JOSH POWELL - A TERRIBLY EVIL AND TRAGIC ACT!

First, understand that I was not witness to any of the following acts, and that these are my personal thoughts about the chain of events which led up to the loss of two innocent young lives... at the hands of their FATHER! (And, keep in mind that "Monday morning quarterbacks" can always call the correct plays that would have won the game for their team.) I have no special knowledge - my evaluation of this process is based soley upon information reported in the media.

I believe there were errors made from the initial missing person report of Susan Powell's "disappearance" from her home in West Valley, Utah, through the horrific ending in Washington. Most of the errors were systemic, as opposed to individual oversights/mistakes. I believed from the outset that Josh Powell had, at the very least, knowledge of what had happened to his wife. He either covered up her murder, murdered her himself, or did so in concert with his father - a voyeur, collector of 'kiddie porn', and suspected child molester. In my heart of hearts I believed that Josh Powell had personally murdered her and disposed of her body.

The first red flag was his explanation of his whereabouts the night of Susan Powell's disappearance. His story was so lame, it would have had greater credibility had he claimed she was "beamed up" by aliens! He claimed he had elected to take their sons, ages 2 and 4 at the time, camping... at midnight... in the dead of a Utah winter... during a heavy snowstorm, in sub-freezing temperatures. Would that story have had the slightest ring of truthfulness to anybody with a functioning adult mind? Of course not! But, the police must have solid evidence before they can act to arrest anyone, whereas I already had Josh Powell tried, convicted and executed (in the 'court' of my mind) from day one.

The next red flag was when it was suggested that perhaps his wife ran away... leaving her purse, cellphone and other personal effects behind. What woman would do that? (Unless... she was intentionally trying to implicate somebody in her disappearance.) But again, the police must have acceptable evidence that a crime had been committed before they can arrest anyone.
There was at least one report that the carpet in the Powell home was "still damp" at some point during the investigation. However, I heard no reports on if samples had been taken from the carpet and processed. (I have to believe that - if that report was accurate - officials [u]did[/u] take samples as evidence, and that the results were "inconclusive" at best.)
First error (in my opinion): Josh Powell was a "person of interest" in the disappearance of his wife, Susan. The question in my mind is why his status in the investigation was never upgraded from that of "person of interest" to "suspect", and why, even as a "person of interest", he was permitted to leave Utah and take up residence over 1,000 miles away?

Now to the most recent event - his murder of his two sons, and the ensuing conflagration of the home in which he was living...
Second error: The children were delivered to him at his domicile for a "supervised visit". Why was he not required to perform this "supervised visit" at the local DSHS office, under the supervision of a Child Protective Service officer? Or, at the very least, in a public place with the same supervisor? They knew they were dealing with an individual who had no real alibi for his involvement in a missing person case, and who may have been involved in that "disappearance". There was a cloak of suspicion of evil surrounding Powell - trusting him was a big mistake.

There are those who believe the social worker had some responsibility for the fate of the children. I am not one of those people. She did her job. Her only "mistake" (if one can call it that) was in allowing the children to approach and enter the house ahead of her, which gave Powell the opportunity to exclude her from entering. Do I believe the outcome would have been any diffferent had she been allowed to enter the house? Of course not! Powell had murdered before, and planned to murder his own young sons! Why would he not take the life of someone for whom he had no feelings at all? The only change in outcome would have been in the body count - +1.

According to media reports, Powell opened the door, grabbed the boys, pulled them into the house, and then closed and locked the door. The social worker than called her supervisor asking for guidance, because she had no prior experience of that kind. Personally, I believe she should have called the police first because Powell had violated the court-permitted "supervised visit". But, once again, I don't believe the outcome would have been any different had she taken a police officer with her on the visit. How much time would it take him to close and lock a door, then strike his children with an axe, and light a match? Less than a minute, I'm sure. How much time does it take for that action to fully register with the people on the other side of the door? 5-15 seconds? Then there is the procedural time wasted notifying headquarters of the act (unless the officer considered it an "exigent circumstance"). That's at least another 10-15 seconds. Then there is the banging on the door, establishing the authority and issuing commands - "This is the police! You are in violation of a court order - OPEN THIS DOOR!" More time wasted. By now the children have both been struck several times with an axe, and are probably lying on the floor unconscious, as their father lights the match that causes causes the house first to explode, and then immediately become an inferno. The lives of two innocent children were taken that day. Children whose only mistake was to (according to reports) "adore" their father... a man who was the embodiment of evil! According to reports, approximately 10 minutes elapsed between the time the children were taken by Powell, and the explosion. Apparently he felt that he had time to execute his plan - and his children - before anything could be done to stop him.

