Comic Books: They're All Grown Up and Morally Ambiguous Now

*sniff* I'm so proud!

So....Insulting, Cutting Commentary or Both?

Props to Kevin Church for the pic.

It’s rare that two of my interests combine in such a manner, but Marvel Comics Latest Huge Crossover Event ™ was “The Civil War”.

In a nutshell, a group of inexperienced superheros completely fucked up taking down four third-rate supervillains resulting in a explosion that not only killed off most of their team, it blew up an elementary school. While it was in session.

The resulting public backlash brought around a piece of Marvel Universe Legislation that had been considered for mutants for years, but now was to be applied broadly across the superhero community: The Superpowers Registration Act.

(Any analogies to the Patriot Act and similar RL legislation are your own to make.)

Needless to say, this makes some characters upset, most importantly Captain America who happens to actually believe in that silly little thing called “Personal Liberty”. On the pro-registration side falls Iron Man, capitalist hero (I’m not kidding, he was first conceived of as an anti-Communist hero) and former Secretary of Defense (Read: A “Yay, It’s the Government!” person). The Marvel Superhero community proceedes to split down the middle with the X-Men playing the Rwandans for this episode ("And where were Avengers and the FF when millions of mutants died in a Sentinel massacre? Right. Screw all Y’all and the horses you rode in on.") and Doctor Strange, well, being Doc Strange, is simply above this sort of thing. Like the Government is really going to force the Sorcerer Supreme of the planet into anything before he turns them all into muskrats? (See below.)

Now, the details don’t matter, Iron Man and Spiderman unmask, jails are made in alternate dimensions, clone Thors are introduced (*sigh* I love comics), no one is really acting quite right in the head because they are being written by someone who doesn’t usually write them. In the end, after being on the cusp of victory in the Climatic Battle ™ Captain America is attacked by a mob of police and firemen because the battle has trashed half of Manhattan. (Like this is something new to Marvel Manhattan. That place has been trashed so many times it should be reconstructed in Leggos…o.k. I can’t take credit for that one, it’s a Joss Whedon) Captian America takes of his mask and surrenders to the police as Steve Rogers.

Tony Stark/Iron Man becomes head of S.H.I.E.L.D. As a reward of their willing participation on the Pro-Registration side of the Civil War She-hulk and Wonderman have been drafted, quite against their will, into S.H.I.E.L.D., which is the Marvel Universe super-duper intelligence black ops, they-show-up-and-everything-grinds-to-halt-in-exposition agency.

In the aftermath, Captain America attempts to give an interview in which he explains his actions. The result is this little scene (Scan down to the bottom, I also encourage you to read the ensuing conversation below it) about which the comic book community has been going berserk ever since. Most were quite insulted or took it as an astute, if painful, commentary, but there are just enough morons in the crowd out there saying “Gee, she's right!” to make one slam one’s head against a wall.

It's truly sad when people have mistaken popular culture for cultural ethical values. What “Sally” points out has nothing to do with what being American means. They're entertainment, not values. They’re trends, fads, things to distract us that will be gone in a relatively short period of time. What Captain America fights for is ideals, the ethics and values that America was founded on, what we as Americans should be aspiring to be, rather than pridefully embracing of the lowest common denominator that so many Americans nowadays seem to feel they are entitled to.

So what if we do “treat our celebrites like royalty and our teachers like dirt”, does that make it right? Should we be O.K. with that? Should we say “That is what being American is!”? Because that sure as hell doesn’t represent me and it doesn’t represent a lot of people.

Marvel’s commentary was dead on. If they meant of reader to think “Hey! Wait a minute!” is up for question, but it certainly does give one pause. Not only that such a thing could be said about our country now, but that things in our society have become so extreme that it was a comic book that was making the observation that America has become too stupid and shallow to make intelligent choices about freedom. A superhero comic book.

On the lighter side, all of this did spawn one of the funniest parodies I have seen in quite a while. (NSFW for some verbal sexual content. ) And yes, that guy has gone through and done all 7 issues. Click the "Photoshopped Crap" at the top of the entry to find links to all of them in his archives. It’s freakin’ hilarious.

Re: The Captain American fight scene at the end, haven’t you always suspected…

Daytona 500

WhaddaRace!

Pretty hairy there, taking out a lot of the big threats, and a great ending!

Mark Martin is simply doomed to enternal second place I suppose, Damn. But hell, I don't anyone in the garage would be ashamed to have his record.

And 6th Place for Elliott! Great start to the year! Whooo!

FYI: The steriod series they put Rutger on worked. He doing much better, thank the Gods. School is also hairy and I am presenting a paper next month, so things have been pretty crazy.

