Here's what we pray. Here's what it means.

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

THE PRAYER to St. Michael the Archangel used to be recited after every Mass in the Catholic Church. It still is in some places, and we often take its words for granted.

Until. . . .

I don't know that we often grasp what that means -- or, at least, what it can mean -- when we routinely recite "be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil" or ". . . Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls."

Today, in Omaha at Westroads Mall, Satan and all the evil spirits were on the prowl. It is not a pretty picture we receive from the Omaha World-Herald story today:

Renee Toney was working in the gift wrap area behind the customer service counter when the gunman came off a third-floor elevator and began firing shots into the ceiling.

"He was moving very fast," she said. The shots "were very, very fast, I would say closer to 30 (shots) in all."

A supervisor called for everyone to go into a stockroom behind the customer service area, and she rushed there, the others just feet behind her.

But she was the only one of her immediate co-workers to make it to the stockroom.

"None of them made it out," Toney said. "I was up front, and everybody except me was shot. It's a blur. I don't even know how I got to the stockroom. I was the closest one to the stockroom. Within seconds, they were shot right behind me."

A supervisor later told Toney that the man had said, "Open the safe." One of the employees moved to open the safe, Toney said. "She never made it to the safe. He shot her before she made it."

When police later arrived and ushered Toney out, she said she saw blood all over the floor and as many as six bodies, some on top of each other.

Mickey Vickroy, who was wrapping gifts at customer service but out of sight of the service counter, said she heard gunshots and some yell, "Gun!"

About a dozen customer service employees ran back into a storage area.

Roxanne Philip, another customer service worker, said the gunshots were so close that it sounded like they were being fired right next to her. She said she took cover and was scared "because I thought I would be next."

Philip said she never saw the shooter, but as she left the customer service area after police arrived, she saw that a woman on the other side of the customer service counter had been shot and appeared to be dead. She said she thought her boss had been shot because she heard him moaning.

Chuck Wright, a Von Maur employee, said a co-worker who also worked in customer service described hearing the shooting break out and people running. The co-worker saw what appeared to be a customer who had been shot and heard a co-worker in customer service yelling for help.

Someone yelled, "Hold on, Fred, we'll get to you."

Another co-worker of Wright's described standing on the second floor near the escalator and looking up toward the commotion. She then saw a man with a gun lean over a third-floor railing. He then shot a man standing next to her in the head.

LET US PRAY. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. . . .

50 years later: Just a meanness in this world

From the Omaha World-Herald:

The 19-year-old shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found on the third floor of the Von Maur at Westroads Mall.

It was the deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather's 1958 rampage.

DID YOU CATCH THAT? "It was the deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather's 1958 rampage."

This month and next mark the 50th anniversary of Starkweather's killing spree across Nebraska and Wyoming, spanning December 1957 and January 1958.

I don't know what, if anything, that means. It's eerie as hell, though.

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

-- From "Nebraska,"
Bruce Springsteen, 1982,
based on Starkweather

Death . . . the final solution

A troubled 19-year-old had some scrapes with The Man, some of the final bad moves of his tortured time on Earth. Then he got fired from Mickey D's.

THAT, APPARENTLY, turned out to be the last straw for the teen authorities identified as Robert A. Hawkins -- male, Caucasian, of Bellevue, Neb. KETV, Channel 7, has the details:

Hawkins, 19, had been arrested on a couple of misdemeanors in November and was due in court this month. One charge included minor in possession of alcohol. He was arrested on Nov. 24.

Sarpy County deputies said they are getting a warrant to search Hawkins' home in the Quail Creek neighborhood in Bellevue.

The woman who owns that house at 4302 McCartey Drive, who only gave her first name of Debra, said Hawkins had a lot of emotional instability. She said she thought he was turning things around. She said he had just learned that he was fired from McDonald's.

Debra said Hawkins was coming out of his room Wednesday morning when she last saw him.

