Posts Tagged → 911
Bad guys are on the run around Harrisburg
Toldja so.
Last year, several critical essays I wrote about PA AG Kathleen Kane were widely published, long before other people felt safe enough, I guess, to jump on the band wagon.
Kane’s incompetence and corrupt behavior were evident within a few months of her arrival in the PA Attorney General seat. She only got worse and worse, and was on a downhill slide to the point where she has now been indicted by a grand jury. Imagine that.
I feel vindicated. Sadly.
Harrisburg’s top cop may go to jail, or be fined, disbarred, and barred from holding public office. It says a lot about politics, that her Breck Girl smile and slow-motion hair tosses were enough for her to get elected.
For the record, I believe that if Pennsylvania absolutely must have a Democrat AG, then Katie McGinty would be the right person. McGinty is every bit as liberal and political as Kane, but Katie is also way too smart to let it show or implement it so egregiously. So, we’d end up with a partisan professional and not the corrupt political hack we have now. That’d be an improvement.
An even better improvement would be Ed Marsico as AG. Ed Marsico is the stellar DA for Dauphin County, and he is so a-political that the Republican establishment has passed him over in the past. Can you imagine, an AG who simply does the job of prosecuting bad guys? How refreshing that would be.
On to Harrisburg City, my home town and my family’s home since at least 1745. It’s a place I care about a lot. We moved here from Washington, DC, to enjoy the high quality of life, easy commute, and low cost of living. I love living in Harrisburg.
Yes, the city has problems. OK, that is true and I think people are genuinely working to solve them, even as many of the same people have worked to exacerbate them because they stood to make money from them (think: Public Parking). But that is another story.
Here’s a story that is just now unfolding: Harrisburg has decided to hold on to its illegal anti-gun laws. Harrisburg City remains happily and blatantly in violation of two state laws barring any PA municipality from passing gun laws. The city has been served notice that they may get sued over this, a costly loss because the city will have to pay money damages and legal fees to the winner.
And of course, the gun laws they have do zero to punish criminals or limit crime. They are designed to punish law-abiding citizens and turn them into criminals, because the zealot prohibitionist crusaders pushing these laws are against guns per se.
Late last Friday night a deranged man attempted to forcefully enter my home through the front door. He was banging away at it, working over the handle hard, and shouting at us.
My wife and kids cowered on the kitchen floor, with Viv talking with a surly 911 dispatcher (who actually yelled at me over the phone); our guests were in the basement.
I stood with a pistol pointed at the door, waiting for the guy to come barging through. Every warning I shouted to him through the door elicited a curse-filled response and harder efforts to get through.
Even I was scared. Someone trying that hard to break into your home is going to do damage once he gets inside.
Ten minutes later the Harrisburg police arrived and caught him, two doors up the street. They were professional and friendly to us taxpayers, and they used force to capture the crazy man because he was violent. I watched him fight with them and try to kick their police dog, Bo. He had some white powder drugs on him and acted like he was insane. Case in point here: Drugs are bad, m’kay?
Without my gun, immediately accessible, our family was a sitting duck for this guy.
We were lucky that he did not come through a ground floor window. Sure, I would have shot and killed him had he entered our home, but who needs that? And what about the other citizens who are neither armed nor prepared or able to defend themselves effectively against intruders?
Let’s ask the obvious question: What about “when seconds count the police are only minutes away” do you not understand, Mayor Eric Papenfuse?
Why are your illegal, ineffective gun laws more important than the safety of my family?
What makes people on the Left so cocksure about their illegal behavior? It must have something to do with the tradition of Leftist protests always being “right,” a mentality that undergirds everything they do.
We will see you in court, Mayor Papenfuse, because you may not inflict your illegal laws on the safety of my body.
A Day of Remembrance, a Day of Resolute Determination
Today is the anniversary of the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attacks on America, where the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were hit with commercial aircraft, and where a determined band of passengers on Flight 93 battled their hijackers, causing the plane to crash well short of its intended destination. That was probably the US Capitol or the White House.
I want to thank the many military personnel, first responders, and other associated public servants who work hard, often at risk to themselves, to keep America free and safe.
Because I played a key role in the creation of the Flight 93 crash site memorial, I am especially attached to that event and to that site. It is a place and a story with which I became closely acquainted, and for several years I worked closely with the Families of Flight 93. I also worked closely with staff of the National Park Service, Somerset County officials and staff, and Wally, the Somerset County coroner. It meant a lot to me to contribute as much as I did to the founding and blueprint for the site. I am pained that the effort was even necessary, because the truth is, the 9/11 attacks should not have even happened.
