The Week That Was

While our attention was focused on the tragedy at Virgina Tech, the world kept moving. Here's a rundown of some of the items you might have missed.

Microsoft Cries Monopoly

Google announced that it would buy online advertising network DoubleClick. DoubleClick was also being pursued by Microsoft. In response to the purchase, Microsoft went crying to government claiming the merger would give Google a monopoly. It's only okay for them to have a monopoly, nobody else.

Privacy groups have also filed their opposition with the FTC, claiming the combination has too much power to monitor what people are doing on the internet. Apparently, they don't know how to turn cookies off in their browsers.

Supreme Court Upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the law banning "partial-birth" abortions. Pro-life groups hailed the ruling as a blow against abortion, while pro-choice rallied against it.

The reality for anyone paying attention is the law is irrelevant at best. "Partial birth" abortions account for less than 10% of all abortions, and none of those in the first trimester. The law also allows the procedure if its is necessary to save the life of the mother, and those seeking abortions can have it done by other procedures, which are still protected by law. This law doesn't stop anyone from actually getting an abortion.

Democrats Still Fail To Do Anything

After making sweeping claims about what would be passed during the first 100 hours of the new Congress, Democrats have now let the first 100 days go by without passing a single bill. This week the focus fell on trying to get the House and Senate to agree on a war funding bill to send to the President. To get what little consensus they have, the Democrats stuffed the bill with non-war pork products to try cobble together an agreement. It was bad enough that the Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree. Now, it seems that the Democrats can't even agree among themselves.

The Democrats are claiming that even though they haven't passed anything, they have held many hearings. Currently, the focus of their hearings is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as Congress attempts to determine if firings in the AG's office were politically motivated. Newsflash: if you work in Washington, you're politically motivated. Stop trying to pretend this is a surprise.

On a Lighter Note

Sanjaya Malakar, best known for his hair and for being at least partially tone deaf, was finally kicked off American Idol. Now, if we could just get the rest of the show to follow him off the air.

And that's the week that was.

Why let the facts get in the way of your opinions?

BBC reporter Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists almost six weeks ago. He was reported to be killed almost immediately, a fact which has been negated today in a speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has stated that intelligence services have received information that Johnston is still alive.

While Britain's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has been concerned about the fate of one of their own, they have no intention of changing their opinions to match the facts. In response to the kidnapping, the NUJ has called for a boycott of Israeli products. They haven't made a single statement criticizing the Palestinians who actually kidnapped Johnston. Instead, they have decided to attack Israel.

The Wall Street Journal wrote: "The NUJ's General Secretary, Jeremy Dear, even went so far as to explain the boycott vote as "a gesture of support for the Palestinian people" (our emphasis), apparently forgetting just who Mr. Johnston's captors are."

British journalists have always been unsympathetic to Israel, but to put such a blatant face on it is inexcusable, particularly for journalists who are supposed to be unbiased.

Well, there's no white washing their bias now. I suppose we should be grateful to the NUJ for throwing away the pretense of being impartial journalists while they push their agenda.

The Story So Far

As information continues to roll in from Virgina Tech, the news keeps getting more and more disturbing. Cho Seung-Hui was determined to be a danger to himself and other before any of this happened. His professor attempted to get him counseling. He was reported for stalking two women. The fact that Seung-Hui was the killer didn't surprise anyone who knew him.

During the two hours between shooting, Seung-Hui took the time to write a manifesto and send it to NBC News. You can see the "multimedia manifesto" at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/. Nothing gives a clearer look into the twisted mind that caused this tragedy than his own words.

Sympathy for Virginia Tech

"It was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history."

We'll be hearing that phrase a lot over the next few days, as the horror of the events at Virginia Tech sink in. The other things we'll here are "How could this happen?" and "Could this happen here?" People will struggle to wrap their heads around the 32 senseless killings.

There are no easy answers, or some things are becoming clearer as the investigation progresses. The gunman was a student at the college, although at the time of this writing authorities have not released his name. He was looking for his girlfriend. She was, apparently, the intended target. But this was not a crime of passion, it was clearly premeditated. Nothing shows this as clearly as the fact that he carried no identification and filed the serial number off of at least one of the guns.

Invariably, someone will turn up an interest the gunman had in video games or heavy metal or something and people will point to that as the culprit. They'll be wrong. A video game doesn't make you kill 33 people. It takes years of psychological damage to push someone to this level of violence. There may be one event you can point to as the trigger, but that's never the root cause. For the true cause, we'll have to look deeper, and that will take some time.

In the meanwhile, all we can do is send our heartfelt sympathies to the students and faculty of Virginia Tech.

Update: Shortly after this posted the gunman was identified Seung Hui Cho, a Korean student at Virginia Tech.