Patriot Act sneakiness again.

Regardless of your position on the death penalty, we have a jury system in this country for a reason. Now the neo-cons want to circumvent that when the jury doesn't give the result they want.

This is the proverbial slippery slope folks, say goodbye to another constitutional right. Thanks again to the UNDERNEWS for being there when it counts.

UNDERNEWS: GOP WANTS TO FORCE DEATH PENALTY EVEN WHEN JURY CAN'T AGREE: "NY TIMES - If all 12 members of a jury in a capital case in federal court cannot agree on whether to impose the death penalty, a convicted defendant is automatically sentenced to life in prison. But that may be about to change. A little-noticed provision in the House bill that reauthorized the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act would allow federal prosecutors further attempts at a death sentence if a capital jury deadlocks on the punishment. So long as at least one juror voted for death, prosecutors could empanel a new sentencing jury and argue again that execution was warranted. The Senate bill does not contain the provision, and representatives of both chambers will soon meet to discuss the differences between the two measures and potential compromises."

Well much like the rest of the Patriot act this serves to fulfill the fantasies neo-con despot wannabes while doing nothing good for America. Is it 2006 yet?

OK Cupid Politics test

Here's how I did....

You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (10% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Plame Fallout and Harriet Miers

Aside from the illegality of exposing a CIA agent's cover there are other concerns Showing up from the Plame Leak. One of the notable side stories underscores what was said in the Downing Street Minutes...

CIA leak illustrates selective use of intelligence on Iraq
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The grand jury probe into the leak of a covert CIA officer's name has opened a new window into how the Bush administration used intelligence from dubious sources to make a case for a pre-emptive war and discarded information that undercut its rationale for attacking Iraq.

CIA officer Valerie Plame was outed in an apparent attempt to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after he challenged President Bush's allegation in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African nation of Niger.

As for the hows and whens...

The State of the Union speech was one of a number of instances in which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their aides ignored the qualms of intelligence professionals and instead relied on the claims of Iraqi defectors and other suspect sources or, in the case of Niger, the crudely forged documents.

Like the Niger allegation, almost all of the administration's claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had to be ousted before he could develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, use them against America or give them to al-Qaida terrorists have turned out to be false. No such weapons or programs have been found, and several official inquiries have concluded that there was no cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida.

Here's How it all ties together...

THE EARLY CASE FOR WAR

The White House launched its public campaign to build support for a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in August 2002.

Top aides led by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and known as the White House Iraq Group directed the effort, according to current and former U.S. officials who requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The group included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, who are at the center of the Plame probe.

Other members were then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy and now successor, Stephen J. Hadley, White House communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkerson and legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio.

The Iraqi National Congress, an exile opposition group whose leader, Ahmad Chalabi, was close to Cheney and others, had begun feeding Western reporters Iraqi defectors' tales that Saddam was training Islamic extremists to hit U.S. targets and hiding banned weapons shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The INC, which was deeply distrusted by the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, piped the same information into Cheney's office and the Pentagon, according to a June 2002 letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee from the group's Washington spokesman.

In an Aug. 26, 2002, speech, Cheney highlighted the main themes of the administration's case for war.

Iraq, he charged, was "amassing" chemical and biological weapons, and "many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon" and could give them to terrorists.

There was no solid U.S. intelligence to support his assertions, and no such finding by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which oversaw the destruction of Saddam's pre-1991 Gulf War nuclear weapons program.

U.S. intelligence had no evidence of any alliance between Iraq and al-Qaida, and many analysts doubted that Saddam would give such weapons to Islamic extremists.

Then there were...

THE ALUMINUM TUBES

On Sept. 8, 2002, The New York Times quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying that Iraq had tried "to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes" believed to be intended for centrifuges, devices that enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

The story quoted an unnamed senior administration official as saying that "nuclear weapons are his (Saddam's) hole card" and that delaying his overthrow would make him "harder ... to deal with."

The story reinforced the Bush administration's charge that the United States couldn't wait for proof that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.

Its appearance in the nation's most influential paper also gave Cheney and Rice an opportunity to discuss the matter the same day on the Sunday television talk shows. They could discuss the article, but otherwise they wouldn't have been able to talk about classified intelligence in public.

"Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon," Bush said to the U.N. General Assembly five days later.

But again a problem with the intel. That old nagging "Truth" thing keeps getting in the way.

But after consulting U.S. nuclear laboratories, the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research concluded that the tubes were most likely for ground-to-ground rockets, not for centrifuges.

