Month: July 2006

It was just a matter of time before a video like this showed up on the net. I expect quite a few “dude, you’ll never believe what happened to me on July 4th” videos in the coming days.

                  

Lt. Ehren Watada had his chance. Now it’s the Army’s turn.

A Fort Lewis Army officer who refused to serve in Iraq could face seven years in prison under charges filed Wednesday.

The Army accused 1st Lt. Ehren Watada of missing his brigade’s troop movement to Iraq, twice speaking contemptuously of the president and three acts unbecoming an officer. The alleged actions are violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The charges set the stage for an Article 32 hearing, where the Army appoints an investigating officer to review the evidence and holds a hearing that could last for days or weeks. At the hearing, Watada’s defense attorney will have the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, or call his own.

After the hearing, the investigating officer will make a recommendation of whether the charges merit a court-martial trial.

Here’s hoping the process is swift and Watada gets what’s coming to him.

Henry Allen of the Washington Post hocks a big ‘ol loogy on Ken Lay’s corpse.

Many people had looked forward to knowing more about Ken Lay, especially how he liked prison.

But now that he’s died of a heart attack in the luxury of his Colorado getaway while awaiting sentencing for his crimes, none of his victims will be able to contemplate that he’s locked away in a place that makes the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel look like Hawaii; that he might be spending long nights locked in a cell with a panting tattooed monster named Sumo, a man of strange and constant demands; and long days in the prison laundry or jute mill or license plate factory, gibbering with anguish as fire-eyed psychopaths stare at him for unblinking hours while they sharpen spoons into jailhouse stilettos.

He will not be ground into gray jailhouse paste by listening to the eardrum-scarring symphony of 131-decibel despair that is the Muzak of penitentiaries, by gagging on the dead prison air, by choking on the deader food, by watching the blue sky taunt him with freedom over the exercise yard, and by feeling his nervous system rent by the cruel grenades of memories — explosions of nostalgia for the days when he knew he’d be swanning forever through the comfy laps and cool lawns of luxury and infinite possibility. Sweet Gulfstreams through sweet skies, the pools, the jewels, the Maybach limousines, a life in which he didn’t just pimp his ride, he pimped the entire world as he knew it.

That’s just mean.

But can you really blame liberals like Henry Allen? They have no God, and without him, there is no final judgement. There is no eternal punishment. Lay’s untimely death is nothing more than an easy escape from consequence. In their mind, by dying, Lay got off scot free.

What’s amazing to me is, Allen’s sermon from the pulpit in the Church of Liberalism makes sense to millions of people. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live life with that world view.

Six-Oh

More: Cokie Roberts on the historical significance of a milestone.

Indian givers.

National Semiconductor giveth, and it taketh away.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company gained loads of publicity last month for announcing plans to give every employee a 30-gigabyte video iPod.

Last week, the company laid off 35 employees at its Arlington plant. To the surprise of some at the plant, the laid-off workers were asked to give back their high-tech toys.

A person who called the Star-Telegram claiming to have been one of the 35 laid-off workers said many employees at the Arlington plant were under the impression that the iPods were theirs to keep. Some had sold them or given them as gifts, according to the caller.

“Nothing was ever said about ever having to give it back,” the caller said. “If I’d known it was company property, I never would have picked it up.”

“They were not a gift,” company spokeswoman LuAnn Jenkins said Friday. Jenkins said she didn’t know whether the company ever intended for the workers to keep the iPods.

But…

As more than 100 workers enthusiastically received their iPods one morning last month at the Arlington plant, two company spokesmen would not directly answer questions from Star-Telegram reporter Aman Batheja as to whether workers would be able to keep the iPods once they left the company.

“We haven’t crossed that bridge,” said Scott Kahl, human resources director.

That was then, this is now. There ain’t no bridge to cross.

Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay died of a heart attack overnight. He was 64 years old.

More: See what I mean? DU’ers believe Karl Rove had something to do with Lay’s death.

Happy Fourth of July!

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