Late Friday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released documents that show Attorney General Eric Holder was alerted of border patrol agent Brian Terry’s death the day it occurred- contradicting Holder’s statements when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011. At the time, Holder said he was informed of Terry’s murder only “a few weeks” before the hearing.

Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller has the story:

“An email from one official, whose name has been redacted from the document, to now-former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke reads: “On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when he encountered [redacted word] unidentified subjects. Shots were exchanged resulting in the agent being shot. At this time, the agent is being transported to an area where he can be air lifted to an emergency medical center.”

That email was sent at 2:31 a.m. on the day Terry was shot. One hour later, a follow-up email read: “Our agent has passed away.”

Burke forwarded those two emails to Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff Monty Wilkinson later that morning, adding that the incident was “not good” because it happened “18 miles w/in” the border.

Wilkinson responded to Burke shortly thereafter and said the incident was “tragic.” “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

Then, later that day, Burke followed up with Wilkinson after Burke discovered from officials whose names are redacted that the guns used to kill Terry were from Fast and Furious. “The guns found in the desert near the murder BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about – they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store,” Burke wrote to Wilkinson.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” Wilkinson responded.”

Read the full story here. For more on ‘Fast and Furious’, click here.

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Gun buyers are more diverse than ever. This however is not the kind of diversity the anti-gun left is happy about. Young professionals, people starting families and women, in greater numbers than ever, are purchasing guns. Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he was “skeptical” of the Black Friday gun surge.

Refusing to accept the reality of the trend, he said “I think there may be no real significance at all.” This of course is the same Brady Center that that in the face of gun violence, has focused it’s efforts on restricting law abiding citizens’ access to guns, rather than campaigning for tougher penalties against criminals who use guns in crimes.

While Brady officials insist their motives are pure, a behind the scenes look at that organization raises serious questions. In May 2005, Florida passed a “Stand Your Ground” law that authorized persons attacked in their own home or automobile to use lethal force in self-defense without a duty to retreat; Brady Campaign workers were dispatched to Florida airports where they passed out fliers warning tourists that, under what they called the “Shoot First” law, tourists could be shot for simply being rude to a Florida resident.

Last year the Brady Campaign gave its “Visionary Award” to AP White House reporter Helen Thomas. Little more than a week later Thomas went on a video taped, anti-semitic rant that resulted in condemnation from the Obama Administration as well as her resignation from AP. The Brady Campaign has remained silent on the entire issue, refusing to condemn Thomas or her hate filled rant.

As the ‘12 Presidential Campaign looms, President Obama himself has been remarkedly silent on the issue of gun rights. He must know that waging an open war against the NRA and America’s 80,000,000 gun owners during this campaign season will only hurt his prospects for re-election. He’s also well aware of the two recent Supreme Court decisions District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, decisions that make it clear that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right.

In Attorney General Eric Holder’s brief filed with the Supreme Court in Heller he argued that “the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms,” that it only protected government militias’ rights to guns. He claimed that the Second Amendment posed no obstacle to implementing gun bans. His argument failed, but his anti-gun agenda continues.

While Obama and Holder have said little lately about gun rights per se, the “Fast and Furious” disaster has exposed the administration’s agenda. E-mails obtained by CBS News from the Department of Justice have spoken for them. On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”

That demand letter was “Demand Letter 3″, which would have required that gun dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas report all sales of long guns to federal authorities. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating Fast and Furious, as well as the alleged use of the case to advance gun regulations. “There’s plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement…”

What you can’t accomplish in one fell swoop, you may be able to accomplish by chipping away. Fast and Furious was clearly, at least in part, a covert effort by the administration to make its case against the Second Amendment; to chip away at established constitutional rights they simply don’t like. The 130,000 Americans who sought to buy handguns on Black Friday aren’t naive. Anecdotal evidence points directly to the Obama administration as a primary motivating factor in the skyrocketing numbers of gun sales.

