The good:
* More innocents weren’t maimed or killed.
* Thousands of people have rallied to the aid and support of the victims, their families, and the city of Boston through prayers, donations, moral and logistic support, messages of love and kinship, and assorted other tangible and intangible expressions of caring. This is one way that goodness rises from the ashes of evil, as God has shown time and time again. As Americans, we cross ideological and party lines to do this, out of concern and love.
* The two front-line Islamist terrorists were caught. Granted, one of the brothers was lost–either to the younger brother’s penchant for bad driving under stress or to police driving and shooting, depending on which “he said, she said” story that you choose to believe. Either way, 1/2 of the Islamist terrorist pair who appears to have performed the bombing is dead and won’t be continuing to cost taxpayers any more money, except for the disposal of his currently unwanted body.
* Except for one particularly vile aspect of their work that turned out to be completely unnecessary (see below), police and FBI did an amazing job at locating and capturing the younger brother alive, with the help of a concerned and observant citizen.
The bad:
* Living victims, and the friends and families of both those living and dead, will be dealing with the aftereffects for many years. We’ve seen this here in central Oklahoma as a consequence of the 1995 Murrah building bombing. The hard times will persist for some folks many years after the news moves on through the next ten thousand events.
* According to the Boston Herald and other sources, the older of the Islamist terrorists was mooching off his brainwashed, overworked, abused wife and taxpayers’ welfare support–all while in an official, classified “Terrorist Identities” database. Something is very wrong with this picture.
* What, exactly, is going on with Abdul-rahman Al-Harbi (the “now he’s deported, now he’s not” Saudi-of-interest in the bombing)? This is bizarre! And it’s being woefully uncovered by most mainstream media that is utterly failing to demand answers. The Fourth Estate is abdicating its responsibility to hold government fully accountable…again.
* Spineless, pandering Obama refuses to call this exactly what it is: Islamist terrorism. That is a complete chickensh_t stance. Just once, I’d like to hear him be duly blunt, to have the cojones to call out the faith of his ancestors–directly, forthrightly and unambiguously–for the carnage it is causing in the world and the wretched oppression of women and “infidels” it is performing today. Not 200 or 500 or 900 years ago…but today…right now. Beheadings, bombings, “honor” killings, mutilation of female parts, extreme inequality and subjugation of women in all respects, stonings, killings of numerous Christians and other “infidels”, on and on — right here in the 21st century and on worldwide scale!
The ugly:
* Some folks were killed or severely maimed. This is ugliest of all, and as a red-blooded American dad, it infuriates me that among those killed and maimed were little children.
* Police and FBI unconstitutionally barged into homes without warrants and violated a litany of citizens’ civil rights. Again, it’s good they caught the Islamist terrorists; however, they did not need to go to illegal (i.e. unconstitutional) extremes to do so. The hunt for them did and does not justify their egregious violations of Constitutional rights of innocent citizens–namely 4th (search and seizure) and 1st (right to peaceful assembly) Amendments. They shut down a large swath of a major metro area, barged into houses without warrants, and unconstitutionally ordered people to stay in their homes for a single gun-toting teenager? It’s a good thing one citizen went outside his home to check his boat.
* Illegal home invasions by authorities are just a small taste of what is to come, I suspect, in an ever-growing police state that is buying up ammo and weapons faster than can be manufactured. What happened to civil liberties in Boston strongly resembles martial law. For the most part, statists and liberals are ignoring this inconvenient truth. If this causes you no concern, fine…keep your head in the sand and keep bleating like sheep the usual straw-men about “conspiracy theorists”. I’ve offered no conspiracies–just observations. These things happened. Ignore that only if you don’t value your liberty.