"He said he'd gotten fired and was pretty upset and said, 'This is the only way,' and we tried to talk to him," Debra said. "He was just a very troubled -- I had no idea that he was this troubled. I don't know if it was because he got fired from McDonald's."

Debra said she saw Hawkins with a gun last night and thought he and her sons were going hunting, which they did quite often.

At 4:30 p.m., Rollie Yost, in the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office, said shortly after the shooting, Hawkins' mother walked into its office with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal."

Yost said Sarpy County is working with Omaha police.

A friend of Hawkins, Shawn, told KETV NewsWatch 7 said Hawkins had been on antidepressants. He was staying with friends in Quail Creek, the friend said, and he said Hawkins had recently begun bouncing from job to job and making "some bad judgment calls." Shawn said he was shocked to hear it was the man he calls "Robbie." Shawn said he had heard through the grapevine on Wednesday that Robbie was suicidal.

Shawn said he last saw Hawkins a few months ago.

A KETV.com user e-mailed this:

"I went to school for seven years with (Hawkins) and he seemed to be a suicidal kid. During school, he would talk about killing or something along those lines."

WAS IT HAYWIRE brain chemistry, or was it a devil on his shoulder telling Robert A. Hawkins "Kill, kill, kill"?

Does it even matter? Whatever the source of the madness, the result was pure evil. The fires of Hell billowing up to Earth and into our lives.

Innocent lives snuffed out as quickly as rifle rounds could tear through flesh and bone. Death was the final solution for Hawkins, and he decided it would be the final solution for eight other Omahans he didn't know from Adam.

It seems to me that death has become our No. 1 solution for everything today.

Even for "an awesome kid," as related just now by one of his friends to a TV reporter keeping vigil outside the house where Hawkins crashed during his last days.

The friend found out this afternoon that his buddy had become Death, destroyer of worlds. TV viewers learned that this caused the lad to be "beat up about it for a while."

But then, in the span of a few hours, came the realization that "Life goes on, and I'll get through it."

Mass murder by your good bud. No biggie.

I REMEMBER reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in ninth grade, it must have been. It comes back to me in times like these, all the more as our society becomes all the more like "The horror":

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

"`The horror! The horror!'

"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt:

"`Mistah Kurtz--he dead.'

(snip)

"`His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me, `was in every way worthy of his life.'

"`And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.

"`Everything that could be done --' I mumbled.

"`Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth--more than his own mother, more than -- himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'

"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. `Don't,' I said, in a muffled voice.

"`Forgive me. I--I have mourned so long in silence--in silence. . . . You were with him -- to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . .'

"`To the very end,' I said, shakily. `I heard his very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.

"`Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. `I want--I want -- something -- something -- to -- to live with.'

"I was on the point of crying at her, `Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. `The horror! The horror!'

"`His last word -- to live with,' she insisted. `Don't you understand I loved him -- I loved him -- I loved him!'

"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

"`The last word he pronounced was -- your name.'"

OUR NAME.

Mental illness, or demons, or just plain garden-variety despair, or just plain meanness all have been constants in the human experience. What is relatively new is efficient means for maximum annihilation of those around us, as well as the mainstreaming of maximum annihilation as a way of getting our "15 minutes of fame" on our way out of this vail of tears.

The horror. Our horror.

Immense tragedy makes you do odd things

I am one of those people who notes the little absurdities and oddities amid great tragedy, how sheer urgency and a little panic makes people do odd things.

This is one of those moments and -- though I'm skating along the thin edge of propriety amid the horror of the previously unthinkable -- I did want to note one bit of media pretense and stodginess crashing to the ground and breaking into a million pieces. Because when it all hits the fan, you've got to do what you've got to do.

Like use the word "blog."

This happened at the Omaha World-Herald, which has been notoriously suspicious of this Internet thing . . . particularly the phenomenon of weblogs. In fact, "blog" (a.k.a. "live update," when the paper absolutely, positively had to commit blogging) was that Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

Until today, when immense tragedy pushed the trivial and the petty to the side, as old media and new did what they had to do. Today, instead, all of us were forced to focus on the Big Things in life.