There are other suggested (ex post facto) alternate scenarios for the visit. The DSHS offices or a public place? Powell acquires a gun, takes it with him, and kills the boys and himself. Deny him visitation rights? Powell finds the boys, kidnaps them, and kills them. There was no possible "happy ending" for this story based upon what information we have at this time. The police were apparently unable to find sufficient evidence - required by the state prosecutor's office - to support the issuance of an arrest warrant. Was any evidence overlooked, or classified as irrelevant or insignificant? We don't know. What we do know is that the laws and the judicial system failed to properly protect Charles and Braden Powell, whose short lives were ended on February 5, 2012, in a final act of selfishness by their father. His final claim was that he "couldn't live without my boys", totally ignoring the fact that they could have lived without him.

My hope is that there is a special chamber in hell for Josh Powell, and those like him, where he will suffer for all time and eternity. God bless the little children, and care for their precious souls.

FBI Violent Crime Statistics vs Concealed Carry Permits

Recently released FBI Violent Crime Statistics report that "preliminary January-through-June figures showed the number of violent crimes declined 6.4 percent from the previous year, led by a 5.7 percent drop in murders and a 5.1 percent decrease in rapes. In other violent crime categories, robberies declined 7.7 percent while aggravated assaults fell 5.9 percent. The FBI's regular statistical report did not give any reasons for the lower crimes nationwide."

Is it just a coincidence that in 1980 there were only one million concealed firearm permits in the USA, and that today there are over six million concealed firearm permits issued? Is it simply another coincidence that the FBI - an agency of the currently left-wing federal government - "did not give any reasons for the lower crimes nationwide."? Or, is it possible that the leadership of the FBI, fearing reprisal from within the liberal, Marxist-Socialist Obama administration, opted not to suggest that contrary to the administration's position on gun control (which position is contrary to the Second Amendment), the vast majority of gun owners in our country are responsible, law-abiding citizens?

Eric Holder's Department of "Justice" was recently caught up in the tangled web of "Operation Fast and Furious", a government sponsored program that forced several border state gun dealers to sell some serious firearms (fully-automatic machine guns, sniper rifles, etc) to straw buyers for the Mexican drug cartels. Why? So the administration could say, "American guns are being illegally sold to, and used by, Mexican drug lords. We need more stringent restrictions on gun ownership in this country!!" The administration wasn't about to mention that those illegal gun sales were conducted at the direction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). And, by the way, the BATFE issues and controls licensing and inspections of firearms dealers. That control was used to leverage gun dealers into cooperating in "Operation Fast and Furious"... which resulted in the deaths of two federal agents, and the feds inability to account for more than half of the 2,200 firearms illegally sold under their direction. Technically, our government is probably one of - if not the - largest illegal firearms traffickers in North America!

Amendment II of the US Constitution closes with "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Therefore any modification of the 2nd Amendment is a violation of what is arguably our most important Constitutional right. The 2nd Amendment insures "We the People" have the capability to keep all the other rights.

Sculpture in front of United Nations

AP Article :"Oklahoma Druggist Arrested For Killing Holdup Man"

"OKLAHOMA CITY – Confronted by two holdup men, pharmacist Jerome Ersland pulled a gun, shot one of them in the head and chased the other away." Okay - so far, so good. Facing two armed robbers, Ersland defended his life, and the lives of fellow employees and customers, as he has every right to do. This is the serious down side of choosing a criminal lifestyle - you point a deadly weapon at somebody and they're just likely to kill you where you stand. The article continues...

"Then, in a scene recorded by the drugstore's security camera, he went behind the counter, got another gun, and pumped five more bullets into the wounded teenager as he lay on the floor." Oooops! Now we've violated the basic rule of self defense - the threat had already been neutralized (according to the report). Also, five more rounds seems a bit excessive... unless the robber was moving as if to retrieve his weapon (which we don't know). We also have the physical issue of adrenaline still flooding through Ersland's body after the experience, and possible PTSD (Ersland is a disabled Gulf War Veteran), or a "combat flashback". Nobody knows what was going on inside Ersland's head but Ersland. The video shows two men bursting in, one of them pointing a gun at Ersland and two women working with the druggist behind the counter. Ersland fires a pistol, driving the gunman from the store and hitting Parker in the head.

District Attorney David Prater said Ersland was justified in shooting 16-year-old Antwun Parker once in the head, but not in firing the additional shots into his belly. The prosecutor said the teenager was unconscious, unarmed, lying on his back and posing no threat when Ersland fired what the medical examiner said were the fatal shots.

The AP goes on to say, "Ersland, 57, is free on $100,000 bail thanks to an anonymous donor. He has won praise from the pharmacy's owner, received an outpouring of cards, letters and checks from supporters and become the darling of conservative talk radio."

"Many of those who have seen the video of the May 19 robbery attempt at Reliable Discount Pharmacy have concluded the teenager in the ski mask got what he deserved." I haven't seen this video, but I tend to agree with those folks. When a person puts on a ski mask and pulls out a pistol, then threatens somebody with it, the intended victim can reasonably assume you are capable of (and perhaps intent upon) taking somebody's life. You cannot tell a teenager from an adult when they have hidden their face under a mask - besides, a teenager with a gun can kill you just as dead as a 40 year old with a gun! By virtue of threatening to take the life of an innocent person - implied when brandishing a firearm - the criminal puts his own life in a position for potential forfeiture. Even a teenager should understand that!

