Yes, 2012 has arrived. I’ll type softly for anybody who ushered out 2011 a little too aggressively.

After we spend today getting used to the arrival of 2012 (I love that “new year” smell) it’ll be time to batten down the hatches for what promises to be an interesting, fun, turbulent and important year loaded with primaries, conventions, Supreme Court rulings on Arizona’s immigration law and Obamacare, presidential debates and of course the general election in November.

I’m going to a family party today at my sister’s where I’ll be watching the Lions try to beat the Packers in Green Bay for the first time in 20 years.

For anybody in a newsy mood today, here are a few possible topics for discussion:

–The Des Moines Register released the results of their final poll prior to the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday: Romney 24, Paul 22, Santorum 15.

–President Obama signed the defense bill yesterday, balks at terrorism provisions.

–Gore-mobiles recalled.

–Kim Jong Il’s son has threatened South Korea already. The UN and Jimmy Carter are of course expected to recommend that South Korea respond by unconditionally surrendering.

–Instructions on how to remove your Obama bumper sticker.

Happy new year all!

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

A few details:

Shoshone County Dispatch says a call came in Wednesday night about buried miners at Lucky Friday Mine.

Dispatch also says that they do not know how many miners are trapped or what level it happened on.

Captain Holly Lindsey with Shoshone County Dispatch says that Northwest MedStar medics and an underground mine rescue team are on scene.

The mine is in Mullan, Idaho which is 50 miles east of Couer d’Alene.

Update: Six hospitalized, others feared to be still trapped inside. Unknown number.

Update: According to KHQ News, all miners have been account for by the Sheriff’s Department. Good news.

Keep the workers and their families in your thoughts and prayers tonight.

Penn State riot photos via The Daily Collegian

You can read my Twitter timeline for all the lowdown on how Penn State students turned Joe Paterno’s firing into an excuse for a mindless pep rally-turned-riot tonight. (Go here.) Oliver Darcy shot this video of the stampede after thousands poured onto the campus streets and someone overturned a WTAJ news van:

Hoodlums tore down street signs, threw beer bottles at police, pulled down a lamp post, and made an utter mess as they chanted “F**k the media” and “F**k the trustees” for taking long overdue, underwhelming action to can Paterno and Penn State’s president Graham Spanier for enabling accused child sex predator/rapist Joseph Sandusky for years. The Daily Collegian student newspaper has coverage as the riot unfolded — and I know I’m not the only one aggravated by the passive voice in the paper’s descriptions of students’ acts of vandalism and debauchery.

As if Penn State alumni and donors didn’t have enough reason to hang their heads in shame tonight…

The disgust over this scandal — this evil, this horror — transcends partisanship.

And this observation from Alberto Martinez sums it up for me:

“Nothing Joe Paterno did for #PSU outweighs the one thing he failed to do.”

Period.

***

Previous: Sports and the sexual abuse of children

Update: Santorum supports firing.

The story in my local paper is here; the Orange County Register series that blew the whistle on the widespread abuse and cover-up in gymnastics is here.

Last year, it was the swimming world that was rocked after revelations that at least 36 swimming coaches have been banned for life by the USA Swimming organization over the last 10 years because of sexual misconduct including molestations, fondling, and rape.

And now, it’s college football. The failures to act, the cover up, the rationalizations all echo each other — and also mirror the institutionalized failures, cover ups, and rationalizations of Catholic Church officials who enabled pedophiles to prey on innocent young victims entrusted to their care and oversight across the country.

The systemic enabling of child sexual predators is an unspeakable evil. So is willful ignorance about the sordid details of the case.

The latest developments? It looks like Joe Paterno will get off and get out easy.

Discussions about how to manage his departure have begun, according to the two people.

Paterno was to have held a news conference Tuesday but the university canceled it less than an hour before it was scheduled to start.

…On Monday law enforcement officials said that Paterno had met his legal obligation in alerting his superiors at the university when he learned of the 2002 allegation against Sandusky. But they suggested he might well have failed a moral test for what to do when confronted with such a disturbing allegation involving a child not even in his teens. No one at the university alerted the police or pursued the matter to determine the well-being of the child involved. The identity of that child remains unknown, according to the Attorney General.

Paterno has not been charged in the matter, but his failure to report to authorities what he knew about the 2002 incident, in which Sandusky allegedly sexually assaulted a young boy at Penn State’s football complex, has become a flashpoint, stirring anger among the board members and an outpouring of public criticism about his handling of the matter.

That’s still too easy. More backlash here.

From the Pennsylvania attorney general’s press release this weekend:

Attorney General Linda Kelly and Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan today announced that criminal charges have been filed against three Centre County men as the result of an extensive and wide-reaching grand jury investigation into reports of the sexual abuse of children.

Seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, all first-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
One count of aggravated indecent assault, a second-degree felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Four counts of unlawful contact with a minor, all first-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Four counts of unlawful contact with a minor, all third-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
Four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, all third-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
Four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, all first-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Eight counts of corruption of minors, all first-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
One count of indecent assault, a third-degree felony punishable by up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
Four counts of indecent assault, all second-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Two counts of indecent assault, all first-degree misdemeanors which are each punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
One count of attempt to commit indecent assault, a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Be sure to click the link and go through to the full PDF of the grand jury report.

From that grand jury report, the failures of renowned Penn State coach Joe Paterno are fully illuminated:

On March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant (“graduate assistant:) who was then 28 years old, entered the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus on a Friday night near the beginning of Spring Break.

The graduate assistant heard back from Curley a couple of weeks later. He was told that Sandusky’s keys to the locker room were taken away and that the incident had been reported to The Second Mile. The graduate assistant was never questioned by University Police and no other entity conducted an investigation until he testified in Grand Jury in December, 2010. The Grand Jury finds the graduate assistant’s testimony to be extremely credible.

Mothers of Sandusky’s young targets speak out.

Penn State alum Rick Santorum weighs in on the matter by refusing to weigh in, and is too “sick to his stomach” to read the indictment.

That’s exactly the hands-off attitude that destroyed so many countless young boys lives in the first place.

When will people learn?

This is the column I filed 10 years ago on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Below it, I’ve included the 2004 Republican National Convention remarks of the late actor Ron Silver — a Hollywood liberal turned Hollywood hawk who died too soon. Before he passed in 2009, he delivered powerful speeches on his post-9/11 awakening that resonate today. Silver spoke for me:

“I think there are September 10 people and there are September 11 people. I’m one of the latter. Everything changed for me. Since then I see everything through the prism of what happened that day.”

***

My generation’s bloody wake-up call
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

September 11, 2001, 10:30 am EST. This day’s infamy is only just beginning to dawn as chaos fills the television screen, tears fill my eyes, and terror presses up into my throat. Both towers of the World Trade Center have collapsed completely. This is not a David Copperfield, made-for-TV magic trick. They’re gone forever — two steel-girded limbs brutally amputated from the New York City skyline by evil fanatics whom President Bush nervously referred to as “folks.”

“Folks” are my family and neighbors. Those who orchestrated this bloody attack are not “folks.” They are madmen. Monsters. Mass murderers. The president looked and sounded scared. And that scares me.

The phone pierces my solitary angst. From his office tower in Gaithersburg, Md., my husband says that he can see smoke clouds from the Pentagon where a plane has reportedly crashed. A friend who works for the Defense Department calls to say he’s okay.

He is mournful: “We let America down.” All the rest of us can do now is pray and wonder and wait.

And watch.

“It’s like a movie. It’s like it’s not really happening.” That’s the shell-shocked refrain I hear over and over again from young eyewitnesses on TV. As their panicked voices melt in the background, this tragedy brings one truth into sharp focus: Mine is a pampered generation that has spent its collective life with its feet on the coffee table, its ample rear end planted into the living room sofa, and its jaded fingers on a remote control.

From the “Real World” and “Survivor,” to “Boot Camp” and “The Fear Factor,” what we know of conflict and survival and fear comes from the mind of cynical producers. From “Platoon” to “Saving Private Ryan” to “Pearl Harbor,” what we know of pain and sacrifice and the terror of war comes from a Blockbuster rental store. We have a Wag the Dog cynicism about the military, and a shameful indifference toward the veterans who secured the peace and prosperity we have so selfishly enjoyed.

Before this day, we occupied our time manufacturing acts of self-victimization, squandering precious time, and feeling sorry for our poor young selves. In the headlines: news of young people committing hate crimes against themselves in a bid for attention and sympathy. On campus: new classes teaching porn while basic world history courses are dropped. And on the bestseller list:

“Quarterlife Crisis,” a book written by two spoiled twentysomethings bemoaning the “landmine period in our adult development” during the transition from college graduation into the “real world.”

“When young adults emerge at graduation from almost two decades of schooling, during which each step to take is clearly marked,” the book’s publisher explains, “they encounter an overwhelming number of choices regarding their careers, finances, homes, and social networks.” There are even seminars and support groups for these traumatized young people. “Confronted by an often shattering whirlwind of new responsibilities, new liberties, and new options, they feel helpless, panicked, indecisive, and apprehensive.”