And death.

Lone gunman, police think

The full horror of what hit this big small town -- hit it out of the blue this Christmas season, evil descending upon unsuspecting shoppers at the area's biggest mall -- is just starting to sink in as authorities begin to sort out just what the hell happened in Omaha this afternoon.

Right now, police say they think the shooter acted alone, then killed himself. At least 14 people were shot; nine are dead, including the gunman.

Asked about the camo-clad man arrested at a Westroads Mall transit center, a police spokeswoman said officers were rounding up anyone who fit early descriptions of the gunman. If the bus-stop man actually was trying to hide under a bench, and why, we don't know.

ALL WE KNOW is the cops think the shooter was alone. And dead.

According to one television report, the mass shooting may have been a murder-suicide writ large. From KETV, Channel 7:

At 4:30 p.m., Rollie Yost, in the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office, said shortly after the shooting, a woman walked into its office with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal." Yost said the note is believed to be connected to the Westroads shooting. Yost said the note contained information from a 19-year-old man.

Yost said Sarpy County is working with Omaha police.

A REPORTER on KMTV, Channel 3 spoke of the enormity of what he'd just witnessed just now starting to hit him. I think the same is happening right now for most of the 425,000 residents of this relatively prosperous, relatively peaceful city on the edge of the Great Plains.

Stuff like this doesn't happen here. But now it has, and we have to deal with it.

Merry Christmas.

Newspaper: Nine dead at Omaha mall

The Omaha World-Herald reports nine dead in the wake of a shooting spree at Omaha's Westroads Mall. Police just confirmed this.

VARIOUS TV REPORTS still have one gunman dead inside Von Maur department store, and at least one suspect arrested outside the mall, apparently after attempting to hide under a bus-stop bench.

The suspect arrested fit the description of the shooter -- a black man wearing a camouflage jacket. Police are saying the shooter is among the nine dead.

All hell breaks loose a mile down the road

A sniper's gunshots shredded "peace on Earth and goodwill to men" in an Omaha mall filled with Christmas shoppers today, not long after President Bush flew out of this Midwestern city.

SHOTS STARTED ringing out in the Von Maur department store at Westroads Mall about 1:30 this afternoon . . . roughly. The Omaha World-Herald is reporting five dead and at least a dozen wounded.

Various television reports say either one or two suspected gunmen have been arrested, with police radio traffic indicating there also might be a gunman dead inside the store, shot by his own hand. Naturally, all is chaos at the moment, all reports are pretty sketchy, and no one knows precisely what we're dealing with, here.

I do know this: One gunman equals a nut; two equal a plot. And where there's a plot, there might be an incident of terrorism. Maybe.

May God have mercy on the souls of the dead, and grant peace and consolation to their families. And may He grant healing and peace to the wounded.

People are stupid

In case you had any lingering illusions that people might be smarter than they actually are, you need to read this post.

That means you, dear.

YES, Mrs. Favog, Kellie Pickler really is as with it as a sack of sand -- it's not an act -- and her number is legion. And apparently quite a few short-bus riders live in and around Rayville, La.

Here is a story from Tuesday's edition of the Monroe News-Star and neither they, nor I, are making this stuff up:

A Rayville man was sentenced to more than four years in prison after he helped his wife pose as a CIA agent and they swindled more than half a million dollars from friends and family.

Brent Eric Finley, 38, of Rayville, was sentenced Monday in federal court in Monroe to serve 51 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

His wife, Stacey Finley, was sentenced in August to spend 63 months in prison and both are ordered to jointly pay restitution in the amount of $873,786.94. Both were convicted on wire fraud charges.

U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said the case began after officials received information that the Finley’s had devised a scheme to defraud their friends and family of money.

The couple reportedly convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims’ bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems.

After the medical problems were detected, the Finley’s convinced their victims that secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment.

F*** The Golden Compass

I don't want to hear another thing about the evils of the flick aimed at making your kid an atheist -- namely The Golden Compass.