Unfortunately for Ersland, the robbers weren't just teenagers... they were black teenagers. Okalhoma City should be getting a visit from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton any day now, claiming that Ersland shot the kid only because he was black - certainly not because he presented a lethal threat. Everybody knows that no self-respecting white man would ever shoot a white robber that was pointing a gun at him!

I suppose I could be wrong about all this, but, based on the information available at this time, I seriously doubt it. (If I was on the Ok City Grand Jury, I wouldn't even vote to indict Ersland, much less put him through a criminal trial.)

(Hate) Crime and Punishment - Do The Math

The Associated Press headline reads: "Trial set to begin in slaying of transgender woman". The murder took place recently in Denver, Colorado and the article goes on to say that the victim was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Then the potential seriousness of punishment for the crime is explained - "Andrade, 32, of Thorton, is scheduled to go on trial Tuesday on charges including first-degree murder and a bias-motivated crime, which could add three years to his prison sentence if convicted."

As I recall, the punishment for first-degree murder is either death or life in prison... exactly how does the court add three years to either of those punishments? Do they hold a semi-execution and then pause for three years before finishing the job? Or perhaps, after the prisoner dies of old age, they hold onto the body for an additional three years? Sound silly to you? It's no sillier than adding time to a capital crime based on the fact that you didn't particularly like something about that person. The crime is that the act of murder was committed, not the thought of committing murder! If we were to be imprisoned for our thoughts of doing something against the law, there would be few people walking around our streets. The second crime was committed by the government... in that they created such a stupid law.

I could be wrong about this... and the Constitution could be wrong about "equal protection under the law". Our government, in their infinite wisdom, has created a class that now receives special protection under the law, which is itself a violation of the Constitution.

Motive For Ill. Church Killing Suspect Elusive

It's their job, I'm sure we all realize that. After the commission of a crime, it's the function of law enforcement to look for an understandable explanation of why the crime occurred in the first place. However, the more heinous the crime, the less likely there is to be any explanation. In the case cited in my title for this post, and any other case where people kill other people that they don't even know, and who presented no perceived threat to them, there are only two possible motivations:

1. Mental illness, or

2. the doer is the personification of evil

Mental illness - as a concept - is understood by most lay persons. What is not totally understood is the root causes of many kinds of mental illness. Most mental distress isn't the result of some physical illness or bacterial infection. It stems from a series of perceived wrongs or inequities, and their accumulation and storage. Frequently that is the result of chemical imbalances in the brain. The inability to discard such perceptions, after objectively evaluating and processing them, eventually creates more psychological "weight" than the individual can bear, resulting in mental collapse.

"Objectivity" is skewed in the mentally ill, and therefore perceptions are distorted, which results in skewed objectivity, which distorts perceptions, ad infinitum. We could easily get hung up on the "chicken-egg" argument here, but it really makes no difference in the outcome. We must also understand that perception creates our "personal reality." When several people witness the same event, they each process it in their own fashion and may perceive it as totally different events. Some processing is intellectual, but all processing is colored by cultural, emotional, political and spiritual influences. Thus is our personal reality formed.

An example of this would be the so-called "Extreme Fighting" matches. To most people from civilized backgrounds these physical confrontations - for the sake of feeding egos - are seen as barbarism. Two people enter a cage and proceed to beat one another senseless (my assumption here is that they had some sense to begin with). These matches always result in the victor injuring, sometimes in maiming, and, on rare occasions, killing their opponent. There are those others who see the same event as entertainment, fun, a test of skills, heroic personal combat, etc..

The key words in the preceding two paragraphs are "perceived" and "accumulation and storage". Most people are capable of observing, processing, evaluating, and then compartmentalizing events. Some compartments are for the purpose of recall at a later time, while others are for discards - things that the person has witnessed that are either neutral influences, or negative influences. These are events that have little or no positive influence on their life, and are otherwise just burdensome.

There is disagreement within the medical and psychological communities over the possibility of somebody being evil by nature. Arguments against an "evil nature" would fall short of explaining the "motives" of people like Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacey, Richard Speck, the 9-11 terrorists, et al.

The motives behind the actions of others are not always visible to others, simply because others do not share the actors' personal reality - it's as foreign to them as Egyptian hieroglyphics would be to the vast majority of the worlds' people. Searching for motives created by a deranged mind, beyond the elimination of what the "normal mind" might see as motive, is generally a waste of time, effort and resources.

The willful taking of a human life, one that is otherwise unknown to you and presents no apparent threat to your life, is either an act of severe mental illness ... or evil personified.

I could be wrong about this, I suppose ... but you'd have to be insane to think so!