High school musical student council

Who's ready to be president from Day One? The Hill provides some inadvertent insight on that question:

In one instance Clinton appeared to gauge Obama’s response before showing her own.

When Bush warned the Iranian government that “America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf” Obama jumped up to applaud. Clinton leaned across Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), seated to her left, to look in Obama’s direction before slowly standing.

The Illinois senator strongly criticized the former first lady last year when she supported a resolution calling for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be designated a terrorist organization. Obama supporters and other Democrats charged the vote would give Bush political cover to begin military operations against Iran.

MAKING UP your own mind on things is a trait I think most Americans would like their president to possess. Waiting to see what your opponent does to see whether it's OK for you to do it, too, is just so . . . well . . . high school.

Then again, maybe part of our problem is that so much of presidential politics -- and American governance in general -- is just so "high school."

That certainly would explain how my fellow Democrats got to be so monolitihic about the notion that encouraging the killing of babies in their mothers' wombs is passable public policy.

Because the Packers lost. . . .

This is so messed up, I don't know where to start.

But an Omaha television station is reporting, citing multiple sources, that a 21-year-old college student died . . . was murdered . . . because the Green Bay Packers lost to the New York Giants.

YOU READ correctly: KMTV, citing its sources and police reports, says 19-year-old Kyle Bormann had been watching the ball game, getting liquored up and getting madder by the minute. And then, say the station's sources, he decided that because the Packers sucked, someone in Omaha was going to die:

Why would anyone gun down a random women in a drive-thru? Until now, few knew. Multiple sources shed light on the shocking evidence. Evidence, that the Green Bay Packers losing playoff performance, could be one of many things that motivated Kyle Bormann to allegedly kill Brittany Williams.

Picking up dinner for her father, Brittany Williams dies in a drive-thru. Eight-thirty on January 20th, a bullet rips through her car, killing her instantly. Police say Kyle Bormann pulled the trigger on a high-powered rifle one hundred yards up 30th Street from the Florence fast-food restaurant.

According to police booking sheets, Bormann had been drinking before the murder. Multiple sources tell Action 3 News the drinking coincided with watching the Green Bay Packers, New York Giants football game. At some point during the game, Action 3 News sources confirm Bormann became enraged with the Packers' poor play. His anger mixed with alcohol, they say, led him to leave home, go to the Florence neighborhood and randomly kill Brittany Williams.

GREEN BAY, we have a problem.

I can understand getting mad and killing the TV. Stupid . . . but understandable. But drunkenly deciding that a young woman, an honor student, must die because the Packers lost?

I have no words for that.

If all this is true, here's to a 19-year-old loser's new favorite football team . . . the Mean Machine.

A messiah with clay feet

Some people never learn. It's bad when one of those people is "The Decider."

Here's President Bush from tonight's State of the Union address:

This is the business of our Nation here at home. Yet building a prosperous future for our citizens also depends on confronting enemies abroad and advancing liberty in troubled regions of the world.

Our foreign policy is based on a clear premise: We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace. In the last 7 years, we have witnessed stirring moments in the history of liberty. We have seen citizens in Georgia and Ukraine stand up for their right to free and fair elections. We have seen people in Lebanon take to the streets to demand their independence. We have seen Afghans emerge from the tyranny of the Taliban to choose a new president and a new parliament. We have seen jubilant Iraqis holding up ink-stained fingers and celebrating their freedom. And these images of liberty have inspired us.

In the past 7 years, we have also seen images that have sobered us. We have watched throngs of mourners in Lebanon and Pakistan carrying the caskets of beloved leaders taken by the assassin’s hand. We have seen wedding guests in blood-soaked finery staggering from a hotel in Jordan, Afghans and Iraqis blown up in mosques and markets, and trains in London and Madrid ripped apart by bombs. And on a clear September day, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens taken from us in an instant. These horrific images serve as a grim reminder: The advance of liberty is opposed by terrorists and extremists — evil men who despise freedom, despise America, and aim to subject millions to their violent rule.

Since September 11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to the enemies of America.

THE OVERREACHING MESSIANISM of the first part of that quotation from Bush ensures that we will "stay on the offense" for decades to come, because -- as did the leadership and much of the membership of al Qaida, as did the leadership and much of the membership of countless warring Iraqi militias -- people all over the world often choose a future of oppression and violence.

The utopianism of universal democracy spreading across the globe -- across wildly divergent cultures, across staggering chasms between rich and poor, developed lands and backward ones -- denies the reality of the Fall and the sovereignty of God Almighty every bit as much as did the Communist utopianism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

These past five years, our messianic, American utopianism has not fared well against the hard, fallen reality of Iraq -- given free and fair elections, Iraqis did not elect generally secular, generally moderate men and women to high office. They elected Shiite goons, and they reaped nationwide ethnic cleansing and terror.

And we are still there, reaping the whirlwind in an unwise, unjust and unsustainable war.

AGAIN, the President of the United States:

America is a force for hope in the world because we are a compassionate people, and some of the most compassionate Americans are those who have stepped forward to protect us. We must keep faith with all who have risked life and limb so that we might live in freedom and peace. Over the past 7 years, we have increased funding for veterans by more than 95 percent. As we increase funding, we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation. I call on the Congress to enact the reforms recommended by Senator Bob Dole and Secretary Donna Shalala, so we can improve the system of care for our wounded warriors and help them build lives of hope, promise, and dignity.

Our military families also sacrifice for America. They endure sleepless nights and the daily struggle of providing for children while a loved one is serving far from home. We have a responsibility to provide for them. So I ask you to join me in expanding their access to childcare, creating new hiring preferences for military spouses across the Federal Government, and allowing our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children. Our military families serve our Nation, they inspire our Nation, and tonight our Nation honors them.

SEE ABOVE. How wonderful it would have been if the fool residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. had realized a few cold, hard facts of life.

