Tech had punished a student for bringing a handgun to class last spring -- despite the fact that the student had a valid concealed handgun permit. The bill would have barred public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit . . . from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun." After the proposal died in subcommittee, the school's governing board reiterated its ban on students or employees carrying guns and prohibiting visitors from bringing them into campus buildings.

Late last summer, a shooting near campus prompted students to clamor again for loosening campus rules against armed self-defense. Virginia Tech officials turned up their noses. In response to student Bradford Wiles's campus newspaper op-ed piece in support of concealed carry on campus, Virginia Tech Associate Vice President Larry Hincker scoffed:

"[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles. . . . The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, 'I can't believe he really wants to say that.' Wiles tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself . . ."

The nerve!

Hincker continued: "The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We've seen that fear here, and we don't want to see it again. . . . Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."

Who's scratching his head now, Mr. Hincker?

Some high-handed commentators insist it's premature or unseemly to examine the impact of school rules discouraging students from carrying arms on campus. Pundit Andrew Sullivan complained that it was "creepy" to highlight reader e-mails calling attention to Virginia Tech's restrictions on student self-defense -- even as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence rushed to capitalize on the massacre to sign up new members and gather e-mail addresses for Million Mom March chapters. "We are outraged by the increase in gun violence in America, especially the recent shooting at Virginia Tech," reads the online petition. "Add your name to the growing list of people who are saying: 'Enough Is Enough!'"

Enough is enough, indeed. Enough of intellectual disarmament. Enough of physical disarmament. You want a safer campus? It begins with renewing a culture of self-defense -- mind, spirit and body. It begins with two words: Fight back.

THE INARTICULATE BARACK OBAMA

By Michelle Malkin

The next time an MSM outlet describes Barack Obama as "articulate," I suggest you send them this audio link. My friend Jessica McBride sent it along, and man, is it painful. It's from his speech yesterday in Milwaukee--tying the Virginia Tech massacre to Iraq, Darfur, Don Imus, and everything but the kitchen sink. Jessica provides a bit of transcription:

He said we are a violence obsessed culture. "We glorify it, we encourage it, we ignore it." In what honestly was a very boring, dry, rambling speech, he then listed a litany of examples of how violent we are. He excoriated "verbal violence" and specifically mentioned Imus but, tellingly, not Ludacris. Then, he mentioned violent crime in Milwaukee, and other examples of how violent we all are. In one bizarre example, he said that he was also talking about the "violence" of men and woman who lose their jobs to other countries. HUH?

And then he mentioned IRAQ...He started out by saying that our culture of violence is rooted in our supposed incapacity to understand we are all connected fundamentally as people (kumbayah!). We are still trapped in a belief that we can impose our wills on each other and differentiate ourselves and make ourselves feel better from one another because of the accidents of birth or race or gender, he said. We still think about our role in the world and foreign policy as if the children of Darfur are somehow less than the children here, and so we tolerate violence there. And then he said in that context:

"We base our decisions in terms of sending our young men and women to war not on the necessity of defending ourselves but the belief that somehow with military force we can achieve aims that should be achieved through diplomacy and alliances."

Really, just try listening to the whole thing. This man wants to be leader of the free world.

GUN CONTROL

This is undoubtedly the worst school shooting, high school, college or otherwise, in the history of our country. There are some facts, however, about some of these school shootings of which you probably are not aware. Do you know, for instance, that at least three shootings in high schools were stopped by civilians with guns? Civilians, not law enforcement. In one case a civilian was traveling past a school when he saw children running from the building. One told him that there was a student inside shooting people. The civilian pulled his gun, ran in side, and confronted the student. The student put down the gun and surrendered. In another case a high school vice-principal heard that there was a student in the hallways with a gun. He sprinted a half-mile to his car. He had a gun in his car so he had to park off campus. He then sprinted back with the gun to confront the student. Lives saved.

There have been many other cases where civilians with guns have prevented further carnage at the hands of killers. The media isn't fond of reporting these episodes because they don't contribute to the cause of gun control.

The point here is that you are never ever going to get the guns out of the hands of those who want to use them for carnage. Never. In all the years of press releases and statements from the Brady anti-gun organization there has never been one single gun control plan presented that would take the guns out of the hands of criminals. This is the oddity of gun control. Only law abiding people are going to abide by gun control laws. Criminals are not. The anti-gun lobby, and that includes much of the media, will never give any fair coverage at all to the people who use guns to save their own lives, or the lives of others.

Now here's something that I have yet to see reported in the mainstream media. Earlier this year the Virginia General Assembly failed to act on House Bill 1572. The citizens of Virginia are permitted to carry concealed weapons if they get a proper permit from the state government --- unless you are on a college campus. This bill would have allowed college students and employees to carry handguns on campus --- with appropriate permits, of course. It died in subcommittee. After the bill was thrown out up steps Larry Hincker, a spokesman for Virginia Tech, the site of today's carnage, who says "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

So .. how safe did these students and faculty in Norris Hall feel yesterday?