A generation that feels “helpless, panicked, indecisive, and apprehensive” because it has too many liberties and options is a generation in need of a real crisis. Now we have one. Yesterday was our Pearl Harbor. Our generational wake-up call. Our bloody moment of shattered self-complacency.

It’s time to grow up, get real, and finally grasp, like generations before us, that freedom is not free.

***

Remarks by Ron Silver as Prepared for Delivery at the 2004 Republican National Convention on Monday, August 30, Evening Session 7:45 – 11:15 P.M. EDT

I want to thank the President and the Republican Party for holding this event in my hometown, my father’s hometown, my grandfather’s and great grandfather’s birthplace.

Just over 1,000 days ago, 2,605 of my neighbors were murdered at the World Trade Center — men, women and children — as they began their day on a brilliantly clear New York autumn morning, less than four miles from where I am now standing.

We will never forgive. Never forget. Never excuse!

At the end of World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander of the South Pacific, said:

“It is my earnest hope – indeed the hope of all mankind – that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world found upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.”

The hope he expressed then remains relevant today.

We are again engaged in a war that will define the future of humankind.

Responding to attacks on our soil, America has led a coalition of countries
against extremists who want to destroy our way of life and our values.

This is a war we did not seek.

This is a war waged against us.

This is a war to which we had to respond.

History shows that we are not imperialists . . .but we are fighters for freedom and democracy.

Even though I am a well-recognized liberal on many issues confronting our society today, I find it ironic that many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them but they are usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they
catalogue repeatedly.

Under the unwavering leadership of President Bush, the cause of freedom and democracy is being advanced by the courageous men and women serving in our Armed Services.

The President is doing exactly the right thing.

That is why we need this President at this time!

I am grateful for the chance to speak tonight to express my support for our Commander-in-Chief, for our brave troops, and for the vital cause which they have undertaken.

General Dwight Eisenhower’s statement of 60 years ago is true today . . .

“United in this determination and with unshakable faith in the cause for which we fight, we will, with God’s help, go forward to our greatest victory.”

Thank you.

According to Fox News, so far 13 deaths have been blamed on the storm. Flooding is a big problem, and it’s reported that four million are without power and billions of dollars in damage has been done, but fortunately the storm never exceeded category one winds, even though to watch some of the news reports you’d have thought the entire east coast was about to be wiped off the map.

Here are a few storm-related items I ran across this morning. Feel free to pass along any links of interest that you run across as the day goes on:

–So far there is no time table for re-starting New York City’s transit system, probably meaning no subway or bus service on Monday.

–Doug Ross has 15 Irene photos spotted on Twitter.

–An article in the New York Times wonders if Irene is the result of man-caused climate change.

–Streakers caught the Weather Channel with their pants down — or was that the other way around?

–Joe Biden played golf in Delaware in the hours preceding the hurricane, but only after Carl Spackler assured him, “I don’t think the heavy stuff’s gonna come down for quite a while.”

–Irene’s predecessor: The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 (there was global warming in 1944?)

–George Will: Journalism “shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria.”

–The full size version of the above photo of Irene approaching the North Carolina coast is here.

–Here’s video of a reporter getting covered in what he called “sea foam.” After the video I’ll tell you what it probably is — make sure you’re not eating lunch:

More on that “sea foam”:

MYFOXNY.COM – A local news reporter from Washington, D.C. ended up getting covered in what is probably the remnants of raw sewage as he delivered live hurricane reports from Ocean City, Md.

When he got back to the TV station it went something like this:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Last night before midnight Colorado time, I tweeted that I felt the earth shaking in my hometown of Colorado Springs. It was a 5.2-5.5 magnitude temblor — the largest Colorado has seen in more than 40 years.

Just now, the Twittersphere lit up with reports of a large 5.8 *just upgraded to 5.9* quake across the Eastern seaboard. The epicenter was located outside Charlottesville VA and there are reports it was felt from D.C. to NY to eastern PA to Boston and beyond. The Capitol and Pentagon have been evacuated. No reports of major damages or injuries yet. Hope all are safe.

Strange times, eh?

***

Only in 2011: The DC Earthquake now has its own Twitter account:

***

There are a few nuclear plants near the epicenter. Several others across the East Coast were shut down as precautions. The NRC says there was no impact on any plants.

***

Newsflash: White House hard at work lining Obama’s jobs plan with quake retrofitting stimulus funds.

***

No major injuries reported, but various reports of damage coming in. Pieces of the National Cathedral spire in DC have crumbled. Minor pipe damage reported at the Pentagon. Most serious: Assorted reports that the Washington Monument may have suffered damage. I thought it was a joke when reports said it may now be leaning/tilting. Apparently, there’s seismological truth to it.