Perhaps then . . . oh forget it.

With Science on Our Side

The trouble with reporters comes when they don't know what they don't know.

COME TO THINK of it, that's the same trouble Pope Benedict XVI is trying to warn people about when it comes to putting undue faith in "science." Basically, the pope is trying to say that science is a grand thing when it's limited to its areas of competence.

The human heart and soul are not among these.

And it's when the pope starts to speak of such things -- and of the limitations of scientific competence -- that it really becomes obvious that, also, there are limits to the competence of journalists. Well, obvious to lots of people but, sadly, not to one Reuters reporter, who just doesn't get it at all:

Pope Benedict warned on Monday of the "seductive" powers of science that relegate man's spirituality, reviving the science-versus-religion debate which recently forced him to cancel a speech after student protests.

"In an age when scientific developments attract and seduce with the possibilities they offer, it's more important than ever to educate our contemporaries' consciences so that science does not become the criteria for goodness," he told scientists.

Scientific investigation should be accompanied by "research into anthropology, philosophy and theology" to give insight into "man's own mystery, because no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going," the Pope said.

(snip)

The Pope reiterated a plea, made in many speeches since he was elected in 2005, for mankind to be "respected as the centre of creation" and not relegated by more short-term interests.

But the conservative German-born Pope's public stand on issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research lead critics to accuse him of holding antiquated views on science.

WHAT SCIENCE vs. religion debate? Saying that science is not well suited to diagnose the longings of the human heart and the troubles of the human soul isn't exactly a reprise of the Scopes "monkey trial." It's just stating the obvious -- some things belong to the realms of philosophy and theology.

And anyone who has a problem with that just doesn't know what he doesn't know.

Of course, the Reuters guy isn't the first member of the Fourth Estate to epitomize the Peter Principle. Last night, I was watching the last half of "No Direction Home," Martin Scorsese's public-TV biopic of Bob Dylan. Trust me, there's not much funnier than the press putting its utter cluelessness on display (above) before the world -- and Mr. Dylan -- in 1965.

Google "Dylan" "press conference" and "1965" and watch the whole thing. You won't be sorry you did.

3 Chords & the Truth: It's Carnival time

Eat, drink and be merry, for Wednesday after next starts Lent.

So, on this latest episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, we're picking up where this week's Four Songs left off . . . and we're partying in New Orleans. Well, at least virtually.

Down in the Crescent City, they're working up to the Big Finish of Carnival time -- Mardi Gras. (That's "Fat Tuesday" for the Gallic-challenged among us.) Now is the time when you make a little more merry than usual as we fast head toward Ash Wednesday -- Feb. 6 this year -- when the six weeks of Lent begin.

Lent, basically, is a time of penance for Christians, a time when we take stock of the Important Things and show that we're reallyreallyreallyreally sorry for all the really inventive (and mundane) ways we've managed to royally screw up the past 12 months. And then we try to do better, as we head for Easter, the great feast celebrating Christ's victory over death -- the happy ending to Good Friday, the day our sins got nailed to the cross with our Savior.

At least, that's the game plan.

ANYWAY, on today's Big Show, count on hearing aural goodness from Shawn Mullins, Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles, Billy Bragg, Professor Longhair (a.k.a. Henry Roeland Byrd), The Meters, Zachary Richard, Dr. John, Ingrid Michaelson and too many more to clog your browser with here.

So, I guess you'll have to tune in, er, download the show. 3 Chords & the Truth, that is.

Come and pass a good time, cher!

Teen-age mutant ninja whack jobs

If you took the reports trickling over the news wires about criminally disturbed teen-agers and replaced "arrested in the death of" or "massacred" with "infected by avian influenza," you could start a national panic.

As far as we know, however, there has not been one reported case of bird flu among American teens. All we have here are reported cases of sporadic atrocities -- ranging from school massacres to mall rampages to suicide pacts to the random unexplainable murder -- carried out by our children.

Ho hum.

Now let's get back to our plasma TVs, which hang in our McMansions, which we're trying to figure out how to pay for, while Junior shifts for himself because Mom and Dad (or Mom and Stepdad . . . or Dad and Stepmom, or . . . ?) are otherwise occupied.

"Say, what's on TCM, hon?"

"'Lord of the Flies'"

BUT FIRST, this special report from Nashville, Tenn. Here's The Associated Press with breaking news:

A teenage passenger from California was arrested in Nashville for plotting to hijack a plane from Los Angeles to Nashville, the FBI said Friday.

FBI spokesman George Bolds told The Associated Press the 16-year-old boy was removed from Southwest Airlines Flight 284 Tuesday night by authorities at Nashville International Airport and found with "suspicious" items.

Bolds said the teen had handcuffs, rope and duct tape in his bag and was believed to be traveling alone. The juvenile's name has not been released.

"His plan had a low probability of success," Bolds said.

(snip)

FBI's Bolds dismissed earlier broadcast reports that the teen was planning to crash the plane into a "Hannah Montana" concert in Lafayette, La.

Bolds said it has not been determined if the boy was trying to crash the plane. He said authorities searched the teen's home in California and found a mock cockpit.

The teen is believed to be suicidal, Bolds said. Bolds said he could not comment further on the teen's mental condition because he is a minor.

Bolds said the teen was calm throughout the flight and never made an attempt to hijack the plane but told the FBI after he was apprehended about his original plans to commandeer the aircraft.

TWO QUESTIONS: Does this child have parents? If so, where the hell were they?

Just asking.

Oh, for God's sake!

Thank you, March for Life people, for making my point for me.

If you want to know why -- despite being dedicated to sticking up for the most vulnerable and powerless humans that ever were or ever will be -- the pro-life movement has accomplished squat over the past 35 years, you need read no further than this from the Catholic News Service:

Among the speakers on the stage, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., headed a long string of politicians who took to the microphone to make sure participants saw the fight against abortion in political terms. He warned that "America's liberal elites" were "empathy-deficient" when it comes to the unborn, turning around a phrase about Americans made by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in remarks on the presidential campaign trail a few days earlier.