Hope everything is well with you all.

I Don’t Know If Anyone Is Still Reading This Or Not.

If you are, thanks. It’s much appreciated. :)

Hope everyone had great holidays!

To kick off 2007 on a depressing personal note, one of the myriad of reasons I have not gotten around to blogging is the sudden decline of my 15 year old dog, Rutger.

For thems not in the know, Rutger has had a host of health problems most of his life (the joys of pure-breds) , beginning with a heart murmur he was born with which a few years ago jumped from a 2 to a 4/5 (the worst rating is a “6”). At the same time we also discovered that he had spinal arthritis, bad. (He also has had the usual periodontal disease. Chihuahua are notorious for bad teeth.) Now, when your dog gets up there, you start thinking about the end and what you might have to do. Ideally, it was my hope that one day, Yon Small Black Dog’s heart would simply give out and I would wake up one morning or come home from class one day to find that he had quietly slipped away in his sleep.

Unfortunately, what we face is the “worst case scenario”. His heart is holding steady, it’s his spine that is degrading. For almost the two weeks, he has had muscle spasms which contort his body almost like a cork screw, pinching the nerves. With a fentynol patch and 20 minutes under a hot pad (set on low) we’ve been able to relax his muscles enough, but this usually happens 2 or 3 times a day. In between spasms, he is fine. Still eating like a pig, walking around the apartment complex and following me around the house. My vet here wanted to put him down, was pushing for it, but he isn’t ready to go. I made the same promise to him that I made the Gerry. As long as he is interested in being around, I will help keep him around. When he stops eating and interacting, then I will help him out the door.

So we’re trying a steroid series with muscle relaxants. I’m not looking for miracles, just to get him comfortable. But we’ve been at either the vet’s office or the emergency clinic at Ungodly Hour A.M. everyday for about ten days.

Muy stress and sleep deprivation.

Other than that, the semester has started and I still am completing my Physical Anthro Honors work for last semester.

For those interested I am taking:

Osteology with Lab
Russian II (yes, I’m a masochist)
Archaeological Techniques
Lifeways of Pastoral Nomads of the Middle East
And my Honors research project

Now that things are settled I will try to get back on this horse and post at least once a week as I was before the holidays. I have a whole stack of interesting books to talk about and of course, Congress is back in session.

I did actually get a phone call from Senator Richard Burr’s office about the School Security Bill I mentioned on here last fall. It’s apparently dead in committee at the moment and no one has re-sponsored it, but his staffer assured me that if it came to his committee he would “take my concerns into consideration”.

Wow.

Respsonsible citizenship pays off, maybe? I guess if you are annoying enough, they do pay attention to you.

In the meantime, here is the teaser trailer for the New Fantastic Four Movie.

Enjoy! I did.

Hey There!

Whew.

Well, finals finally ended for me last Friday and keeping my head down in the books (as well as wishing really, really hard) paid off.

Roman History (honors) – A
Medieval History – A
Biological Anthropology (honors) – B (pending completion of my honors paper)
Bio- Anthro Lab - A
Math For Humanities Dummies – A
Russian – B

It wasn’t pretty, but I survived.

Now I am on the road, writing to y’all from the homestate (Maine) spending time with the greatest Nephew in the world who is three. I tell you, I envy that kind of complete investment in one’s imagination.

Rutger also went for a swim today…in a lake. In Maine. In December.

Not one of his better plans.

In The News

A week or so before I left, I caught Senator Byrd on CSpan chewing out the 109th Congress on shuffling aside something along the lines of a dozen spending and appropriations bills until the new Congress starts up in January. Either A. The GOP representatives had their nose rings screwed in so tight they couldn’t move without word from the Oval Office or B. they were purposely trying to bog down the incoming Democrats in old business so it wouldn’t look like they were moving as fast as they promised on issues such as troop withdrawals (It’s not a “redeployment”, it’s withdrawal. Call it what it is people.).

However, give the sharp rise in attacks on Americans in Iraq, that childish little tactic will probably fail.

"All of us want to find a way to bring America's sons and daughters home again," said Robert Gates, who was sworn in Monday as the new U.S. defense secretary. "But as the president has made clear we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility (Too late!) and endanger Americans for decades to come."

I hope to Gawd he is just saying that to kiss Bush’s ass, though why anyone should bother to do so at this point is beyond me.

One of the biggest problems is of course, the president has never spelled out what “success” in Iraq is…at this stage in the game we can only assume he means a government subservient to America’s needs that will do whatever we want it to…”oh and get rid of all those dirty Muslims while you are at it. “

Let’s quit while we are behind to focus on real threats, like Iran and North Korea.

It’s a civil war, it’s bad and it’s not worth our soldiers lives.