Oh, no. I'm not defending the film. Philip Pullman has been quite explicit in what he's all about. To wit, "My books are about killing God." And The Golden Compass is based on the first in a trilogy of Pullman's God-killing books.

If you're a Christian, and you have kids, and you send them off to see The Golden Compass, that's what you're getting.

"My books are about killing God." And about portraying a fictionalized, twisted version of the Catholic Church in a horrible light. That's what I'm saying.

Still, it's a free country, and New Line Cinema is free to make toxic films about toxic subject matter -- just as Americans are free to poison their minds and their souls. Willingly or ignorantly.

Free will reigns supreme. Free will . . . a gift to mankind by the deity Phil Pullman thinks he can "kill," because He's already dead or, more precisely, never existed.

BUT I'M NOT HERE to talk about that. I'm here to rip the boycotters a new one.

Like I said, I don't want to hear another thing about The Golden Compass. Especially from Christians.

Why is that?

That's because being against stuff is not enough -- our faith is no mere negation of whatever peeves Christians at the moment.

That's also because Christians -- and their denuded culture -- have been too dense, shortsighted, narrow-minded and intellectually sclerotic to come up with much that's any better for the past 20 years, ever since Walker Percy penned his last novel, The Thanatos Syndrome.

Even then, I've had a Catholic bookstore manager tell me a priest once warned him not to stock those "dirty" Percy novels. Ah, Jansenism . . . the heresy that keeps on puckering you up, Buttercup.

Likewise, when Flannery O'Connor was still cranking out masterpiece short stories, all the little old ladies wanted to know why she couldn't write something "nice."

Well, Christians can't create stuff that's uniformly "nice" and inoffensive because that inevitably leads to a flaccid catalog of mediocre crap. Propaganda for Jesus, as it were. And if Jesus needs an army of hack propagandists to do His bidding, He isn't worthy of our worship.

CHRISTIANS ARE OBLIGED to illuminate the truth, which will lead to the Truth.

I say "obliged" quite deliberately. We are "obliged" to be witnesses to the truth, which often neither is nice nor inoffensive, because He Who was Truth hung on a cross until He was dead to ransom our sorry asses out of a Hell of our own choosing.

And I guess -- so far as our sins ended up being the death of Jesus . . . each and every one of us, Christ killers all -- Philip Pullman really is "killing God" with every book he foists off on a lemminglike public. But he couldn't -- and can't -- stop Easter Sunday. The tomb is still empty.

Mr. Pullman is obliged to create art which reflects the truth. Instead, he spins clever tales of the Big Lie.

Christians are obliged to create beautiful things, provocative works, great art that is true to themselves and true to the Truth. Instead, by and large, the world gets vapid junk in the name of Jesus.

FRANKLY, I think crap for Christ is way worse than broadsides against Christ. With broadsides against Christ, at least you can consider the source.

But when you have Christians' cultural defecations in Christ's holy name -- Left Behind, anyone? Or those truly pious and truly awful "classic" Catholic films on EWTN? -- it's easy for people to get the idea that Christ is shit. Philip Pullman couldn't pull that one off in his wildest atheist dreams.

Of course, you won't be hearing a recitation of this particular rant on Catholic radio. Or on your local evangelical "praise and worship" station. Or on the Catholic News Service wire.

See, I said a bad word. I wasn't being pleasant. Some superannuated citizen might be taken with the vapors . . . no matter how therapeutic those vapors might ultimately be.

Walker Percy, pray for us.

Flannery O'Connor, you pray, too.

A matter of perspective

This from The Washington Post is enough perspective to put me squarely on the side of the world on this question.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Are You Dumber Than a Box of Rocks?

Bless her heart, I'm sure past American Idol finalist Kellie Pickler is a fine singer and a sweet girl. And her life story is an inspiring tale of overcoming long, long odds.

BUT GODAMIGHTY, how did that girl graduate from North Stanly High School in New London, N.C.?

Seriously, y'all, somethin' ain't right there. And after watching this clip from Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, I'm thinking love child of Ernest T. Bass and Charlene Darling.