Now nobody can say for certain, but If it had been legal for students, employees or faculty members with permits to carry guns on the campus, is it at all possible that there might be some students alive today who didn't make it through the carnage? Do you think the actions of the Virginia General Assembly stopped the gunman from getting his guns and carrying them to the campus? Of course not. Reports are that the guns had their serial numbers scratched off. The were acquired outside of the normal channels of commerce and illegally carried to the Virginia Tech campus. The law meant nothing to the shooter. It meant something to the victims though, and perhaps that's why there wasn't one person anywhere near the shooter with a gun that might .. just might have been used for self defense.

There are those out there who think that allowing people to carry a concealed weapon on a college campus is an absurd idea. Why so? Just how is a college campus that much different than our society as a whole? Diverse people living together in common environment pursuing different goals. Where's the big difference? What is so special about a college campus that students should not be allowed to own firearms? What if some student in the dormitory had a gun? What if he heard the argument in an adjoining room and had accompanied the student advisor when he went to quell the disturbance? Could that student with a gun have stopped this carnage before it even began? We'll never know. But is there anyone out there who can say for a certainty that the day might have played out quite differently?

Some of the less educated will come forth with lines of thought like "We don't want to return to the wild, wild west." Why not? What research have you put into your clever little "wild wild west" line? Do you know anything about the actual crime rates in the so-called wild west? Would you be surprised to learn that the crime rate in what we now refer to as the "wild wild west" was actually lower than it is in most American cities now? And why would that be? Because people were armed, for one thing. People were armed, and the bad guys knew that people were armed. Tell me ... just what chance do you think a lone gunman would have had in those days in lining up people against a wall and then calmly picking them off one by one. No ... I'll tell you. Slim to none. Oh he might get off a shot or two, but by then he would be the object of some rather intensive target practice.

And let's talk about people with concealed carry permits. Do you think they're dangerous? Do you think they're just wandering around ready to pull their gun and start shooting at the slightest provocation? Again .. check the statistics. People with concealed carry permits are among the most law abiding people in the nation. Oops ... another little preconception shot to hell, so to speak.

Let me ask you another question. In fact, let's set up a hypothetical situation. You're in a class full of people at a university. Let's say that there are 30 people in that room. A predator with a gun walks through the door. He shoots the professor, kills him. He then takes the remainder of the people in the room and lines them up against a wall. He then walks up to the first person and shots them in the head. Now ... let me allow you to change the scenario. We can freeze-frame this situation while you make a decision. Your decision is this: You can put a gun into the hands of one student or a professor in that room, or you can leave things exactly the way they are. What are you going to do? Come on now, let's have it. Which way do you want it? Do you want the predator to be the only one in the room with a gun? Or would you like to have at least the fighting chance that would result if one, maybe two of your classmates had a firearm.

Now believe it or not, there are people out there (we generally call them liberals) who would say; "Oh no, I don't want anyone else to have a gun! They might try to shoot the killer and innocent people might get caught in the crossfire!" Well you can try to find a rational basis for that argument from now until pigs fly, and you will fail. There is no rationality in that argument. It's an argument based in mindless hysteria.

Let's couch the argument a bit differently. Let's say you are the parent of a college student. You get a call from the campus police saying that your child is being held hostage in a classroom on the campus. The hostage-taker has a gun and has already shot one student. The police tell you that they have developed a plan whereby they are going to be able to sneak a gun into the hands of one of the students in the classroom, a student known to the police to be proficient in the use of a handgun. Before the police can take this step they need the unanimous consent of the parents of the students in that class. While you're thinking it over the hostage-taker executes another student. OK ... your decision. What do you say? Are you going to say "No, I don't want any of those students to be armed. I don't care how qualified they are with a gun." Or are you going to allow the gun to be passed to the student.

Now if your answer is that you would allow the gun to be passed to the student, they please explain your rational for the position that the student in question should not have been permitted to have a gun in the first place with a concealed carry permit? You may have difficulty in understanding this, but it really is rather difficult to arm these students after the fact. And insofar as the shooter is concerned ...you do understand that there is no way in hell to have prevented him to come on to that campus with guns once he made up his mind to do so, don't you?

Here's another question for you to ponder. What if the Virginia legislature had passed HB 1572 and it had been signed into law? Then the shooter would have known that there was a strong likelihood that there would be some students, professors and administrators on the campus with a gun. Is there any chance at all that this might have caused the shooter to set aside his plans for carnage? Can you say for a certainty that things would have played out as they did?