'Tis a Silly Rant

Now then folks, after blowing all my neurons out in Finals, I am off to read the drivel that I have been reading since Friday at 1:30 pm. That’s right, I’m making one of my periodic swings through the Marvel Universe.

As I have mentioned before, I am an ex-X-Freak. I began reading it along with the original New Mutants series in High school (as Rogue joined the team) and stopped a few years later shortly after the “Mutant Massacre” when Chris Claremont seemed to be going through some kind of creative and/or emotional crisis (or maybe he was just sick of the series) and he made it all dark and depressing by making otherwise smart characters make a bunch of really stupid decisions (It’s a Mutant Genocide and Magneto is just sitting there. Storm, if there was ever a time to let Big Red out of the box, a genocidal masscre would be it.) and removing the more uplifting members of the team: Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Colossus, leaving Storm, Wolverine, Rogue and Psylocke to wallow in their melodrama, non-stop.

No, the Jujubee doesn’t count. She was like a Marvel version of Elmo.

Everyone once in a while, every couple years, I stick my head back in to see what they have been doing with the characters. Sometimes it’s good, like Generation X, and sometimes it’s bad, like destroying Banshee by completely removing all vestiges of the character we have known for twenty plus years and making him a militant bad guy (Banshee? WTF?).

This time it’s about the same. While there are some things that I am *very* happy about, such as Magneto getting Genosha and being all Machiavellian and tragic (honestly, he has really hit a high point as an anti-hereo in those storylines), as well as Marvel ditching the cowardly attempt to avoid accusations of anti-Semitism with the “Erik Lehnsherr Sinte Gypsy” I.D. (by making it a forgery), there are some things I am not.

For instance…

“Secondary Mutations”. Being a telepath wasn’t enough, suddenly this person has to be able to turn her body into a “living diamond”. (Dudes, even Colossus wasn’t solid steel, get a grip.) Sorry folks, but it’s just a lame-ass cop out of writers run that have out of ideas. A duex ex machina to save characters written into a corner or in Hank’s case, to monkey with to make worse. Cut it out.

Beast is Angsty. Let me repeat that. The Beast. Is Angsty. As in the uninspired soulless automatons at Marvel had to go and make Hank McCoy depressing. The losers.

Women are either frigidly cold sex-tease bitches or completely hysterical psychotic bitches. When was the last time anyone at Marvel had a date? Do they wonder why?

Multiple titles. This is one of the reasons I left in the first place. It’s started with the X-Men and then they added the New Mutants. Their story lines didn’t even cross at that much despite the fact they lived in the same damn house. Now we have X-men, Uncanny X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, Amazing X-Men, New X-Men, Ultimate X-Men (whom for some reason are all gay, so much for Magneto’s dream of a Mutant Race, they aren’t breeding.), X-Factor, New Mutants, Wolverine, Weapon X, etc. etc. etc. And you have to buy all the titles of you want to keep up with any major storyline.

At 3.00$ a pop.

It’s fucking annoying. Knock it off.

Wolverine is named James Howlett. Now, I have never been overly fond of the little guy (I prefer either characters who do not take themselves *so* seriously: such as the way Nightcrawler, Banshee or the Beast used to be, or the *really* grand walking Greek tragedy: Magneto) but I understood his appeal. Wolvie was “the Man". He called all woman “darlin’” and Professor Xavier “Chuck”. He smoked constantly and drank copious amount of beer (an advantage of having a body that processes all toxins at a highly accelerated rate), he called out Cyclops for being the neurotic boyscout that he was, he loved Jean (and later Mariko) in the way a Knight of a chivalric medieval romance loved his unattainable Lady, he would take every fight to the limit and then go beyond, he was a reality check for all the other characters (Xavier included) and yet the ultimate Man of Mystery in the mansion, and the fans loved him for it.

Now, the wonderful thing about men of mystery is…

They’re mysterious.

You drop a little clue, a breadcrumb of character development every two years, and the fan base goes beserk with speculation and keeps buying the title.

You do not spell out every single fucking detail of their life story.

The problem is that everyone who grew up reading the X-Men that had their own ideas about Wolvie’s background got into comics and proceed to ruin it for the rest of us. A friend of mine refers to it as the “Rape of Wolverine”, the blatant exploitation and destruction of a great character in order to sell books.

Actually I was watching one DVD extra or something where they were discussing Wolverine character as the “failed Samurai” who has actually far exceeded the rest of the world’s moral and ethical standards, but continually fails his own unreasonably high self-judgment. I thought that was a great analysis of the character in a nutshell and all anyone ever needed to know about him.

And now that they have spelled out everything about Wolvie's background, what is there left to do with him?