A big “Happy Mother’s Day” to all you moms out there. I’ll be trying to make sure my kids spoil their mother before we all go to visit my mother, so we’ll be on the road a bit today. Consider this an open thread for discussion.

For a Mother’s Day flashback, Ronald Reagan’s radio address in observance of Mother’s Day in 1983 is here.

Naturally, Planned Parenthood is doing their usual Mother’s Day fundraising, just in case you want to give mom the gift of disturbingly thick irony.

Here’s a possible discussion point unrelated to Mother’s Day:

President Obama and Air Force Brig. General Ed Wilson were caught on tape exchanging notes last week. What could be written on them? HAP thinks the General is giving Obama a coupon for a free round of golf. My guess is that Wilson carries with him two notes at all times — one says “spike the football” and one says “no NOT spike the football.” Which one was the president handed here?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Happy Easter to all of my readers of the Christian faith — and Happy Passover to all of my readers of the Jewish faith.

“Jesus Christ is Risen Today” performed by the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir:

And “Rejoice,” from Le choeur gospel de Paris:

***

Worshipers practice their faith in fear in Iraq:

Iraqi Christians marked a restrained Easter weekend as fear of attacks kept many from openly celebrating their most sacred day of the year and church officials urged them not to give up on the country.

At Our Lady of Salvation, where gunmen and suicide bombers killed 52 worshipers and guards in October, the church was tightly locked, guarded by Iraqi police who said the doors would be opened only moments before the Saturday evening Mass.

Only the arch and cross on the church roof were visible behind 10-foot-high concrete walls like others that have turned most churches in Baghdad into miniature fortresses.

“Our churches have become like prisons,” said Monsignor Pious Casha, who arrived at Our Lady of Salvation during the siege moments after Iraqi special forces stormed the church. “The barbed wire and concrete are new. Yes they protect the churches, but they make the worshipers spiritually constrained.”

A roadside bombing outside Baghdad’s Sacred Heart church today:

An Iraqi police official says seven people have been wounded by a roadside bomb outside the entrance of a Baghdad church.

The official says the blast took place Sunday just yards (meters) from the Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood. Shrapnel from the bomb struck the outside of the building.

The officer said no parishioners were inside and services had not been held in the building.

Four policemen and three civilian bystanders were wounded.

Troops in Afghanistan celebrate:

A large crowd gathered around a bonfire out in front of Bagram’s Enduring Faith Chapel on Saturday night.

Many in the group were in uniform and carrying weapons, but so unobtrusively that the sight barely registered here in a place where weapons are a fact of everyday life.

For the Catholic service known as Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, the American priest and his Polish assistants dedicated a candle and lit it from the bonfire, after which the large crowd lit individual smaller candles and began to file solemnly into the church.

Lots going on today to talk about, including the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and problems at nuclear reactors. There is some good news: A baby was found alive in the rubble and reunited with her father.

A few other things going on…

–Time Magazine goes out of its way to help push the new civility.

–John Conyers wants to help make Obama a better president. I guess this means we might soon see Obama reading Playboy on the plane and letting his kids drive his government vehicle around town.

–Obama’s approval continues to skid.

–Captain Louis Renault Award: Nina Totenberg

–Susan Sarandon heads to Wisconsin as the situation there continues to grow almost as hairy as her armpits in White Palace.

–MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski horrified at her daughter’s Domino’s Pizza “mound of crap” dinner (nice that Mika’s helping out a large advertiser with their “tough love on itself” campaign).

–Harry Reid’s son under investigation for PAC Scratch Fever.

–NPR: O’Keefe “inappropriately edited” the video, but their former exec still behaved egregiously, or something.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Keep praying for the Pacific tsunami/quake victims, their families, and those involved in emergency/rescue.

As if things weren’t nightmarish enough in Japan, this:

More than 1,000 people were feared dead and authorities warned a meltdown may be under way at a nuclear plant after a monster tsunami devastated a swathe of northeast Japan.

Reactor cooling systems failed at two generating plants after Friday’s record 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit, unleashing a terrifying 10-metre (33-foot) high wave that tore through coastal towns and cities, destroying all in its path.

Radiation 1,000 times above normal was detected in the control room of one nuclear plant, although authorities said levels outside the facility’s gates were only eight times above normal, spelling “no immediate health hazard.”

But officials warned one of the plants, just 250 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, “may be experiencing nuclear meltdown,” Kyodo and Jiji reported.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from around the plants as Tokyo Electric Power, which runs the facilities, said it had released some radioactive vapour at both locations to relieve building reactor pressure.

“We are not in a situation in which residents face health damage,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters, according to Jiji news agency.

