A story of heroism amid the tragedy

I heard this mentioned on the Dennis Prager show and found the article at LGF: professor and holocaust survivor died shielding students from the gunman. (IsraelNN.com) As Israel observed Holocaust Day, thousands of miles away, A Rumanian-born Holocaust survivor gave his life in another senseless murder - and apparently in an act of heroism. Among the 32 people killed by a lone gunman at Virginia Tech Monday is 77-year-old engineering professor, Liviu Librescu, a citizen of Israel. According to eyewitness accounts, Librescu ran to the door of his classroom and blocked it with his body – preventing the gunman from entering but getting shot to death himself as a result. Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old student who had been in Librescu's class in room 204, told a reporter that at 9:05 a.m. the heard screams and a loud banging sound from the next-door classroom. When the students realized it was gunfire, he said, some hid behind tables, and others leapt from the classroom's windows. Calhoun himself was among the last to jump. "Before I jumped from the window, I turned around and looked at the professor, who stayed behind, maybe to block the door. He had been killed." He is survived by his wife of 42 years and two sons.

BREAKING - At least 20 killed at Virginia Tech in campus shooting incident

***Scroll down for updates*** Another tragedy on a US campus. Police said there had been "at least 20 fatalities" in two locations at Virginia Tech university this morning. Earlier, the university released a statement saying that one person had been shot and a suspect had been arrested but released the higher total to astonishment several hours later. "Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," said university president Charles Steger. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified." The shootings are reported to have occurred two hours apart at an engineering building and a dormitory, on opposite sides of the campus. Amateur footage showed armed officers running over the campus with the sounds of gunshots in the background. At the news conference where the initial death toll was announced, Wendell Flinchum, the university's police chief, said that one man was believed to be responsible for the shootings and that he had been killed. Most of the victims are believed to have been students. "We have a ballpark figure on fatalities. It’s at least 20 fatalities," he said to gasps. "We don't know whether the shooter was a student." There's a lot of information that still hasn't been released yet, and rumors abound... was the shooter a student? One rumor states it was a young man who was looking for his ex-girlfriend (this is still rumor at this point of course). Was his fatal wound self-inflicted or was he shot by authorities responding to the incident? I'll post updates as I find them. UPDATE @ 10:22am: The VT website confirms 22 dead. Families wishing to reunite are suggested to do so at The Inn at Virginia Tech. UPDATE @ 10:47am: ABC reports 29 dead now. UPDATE @ 11:25am: Fox reports 32 dead and 21 injured. UPDATE @ 2:31pm: The LATimes put the number wounded at 56, but not all of those were shot by the gunman. Medical personnel are seeing lots of injuries from people trying to escape; cuts from broken glass, broken bones, and sprains as people fled the shooter. UPDATE @ 3:02pm: Seems like this might be a good point for a timeline of events (as reported in this SFGate article). The first shooting was at about 7:15am at West Ambler Johnston, one of VT's dorms. 2 were killed in the dormitory. The second set of shootings occurred at least 2 hours later about a mile and a half across the campus at Norris Hall, an engineering building. 30 were killed at Norris Hall; the shooter killed himself here as well. Much of the confusion with the inceident stems from the 2 hour gap as the gunman moved from the dorms to the engineering building which is why initial reports released had only one killed. University president Charles Steger says a school closure wasn't put into effect after the initial shooting in the dorms because authorities believed the dorm shooting was a "domestic dispute" and the gunman had fled the campus. UPDATE @ 3:11pm: Fox News says the gunman was described as an asian male. He was wearing a vest covered in clips which I assume were for the two 9mm handguns that police recovered at the scene. UPDATE 4/17 @ 9:12am: The information on the gunman yesterday has been released April 17, 2007 — Cho Seung-hui, 23, the Virginia Tech student who police believe is responsible for killing 33 people yesterday, was "a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," said university spokesman Larry Hincker. Police identified Cho, a native of South Korea and resident alien who lived in Centreville, Va., as the shooter by linking the fingerprints at the scene to his immigration documents. Police say the senior English major, who lived in Harper Hall dormitory on the university campus, was likely responsible for both shootings at the university, the first of which took place at around 7:15 a.m. Monday morning when two people were killed at West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory. Later that morning, the remaining victims were killed in Norris Hall, the engineering studies building. ABC News has learned that Cho left behind a note after the killings at West Ambler Johnston Hall. He then returned to his own room, rearmed and entered Norris Hall, roughly a half a mile away, to continue his shooting rampage. The Sydney Morning Herald confirms what I posted yesterday as simple rumor: the gunman's rampage began with the death of his ex-girlfriend, Emily Jane Hilscher, whom he shot in a jealous rage allegedly because she cheated on him. The second victim was the RA, Ryan Clark, who came by most likely responding to the gunfire. Thus far, those who are confirmed to have died in yesterday's tragedy are Maxine Turner, senior, chemical engineering; Henry Lee, freshman, computer engineering; Matt La Porte, freshman; Jamie Bishop, instructor, foreign languages and literature (German); Professor G.V. Loganathan, civil and environmental engineering; Juan Ortiz, graduate student, civil engineering; Jarrett Lane, senior, civil engineering; Ryan Clark, senior, biology, English, psychology; Leslie Sherman, sophomore, history and international studies; Caitlin Hammaren, sophomore, international studies and French; Professor Liviu Librescu, engineering, science and mechanics; Professor Kevin Granata, engineering, science and mechanics; Reema Samaha, freshman; and the killer's former girlfriend, Emily Hilscher, freshman, animal and poultry sciences, and equine science.

