Sedgwick County Commissioner Dave Unruh was in line with his wife and two grandkids when the shooting occurred today at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Here is an interview with Unruh by a TV station.
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Daily Archives: June 10, 2009
Unruh recounts shooting at Holocaust Museum
June 10, 20094:10 p.m.
NAACP backs veterans memorial
June 10, 200912:05 p.m.
“As a veteran and the child of a military family with roots going back to the Korean War, I appreciate the service and the risks undertaken by the members of the South Vietnamese Army as they fought against the spread of communism,” Kevin Myles, president of the Wichita branch of the NAACP, wrote in an open letter to the Wichita City Council supporting the proposal to add a Vietnamese community memorial to Veterans Memorial Park. “These men and women fought, bled and many died, alongside men like my father, in defense of the very ideals that we as Americans still hold dear. In honoring them, we honor ourselves.”
Myles noted that “there are nearly 8,000 Americans of Vietnamese origin, many of whom are veterans of the conflict, who are an integral part of our city,” and he said that it “would send a tragic message were we to segregate our tributes by denying them space within the Veterans Memorial Park.”
The City Council decided to delay a decision until next month. Our editorial today noted how difficult this issue is, with heartfelt feelings on both sides, and expressed some hope that the council and the groups involved can find a way to honor all veterans.
Palin upstaged Gingrich’s message
June 10, 20096:03 a.m.
Newt Gingrich gave a meaty defense of conservative principles during his keynote address at the GOP congressional fundraiser Monday, but he was upstaged by the circus over whether Sarah Palin was or wasn’t coming to the dinner, reported Dan Balz of the Washington Post. Gingrich tried to “bridge the differences between those Republicans who prefer a smaller, purer, more conservative party and those who say the party’s only hope is to expand its appeal and attract moderates and independents,” Balz wrote. “Gingrich called (for) both an adherence to conservative values and for the party to be inclusive, saying that any party that aspires to be a majority party should expect vigorous debate and disagreement.” But rather than getting this strong message out, Balz wrote, “the GOP allowed lowbrow chatter about Palin’s attendance rather than something more substantive to dominate the day.”
Several attorneys thought torture was legal
June 10, 20096:01 a.m.
Three top former Justice Department attorneys have received most of the criticism for providing legal cover for torturing suspected terrorists. But e-mails and additional information show that other Justice Department attorneys agreed with them that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were legal, though several objected to their use, reported the New York Times. For example, James B. Comey (in photo), the former deputy attorney general who balked at the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program, concluded that the interrogation techniques were legal, though he said in e-mails that “some of this stuff was simply awful” and warned then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that “it would come back to haunt him and the department.”
The fact that several attorneys thought the techniques were legal makes it difficult to press ethics or legal charges against former Justice Department attorneys John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, as some have called for. Still, Brian Tamanaha, a St. John’s University law professor who has studied the interrogation memorandums, contends that concluding that waterboarding was legal required “extraordinary contortions in language and legal analysis.”
GOP like Eminem?
June 10, 20096:00 a.m.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was unimpressed by NBC’s “Inside the Obama White House” specials: “I haven’t seen something that staged since that half-naked Austrian fell onto the face of Eminem at the MTV (movie) awards,” Pawlenty told a gathering of college Republicans, going on to suggest that Republicans, “just like Eminem getting dumped on, we’ve got to kind of regroup. We’ve got to continue to fight. And we’ve got some things worth fighting for.”