The two nuclear plants affected are the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants, both located about 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

Allahpundit at Hot Air has breaking developments:

The WSJ confirms that people within a six-mile (i.e. 10-kilometer) radius were already being shipped out hours ago. Also, an update on the control room, where radiation levels reached 1,000 times the normal rate earlier:

Radiation levels aren’t supposed to rise in a control room, which is designed to allow operators to continue working during emergencies and is equipped with filtration systems and other design features to protect workers from radiation exposure. Nevertheless, experts said that a level that is 1,000 times normal probably isn’t immediately harmful.

The technicians on the scene battling this thing must be signing years of their lives away, if not decades.

More from NYT.

***
UPDATE:

Sigh of relief…for now via Reuters:

Japan’s nuclear authorities said on Saturday that radioactive pressure was successfully relieved at the No.1 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi plant by opening valves.

Keep the people of Japan in your prayers. The earthquake and tsunami that hit the northern part of the country has caused devastating loss of life and destruction. Readers in Hawaii e-mail that they have prepared for coastal flooding as well. Be safe, friends.

Via the NYTimes:

A huge earthquake struck Japan on Friday, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland along the northern part of the country and threatened coastal areas throughout the Pacific.

Walls of water whisked away houses and cars in northern Japan, where terrified residents fled the coast. Trains were shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted. A ship carrying more than 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, tKyodo News reported. A fire broke out at the nuclear plant in Onagawa, but Japanese officials said it was extinguished.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the disaster caused major damage across wide areas. Several hours after the quake, Kyodo News was reporting 48 deaths, but with rescue efforts just getting under way, the extent of injuries and damage is not yet known.

The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake had a magnitude of 8.9, and occurred at about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo and at a revised depth of about 17 miles. The Japanese Meteorological Agency said the quake had a magnitude of 8.8, which would make it among the biggest in a century.

The quake occurred at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time and hit off Honshu, Japan’s most populous island. The quake was so powerful that buildings in central Tokyo, designed to withstand major earthquakes, swayed.

“This tremor was unlike any I’ve experienced previously, and I’ve lived here for eight years. It was a sustained rolling that made it impossible to stand, almost like vertigo,” said Matt Alt, an American writer and translator living in Tokyo.

Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, told CNN that residents in Hawaii and the West Coast should prepare for coastal flooding. He said that there was a “full coastal evacuation” underway in Hawaii.

***

Video of the tsunami as it hit an airport in Sendai:

Video via NHK:

Transcript, President Ronald Reagan, Jan. 28, 1986:

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight; we’ve never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we’ve forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, “Give me a challenge, and I’ll meet it with joy.” They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.

I’ve always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute. We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: “Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.”

There’s a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and an historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.” Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

***

High Flight — John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

*Two police officers were shot and killed a U.S. Marshal was wounded in St. Petersburg, Florida on Monday.

*The shooting in St. Petersburg occurred on the day of the funeral in Miami of two Miami-Dade County police officers who were shot and killed by a fugitive murder suspect last week. The fugitive was also killed.

*4 Detroit police officers shot, gunman dead in ‘horrifying’ attack

*Suspect Sought in Shooting of Oregon Police Officer

*An Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer remained in critical condition this morning recovering from four gunshots wounds suffered during a traffic stop Sunday.

*Two people died and two Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies were wounded Sunday after a shootout in a Walmart parking lot in Port Orchard WA on Sunday.

In 2010, the number of federal and local officers killed in the line of duty rose to 160 from 117 the year before. Fifty-nine officers were fatally shot in 2010, up from 49 killed in 2009.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund honors federal, state and local law enforcement officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the safety and protection of our nation and its people.

Keep them all in your prayers.

***

Flashback: 4/10 Border disorder: Arizona deputy shot in desert

Flashback: 12/09 Another police ambush in Washington state

Flashback: 12/09 The war on cops

Flashback: 7/09 The anti-police bigotry of the Left

Flashback: 3/09 19,000 mourners fill Oakland Coliseum to honor slain police officers

Flashback: 5/08 Officer down: Philly policeman executed by bank robbers in Muslim garb

Flashback: 9/06 Houston PD Officer Rodney Johnson was shot and killed after taking an illegal alien into custody during a traffic stop.
Flashback 5/05 Thank you, officer

Flashback 5/05 Farewell to a cop’s cop

A special New Year’s greeting to all our troops serving overseas. Always remember: We are the land of the free because of the brave.

Special thanks also to terrific guest-blogger Doug Powers for all his laugh-out-loud work this year (and especially during the past week while I’ve been traveling).

May 2011 bring more peace, prosperity, and freedom to all.