Or somethin' like that.

Beer makes you stupid

It's official: According to this Associated Press story, college students really are stupider than a bunch of chimpanzees.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence.

When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do," said Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The center studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate in the new study.

BUT LET'S SEE how smart that chimp would be if he'd downed half a bottle of wine, 11 beers and two mixed drinks today.

Uh huh. Damn straight.

Video of the week

Pick the version of events in the Saga of the Michigan Man you care to believe, but what it all came down to was LSU Coach Les Miles pulling the plug on an old, dear dream that was threatening to sink the football dream of a bunch of young men. His young men -- LSU Men.

And their dream did not die amid an ESPN hellstorm, nor did it die when a crippled up Louisiana State squad took on Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference title game.

NOW THE MICHIGAN MAN and his LSU Men -- after the most improbable chain of insane events during a wild and woolly season-finale weekend -- chase a renewed dream. A national championship. A dream so far out of reach that its sudden resurrection was marginally less stunning than ol' Lazarus stumbling out of his tomb a couple of millennia ago.

On one hand, the old Michigan Man can't go home again. Neither can many of us.

Things change, dreams die painful deaths and, sometimes, better ones show up after the funeral is concluded and the dearly departed's memory has been toasted.

Les Miles has a national championship to win against -- deliciously for an old Michigan Man -- the Ohio State University. And win it he just might.

As an LSU Man. Geaux Tigers.

Fans have Miles to go to be worthy of Les

MSNBC news item:

Les Miles insists he will remain LSU’s football coach despite all the speculation he would bolt for Michigan.

“I am the head coach at LSU. I will be the head coach at LSU,” Miles said Saturday. “I have no interest in talking to anybody else.”

LSU athletic director Skip Bertman said Miles and LSU chancellor Sean O’Keefe already have worked out a contract “they’re happy with,” but it has not yet been signed.

Wearing a purple tie, standing and gesturing, Miles angrily made his announcement two hours before the No. 5 Tigers played No. 14 Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference championship game.

“I’ve got a championship game to play, and I’m excited about the opportunity of my damn strong football team to play,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that I had to address my team with that information this morning.

Miles said an erroneous ESPN report that he was going to Michigan prompted him to speak to his players and the media.

“I represent me in this issue, please ask me after. I’m busy,” he said.

Here are some selected comments following the Times-Picayune story about Miles staying:

* DAMN..DAMN YOU SKIP!!! LET HIM GO ..DAMN!!

* he only wins because he has sabans recruits ...... you give him a new contract and then he starts losing ....... idiots .....

* OH NOOOOOOOOOOOO, Let Him GOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* Big Frank , as others, that , ley's face it, when Saban's recruits are gone, so is the dream! Miles is NOT a Coach by any means. He is where he is because he has been able to get 110% out of Saban's guys. Predictions are no better than 7-5 next year and that's on the high end. One more thing, Saban or Spurrier was here. Perrilloux's Hoodlum azz would be GONE!

GOOD GRIEF. I'll say here what I said over on the T-P:

How come no one ever bitched about Nick Saban winning with Gerry DiNardo's recruits? All some gobstopperingly moronic LSU fans want to do is run off a coach who has put together three straight 10-win seasons, something that even the Almighty Saban couldn't do.

If that's how you treat Les Miles, who the hell with any sense would WANT to come to LSU . . . except to get a sweet contract, make some money, bolster the resume and gut it out in a Third World country for three years before hauling butt to greener pastures.

Miles is displaying a little loyalty to Louisiana -- probably foolishly, being the man DOES have a wife and school-age kids to worry about. Any look at all the good rankings and the bad ones will tell you that Louisianians regularly manage to do what even a dog won't -- s*** in his own bed.

And the coach you want to run off still sticks with LSU and with Louisiana. I hope his compensation package amply takes that into account.