The International Atomic Energy Agency later reached the same conclusion.

Facts be damned we WILL invade Iraq. Folks we have been lied to in a BIG way. Speaking of not being forthright Bush has refused to release Harriet Miers record. This is like going to a used car lot and being denied a test drive but having the salesman insist you sign the contract anyway. Read On...

Bush refuses to hand over Miers documents / Nominee's chances for confirmation appear in jeopardy: "Washington -- President Bush rejected requests coming from Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers to produce documents about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' work as White House counsel, as conservatives Monday began a formal campaign to force her withdrawal.

The brewing clash between Bush and Senate Republicans over White House documents marks the latest downturn for an embattled nomination that has deeply demoralized Bush's conservative base and raises the prospect that Miers could be defeated by her own party.

'People can learn about Harriet Miers through hearings,' Bush said, speaking briefly to reporters after a Cabinet meeting, 'but we are not going to destroy this business about people being able to walk in the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's my advice to you, here's what I think is important.' And that's not only important for this president, it's important for future presidents.'

The Presnit refuses to give full disclosure on his nominees. Not good. The Nominee is going down. Note to Ms Miers: Don't pack your office up yet, In fact don't pack at all.

A little about the left and religion

Recently I have run across several progressive Humanist and/or Atheists who seem offended by the notion that some folks dare to criticise them for their attitude toward Christians. With a hearty serving of righteous indignation they complain about Christians being the ones who are bigoted and trying to force their religion on allwho are not Christian. While I agree there are many Christians who do just that and that they are becoming dangerous as some of them have connections to people in power, not all Christians are like that. In fact most are not. Below is my response to just such a post that referred to Christianity as a Cult.

Perhaps it is their 'Cult'. I would submit some of those believe so unwaveringly they are all but lost to any other viewpoint. There are however, many that are faced with a multitude of decisions and issues, would it not be better to communicate our position by showing them that we are different from our opponents by not resorting to name calling or belittling them or their beliefs? I imagine if you wish to sway their opinion of the right wing it might be better to show them that there is room for them on the left rather than tellng them to abandon all they have believed in because in your belief theirs is wrong. Sounds a bit like any two religions arguing about their respective beliefs. Atheism is a belief too. A belief that their is no god (and by the way just as unprovable as the belief that there is a god). You chose your belief let them choose theirs. Welcome their point of view and work with it. The preferred disavowment and debasement of all things religious eliminates the majority of the country from the start. Dooming your position to failure (unless the non believers can somehow eliminate elections). Don't misunderstand I have a great desire to see the Robertsons and Falwells of this country (and the world for that matter) fall from favor and return to whatever dark place they emerged from. They are, in fact, truly about power. Religion is just the means to their end. Also have no doubt that I am an avid supporter of Church-State separation. Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli clearly spells out the intentions of our founding fathers if the First amendment wasn't clear enough (apparently for some, especially on the right, it wasn't). There are a great many well meaning Christians who waver on which party or approach the would support. Progressives would do better to welcome them than issue blanket condemnations of them.

Also I would add as I hinted at in my response there are many Atheists who try to force their beliefs on others. It usually takes the form of ridicule and belittlement (on the more benign end) or long complicated lectures and attempts to prove the non existance of God (an impossibility) (on the more malicious end). Make no mistake Atheism is a belief system too just as any other religion. And its belief comes from an unswerving belief that what others sometimes see as evidence of the divine is evidence of nothing. Sometimes they are right. Try as they might however there is no way to prove that God (or anything else) does not exist, only that there is no verifiable evidence that they do.

Iran, Syria and Liberals Oh My!

Let's Start off today with some Rice.

CNN.com - Rice: U.S. will defeat insurgency, rebuild Iraq - Oct 19, 2005: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday defended U.S. policy in Iraq amid criticism from lawmakers demanding a plan to bring troops home.

In her first appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since February, Rice said the U.S. goals in Iraq are to break the back of the insurgency, keep Iraq from becoming a safe haven for Islamic extremism, turn the corner economically and become a democratic example for the entire Middle East.

She outlined a strategy to clear the toughest areas of insurgents, secure them as a sanctuary from violence and 'build durable national Iraqi institutions,' which she insisted would 'assure victory.'

'Our strategy is to clear, hold and build,' she told senators. 'The enemy's strategy is to infect, terrorize and pull down.'

The Afghanistan model

The WHAT!!! Does that mean we are going to crochet blankets or turn Iraq into a narco-state? If the latter do we chalk up a win in the Terror War AND a loss in the Drug War?

