Michael Reagan posts what I consider to be one of the finest pieces on Haditha written to date.

It may be simple in its explanations, but it is concise in its facts which is refreshing on its face:

You’d hardly know it if you relied on the mainstream media, but the government’s case against the Haditha Marines took another body blow last Friday that may be the beginning of the end for this whole sorry attempt to severely punish eight heroic United States Marines for doing what they are trained to do.

In a surprise development on the day Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum’s court martial was scheduled to begin, all charges against him were dropped without explanation.

I wonder however, if Time Magazine and Congressman Murtha have an answer to the question posed in the last paragraph of this piece:

And thanks to John Murtha and the liberal media, these Marines can now join my Dad’s wrongly accused Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan in asking where they go to get their reputations back.

I’ve often said politics and war do not make good bedfellows. When you add in a press ready and willing to paint our military in the worst of lights..well it is a true recipe for disaster.

As to where these young men go to regain their reputation I say only, it was lost only to those who refused to wait out the facts. There will be no apologies from the press or Congressman Murtha to be sure.

For those of us willing to believe that even our troops are innocent until proven guilty, there is no reputation to be regained.

There is simply gratitude that we have such men and women who are at the ready always to defend this country and sorrow that they and their families had to endure this ordeal at the hands of those who peddled their wares and political ambitions.

What an incredible specimen this Albino Alligator is.

Albino Whitie would have made a snack for larger alligators because of his colour.

But the 16st five-year-old was rescued from Louisiana swamps and taken to Florida.

Check out the link above for a must see picture.

HT:Ace

When I saw the title of this article, my first inclination was to not take the time to read the copy. It appeared as another run of the mill, pros and cons of the candidates piece.

Well, appearances were deceiving and I found myself engrossed in all three pages of Mr. Miller’s work. He has captured (with a bit of past history included) exactly the feeling I think many have in relation to this election cycle:

It seems clear that Senator Clinton, Senator Obama or Senator McCain will soon become the next President of the United States. Barring a catastrophe of a different sort, this is almost certain to happen to the United States –- which we enjoy calling the most powerful and most important country in the world. While perhaps jingoistic, if this view were totally off the wall the entire world would not be watching with as much fascination as it seems to be (of course, they may just be watching an amusing spectacle, like a cock fight). This makes the basic question even more important than otherwise — if only because others seem so to view us and base some of their policies on this thesis.

Why Clinton, Obama or McCain? There are more than three hundred million people in the U.S., and obviously many of them have the requisite Constitutional qualifications. It is not worth calculating the actual number, but whatever the number may be, it is humongous. I would be willing to bet that there are many millions who are constitutionally qualified and that there are thousands, if not millions, who would make far better presidents than any of the current crop, based on experience, ethics, humility and common sense. As Diogenes discovered, finding an honest person is not easy -– even with a lantern and even if there are scads of such people. We we are stuck with these three, quite possibly because nobody with more experience, ethics, humility and common sense would want the job or even accept it, except based on a rare sense of duty. Or, perhaps, because Diogenes is no longer with us.

At least a modicum of humility is essential, and few people who want to be president have much. There is none to be seen in Senator Clinton, but perhaps a little in Senators Obama and McCain.

Especially if you are among those not sold on any one of the three choices which have been presented to us at the moment (and unfortunately voting out of a sense of duty and partisanship), I don’t think you will be disappointed in the balance of this piece.