If Mr. Obama is reelected, the battle will rage on. Brady Campaign Award Winner Helen Thomas

You will not get to safer streets nor a self-rule without smaller government first, and that will not come as long as there is gun control. Everything else, every delay, every complication, is lip service, designed to waylay our time, energy and spirit away from anything productive, giving us the feeling that we are directing things, but actually wasting our time.

We’ve made some friends and allies in Congress and we have unseated some foes of liberty, but some of us still have the impression that we’re not getting the cooperation we need. Somewhere in there, the new freshmen believe, there is such a thing as sensible gun regulation.

There isn’t. Gun laws are incompatible with liberty. All gun laws.

In Part I, I said that in time of violence, when the target of crime is armed, there is more law present, more public policy present, and more public interest served than by all 20,000 gun laws in force. With a majority of states affirming second amendment latitude, it is clear what their public consensus is. The major cities are out of step.

In Part I, I said that we are the Sovereign, and that our 2012 candidates must acknowledge this on the stump. They should be asked outright and they must affirm this by the repeal of all gun laws, please.

The repeal of all gun laws will unveil one powerful societal dynamic, and that is the personal independence of the individual. When crime is fought best at the scene of the crime and not exclusively after the fact, say, for instance, detection, interdiction, apprehension and the administration of justice, it is because independence has been brought to bear on the problem when it can do the most good. Our greater independence from our own public servants is critical to everything from personal safety to prosperity. Our independence from our servants is critical to self-rule and safer streets.

Centralization is the foe of all of these. Centralization is greater independence from the electorate [corruption] with the electorate’s ever-increasing dependency on the government; republicanism is our greater independence from our servants. In centralization, there is no accountability, much less any exits or alternatives to the State, only dependency.

I have a new video out which teases the point of how the armed citizen is identical to the CPR-trained citizen. I gave a talk last week to a republican womens group – the Pistol Packin’ Petticoats here in L.A. – about a concept I formulated I call The CPR Corollary. Highlights were captures on video and made into a tease for my new book. Like most groups I speak to, they were hearing the concept for the very first time; how the armed citizen is identical to laymen trained in CPR and First-aid;  — and how it makes for smaller government.

Centralization grows because bureaucracies justify themselves by need, or crisis. They do this by smothering safeguards which work so well that bureaucracies are in fact not needed, programs which look silly at the very proposition.

But gun control is one such example of removing such a safeguard and then growing costly agencies bent on anti-violence missions when citizens can largely handle violent crime if officials would get out of the way. Officials did not oppose training citizens in CPR; that would have been an outrage. Instead, they examined Citizen CPR and, by golly, they got out of the way.

To our way of thinking, gun control is an outrage because it has the same effect as if someone told you not to do CPR, or not permit you to know it, much less administer it in coming to the aid of another.

Physicians examined the prospect of Citizen CPR and found it worthy. Today, three decades later, forty-plus states find the armed citizen worthy, and understand it for the very same reasons: police cannot always arrive with a life-saving response time any more than EMS can, hence, the training of persons to act in the interest of the community in the absence of first responders. I call it the attitude of latitude. Other people call it Freedom.

The repeal of all gun laws would be an immensely beneficial reset button for our society in reducing the size of government, and then we can see what sort of regulation the people would like if they had another chance to revisit the issue. My bet is that they would take their time. Gun control groups don’t count because they go against a civil right secured by law.

The repeal of all gun laws would reduce government because many bureaucracies might be very hard put to justify a second time their very existence if they had to do it all over again; this time in light of citizens who can fight violence where it is fought best: at the scene of the crime. Many of those costly bureaucracies would never get to second base if citizens were armed where they would like to be armed, free to question the need for another agency. Much of our money would remain where it fights centralization best; in our pockets.

_________________________

California has among the strictest gun laws in the country, and couple of local politicians are seizing the opportunity created by the Arizona shooting to make them even stricter.

While most states operate under a “shall-issue” concealed carry weapons (CCW) permitting regime, meaning that anyone who passes a basic background check can get a CCW, California uses the “may-issue” rule, which means the decision is left to the sole discretion of the county sheriff. The result? Approximately 0.1% of California citizens have CCWs, which is almost 20 times lower than in the average shall-issue state.