America was culturally asleep on September 11, 2001, and we remain so even today. Witness the heavily politicized decision to grant a rally permit for a handful of radical Muslims in Washington today, and the curious unwillingness of the same National Park Service to grant a permit to hundreds of thousands of bikers, who wanted to drive through Washington, DC today, in order to commemorate today’s significance.
America faces a real war for its soul, and the battles in this war are fought in small ways: Whether the radical Muslims get the permit to rally on 9/11 in DC, or do the bikers get the permit to rally today in DC. Theoretically, both groups could have their respective events simultaneously. But this administration obviously favors the radical Muslims, and disfavors the flag waving, patriotic bikers.
See what you can do to win one of the small culture battles in your city, county, or neighborhood. Each battle is important. Winning the war is key. Otherwise, the 9/11 terrorists won, and America lost. Make today a day of both remembrance, and a day of resolute determination that America will win.
George Zimmerman’s right of self-defense
Maybe I should not be surprised, but I am:
People calling for George Zimmerman to be lynched by a mob or executed by some nameless gangster, dissatisfied with a jury’s decision…the human right of self-defense thrown out the window…people wanting to believe what they want to believe, uninterested in the photos of a bleeding, battered Zimmerman but very interested in the far-outdated photos of a youthful, innocent-looking Trayvon Martin…people decrying “racism” when the only racism evident was Martin’s “creepy-ass Cracker” comment to his girlfriend, immediately followed up by his life-threatening physical assault on Zimmerman…a media full of people willing to edit 911 recordings, or describe the Hispanic Zimmerman as “white,” to push an agenda and create an impression contrary to the facts….this case has been about everything but what it was about: Self-defense.
Zimmerman was attacked. Lying on his back and taking a savage beating from a large male straddling his chest, he pulled a legal gun and killed his attacker. That is the way life is supposed to work.
Had the skin colors been reversed, Zimmerman would now be a hero to many.
Self defense is what this is all about. Nothing else. I am pleased that the right of self-defense has been upheld. It is the most basic of all human rights.
September 11th, A Day of Remembrance, Reflection & Resolve
September 11th, A Day of Remembrance, Reflection & Resolve
September 11, 2012
By Josh First
September 11th is an American day of national remembrance and reflection. We remember the attacks on our defenseless civilians by Muslim terrorists, who used our freedoms against us on this day.
We reflect on American heroism, an innate trait seen most graphically on Flight 93, now memorialized at the crash site in Somerset County, Pennsylvania (which I had the honor to help create, leading the first two years of real estate protection there with the National Park Service, Somerset County, the local townships, the Families of Flight 93, PBS Coals, CONSOL Energy, the Mellon Foundation, and others, not to mention the many supportive landowners).
Should the American character of inclusiveness be continued in a way that invites these kinds of attacks? An inclusiveness at any and all costs?
Based on his experience in both world wars, British leader Winston Churchill quipped after World War II that the Americans wouldn’t show up to a fight until it was almost too late to win it. Will our generation of Americans languish in our non-judgmentalism, uber-inclusiveness, and moral relativism until it is too late?
The “too late” will be when Iran obtains nuclear bombs, which is in the end-process of happening with an American and European acquiescence that is exactly how the West dealt with Hitler before 1940. Pacifists call this avoidable prelude to widespread death “peace,” but what do they call it after the bombs start going off? They call it someone else’s failure.
Many people believe that those Iranian bombs will be directed at Israel only, but Iran fears and hates America more than Israel. To Iran’s Muslim leaders and most of its citizens, America is the epicenter of everything they oppose. It’s a clash of civilizations that they intend to settle with nuclear bombs and that we currently intend to resolve through endless discussion.
America’s porous borders and inability to fight back against Islamic supremacism at home or abroad mean that at least one Iranian bomb will find its way into a large American city. The devastation and economic fallout will be unimaginable. What if two or three bombs are snuck in, and detonated? Is it “peace” to ignore these questions, and is it “warmongering” to ask them?
The oft-quoted historian George Santayana said “Those who forget history are destined to repeat it,” which in the context of September 11th means that Americans who are forgetting what happened that day, and why, will be surprised the next time we experience a huge domestic attack. The problem is that the next attack will be with a nuclear bomb, maybe several, America may not be able to recover from the damage, and we don’t have to be surprised; we can take steps to stop it from happening.
So on September 11th, the modern equivalent of remembering the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, let us not just recall the pain that we felt, but rather also resolve that it won’t happen again. Let us take the small and big steps necessary to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, the personal ones, the professional ones, and the political ones.
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