Frankly, as a Louisiana native and LSU grad who in 1988 hauled butt to Nebraska (where government generally works and people generally care), I am thrilled that my "other team" is getting Bo Pelini. Y'all didn't want him, but he's going to go to work for Tom Osborne down in Lincoln, and he's going to win, and win, and win, and win some more.

Suckers.

The tragedy of Louisiana is that people who are so idiotic as to want to run off a perennial 10-win coach probably aren't a tiny group of fringe lunatics.

The bigger tragedy of Louisiana is that people that damn stupid are allowed to vote. And it shows.

Jena: The gift that keeps on giving

The latest installment in Nooses Across America, this time from the Omaha World-Herald:

The U.S. Army Reserve is investigating allegations that an officer hung a noose in the Council Bluffs office of an African-American sergeant and Iraq war veteran, Army officials said Friday.

Sgt. Tiffany Robinson filed a complaint alleging that her commander, 1st Lt. Harold Hessig, a part-time reservist who also works as a Bellevue police detective, left a rope tied in a noose hanging from a pipe in their office in October.

Robinson, who served in Iraq with the Reserve's 784th Transportation Company, requested transfer to a new assignment, saying she felt that her civil rights had been violated.

"I felt it very offensive and psychologically damaging. I don't feel safe," she wrote in the complaint sent to Army Reserve officials.

Except to confirm that an investigation is in progress, Reserve officials declined to comment Friday.

"There is a formal investigation into these allegations that is currently under way. Until that is complete, we can't comment on the case," said Lt. Col. Kathy Klein, spokeswoman for the Reserve's 89th Regional Readiness Command in Wichita, Kan., which oversees Nebraska Reserve units.

Hessig did not return calls to the Bellevue Police Department seeking comment. A home phone listing for him had been disconnected.

Bellevue Police Chief John Stacey said that in light of the Army investigation, the department has opened an internal investigation into Hessig's actions. He remains on duty while the inquiry continues, Stacey said.

In Hessig's 7½ years with the Police Department, no complaints have been lodged against him, Stacey said. He said Hessig had compiled an "exemplary record."

Stacey said Hessig left the department in 2004 to serve with the Army Reserve in Afghanistan, returning in 2006.

"I'm a little shocked they'd consider him at the center of this," the chief said. "I think they'll probably find out they've got the wrong guy, but that's what investigations are for. We'll find out."

According to her complaint, Robinson walked into her Reserve office in October to find Hessig and another soldier fashioning a noose out of a piece of rope that Robinson had found earlier in a file cabinet.

Robinson said she felt uncomfortable and left the office but "brushed it off" after she returned and didn't see the noose anywhere.

She said she found the noose hanging from a heating pipe in the office the following Monday.

"I don't know what the intentions were behind it or if it was racial at all, but I am very offended. I don't feel safe at home or at work," Robinson wrote in her complaint. "I don't think Lt. Hessig would intentionally do anything to hurt me, but under the circumstances I can't be 100 percent sure."

Robinson said she received several apologies from Hessig but that his attempts at reconciliation began to worry her when he showed up unannounced at her home.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful . . .

But the music inside's delightful. So what the hell do we care? Let it sleet, let it snow, let everything ice over.

BUT NOT the power lines. We need the juice to listen to the Revolution 21 podcast, right?

And heat. Heat is good as we go into December, here.

That's right, we're bracing for an ice storm here in Omaha, but your Mighty Favog has got enough good music to keep us all warm.

Again . . . so long as the electricty and the Internet connection holds out. Let us pray. . . .

Don't feed us a line, show us the pictures

Omaha's police chief says nuh uhhhh, one of his officers did too shoot a teen-age suspect in the front of the leg, not the back, because the kid did too aim his gun at the pursuing policeman.

Marcel Davis Jr.'s lawyer, Bill Gallup, had alleged the Omaha cop gunned his client down from behind, saying the teen reported having thrown the gun away before he got shot. Here's the latest report from the Omaha World-Herald:

Photos from a medical examination of the gunshot wound sustained by a 14-year-old boy showed the bullet entered the front of the boy's leg, not the back, Police Chief Thomas Warren said today.