This restrictive climate has led to the emergence of a burgeoning “Open Carry” movement, wherein citizens carry holstered, unloaded weapons in plain sight. California Assemblyman Anthony Portantino calls the open carry exemption in the law a “loophole,” which he intends to close with Assembly Bill 144 (AB 144).

Portantino’s fellow Assembly member Lori Saldana tried to ban open carry in 2010, but the bill failed in the assembly. But this time, AB 144 has gained helpful momentum from an unexpected source: Jared Loughner.

“Since the events in Arizona, gun issues have taken on a greater national debate and a greater significance,” says Portantino. Earlier this year, AB 144 passed the Assembly and now will head to the state Senate in late August 2011 and then on to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk.

Open Carry advocate Sam Wolanyk, who once successfully sued San Diego county when police arrested him for open carrying, says that the focus on lawful gun owners is misguided.

“It doesn’t matter if you stacked up 50,000 felonies,” says Wolanyk of the Loughner situation. “You can’t stop a crazy person from doing crazy things.”

UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, creator of the popular law blog the Volokh Conspiracy, also says that crafting legislation in the face of rare tragedies is miguided.

“It doesn’t make much sense to come up with comprehensive law focusing on those very rare incidents,” says Volokh.

Despite the fact that crime rates are down nation wide and that there has never been a reported incident of an Open Carrier hurting someone, Portantino stands firm that the practice is a public danger and a drain on police resources. He also says he has no plans on introducing legislation to loosen up concealed carry laws.

“Just because one person is comfortable with their weapon,” says Portantino, “doesn’t mean that gives that person the right to infringe on the rights of other people who aren’t comfortable.”

Approximately 8:30.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Hawk Jensen.

Visit Reason.tv for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube Channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

That initiative — which could go down in the annals of presidential history as “Obama’s Watergate“ — goes by the name, “Operation Fast and Furious,” and it’s an offshoot of “Project Gunrunner.”

Ogden is shown in the video that resurfaced Friday as he addresses reporters at a Department of Justice briefing.

“The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels,” Ogden begins, “and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the Administration’s comprehensive plan.”

He goes on to outline that plan, using the exact words below:

“DOJ’s Drug Enforcement Administration, which already has the largest U.S. drug enforcement presence in Mexico with 11 offices in that country, is placing 16 new DEA positions in Southwest border field operations specifically to target Mexican trafficking and associated violence.”

“The DEA is also deploying four new mobile enforcement teams to specifically target Mexican methamphetamine trafficking, both along the border and in U.S. cities impacted by the cartels.”

“DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.”

“ATF is doubling its presence in Mexico itself, from five to nine personnel working with the Mexicans, specifically to facilitate gun-tracing activity which targets the illegal weapons and their sources in the United States.”

After watching this video, the reasons behind Ogden’s resignation after working for Attorney General Eric Holder for less than a year, appear seem clear: He wanted to reduce his chances of becoming the “fall guy” for the Obama Administration after news of this doomed-from-the-start gun-running operation became public. Nineteen months later, the “cat” that is Project Gunrunner is out of the proverbial bag:

Sen. Chuck Grassley: Guns in ATF sting tied to agent’s death (USA TODAY, 2/01/2011);

U.S. urged dealer to continue gun sales despite concerns, inquiry finds (Los Angeles Times, 4/15/2011);

Gun program deserves inquiry (San Antonio.com, 6/16/2011);

Acting ATF Director to Resign Over Sting (NewsMax.com, 6/20/2011);

Another scandal that could take Obama down (World Net Daily, 7/9/2011); and

Issa, ATF Agent Warn of ATF Cover-up (NewsMax.com, 7/11/2011).

Is there any room under the bus?

I keep a copy of it in my office (and the PDF on my website) because it’s a fascinating and illuminating piece of American history.

One, it provides a clear window into the role that Christianity and Judeo-Christian values played in American culture on that “Day of Days.” Two, it proves, in no uncertain terms, how radically the New York Times, the Democrats and their kindred political spirits have shifted to the left in the 66 years since our nation’s finest hour.