Rice said the Bush administration would 'restructure' part of its mission on a model the United States found successful in Afghanistan, where diplomats and reconstruction workers are embedded with the military.

'Provincial reconstruction teams' made up of civilian and military personnel will work together to clear out insurgents, train police, set up courts and help the government establish basic services, Rice said. The first of these new teams will begin work next month.

But the hearing often turned contentious, with Rice facing tough questioning from senators on both sides of the aisle, looking for a timetable to win the peace and begin withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Last I checked Afghanistan was spiraling into becoming a narco-state and the Taliban was regaining some of its former power. In what way was Afghanistan a success for the US?

Timetables debated

Rice refused to give a timeline for U.S. withdrawal but called Iraqi forces' assumption of responsibility for some of the toughest areas in Iraq 'good benchmarks'

But the Republican committee chair, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, countered that 'the American people need to more fully understand the basis upon which our troops are likely to come home.'

'We are engaged in a difficult mission in Iraq and the president and Congress must be clear with the American people about the stakes involved and the difficulties yet to come," he said.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said that nobody was suggesting an immediate pullout of U.S. troops, but more details on the Bush administration's plan to win the peace and begin withdrawing troops were needed.

"What's the plan, Stan? Tell us," Biden said. "We are not setting timetables and saying cut and run. We are saying give us a plan."

Asked pointedly whether the United States would still have troops in Iraq five or 10 years from now, Rice said, "I think that even to try and speculate on how many years from now there will be a certain number of American forces is not appropriate.

"I don't know how to speculate about what will happen 10 years from now, but I do believe that we are moving on a course on which Iraqi security forces are rather rapidly able to take care of their own security concerns."

Apparently we'll be done when the prez says we're done.

Syria and Iran

She reiterated U.S. criticism of Iraq's neighbors Syria and Iran, who she said need to take steps to stop fighters from entering Iraq.

"Syria and, indeed, Iran must decide whether they wish to side with the cause of war or with the cause of peace," she said.

While Rice said the United States is continuing to put diplomatic pressure on Syria to stem the flow of insurgents, the military option remains on the table. The United States also wants Syria to stop supporting Palestinian extremist groups and end its presence in Lebanon.

Rice said the United States is examining whether its ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, should hold diplomatic talks with Iranian officials about the situation in Iraq, just as he did during the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Iran and Syria have been in the plans for a while as you know if you go just a step or two beyond the MSM to get your news. Now the government is officially saying it. Wait for official word on a draft in the not too distant future. (watch the terminology though as the Republicans don't like the D-word.

'Spin of false expectations'

In response to her comments that a free Iraq would "be at the heart of a different kind of Middle East" and allow the United States to defeat the ideology of hatred and extremism threatening it, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, accused Rice of "rewriting history."

Boxer said the Bush administration's war on terror was supposed to be about going after the terrorists that threatened the United States after the September 11 attacks, not "rebuilding the Middle East."

"Our country is sick at heart with the spin of false expectations," she told Rice.

The secretary also faced criticism from senators for failing to appear before the committee for so many months. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, pointed out that if Rice made time to appear on Sunday morning talk shows, she could make herself available to address Congress about a policy that is costing the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis and "draining our treasury substantially."

"This is just unacceptable we go this length of time without discussing this in full and in the public," Dodd said.

It is nice to see our senate so worked up about something . Demand answers folks. We want them, We need them, and we deserve them.


Nest an excerpt from and interview with Douglass Massey. The man has some GOOD ideas. Read on.

AlterNet: Start Making Sense: Return of the 'L' Word: An Interview with Douglas Massey: "Return of the 'L' Word: An Interview with Douglas Massey By Bradford Plumer, MotherJones.com. Posted August 16, 2005.
Liberals need a vision for the new century, says Douglas Massey.

MJ: Let's shift over to the political landscape. You see the conservative movement today as being spearheaded by what you call a variety of fundamentalisms. Can you explain what those are?