Warren offered the information in light of a statement made Thursday by J. William Gallup, the attorney for Marcel Davis Jr. Davis was in court after he was accused of pointing a gun at a police officer as he was being chased from a car that police had stopped near 48th and Boyd Streets.

The police officer, Nicholas Andrews, fired at Davis, hitting him once in the leg. A loaded 9 mm pistol was found at the scene. The gun was reported stolen June 2.

Davis was charged Thursday with attempted first-degree assault on an officer, use of a firearm to commit a felony and possession of a stolen firearm. Douglas County Judge Stephen Swartz set bail at $100,000. Davis would have to post 10 percent, or $10,000, to be released.

Gallup, after Thursday's court hearing for Davis, said his client told him that the bullet pierced his right calf. "He was shot in the back of the leg, not front," Gallup said.

Warren said today that's not what crime lab photographs from the medical exam show.

According to the photos, Warren said, "the entry was to the front of the leg, to the shin area, approximately 4 inches below the kneecap . . . There was no entry sustained to the rear or the calf area.

"There is no injury to the rear of his leg."

Gallup, when contacted today, said he isn't disputing the medical report. "My client said he got hit in the rear area of the leg," he said. "His position is that he was running away. He did not point a gun at the policeman."

Gallup said that Davis told him he threw the gun in some bushes as he got out of the car because he didn't want to get caught with a gun. Gallup said witnesses would confirm that account.

Officer Bill Dropinski, a police spokesman, said today that the gun was found near Davis when he was apprehended, "not back by the car."

Gallup said police are taught to shoot assailants in the chest because that's the biggest target. Andrews, he said, shot Davis in the leg "either because he's a poor shot or he was simply trying to stop a guy he was chasing . . . He did not perceive the kid to be a threat, he was just hitting him in the leg to halt his flight."

I LOVE THE SMELL of a good pissing match in the afternoon. Then again, no, I guess I don't . . . ewww. Whom do you believe?

In one corner, we have one of the best criminal-defense attorneys in the Midwest, working like hell on behalf of a client who screwed up but good. You pretty much know the kid is guilty of something.

A good defense attorney usually doesn't go off half-cocked when it matters. Or if he does, it's usually calculatingly half-cocked. And he says he has witnesses, who at the time also complained to local TV reporters that the officer had no reason to shoot the kid.

In the opposite corner, you have Tom Warren, chief of the troubled Omaha Police Department. Bill Gallup is a better lawyer than Tom Warren is a police chief.

Warren presides over a department that's had a problem with rogue cops and a culture of intimidating minorities and, sometimes, brutality. More than one -- more than two . . . more than three -- African-Americans in Omaha have been shot and killed by police under questionable circumstances over the past 35 years or so.

And recently, one Omaha cop was convicted of sexual assault on a local prostitute.

Despite all this, Warren and the mayor's office are quick to completely exonerate police whenever anyone complains about their actions and completely demonize the complainer. All before anyone -- even OPD internal-affairs officers -- has had a chance to thoroughly investigate anything.

THE OMAHA COP SHOP has problems. The teen-aged knucklehead has problems -- big ones -- not counting the two he's had since conception. Whom do you believe?

Is "None of the above" an option?

Here's the bottom line: If Tom Warren wants us to believe his version of the truth, he needs to pony up the medical report and the accompanying pictures. He also needs a third-party investigation to vouch for his officer's actions.

Because while a little hoodlum who got on the wrong end of some hot lead from an Omaha cop may have little to no credibility, what emanates from Omaha police headquarters nowadays scarcely has more.

Back. Of. The. Leg.

Click on picture for video.

Whadda you know. Baby might have been telling the truth, after all.

And the Omaha Police Department just might have stepped in it. Again. Because it's starting to look like some officers just might think they have Negro-hunting licenses. Maybe.

According to the attorney representing Marcel Davis, Jr., police shot the 14-year-old in the back of the calf. Davis said he was running from the cops and had thrown his stolen gun away after bailing from the vehicle in which he rode.