The Times’ lead story in the left column of the June 7, 1944 edition was headlined “Country in Prayer.” Reporter Lawrence Resner wrote: “Led by President Roosevelt, the entire country joined in solemn prayer yesterday for the success of the United Nations armies of liberation.”

We learn in the piece that church bells rang across the land, including in Boston’s Old North Church, and that Americans flooded their houses of worship. New York governor Thomas Dewey attended services at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Albany, while in Manhattan, some 50,000 people jammed Madison Square for a prayer led by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

It pays to remember that D-Day was a Tuesday.

Next to Resner’s piece, front and center on page one, was a dutiful transcription of President Roosevelt’s national prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity … Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.”

Roosevelt asked, with Lincolnian faith, that the Americans at home “rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in (Almighty God) in this hour of great sacrifice.” (You can listen to his prayer here.)

If President Bush had invoked the kingdom of Almighty God, the radicals at the contemporary N.Y. Times would have savaged him mercilessly. But on D-Day, the left’s greatest icon prayed for the grace of God on page one of the N.Y. Times.

Page one was not the only place in the Times that you’d find prayers to a Christian God on D-Day. In fact, these prayers appeared on the editorial pages, too.

The Times editorial board, led by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, grandfather of current publisher Pinch Sulzberger, published these words on June 7, 1944, under the headline “Let us Pray.”

“This nation was born in the only revolution in history made in the name of God. It was born of the conception that the rights of man … are given him by God as the inalienable birthright of the human being.”

The piece continued: “We pray for the boys … we pray for our country … the cause prays for itself, for it is the cause of the God who created men free and equal.” (See the page here.)

It’s a far, far cry from the secular and anti-Christian screeds that dominate op-ed pages today. In fact, it’s hard to believe those words come from the same publication we know today.

Historian Stephen Ambrose chronicled the way a proudly religious nation reacted to the invasion of Europe in “D-Day, June 6, 1944: the Climactic Battle of World War II.”

“The impulse to pray was overwhelming. Across the United States and Canada church bells rang … as a solemn reminder of national unity and a call to formal prayer. Special services were held in every church and synagogue in the land. Pews were jammed with worshipers.”

The Liberty Bell rang on D-Day for the first time in 109 years. “Philadelphia mayor Bernard Samuel tapped the bell … sending its voice throughout the country,” wrote Ambrose. “Then he offered a prayer.”

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower called D-Day “a great crusade.” President Roosevelt called for “faith in our united crusade.” Media that crucified a president for uttering the word “crusade” in 2001 offered no criticism in 1944.

Remember, too, that 9,387 Americans are buried above Normandy’s “bloody” Omaha Beach, where so many were slaughtered on D-Day. They’re not buried beneath trite “co-exist” bumper stickers. They’re buried beneath 9,387 pristine white marble symbols of Western faith: Stars of David and crosses of Jesus Christ.

Contemporary leftists tell us that the right side of the political spectrum has grown too rigidly conservative. They “cling to their guns or religion” as President Obama said so condescendingly of his countrymen while on the campaign trail in 2008.

The truth, though, is that Americans in the anxious hours of D-Day embraced their Judeo-Christian God. The truth is that the left has abandoned these core American values since D-Day. The truth is that, in 1944, a conservative people clinging to guns and religion saved the world.

We know all this is true, simply by reading the N.Y. Times of June 7, 1944.

Christians and conservatives have not abandoned America’s roots. Today’s “right-wing radicals” believe what ordinary Americans believed on D-Day: that their God and their country are unique, liberating powers for the good of mankind.

The N.Y. Times, Democrats and other leftists once shared this view of God and country, back in our nation’s finest hour.