A brief roar of agreement greeted a warning by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that electing Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., or Obama as president would mean nominees for federal judgeships would be less pro-life than those nominated under President George W. Bush, so "we need to elect a pro-life president."

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, himself a candidate for president, downplayed those ambitions to emphasize his experience as an obstetrician, helping bring 4,000 babies into the world. Dozens of "Ron Paul for President" banners held high above the crowd made a point of his political ambitions for him.

In his remarks recorded at a White House breakfast earlier that morning and replayed at the rally, Bush lauded those who work for "a culture of life where a woman with an unplanned pregnancy knows there are caring people who will support her; where a pregnant teen can carry her child and complete her education; where the dignity of both the mother and child is honored and cherished."

IF I WERE Chris Smith, I'd be worried less about the "empathy" deficiency of "America's liberal elites" and worried more about the dumbass sufficiency of America's right-to-life elites.

(And, as a Catholic, I'd worry about the utter Pravdaesque "report no evil" incompetence of the Catholic News Service -- but that's a matter for another post someday.)

See, here's what the irony-insensitive CNS report failed to tell you. And, sadly, what CNS failed to tell you is pretty much all the context you need to know why the pro-life movement, as it's presently constituted, is a doomed proposition.

Let's start with Sen. David Vitter, R.-La.

Sen. Vitter, you see, likes nookie. And, during his political career -- both back in the Bayou State and in Washington -- he has liked nookie so much he's been willing to pay top dollar for it.

From women not Mrs. Vitter.

That is called soliciting prostitution, making Vitter a "john," even though his name is David. This activity is quite illegal in 49 of the 50 states. That's why it was so big a deal when Vitter's number turned up in the phone records of the "D.C. Madam."

And it's why it was such a big deal when the working girl who "loved" him back in New Orleans started blabbing to Penthouse publisher Larry Flynt. Some folks back in Louisiana thought Vitter ought to resign his seat or be kicked out of the U.S. Senate for having engaged in criminal acts.

Those people, however, were prudes. Not like the March for Life organizers.

Then there is the slight problem of Vitter being the Southern regional chair for the Rudy Giuliani campaign while spouting lines like "we need to elect a pro-life president."

You'd think most folks, after hearing such from a backer of the pro-choice Giuliani, would figure their intelligence had just been insulted. And, in fact, most would. They probably would become angry and start booing and throwing things.

But this was a crowd of pro-life activists and their politicized leaders. And David Vitter -- veteran politician and connoisseur of the world's oldest profession that he is -- can read an audience.

HAVING FIGURED OUT there's not fun in holding the moral high ground if you can't cede it, the March for Life organizers then invited Rep. Ron Paul to the microphone.

The long-shot GOP presidential candidate has had his public-relations problems of late, after it came out that a newsletter written in his name had for years contained the worst kind of race-baiting, paranoid, whack-job claptrap.

Paul, however, didn't want to talk about politics (I wonder why). He wanted to talk about the 4,000 babies he brought into the world as an obstetrician.

"Dozens of 'Ron Paul for President' banners held high above the crowd made a point of his political ambitions for him," as the CNS story put it. Yep, there's nothing quite like throwing away moral superiority to scream to the world "I'm a Racist Conspiracy Nut for Life!"

FINALLY, we come to the prerecorded address by President George W. Bush.

Nothing says "I support the vulnerable" like "pro-life" marchers standing there, listening to supportive bromides from a man who lied his nation into a disastrous, unjustified and unjust war in Iraq . . . that is, when he wasn't subverting the United States government to justify, then carry out, the torture of "illegal enemy combatants" in violation of both U.S. and international law.

One march.

Three strikes.

And America's unborn babies are s*** out of luck.


HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

We're walking to New Orleans

We're doing a little time traveling this week on Four Songs.

So, welcome to New Orleans. It's 1961, and the music is mighty fine. Mighty fine, indeed.

AND WE'LL BE hearing not only from the Soul Queen of New Orleans, but also from the best fender and body man in the Crescent City.

If you want to know who that was, you'll have to download the show, now, won't you?

It's Four Songs . . . and it's four songs. We call it the bite-sized show from Revolution 21.

So pop open a Jax (provided you are of legal age, of course) and enjoy the sweet sounds of a turbulent age.

Explains a lot

And all it takes is a poorly socialized moron to sling around outraged F-bombs because a blogger was insufficiently sympathetic toward what procsecutors say is a confessed cold-blooded murderer.

From Wednesday's Omaha World-Herald:

Kyle Bormann has admitted firing the shot that killed 21-year-old Brittany
Williams, a prosecutor said Wednesday in Douglas County Court.

The 19-year-old Omaha man was denied bail by Judge Jeffrey Marcuzzo. Marcuzzo cited the seriousness of the crime in his decision.

Bormann, who lived with his father in the Ponca Hills area, was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit a felony. He is accused of firing a rifle at Williams on Sunday evening as she sat in her car in the drive-through lane at the Kentucky Fried Chicken/Long John Silver's restaurant at 7601 N. 30th St. Police said he was about 100 yards away.

The restaurant is a little over two miles down 30th Street from the Bormann house.

(snip)

During an interview at the police station, Smith said, Bormann admitted firing his rifle at Williams' car while she waited in the drive-through lane.

Authorities have said Bormann shot Williams with a Winchester .243-caliber bolt-action rifle that had a Bushnell scope.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said Wednesday afternoon that Bormann was wearing camouflage and that he had been drinking alcohol prior to the shooting.

About a dozen of Williams' friends and relatives attended Wednesday's hearing.

