Look, I dislike Michelle Malkin as much as anyone, but is it necessary to call her "hideous?" If you intended to say that her opinions are hideous, maybe you should make that more clear.

I'm reposting a comment I made on the Blog Report item:

This NYT article (link below) details what happened in the German class. There was initial panic as Cho opened the door and immediately started firing; then he left, they rallied and held him off when he returned. Two were injured when Cho shot through the door.

Male and female students alike acted heroically.

So all you Rambo wannabes out there, STFU.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/us/18german.html?hp

there are people just as crass and oblivious to the world as you. What a sigh of relief you must have exhaled when you realized that you could turn the argument from your ridulous views on the President to someone elses more ridiculous views on the victims.

And you get to have another round in your ongoing cat fight with Malkin!

Time for makeup and Scarborough.

One antigun cliche I've often been confronted with is that attempting to use a gun in self defense will likely result in it's being taken away and turned against one. One survivor did state the gunman even stopped and reloaded while in a classroom filled with intended victims. I think it's fair to ask why didn't his guns get taken away?

Apparently Joan can't come up with a factual, logical rebuttal to the pro-self-defense crowd so she just falls back on name-calling.

Look, I dislike Michelle Malkin as much as anyone, but is it necessary to call her "hideous?"

For this one, I do. That was simply beyond the pale. What an evil piece of trash. No hometraining, no moral boundaries, nothing.

I hope she never has to face that situation. Then maybe she'd learn some human empathy. The students blocked the doors. A faculty memebr died blocking the doors. They didn't expect that assault. Hindsight is 20/20 these days. What part of MENTALLY ILL did this vicious child miss.

I'm on the STFU train for the others as well. Have some respect.

No matter what anyone says all the survivors will wonder what they could have done differently.

One survivor did state the gunman even stopped and reloaded while in a classroom filled with intended victims. I think it's fair to ask why didn't his guns get taken away?

Could it be due to fear? It takes a certain person (probably with a certain amount of training) to go up towards a guy who has shown to use lethal force. Unlike the people on Flight 93, most of these students did not have time to think out a plan of counterattack.

They were in the moment. They reacted the way they did. They will have to live with those memories for the rest of their lives, not just what they did or did not do but just the experience. Instead of questioning their actions or questioning their manhood, can we maybe show them a little sympathy given the fact that they just survived a tragedy? It's going to take them awhile to just be able to function in a normal setting. Let's not berate them for their actions in a completely screwed-up situation.

Please, it doesn't matter whether he stopped to load, who did what or when or whatever. People were shot. Dead. To somehow say that the victims of this tragedy are to blame for the fact that they are dead is beyond the pale.

No one 9-11 deserved to die, no matter how bad US policy in the middle east is and was.

No one at Virginia Tech deserved to die and nothing the individuals did or did not do has any bearing on their deaths.

To get bogged down in semantics of gun control laws, self-defense or whether Malkin is hideous or just her opinions are is to cloud the issue:

Malkin and her ilk are saying that it is those students fault for dying.

PEace

One survivor did state the gunman even stopped and reloaded while in a classroom filled with intended victims. I think it's fair to ask why didn't his guns get taken away?

First: reloading a semiautomatic takes a matter of seconds. They're designed that way, so that police don't have to fiddle and fumble with ammunition clips and let criminals get the jump on them.

Second: Shock? Panic? Fear for your life? I think seeing your professors' and friends' blown to pieces might cause even the strongest people to simply shut down out of a survival instinct. Let me tell you from an unfortunately personal viewpoint: there isn't much left of a human head after it's been hit with bullets. By the accounts of the physicians treating the wounded, the killer was particularly savage in the number of times he fired on individuals.

This isn't the movies, and while there are some people who will react differently, I suspect the natural human reaction for the vast majority of us is incomprehensible terror, and a subsequent inability to do anything other than try to get the fuck out of the way.

I just figured out why the articles on Salon.com are driving me crazy lately. I have read Salon for years I always felt that Salon offered responsible journalism. I know there is a left-wing bias here, but I thought I could depend on the editors and writers to maintain some objectivity. But lately it seems Salon is all about spouting left-wing views, or just disagreeing with anything from the right. And now this from Joan:

"But if you ever find yourself wondering why liberals are so often out-shouted in the public sphere, even though most Americans agree with their politics, remember this moment. It isn't easy to compete with wingnuts who will say absolutely anything to make their points."

Joan, I for one do not want you to compete with the wingnuts. I want Salon to report the news and to offer objective insight, not play the offense against everything every right-wing blogger says, or parrot the liberal party line. I want Salon to examine the issues objectively, like reasonable, intelligent people.

In the meantime - does anyone else have suggestions on where I can find objective news and opinion pieces similar to the old Salon?