Of course, this just goes to show the wisdom of suspending judgment until all the facts are in.  Alas, this lesson was lost on the media, who from the minute news of the shooting broke managed to get almost every detail of the story wrong. At first they told us that the killer was dead; then that there might have been more than one shooter. Soon we knew the suspect’s name, and learned that he was a Muslim convert. Then we learned that he had been Muslim since birth. Then we were told that he might have cracked as a result of exposure to combat, only he had never seen combat. Or maybe it was a response to racism he had experienced, or because as a devout Muslim he was unhappy about being deployed to Afghanistan. (And yet curiously, such a degree of sympathetic understanding was never extended to the likes of Timothy McVeigh or Seung-Hui Cho who also vented their rage by killing strangers.)

Indeed, even Mr. Obama lost his cool, by rushing to the judgment that we were all rushing to judgment, and asking us not to do it. After all Americans do love their pitchforks, don’t they? And when it got out that the suspect was not dead, and that he had shouted Allahu Akbar before opening fire, well- it became all the more important not to rush to judgment, and especially not to assume that the massacre had anything to do with terrorism or Islamic extremism.

Tired of listening to all the non-judgmental judgments, on Saturday I visited Fort Hood for myself.

I wanted to listen to the thoughts and fears of all those utterly insignificant individuals we never hear from on TV or in the papers- i.e. the people who actually live there, both on post and in Killeen, the civilian town that exists to serve Fort Hood. But there was more to it than that – I also wanted to gauge the level of rage on the street. You see there’s a mosque just down the road from me in Austin and I had not noticed any pitch forks or flaming torches in the night. But I didn’t want to assume that the apparent absence of angry right wing mobs outside my window meant that there weren’t any out there. That would be rushing to judgment.

***

I arrived in Killeen around noon and spent some time driving up and down the streets surrounding Fort Hood. It was a low income, mixed race area with lots of pawn shops, fast food joints and tattoo parlors, plus multiple military supply stores for soldiers wanting to supplement their kit.

The first local I spoke to was the Reverend Tracy Smith, of the Rivers of Living Waters Ministries in Killeen. Like practically everyone in the town, he was an ‘army brat’, with relatives in the military- in fact, his cousin had been participating in a graduation service when the shooting began at the Soldier Readiness Center next door: ‘My cousin, her family, they got caught up in the middle of it…and when I heard my family members were that close to it, it brought it closer to home. She had just gotten back from Iraq so she’s combat tested. But the family members aren’t, know what I mean?’

On Nidal Hasan, the Reverend Smith had this to say: ‘I heard he was going out to fight members of his own religion, so I imagine that must have been pretty hard.’ At no point however did Smith launch into an attack on Islam. When I asked whether he thought there would be mob-like retaliations against innocent Muslims, he had faith in Americans: ‘I don’t think it will happen, I hope it won’t, but there might be some small incidents involving narrow-minded people.’

Ultimately Smith was optimistic: ‘If we look at the history of America, we have always been able to rise above. An eagle always rises above the storm.’

***

My next stop was ‘America’s Heroes’, a comic book store located a few blocks from the entrance to Fort Hood. The sales clerk told me his clientele was 98% military. It makes sense: we forget how young soldiers are, or that most of them have never lived away from home before. A few of his customers had spoken about the events on base, but mainly about how long they had spent in lockdown. On Friday he had noticed much higher security around town, reminiscent of the days after 9/11, however by Saturday it was almost back to normal.

The 9/11 theme was echoed a few blocks down by Lewis Smeen who ran the Military Depot store. ‘When I heard people had got killed on post, it was like a shock. After 9/11 things were starting to calm down, and now it was like: oh no, here we are again. It wasn’t the empty feeling I felt on 9/11… that was surrealistic, like- was the world ending? But this was like a reminder, that there are still crazies out there.’

Business was bad: Smeen had only seen five soldiers the entire day, down from an average of thirty or forty for a Saturday. As for Nidal Hasan, he wanted to know why so many warning signs had been missed. ‘You have to be fair and even-handed, of course. I don’t think every Muslim is like this guy, but there were warning signs.’