DM: Yeah, I did a lot of reading trying to understand fundamentalism, and there was one interesting scholar I ran across—Martin Marty of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago—who spent more than a decade studying fundamentalisms around the world. Basically fundamentalism is not about religion, it's a political movement that often uses religion for political purposes. And fundamentalists are essentially all the same, whether you're talking Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims, Christians, Jews. They selectively draw from sacred texts to achieve political goals in the modern world. And they're essentially engaged in a war against modernism, against what has been accomplished through the modern liberal political economy—which includes the liberation of women, the end of the subordination of minorities, the end of privilege, all those things really disturb many fundamentalists. And they turn to religion as a way of marshalling their forces to attack all these things. So it's not about religion at all. And after that, I started seeing other types of fundamentalism in our political culture. There are the constitutional fundamentalists who now dominate our judiciary, and think that the Constitution was basically a sacred document, that we have to go back to what the Founding Fathers were thinking at the time they wrote it, and not put anything else into it. I find that appalling given that the majority of people who wrote the Constitution were slaveholders, and their goal was to create a document that somehow finessed the issue of servitude, and would allow slavery to exist in a society that was otherwise dedicated to liberty. Then there are a variety of other fundamentalists, including the Platonic fundamentalists who controlled our foreign policy in Bush's first term, the followers of Leo Strauss who have a bizarre notion that truth was revealed through the ancient classics and that careful study of those works will lead to enlightenment so that you can lead the masses. It's bizarre.

MJ: But certainly these varieties of fundamentalism don't comprise the whole of the Republican coalition?

DM: No, there are a bunch of self-interested actors too, what I call the crony capitalists who are basically making tons of money by transferring public wealth into private coffers: the most notorious of which include the infamous Carlisle Group, Halliburton, the private security firms in Iraq. These aren't people who believe in free markets, they believe in the private exploitation of public resources, and they'll do as much of it as they can get away with. And then are neo-confederates in the Republican Party who want to restore white power, and are not very subtle about it. You have the former Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, giving interviews to Southern Partisan and lauding the accomplishments of Jefferson Davis. And then Trent Lott says that the principles of the Republican Party are the principles of Jefferson Davis. I mean, Abraham Lincoln must be rolling in his grave. Why do Democrats just let that pass? Why is any of this acceptable?

Indeed why do we let it pass? I have been hoping for someone to take the lead in the dems for some time now.

News For A Day

A bit of a mixed bag starting with...

CONSERVATISM -- REAGAN AIDE BRUCE BARTLETT FIRED FOR CRITICIZING BUSH: "In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush," conservative commentator Bruce Bartlett was dismissed yesterday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a prominent conservative research group based in Dallas. Bartlett is a former White House aide under President Reagan and the first President Bush, and had been with the Center for 10 years. The dismissal came after Bartlett supplied NCPA president John C. Goodman with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." In his next column, to be published on Wednesday, "Mr. Bartlett wrote that it is dawning on many conservatives 'that George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been,'" the New York Times reports.

Which Reagan legacy was that HUGE military spending and a deficit to go with it? Union Busting? Tax breaks for people and corporations that don't need them? All seem to be alive and well under Bush II's regime...


Now onto DMCA,RIAA and Music....

UNDERNEWS: WOMAN COUNTERSUES RIAA: "RYAN PAUL, ARSTECHNICA - There are two commodities that the RIAA has in great abundance: cash, and consumer resentment. Since the start of its concerted legal assault on digital media piracy, the RIAA has become a veritable pariah... Tanya Anderson, a 42 year old disabled single mother from Oregon, has filed a countersuit against the RIAA, in which she claims that the organization engaged in numerous crimes, including fraud, deceptive business practices, and racketeering. In addition, she claims that RIAA has been 'abusing the federal court judicial system for the purpose of waging a public relations and public threat campaign targeting digital file sharing activities.'

... According to Anderson, shortly after she received notice of the suit, she was contacted by the Settlement Support Center, which claimed that a company called Media Sentry illegally infiltrated her computer and found evidence of copyright infringement. Anderson, who has no interest in gangster rap, contested the accusation and even requested that the Settlement Support Center inspect her computer to verify her innocence.

Okay, but doesn't it get freaky? I mean what's a good rock'n'roll story if something doesn't get freaky?

Brace yourselves, this is where it really starts to get freaky.

There we go! Yeah!

In her countersuit, Anderson claims that the Settlement Support Center acknowledged the probability of her innocence, but informed her that should she refuse to settle, the RIAA would proceed with a suit in order to discourage others from attempting to defend themselves against unwarranted litigation.

That 'S a bit freaky but sounds more like just plain WRONG!

Lets have a look at the countersuit:

Despite knowing that infringing activity was not observed, the record companies used the threat of expensive and intrusive litigation as a tool to coerce Ms. Andersen to pay many thousands of dollars for an obligation she did not owe. The record companies pursued their collection activities and this lawsuit for the primary purpose of threatening Ms. Andersen (and many others) as part of its public relations campaign targeting electronic file sharing.