Omaha cops and the county attorney say he pulled a gun on the officer, and the cop did what he had to do.

PERHAPS IT'S POSSIBLE to get shot in the back of the leg by a cop while you're pointing your handgun at him, but only if you're really, really into yoga or happen to be Nadia Comăneci. Or, at least, so it seems to me.

The Omaha World-Herald covers Davis' first court appearance:

Davis was shot in the leg by Officer Nicholas Andrews near 48th and Boyd Streets. Davis had run from a Chrysler Cirrus that Andrews and Officer Alan Peatrowsky stopped after they spotted the car being driven without its headlights on and with an expired license plate.

During the foot chase, police said, Davis turned and pointed a gun at Andrews, and Andrews fired at Davis hitting him once in the leg. He was treated at Creighton University Medical Center.

The firearm that Davis is accused of carrying is a Smith & Wesson 9 mm pistol that was reported stolen on June 2.

Gallup said Davis told him that he had tossed the gun in the bushes and ran from police. He also told Gallup that the bullet pierced his right calf.

"He was shot in the back of the leg, not front," Gallup said.

IT'S NOT LIKE Omaha police have a great track record in this area, with fatal shootings that sparked a major riot back in the day and almost got us there a decade ago. Not to mention this, of course.

Oh, before I go, I just wanted to note that Baby's daddy's baby mama is still a freakin' piece of work. And the rest of that fractured whateveryoucallit, too:

Before the court hearing, Alethea Goynes, the boy's mother, got into a shouting argument with the girlfriend of Marcel Davis Sr. just outside the courtroom. Security escorted the girlfriend outside.

POOR KID probably never had a chance. And now look at him. I almost wish that, instead of locking up Baby, we could instead lock up the pair who sired and whelped him, then called it good.

And then maybe the court could send that benighted duo's most unfortunate offspring to Girls and Boys Town for a chance at a do-over.

The public airwaves: Existing so that petty people can do some score-settling

Guglielmo Marconi would be so proud. I know I am.

WHICH WILL EXPLAIN my projectile vomiting the next time I hear anyone allude to radio operating in the public interest. It'll probably also explain that person's nose growing longer and longer, right before your very eyes.

Here's the vomitous sludge from the New York Post's "Page Six" column:

All those politically correct types who piled on last April when Don Imus went down for making his bad "nappy-headed ho's" joke had better duck and cover on Monday, when the I-Man goes back to work on WABC Radio.

"I think he will have some scores to settle," the station's general manager, Phil Boyce, told Page Six yesterday.

It is doubtful Imus will ever forgive CBS chief Les Moonves, who fired him, or regular guest Tim Russert, the host of NBC's "Meet the Press," who was "an invisible man" while Imus was under attack.

Private eye Bo Dietl, who will join Imus in the 8 a.m. hour on Monday, also named Harold Ford Jr. and Al Roker as two Imus regulars who abandoned him in his hour of need. "They turned their backs on him so fast," Dietl said yesterday. "Al Roker had his stomach stapled - he should have had his mouth stapled."

One longtime listener wondered, "Will Imus ever give Newsweek editors another chance to plug their books on his show since they cut and ran when Al Sharpton started his crusade to get him off the air?"

Dietl said Imus' controversial remark "brought attention to that Rutgers basketball team. They really benefited. It turned out to be a positive thing." Dietl expects "a kinder, gentler Imus" next week, "but I don't know how long that will last."

It's beginning to look a lot like . . .

Christmas!

Victory! This just in:

WBRZ Channel 2 has learned that LSU has decided to change the name of its annual holiday centerpiece back to "Christmas Tree."

The university had chosen to change the name to "Holiday Tree" to be as "inclusive as possible of all cultures and religions, as the LSU community is very diverse," according to a statement issued by Kristine Calongne, director of media relations at LSU.

"However, it is true that the tree is, in fact, a Christmas tree, and we are happy to call it such," the statement said.