As for a possible backlash against Muslims in the army, Smeen was doubtful: ‘I’ve had Muslim soldiers in my shop; they’re usually with buddies or comrades. Sometimes I’ve heard talk against the war from Black Muslims, but not from Arab-Americans, with the Muslim heritage. There’s whackos of every background in the military so there may be a few incidents, but I don’t think it’s going to get out of hand.’

***

All the pawn shops in town had adopted a strict ‘no comment’ policy on the massacre, no doubt because they sold guns for personal use and did not want to get mixed up in the controversy, even though none of them had sold Hasan the arms he is reported to have used. Quantico Arms and Tactical Supply on Fort Hood Street also had a ‘no comment’, but didn’t object to me hanging around the shop, and it was here that I met two soldiers who had been on post when the shooting occurred.

The first soldier gave his name as ‘Park’. As he had spent six hours on lockdown he had found out the details of the massacre long after the rest of us living outside Fort Hood. He described in detail the boredom and disorientation of the lockdown experience, before getting on to the topic of soldier’s attitudes towards Hasan: ‘People are shocked. Down range shit happens, whatever. But if it’s a fellow soldier doing this to other soldiers, especially stateside- well, you just don’t do that to people.’

For Park it was Hasan’s rank, not his religious beliefs, that was the issue. ‘It’s not going to be easy for the young soldiers. Think about it- for most soldiers it’s their first time away from home, away from state. They’re fresh out of high school. The relationship between a junior soldier and an officer is like a son and a father- or grandfather: you can trust them, look up to them. They’ve got more education, they’ve got more training, but now it’s an officer who went out and shot everybody. You must trust him with your life- and then you get backstabbed. But it’s more than a backstab. It’s like your wife cheating on you… no, it’s more serious than that. You are deployed and you come home and your house is empty, cleaned out, everything gone. But it’s worse than that. Those kinds of things you can move up and move on, but this…?’

The second soldier, James talked about the fearful, nervous atmosphere on post after the attack and echoed Park’s feeling that some kind of scared trust had been broken. In fact, he said, it was precisely this betrayal that had fueled the anger against Hasan.

‘Yesterday there was a great outrage as to why he was still alive. There was a real pitchfork and torch mentality- especially in Killeen, among civilians… the people in the town want to see punishment.’

This had nothing to do with religion however: ‘They dislike him because he’s not an outsider, or deemed as a terrorist- I mean that’s a justified fight. No this is much different- it’s because he wears our uniform, because he’s our “superior”, and then he turns around and shoots you. That’s a betrayal.’

Some soldiers, ‘more than a few’, would now distrust all Arabs, said James. ‘But I can’t speak for them. As for me, I have no issue with Arabs as a people, or Muslims as a religion. If they’re tolerant of me I’m tolerant of them.’

***

A few hours later, I was back in Austin and the media spin was still in over drive. Nidal Hasan was being diagnosed by ‘experts’ and journalists who had never met him, and who had no knowledge of the background to the case. The NYT was in the driver’s seat, successfully resolving every controversial issue before the investigation was complete. A fantastical new condition, second hand PTSD, had been discovered, whereby the poor major, overwhelmed by listening to soldiers discuss traumas he had not experienced, simply snapped and just had to kill lots of his fellow soldiers… and other such bulshit, and on and on, ad nauseam.

It is true that we should not leap to judgment; indeed each day we learn something new about this terrible event. But the truth is that a whole series of judgments have already been made by our elders and betters in the media and in the administration, and a whole narrative has been prepared in which the killer is the victim, while the real enemy to be feared is the unwashed horde drooling and snarling in deepest, darkest America. This is obscene: of course there are bigots out there, and there always will be, but the vast majority of people can distinguish between an extremist whack-job and an honest citizen.

Meanwhile, it’s a hard life in the army. You get shot at, blown up and paid very little for your trouble. When you’re demobbed, you might wind up living in the cheap housing in Killeen, not far from Fort Hood, among the tattoo parlors and Pawn Shops. Making these sacrifices, the least you can expect is that your superior officers don’t shoot you. And so when that rule is violated, the minimum respect we owe the dead is to uncover the truth about what happened to them, whatever it may be- and however uncomfortable it makes us feel.