After the hearing, Jerard Christian, a cousin of Williams who serves in the U.S. Army, said, "This is ridiculous. Something needs to be done about all this gun violence in Omaha. I am trained in the military, and to take somebody's life because he's upset about something, he has no idea how many lives he's hurt by this."

SORRY, ANONYMOUS, all my sympathy has been used up on the poor girl your pal with the high-powered blew away at the KFC. Allegedly.

But your artful missive has explained a lot. I think it's explained that my generation has raised a bunch of foul-mouthed, unsocialized, violent butt-wipes who we may well have reason to fear.

Or at least disarm.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for coming. We don't care. Next.

If you want to know how irrelevant America's right-to-life movement has become, all you have to do is turn to Page A-3 of today's Washington Post.

That's where Washington's newspaper of record put the story telling how:

Tens of thousands of abortion opponents took to the cold, gray streets of Washington yesterday, buoyed by a recent report that the number of abortions in the United States had hit the lowest level in years and vowing to continue the fight.

IT'S NO BIG SIGN of how far pro-lifers have fallen that the Post put the story about tens of thousands of people in a protest march through its own town on an inside page -- it's done that for years. What should have the marchers -- and their leaders -- worried is that the reporter didn't bother to quote one pro-choice leader refuting anything anyone on the pro-life side said.

When no one takes you seriously enough to go to the trouble to refute what you say, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Or engage in a withering reappraisal of what the hell you're doing.

The newspaper said pro-lifers were buoyed by the news that abortions were at a 32-year low. Two questions about that: First, is it so and, second, did the pro-life movement have anything to do with it?

Again, from the Washington Post:

At the same time, the long decline in the number of abortion providers appears to be stabilizing, partly a result of the availability of the French abortion pill RU-486, the report found, because some physicians who do not perform surgical abortions provide it to their patients.

The report did not identify reasons for the drop in abortions, but the researchers said it could be caused by a combination of factors.

"It could be more women using contraception and not having as many unintended pregnancies. It could be more restrictions on abortions making it more difficult for women to obtain abortion services. It could be a combination of these and other dynamics," said Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization, which published the report in the March issue of the journal
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Whatever the reasons, the trend was welcomed by abortion opponents and abortion rights advocates.

"This study shows that prevention works, and that's what we provide in our health centers every day," said Cecile Richard of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "At the end of the day, Americans of all stripes believe that we need to do more to prevent unintended pregnancy and make health care affordable and accessible."

I TEND TO THINK the drop, instead of having much to do with the efforts of the overly politicized pro-life movement, probably has more to do with naturally changing attitudes by members of a couple of generations who know they could have suffered the same fate as 25 percent of their contemporaries. As well, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that more than a few of the "missing" abortions never went missing at all.

Those probably went "Plan B" instead -- fertilized eggs that never implanted, thanks to the "morning-after pill." Still an abortion, but never will show up in any statistic as one.

So what do we make of a movement so spectacularly unsuccessful that it's ecstatic over abortions falling from 1.6 million a year in 1976 to 1.2 million a year in 2005? Even at the "low" rate, give Americans five years and they've done to their own children in utero what Adolf Hitler did to the Jews ex utero.

That ain't success.

Given that pro-lifers have sold their souls to the Republican Party for a bag full of empty promises about fixing all kinds of social ills -- most especially abortion -- and still have ended up with a couple of Holocausts a decade for three-and-a-half decades now (not to mention the "right" to kill babies at any point of their nine-month sojourn in Mama's womb), you have to wonder why pro-life Americans aren't ready to tar and feather whomever came up with that bright idea.

HERE'S THE THING. Pro-lifers put all their eggs in Republican politicians' basket, giving them every incentive to string folks along with pretty rhetoric and no incentive to actually do anything about abortion, thus eliminating a bloc of "automatic" votes.

Meanwhile, the culture -- where fads become trends, and trends become entrenched behaviors, and entrenched behaviors remake entire societies -- careens along, unmolested by church, activist and politician alike.

It's ironic that the Roe v. Wade anniversary (and the March for Life) always fall close to the commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Pro-lifers like to fancy themselves as being in the mold of the civil-rights movement, employing tactics much like those of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

But there are three things King managed to do that the pro-life movement never even thought about. He captured a nation's imagination. He never descended into a shouting match with his opponents. And he transformed the culture of a nation.

Where is the great rhetoric of the pro-life movement? Where is its great art? Its transcendent music? Where?

There is some pretty good music related to the pro-life cause but, alas, it never made it out of the "Christian ghetto."

MARTIN LUTHER KING, on the other hand, marched out of America's black ghettos and into the conscience of a nation. Since 1973, we pro-lifers have marched . . . and we've sat in . . . and we've protested . . . and we've politicked . . . and we've prayed . . . yet what does America see amid all this?

And there lies the problem.

America, in the 35 years since Roe, has seen not Martin Luther King marching across the Edmund Pettis Bridge but instead has seen Carrie Nation busting up a saloon. America knows all about what we're against, but little of what we're for.

Hell, we know all about what we're against . . . but do we really know what we're for? Or what America might look like if we achieved it.

The Carrie Nation approach to drinking ultimately may have gained us Prohibition for a season. But now we have Double Drunk Tuesdays and college administrators across the land wringing their hands about students' wild binges -- and the consequences that follow.

Do I wish abortion were illegal, just like every other form of homicide? Absolutely.

But what's more important for the cause of life? That we pass a law (which isn't going to happen anytime soon), or that we -- somehow, someway -- persuade women, their partners, their parents and their doctors that killing is evil, no matter whether or not it's legal.

Prohibiting iniquity doesn't equal success, even though codifying the sentiment would be instructive. Success, instead, lies in fostering virtue.

And victory lies in showing a nation that loving -- not killing -- is the best way to solve even the toughest problems.

Death is a 19-year-old, dope-smoking child of divorce with a gun . . . again?