Anderson isn't the only one crying foul. Employees of Kim's Video and Music Store in New York claim that they were wrongfully arrested in June on bogus piracy charges when New York Police Department officials and RIAA representatives raided the store. Econoculture, a web site devoted to the defense of modern music culture, has a chilling article containing numerous allegations of egregiously unlawful behavior purportedly perpetrated by the RIAA and law enforcement agents.

According to the article, the police officers may have confiscated CD-R discs legally produced and burned by independent artists, simply because the discs did not look like the legitimate, recorded CDs distributed by RIAA member companies:

RIAA regional officer Kenneth Rivera, who worked as an undercover agent on the Kim's case, identified the store's mix tapes and CDs as piratical, testifying in an affidavit that they "listed unfamiliar company names, do not display the name of the owner of the copyright, have packaging inferior in quality when compared with legitimate discs," and because "many are recorded on CD-R media. Legitimate recordings released by RIAA member companies do not release their recording on CD-R format."

Okay these folks are just out of hand. I mean garage bands record on CD-r and by the way as soon as you create an original work you own the copyright to it (whether you register it or not).

And Finally the Religious Right...

CHRIS HEDGES, THEOCRACY WATCH, 2004 - Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the 'Christian fascists.' The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

This is one of the thing that bothers me most about the current regime and their friends. A few years ago people who were raving about how fascist and evil these people are sounded like nuts, now they are making sense and I am one of them! It's a bit frightening but so is what is happening to this country.

USATODAY.com - CIA review faults prewar plans

Intertesting that the truth comes out in little bits and pieces. This information is SOOOOO obvious yet the administration denies it 'Vehemently'.

CIA review faults prewar plans
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A newly released report published by the CIA rebukes the Bush administration for not paying enough attention to prewar intelligence that predicted the factional rivalries now threatening to split Iraq.

Policymakers worried more about making the case for the war, particularly the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, than planning for the aftermath, the report says. The report was written by a team of four former CIA analysts led by former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr.

"In an ironic twist, the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right," they write.

White House spokesman Fred Jones said Tuesday that the administration considered many scenarios involving postwar instability in Iraq. The report's assertion "has been vehemently disputed," he said.

Then-CIA director George Tenet commissioned the report after the invasion of Iraq. The authors had access to highly classified intelligence data and produced three reports concerning Iraq intelligence.

Only the third has been released in declassified form. It is published in the current issue of Studies in Intelligence, a CIA quarterly written primarily for intelligence professionals. The report was finished in July 2004 just as Tenet was ending his tenure as CIA director.

OK. It sort of makes sense.You can't plan for the post war if you can't start the war.

The report determined that beyond the errors in assessing Iraqi weaponry, "intelligence produced prior to the war on a wide range of other issues accurately addressed such topics as how the war would develop and how Iraqi forces would or would not fight."

The intelligence "also provided perceptive analysis on Iraq's links to al-Qaeda and calculated the impact of the war on oil markets.

I suppose if all you really need is a war the rest is just details.

The Circus

Hey everbody, the CIRCUS is in town! Look at the CHIMP...

FOXNews.com - Politics - Bush Spends Night in New Orleans to Promote Progress: "NEW ORLEANS — President Bush got a taste of some of New Orleans' finest attractions Monday in an effort to showcase progress in a hurricane-battered city.

The president dined at a French Quarter (search) restaurant before spending the night in a famed luxury hotel.

Hmmm... Checkin up on the progress. That's good.

The president's effort to show New Orleans is making progress came even as much of the city remains in ruins.

The historic French Quarter was mostly spared by the storm and is showing increasing signs of normalcy with lights back on and establishments re-opened.

Still, many of New Orleans' stores andnhabitable, even if mostly dry.

That sound's about right for the situation. But it seems unusually compassionate and longsighted for Bush . (Not to mention somewhat pointless.)

The president, accompanied by wife Laura, saw little of that, instead choosing to shine a spotlight on the improvements.

There we go. Folks a couple of five star restaurants and a world class hotel do not a rebuilding make.

The Worst School Disaster In US History...

Was not at Columbine. In fact it wasn't even in the last half century. In was in the 1920's in Bath, Michigan. You can get some details Here and Here.

It seems Mr. Kehoe was unhappy about the tax increase for the new school and got himself elected to the school board. When the school needed some electrical work he offered to do it to save some money. In addition to the needed wiring however he also wired the school with explosives. 45 people died, mostly students. There would have been more but not all of the explosives detonated.

So next time you hear someone complain about school violence and long for the good old days, hope they don't mean the 1920's.