John Kerry says only stupid people end up in our military

And you won't believe how he's trying to spin his way out of this one... First off, the comment came at a campaign stop at Pasadena City College where Kerry stuck his foot into his mouth pretty much all the way up to his knee... While campaigning in California, Kerry told a college crowd on Monday: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Well now... so only the stupid kids get sent to Iraq? Are all military personnel stupid? Having served in the military, does that make you stupid Senator Kerry? Before we start piling on too much, one of his spokespeople offered an explanation: Kerry misread the speech: Kerry's office released his prepared remarks, which said, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush." If true, while there's still a nice Freudian slip type feel to the remark, we can't hammer him too badly... It's not like Bush is a perfect orator either. We all make verbal mistakes; no bid deal... But then Kerry goes and opens his big fat mouth some more trying to respond to comments from the White House, specifically Tony Snow, that he ought to apologize. The Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential nominee struck back, although he said that he was making a "botched joke" during a campaign appearance for a Democratic congressional candidate Monday. He said that Snow and the others distorted what he said. "I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq," Kerry said in a statement. "It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have." Oh really? It's a lies, lies, vicious lies! A vast right wing conspiracy! Karl Rove's minions changed my speech at the last minute! Then a little misdirection that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand, and there you have it. The liberal two-step. A simple, "sorry, didn't mean that," or "misread my speech" really could have delfated the whole issue. We'd have snickered over the issue for a day and then forgotten all about it. Now that you've made a huge deal out of the whole thing and insulted Tony Snow and Rush Limbaugh for no reason, it's going to be a topic of conversation for an entire week. The week before the election is going to be spent trying to figure out why John Kerry is so bitter and angry and if it's a symptomatic problem of the Democratic party as a whole. Why can't democrats just simply say "oops... my bad" and move on with their lives. He's taken the focus off of whatever other scandal information they had waiting in the wings and put it on why John Kerry's an idiot. I guess Dennis Prager's right... being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry. UPDATE @ 3:57pm: GOP and the City had the video of John Kerry's idiocy... UPDATE 11/1 @ 4:05pm: Kerry apologizes... In a brief statement, Kerry apologizes to "any service memeber, family member or American who was offended" by remarks he made earlier this week, in which he suggested that those who don't do well in school could "get stuck in Iraq." In the statement, Kerry says he sincerely regrets that his words were, as he put it, "misinterpreted to imply anything negative about those in uniform." Took him long enough. Hell, even Hillary Clinton was out there saying his remarks were "inappropriate."

War against subversive children's games: "Tag" gets the axe

Yep, two Massachusetts schools banned the game of "Tag" this week. Yes run around, tag, you're it is now no longer an acceptable recess game. When I read the headline, I figured it'd be because it would cause self-esteem issues with kids who couldn't run as fast as the others or perhaps because we can't allow boys to start tagging girls because we wouldn't want some second grader claiming she was sexually harassed when she was "it". The last one's close, but still not quite as lame an idea as the one actually given in the article... WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two Massachusetts primary schools this week joined a growing list of US schools that have banned the age-old game of tag for fear that children may get hurt and their parents will sue. Officials at McCarthy Elementary School in Framingham in the northeastern state, told local media that children have been ordered to invent a new no-contact version of the game for safety reasons. "If the hands come out to touch, then the supervisors ask them to stop," McCarthy principal Joan Vodoklys was quoted as saying in the Boston Herald on Friday. "What we require is that children do not touch each other." What would our kids do these days if not for the benevolent protection of the legal profession? I think the "heaven-forbid-the-kid-fall-down-and-skin-a-knee" excuse is probably the lamest excuse someone with a graduate degree could think of. But it does make the kids think... Like how to tag another player without actually touching them with your hands. Kicking perhaps? Pointing and laughing? Maybe spitting on them to designate tham as tagged? Throwing a rock? That's a good way to let someone know they're "it"... Or we could just send the kids to school everyday with their attorneys, and have the attorneys' perform all required actions, while the kids stay in their hermetically sealed bubbles protected from the dangers of a stiff breeze. The lawyers answer all questions posed in class, make sure nothing inappropriate like peanut butter is served in the cafeteria, and play all recess games so the kids don't get hurt. That way we can create an entire generation of kids who never actually do, learn, or accompish anything throughout their entire lives. It'd be just like Berkeley. UPDATE @ 4:11pm: Looks like Chad, the East coast rep for Cake or death posted this back on Wednesday... I just can't get a break...

Has the world gone friggin insane?

This could have been another school shooting disaster, except this time we got lucky. JOPLIN, Mo. — Fascinated by the Columbine bloodbath, a 13-year-old boy in a black trenchcoat and mask carried an assault rifle into his school Monday, pointed it at students and fired a shot into a ceiling before the weapon jammed, authorities said. No one was hurt. "Please don't make me do this," he was quoted as telling administrators before police arrested him and thwarted what they called a "well thought-out plan" to terrorize his school. This is a 7th grader for crying out loud! He also claimed to have a bomb on him... Thank God his gun jammed. With this rash of violence in schools, I'm sure safety and security will be a popular topic among candidates for this upcoming election. But what can be done that isn't already being done? Do we install more metal detectors? Have more police on campuses? What's the best course of action to keep this from happening. Metal detectors and police (real police, not rent-a-cops) would be great, but what's that do to education budgets? Our government already spends more education than any other nation in the world, and look what we're getting for our money. I'm more a fan of letting teachers discipline their students. Are we really so damned concerned with the emotional health of kids that teachers can't use red ink to correct papers anymore? Does the student learn more when the administrators care more about students' self esteem rather than doing what's best for the kids? After 9/11 in addition to adding air marshalls, the government allowed pilots to arm themselves to prevent future hijackings as long as they took proper training courses. Why not give teachers the same option? If teachers might be armed, couldn't that disuade a few of these school shooting psychos? Of course, licensing and training sessions would be mandated, as well as an extensive screening process. This could help improve things because, really, can it get any worse?