All it takes is a loser with a gun to shoot out our brightest lights.

Leaving us with the loser. And his gun.

OMAHA POLICE SAY it was 19-year-old Kyle Bormann who, dressed in camouflage and carrying a hunting rifle with a telescopic sight, went hunting Sunday night on North 30th Street. This is who he allegedly bagged -- his prey -- the young woman shot in the head as she waited in the drive-through line at Kentucky Fried Chicken:

Brittany Williams was going somewhere in life. She knew it. And she wanted other people to know it, too.

"She knew she wanted to go places and do things," said Mel Clancy, who knew her well through the Project Achieve program he directs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "She was always meticulously dressed. She projected the part of a polished college student. And she worked her tail off."

The future Williams was building for herself was ripped away from her Sunday night. Williams, 21, was killed about 8:40 p.m. Sunday as she sat in her car outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken/Long John Silver's restaurant at 7601 N. 30th St. Omaha police say Kyle J. Bormann, 19, used a high-powered rifle to shoot Williams from about 100 yards away.

Williams, a junior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, died at the scene.

Bormann was charged today in Douglas County Court with first-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit a felony in connection with the shooting.

"It appears to be a premeditated event, and the evidence reflects that," said Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who filed the charges. "But it appears to be random in nature, even though it was an intentional killing. We don't know the motive or motivation behind it."

(snip)

Williams made the dean's list several times while studying pre-nursing at UNO, Clancy said. She volunteered for several community projects, including UNO's seven days of service during spring break. Herself a participant in Project Achieve, a program for first-generation, low-income students, she was giving back by advising younger students in the program.

"This young lady had success written all over her," Clancy said.

Whatever she decided to do, Williams would have done it with style and a smile, a sorority sister said.

"She was a great person, a sweet person who would do anything for you," said Tia Robinson, a fellow member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. "Bubbly. Energetic. She was always smiling. Anytime you saw her, she'd give you a hug."

Monday afternoon, Robinson and four fellow sorority sisters held hands, prayed, cried and hugged each other on the snowy southeast corner of 30th and Craig Streets. They stood a few yards from where Williams' life had been coldly and apparently randomly stolen Sunday night in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant.

The women toiled to push a wooden stake into a frozen flowerbed. On the stake was a placard signed by sorority sisters in squiggly letters with bright-colored markers. On the placard was an enlarged photo of a long-haired young woman in a white dress with a bright smile: Brittany.

Williams, who graduated from North High School after attending Northwest High through 11th grade, was a Goodrich Program scholar at UNO.

Mike Carroll, an associate professor with the Goodrich Program, said he remembered her well.

"She was a talented student and a good writer," he said. "I had her in English composition, where she wrote some autobiographical essays that showed a broad understanding of the local community. . . . She talked about nursing and wanting to make a difference."

MEANWHILE, as we find out more and more about the Kyle Bormann, we also find more commonality between the alleged gunman and Westroads Mall shooter Robert Hawkins.

Now it's not only that both were children of divorce. It seems that Bormann had a few convictions in South Dakota for both drugs and minor in possession of alcohol. KETV television in Omaha reports:

Kleine said the possibility that this was a hate crime is still being considered by investigators.

"We'll see where that leads, as far as motivation -- what motive he had," the prosecutor said.

Police said Bormann was 100 to 200 yards away from Williams' car northwest of the restaurant on 30th Street when he fired the gun.

Kleine said Bormann used something like a Winchester model 670a with a .243 cartridge. Considered a pure sportsman's rifle by some, it is a bolt-operated rifle that takes some time to reload.

Kleine said the gun had a scope, and that the weapon belongs to Bormann.

"Apparently he had some history of hunting -- lived in South Dakota. That's where he was from, and was a hunter," Kleine said.

When he was arrested on Sunday night, police said they found Bormann dressed as a hunter.

"He was dressed in camouflage gear, camouflage jacket, camouflage pants," Kleine said.

Kleine said he will ask a judge on Wednesday to assign no bond for Bormann.

South Dakota criminal records show that Bormann has been charged with crimes in at least three counties. The charges range from traffic violations to drug possession -- a charge that was later reduced.

Bormann was sentenced in Brookings County in July after he pleaded guilty to ingesting intoxicants. Brookings police said an officer saw Bormann acting suspiciously near a motel, and when the officer tried to find out what he was doing, Bormann took off running.

"The officer was able to locate him again and through his investigation, there was the smell of alcohol, as well as marijuana," Lt. Jeff Miller of the Brookings Police Department told television station KSFY.

Police said an ingesting charge is most common when a suspect is under the influence, but the officer doesn't find the person carrying a substance.

One of the conditions of Bormann's sentencing was that he had to stay out of trouble with the law until next July, records show.

OMAHA'S WOWT television says Bormann had "two minor drug arrests," two MIPs and a speeding charge on his South Dakota rap sheet.

Now all we need is to find out race hatred was the motivation. The prosecutor isn't saying -- yet -- but another Omaha TV station, KMTV, reported Tuesday that one of Bormann's friends was afraid that it was.

Lord, have mercy.

Another day, another atrocity

White kid from small-town South Dakota moves to the big city, comes across African-American college student -- a young woman, a 21-year-old sorority sister and scholarship recipient, the daughter of an Omaha public-works employee.

Their fateful encounter came in the drive-through lane of a KFC in the Florence section of north Omaha.

CHECK THAT. Brittany Williams was sitting in her car in the KFC drive-through. Kyle Bormann, say police, was in his car 100 yards away -- with a high-powered rifle. And officers say he aimed that rifle at Brittany Williams' head and pulled the trigger.

Brittany Williams died where she sat.

In her car.

At the KFC.

The Omaha World-Herald picks up the story:

Kyle Bormann was an above-average high school student growing up in South Dakota, earning mostly A's and B's. He excelled in chemistry and precalculus. He had no discipline problems in school. He held a part-time job at the small-town grocery store.

