As I was making my rounds today carrying out the mundane but highly technical tasks of a REMF, I chanced upon the camera gear that represents a physical connection to the last few moments of the lives of Paul Douglas and James Brolan. Their shattered equipment, which they used to record and report events in Iraq, lay broken and twisted on the floor, covered in specks of blood and pierced in various places by the shrapnel that always accompanies an IED’s concussive force in the milliseconds after the triggerman sets it off.

I do not know what ran through their minds in their last moments on this earth, but I hope they found comfort in whatever faiths they may have practiced. Death hasn’t touched me much on this deployment. The deaths of these two men did, because I had shared the same air they breathed on more than one occasion. They were observers, not combatants. They were human beings who hoped for better days for the nation and people of Iraq. They did not deserve to die.

If anything their murder hardens my resolve to support the continuation of the imperfect process that is underway here in the Middle East. The beliefs of fundamentalist fanatics willing to kill anyone by any means to achieve their personal goals and visions cannot be tolerated. I am not responsible for the turmoil that is brewing in the minds of murderers like Osama bin Laden and Musab al-Zarqawi. I only truly began to pay attention to men like them on September 11, 2001. Prior to that day, fundamentalist religious fanatics had only touched on my life in theoretical, distant ways. They were people I despised from afar but had little interest in because in my naiveté I thought they could not touch my life. On September 11, 2001 my aloof interest in religiously motivated fanaticism became much more personal, and has only grown more so as time passes and atrocities continue to be carried out.

I would rather die than submit to the type of men who are willing to kill indiscriminately to wield power, especially in the name of a higher being. How dare they tell me who God is and what God demands from me! No matter who they are or what arguments they attempt to use to justify their evil, they are wrong and must be fought. A life lived without moral boundaries is a life that burns through the lives around it like acid. These barbarians must be held back, corralled and subdued, no matter the cost. The alternative will only mean more shattered detritus speckled with blood reminding us of faces that will smile and laugh no more on this Earth.

Radley Balko has a great editorial over at Fox News.

Interestingly enough, the one statistic that bucks the trends outlined above is drug use. Drug use among adults is up fairly dramatically over the last twenty years. But drug use is one area of personal liberty the government has gotten more aggressive about policing. Which to me suggests that government efforts to control our decisions not only stifle individual freedom, they aren’t very effective.

Please take the time to read the whole thing. Nannying adults is expensive and ultimately, counter productive. When we insist that our government lead us by the hand through life, we become lazy. And because government is essentially the productive providing for the non-productive, encouraging people to be lazy over long periods of time decreases the ability of government to redistribute income from those who produce to those who do not. We are heading towards a situation in which the producers are being eaten by the non-productive. How long can a nation remain viable with such an imbalance?

Taxes are boring, complicated and designed to confuse the average person. If they weren’t, they could never have been jacked up to their current levels. I’ve been muddling my way through Neil Boortz’s Fair Tax Book for some time now. You may or may not agree with his plan, but it’s clear to many angry Americans that the time for massive tax reform is way overdue.

So anyhow, Boortz held a rally in Atlanta yesterday. Go read the report from Right Truth.

After all, who knew there would even be a thousand that would attend? Neal Boortz, the co-author of the Fair Tax Book, certainly didn’t think so himself. In fact, when Neal took the stage at about 8PM, the old curmudgeon was visibly moved. But that’s just where it all begins. Let me take you inside the event in my memory.

I hope the Fair Tax plan succeeds. Almost anything is better than the economic slavery and disincentives to achieve that have been the legacy of ruining lives gifted to us by the creators of the Internal Revenue Service. Spend a few minutes of your life assessing the Fair Tax. You may decide to throw your support behind it.

Thanks for the tip, Dale.

One of my pictures was published as the photo of the day on Defend America. I’m honored.

I’ll have more to say about Tarmiya early next month.

Every PC user should have a firewall installed. No exceptions. The one that comes with Windows XP is merely OK; it’s not exceptional. This one is better than good:

Comodo Personal Firewall is a kick-ass free firewall. It keeps hackers out and tricky unauthorized programs off the Internet. And it resists being terminated. It works as well as all but the best for-pay firewalls—and did I mention it’s free?

You can download the free firewall here (requires e-mail registration). Comodo also offers a decent and free password manager.