As of Sunday evening, however, the portrait had changed.

That's when Bormann, 19, is accused of fatally shooting a 21-year-old Omaha woman who had stopped in a fast-food restaurant's drive-through lane.

Police say the shooting was random, and the shot was fired from about 100 yards away.

Omaha police say Bormann used a high-powered rifle to shoot Brittany Williams about 8:40 p.m. as she sat in her car outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken/Long John Silver's restaurant at 7601 N. 30th St.

Williams, who had attained junior status at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, died at the scene.

Bormann's alleged role in the shooting has floored Bormann's friends, school officials and relatives in his native South Dakota.

"I can't believe that he would do something like that. It sounds kind of crazy," said 21-year-old Jim Jensen, one of Bormann's close friends from Wessington Springs, S.D.

Bormann graduated from Wessington Springs High School in 2006, a year after Jensen. He attended Dell Rapids High School in South Dakota for the first three years of high school before changing schools his senior year.

Bormann's parents are divorced. His father, Greg, lives in the Ponca Hills neighborhood in Omaha. His mother still lives in South Dakota.

Bormann's family declined to comment. A handwritten sign posted Monday outside his house on Canyon Road read, "No media. No trespassing." A woman who answered the phone at the house declined to comment.

At Dell Rapids, a high school 15 miles from Sioux Falls, Bormann earned mostly A's and B's, said his former high school guidance counselor, George Henry.

"He never got any bad grades," Henry said. "I never recalled any discipline, no anger from him, no fighting. Just a nice kid. A little on the quiet side."

Wessington Springs Principal/ Superintendent Darold Rounds said Bormann adjusted well despite transferring into the tiny school for his senior year. One of Bormann's older sisters now teaches at Wessington Springs and serves as an assistant athletic coach, Rounds said.

"Kyle was popular among students, just an ideal student, and new people don't usually fit right in," said Rounds, who recalled attending Bormann's summer graduation party in 2006 and meeting several of Bormann's relatives.

Friends and school officials say they have a hard time understanding that Bormann is accused of shooting a woman he didn't know.

"This floors me. I am really shocked," said Rounds. "It's hard to comprehend."

About 20 minutes after the shooting, Omaha police said, a man later identified as Bormann drove a white 1996 Chrysler Sebring through the crime-scene tape that officers had put up around the restaurant. He ignored police officers' commands to stop and drove off.

Police chased the car, and it stopped at 29th and Bondesson Streets, where the driver jumped out and ran away. Police said the man threw a high-powered rifle to the ground.

After a short foot chase, officers arrested Bormann on suspicion of criminal homicide and use of a weapon to commit a felony.

Omaha police allege that Bormann was inside his vehicle when he fired the rifle. Police said there were no indications that Williams and Bormann knew each other.

"It's not a whole lot different than the Von Maur situation in that it's just completely random," Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said. "You're just shopping at a store or waiting in a drive-through and this happens? It's unimaginable."

THAT MAKES TWO random acts of horror pinned on 19-year-old white males in Omaha in a month and a half. Apart from that, the only thing anyone can find in common is that the young men were children of divorce. And that the shootings were utterly random.

Are we raising up a generation of monsters, or is this a pure fluke? Along with Virginia Tech and Columbine and Von Maur and all the other horrors committed by young men in the past decade.

Can't really say.

Can say for a fact, though, that this is what we've lost:

Beautiful, bubbly Brittany Williams was a young collegian preparing for a future in nursing.

Or maybe the fashion business.

But whatever she decided to do, Williams would have done it with style and a smile, a sorority sister said Monday.

"She was a great person, a sweet person who would do anything for you," said Tia Robinson, a fellow member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. "Bubbly. Energetic. She was always smiling. Anytime you saw her, she'd give you a hug."

Monday afternoon, Robinson and four fellow sorority sisters held hands, prayed, cried and hugged each other on the snowy southeast corner of 30th and Craig Streets. They stood a few yards from where Williams' life had been coldly and apparently randomly stolen Sunday night in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant.

The women toiled to push a wooden stake into a frozen flowerbed. On the stake was a placard signed by sorority sisters in squiggly letters with bright-colored markers. On the placard was an enlarged photo of a long-haired young woman in a white dress with a bright smile: Brittany.

Williams, 21, was a junior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. A Goodrich Program scholar from Omaha, she was in pre-nursing studies.

Mike Carroll, an associate professor with the Goodrich Program, said he remembered her well.

"She was a talented student and a good writer," he said. "I had her in English composition, where she wrote some autobiographical essays that showed a broad understanding of the local community. . . . She talked about nursing and wanting to make a difference."

While we were waiting for Britney's demise . . .

As The Associated Press works up an obituary on Britney Spears for use on newspaper front pages across the globe when the inevitable happens -- barring some dramatic, miraculous response to saving grace by the tortured pop tart -- it took a little digging through America's news conduits to find this obituary.

AND THAT'S WRONG on so many levels.

For one thing, the Kingston Trio's John Stewart -- who joined the folk group in 1961 after writing songs for it over several years -- was noted for his artistry. He was respected for his songwriting. And Rolling Stone named his 1969 solo work, California Bloodlines, one of the 200 best albums ever recorded.

Brit Brit -- God help her -- is notable primarily for her distaste for knickers . . . and for being an unfit parent. But when she goes, by God, you'll know about it.

In fact, it'll be as big a deal as Princess Di -- albeit in a double-wide kind of way.

Life ain't fair. Death, either. We, with our unquenchable thirst for the worst our culture has to offer, make sure of that.

As my little protest against that sad reality, here, please, is the Kingston Trio on the Andy Williams Show in 1966.

There's something deeply ironic about this

From Reuters:

An anti-smoking drug sold by Pfizer Inc will carry more prominent warnings that patients be monitored for unusual activity including agitation, depression and suicidal behavior, the company said on Friday.

The world's largest drugmaker said it worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to update an earlier label change enacted last year for its drug Chantix.

The new label offers a similar recommendation to monitor patients, but the language is more prominently located to better get the attention of doctors, Pfizer officials said.

(snip)

The revised section is not a "black box," a warning reserved for what the FDA deems the most dangerous potential adverse events.

It directs doctors to observe patients on Chantix for "serious neuropsychiatric symptoms, including changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior," according to Pfizer.

In November, the FDA issued an early warning after receiving reports of suicidal thoughts and behavior, and at least one death, potentially linked to the medication.

3 Chords & the Truth: It's all right

We're starting out Edition No. 2 of 3 Chords & the Truth by relying on faith.

We have faith that you'll listen. Faith that you'll like what you hear. Yep, we're running on faith . . . because Eric Clapton told us to.

NOW THAT YOU KNOW how the Big Show is starting out, I bet you'll want to download the whole thing and see what's next. Right?

Because we have faith in you. That's what we're all about here at 3 Chords & the Truth -- and at Four Songs, too. Faith. After all, what's the alternative?

Having faith that faith is worthless? Gee, that's no fun . . . and kind of depressing, too.

So have a little faith that 3 Chords & the Truth will rock your musical world. Because it will, you know.

And he could there do no mighty work. . . .

Is Louisiana fixed yet?

After all, it has been the better part of a week since the Messiah took office. Robert Kennon Buddy Roemer Bobby Jindal, by his mere presence and tough talk on ethics, was to instantaneously transform a state that's been mired in varying degrees of dysfunction since the dawn of the 18th century.

SO, WE FIND that, thus far, the status quo is hanging tough in the Gret Stet. The business community and LSU are fighting over the resignation of Chancellor Sean O'Keefe, forced out amid political machinations by the school's new president and its board of supervisors.

Also in Baton Rouge, existing downtown casinos, through front organizations, are airing anti-casino TV ads to keep a competitor from opening and sucking gamblers to a new "resort" in the southern part of town, where -- on a different matter -- some residents are fighting tooth-and-nail to stop the kind of mixed-use, commercial/residential development that most American cities lust after.

Meanwhile, murder rates are soaring in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and the mayor of the Crescent City is still a preening doofus.

And my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School, is still a dump. Despite having one of its own in the governor's mansion.

Any moment now, I expect that disillusioned Louisianians will begin denouncing Jindal, asking what use have they for a messiah who can't turn water into wine, much less a Third World entity into something resembling a functioning civic society. And do it instantly.

Remember, you read here first that -- even under the most miraculous permutations of great good fortune -- the best Bobby Jindal can do is futz around the edges of Louisiana's pathology, perhaps fixing a doodad here and a thingamabob there. Maybe a couple of thingamabobs, which probably would earn him a vice-presidential slot on the 2012 GOP presidential ticket.

That's about it, though . . . fixing some doomaflatchies and whatsits. Because Jindal can't legally do anything about the real problem with Louisiana -- the people who live there.

It takes people to make a culture, and it takes people to generally care so that government might generally work. Your score in the Louisiana Bowl, after 300 years of play, is Violent Dumbasses 76, Prosperous Functioning Society 14.

The coach, alas, is only as good as his players.

LET'S LOOK, in a metaphorical vein, at the governor's old school and mine -- Baton Rouge Magnet High.

Over the past generation or so, it has been allowed to fall into an extreme state of disrepair. Quite literally, it has been falling apart around students, teachers and administrators . . . which is not exactly the way a state tells its best and brightest young people "I love you. Please stay."

Football programs quickly learn they can't recruit good players when Whatsamatta U's athletic facilities are falling apart. Louisianians never learn, however, and demographic data has shown for some time that the state pays the price.

When I was a child, Baton Rouge's public schools were pretty dumpy, and the school system pretty much sucked. Except for one school -- Baton Rouge Magnet High.

Now, as reported by the Baton Rouge Business Report (and everyone else), the school system still pretty much sucks and the facilities have nosedived well into "Good God ALMIGHTY!" territory:

About a year ago, workers employed by the East Baton Rouge Parish School System were looking to perform some fairly routine repairs to Baton Rouge Magnet High School. But the more they looked, the more problems they found. For starters, the brick and mortar of the venerable main building were no longer even connected to the exterior walls.

The findings were no surprise to Dot Dickinson, who watched a tile fall from the ceiling before a performance of the school’s orchestra, which included her son, in the mid-1990s. Luckily, the wayward tile landed on empty seats.

“Seems someone would have noticed the need for maintenance at that time,” she says.

Most likely someone did. But at the time, every public school in the parish needed work, and there was virtually no money to pay for it, school officials say. The system isn’t in the crisis mode it was in 10 years ago, but there are still a number of school buildings that are drafty, leaky, moldy or otherwise disheveled.

The School Board was scheduled to discuss—and most likely finalize and vote on—the system’s facility plan on Jan. 10. The futures of Baton Rouge Magnet High, which is in line for a $62 million renovation, and Lee High School, which the system had considered closing before Superintendent Charlotte Placide proposed building a new Lee High on the same site, have elicited the strongest emotions.

(snip)

Revenues over the next 10 years, including a $20 million surplus, are expected to be more than $489 million, assuming the renewal of a one cent sales tax. That covers what the system believes are the most pressing needs.

But making all the needed repairs could cost about $800 million if everything is fixed by 2011, system spokesman Chris Trahan says. Meanwhile, the parish’s older schools will continue to deteriorate. Placide says the system needs more money to catch up, but will parish voters pony up, especially since so many abandoned the public school system years ago?

For more than three decades, the system didn’t build a single new school. From 1964-98, parish voters approved enough tax renewals to keep the system operating, but not nearly enough to make any significant capital improvements, Trahan says. There were no bond issues, and no dedicated stream of revenue for infrastructure. The system didn’t even have a building maintenance fund like most districts.

Placide says there are “various reasons” why voters wouldn’t approve significant fees for capital improvement, which she didn’t attempt to list, but allowed that the problem was “related to the desegregation issues the community struggled with for some time.” The parish settled its 47-year-old desegregation case with the federal government in 2003.

IN OTHER WORDS, since 1981 -- the beginning of "forced busing" as a desegregation tool in Baton Rouge -- white residents steadily and relentlessly removed their children and their financial support from the public schools. The numbers don't lie.

Sheer racism may or may not have played a major role in the ethnic and financial "cleansing" of the local schools. For the first wave fleeing the East Baton Rouge public schools for brand-new private schools (and to neighboring parishes), race played a big role. Or at least I suspect it did.

For later waves of refugees, that abandonment probably was due to being sick and tired. Sick of fighting against growing urban decay and the resulting educational dysfunction, and bone tired from the fight.

Nevertheless, the result was the New Orleanization of the capital city's public schools, and civic support for public education cratered. Again, from the Business Report article:

In 1997, the system put together a comprehensive facilities plan that identified millions in needed work. Perhaps hoping to take advantage of goodwill engendered by the end of forced crosstown busing the previous year, school officials put together an ambitious proposal, asking voters to approve a 25-year, $475 million bond issue and a 35-year 1% sales tax for constructing and maintaining new school buildings. Both propositions were soundly defeated at the polls.

Thus chastened, school officials came back the next year with a proposition that had been drastically scaled back: a penny sales tax, levied over five years, about half of which was earmarked for a pay-as-you-go repair and construction fund. The tax passed and was renewed for another five years in 2003, and the system built seven new schools with that money.

(snip)

“The school system is one of the greatest detriments to economic growth that we have here,” says Fred Dent, chairman of a Baton Rouge financial consulting firm and spokesman and founding member of TaxBusters, which works for lower taxes and streamlined government. “When we keep getting headlines about the lack of performance of schools, it does not engender a lot of trust for any school board that has that problem. … It’s not about the money, it’s about performance.”

(snip)

Thirty percent of children in East Baton Rouge Parish do not attend public schools, nearly double the state average of 16%, which the Louisiana Department of Education says is the highest rate in the nation. The private schools can pick and choose whom they want to let in, while public schools take all comers. Public schools tend to have nearly all of the special education and special-needs students, while private schools grab many of the high-achievers.

For middle- and upper-class children, private schools are the rule, not the exception. Nearly 77% of the students left in East Baton Rouge public schools are poor, as measured by how many qualify for free or reduced lunch. Often, poor children come from unstable homes or dangerous neighborhoods, and they bring those problems with them to school. Parental involvement in a child’s education, a key factor in academic success, is often lacking in poorer homes.

EVERY STATISTIC in this story is staggering. And very few of them can be ameliorated by even as great and talented a political messiah as Bobby Jindal.

In Baton Rouge -- and in New Orleans . . . and all across the Gret Stet -- the problem with public education lies in the people. The people have the freedom to elect good stewards of the public trust . . . or lousy ones.

The people can commit themselves to strong public education for the good of society . . . or not. They can give public education -- and desegregation -- a chance . . . or not. They can vote for taxation sufficient to support good public schools and then hold officials accountable . . . or not.

The people of Baton Rouge, and Louisiana, can be OK with the sorry state of one of the state's best schools . . . or not.

So far, the people's job performance hasn't been exactly inspiring.

And the Business Report article makes it sound like passing the tax renewal won't exactly be a slam-dunk. Even in the face of damning evidence that Baton Rougeans have fallen down on their job -- the job of creating a functioning civic society that offers all its citizens equal access to the necessities of modern life.

Like a decent education.

IN STATES not Louisiana, public education has a history dating to 1635, with the establishment of the Boston Latin School. Universal education as a function of the state had one of its early champions in Thomas Jefferson, and the idea took off in the mid-19th century.

As it has been understood in the United States, free public education is a basic service civic society -- through local government -- provides to all its citizens without regard to status, creed, nationality or race. As it has played out in Baton Rouge, among other unfortunate examples, free public education is what you get when you are unable or unwilling to pay for private or parochial school.

And like the segregated education African-American children routinely received in the South of my childhood, public education in my hometown once again is separate and unequal. Some 83 percent of those children on the public side of Baton Rouge's resegregated educational realm -- many of whom are doomed to attend classes in substandard, crumbling facilities -- just happen to be black.

Separate. Unequal. Still.

Faced with the picture of children -- if not theirs, somebody's -- trying to learn in squalid classrooms such as those at my alma mater, Baton Rouge High, "activists" like Fred Dent balk at setting tax rates adequate to erase the shame of a city.

"It’s not about the money, it’s about performance.” That's what the man says.

Really? Couldn't it be just a little bit about, "I got mine. Screw the ghetto dwellers"?

Or does Dent really think the rational response to a crumbling, failing school system is to cut off the money and kill the sucker dead? And he and his ilk are working to replace the unacceptable entity with . . . what, exactly?

MEANWHILE, it'll probably take a brutal fight to pass enough of a tax renewal to assure repairs to Baton Rouge High, Lee High and all the other dung heaps where Baton Rougeans are content to warehouse their children. If it even passes at all -- despite all the shocking pictures, despite all the gallons of ink used to print the story of a city's shame.

"America's Next Great City," as its mayor laughably calls it.

Louisianians wait with bated breath for one of their occasional political messiahs to pull off a miracle well beyond the pale of mortal man. And soon enough, they'll crucify him because cheap grace was something that would not materialize out of his insufficient incantations.

A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work. . . . And he marvelled because of their unbelief.