Stupid, stupid people.

They killed Skin. Angelo Espinosa was one of the more unique character creations they had in some time. Skin was an ex-gang banger from L.A. who’s mutation of six extra feet of grey skin put him squarely in the Nightcrawler/ Beast category of getting by. But the fact that being at Xaviers was escaping his violence fraught past combined with the fact that he had more street smarts and experience, though not necessarily maturity, then most of the other kids made him someone who had his priorities in order and wasn’t taking life too seriously most of the time. I enjoyed Angelo, I was looking forward to seeing him back…and they killed him off as a plot device…

Because Gawd knows you can’t possibly have anyone running around the X-Universe that isn’t tragic and depressing.

Will someone get the Marvel staff some Paxil or something?

O.K. Rant fini.

I’ll check back with something a little more sane and on the ball within a week or so when I hit the next stop on the “Rutger Nationwide Tour”: Arizona, but I may check in before then.

Pause for Station Identification

Sorry about the quiet there folks, the semester is coming to an end. As as you know, that means tests, finals and papers due. I took three honors courses this semester...and then got sick at the beginning of the semester which put me behind the 8-ball. As a result I, as my father put so succinctly, choked, so life is more than a little crazy right now as I try an salvage some respectable grades. In fact I'm in the foreign language lab now waiting for the Russian tutor.

There is a lot to talk about: the rumblings of a Draft (as long as they use all those spiffy spy programs to draft anyone who has seriously uttered the words "Libtard, "Islamofacists" and "glass parking lot" first.) , Hillary and Condi as Presidential Candiates ("Not happenin'" and "No Fucking Way"), and "Yes Virginia, It's a Civil War", The Justice Department Watching the Watchers (YEAH!) , Global Warming Goes to Washington, When Mother Nature Gets Testy, and of course, the new Bond film....

... so hopefully I will get around to them this weekend when I have some breathing room.

So have a great week everyone, don't get carpal tunnel doing your X-Mas shopping, and I'll talk to you very soon.

In the meantime, enjoy this Holiday favorite from YouTube: It's An Outkast Chirstmas Charlie Brown

It's a Geek Thanksgiving

Since today is a family holiday and everyone is supposed to be having a good time, I will spare folks my political rant in favor of something more fun. Had my clan gathered this year:(, this one of the many sorts of things discussed over the mounds of food.

Best Space Ships in SciFi.

Last week a debate broke out on Fark over the best space ships in SciFi. It was prompted by a rather pedestrian list that appeared on a blog that both limited the ships to movies only and still made some rather glaring omissions.

He also didn't seem to remember that the ship in question in Star Trek IV was a Klingon Bird of Prey, not the Enterprise. Tsk. Tsk.

Now, not being a big book-reading SciFi person, I have to omit any notable space ships from Science Fiction literature (though I would be quite willing to listen to any recommendations) but I can compile a more accurate list from TV and movies than “Enterprise” and “Star Destroyers”.

So in no particular order...

Serenity (Firefly). Serenity is the inheritor of the Millennium Falcon, the run down transport that has been bought/won in a poker game second hand and is now doing work as a smuggler. Always two steps from falling out of the sky, in Wash and Kaylee’s capable hands and with Mal iron will, she could do just about anything.

Starfuries (Babylon Five) are a winner for me because they are what X-Wings should have become if some of the engineers from the Gunstar Project (The Last Starfighter) had come over. Not the fastest of fighters, but with multidirectional thruster assemblies on every projecting arm/wing, they were certainly the most agile. The later Thunderbolt series with the atmospheric airfoils was just completing the circle back to the X-Wings.

Romulan Warbirds (Star Trek: The Next Generation) As my brother once commented long ago, “They’re the Ferraris of the Star Trek Universe.” One always had the sneaking suspicion that any Federation Captain that ever faced down a Romulan Captain secretly thought, “Why does his ship look cooler than mine..?” Plus they come with a cloaking device. Standard.

Enterprise 1701-E (Sovereign Class, Star Trek: TNG Films) The first Enterprise looked like a scrappy little contender. The Enterprise of Next Generation looked like a cruise ship. This enterprise of the last two films looked like it could seriously kick ass and take names. This was the Enterprise I had been waiting for. Too bad she came along so late…and in Berman’s time.

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars IV, V, VI). Can anyone not love this ship? The mechanical expression of Han Solo’s broken down cynic with a hero lurking inside of him, Chewbacca beat them both up (the human metaphorically) in order to bring them back to their noble selves. The Falcon became *the* ship that represented the Star Wars series and the lack of such a redeemed morally-ambiguous curmudgeon character/ship is one of the many reasons why the “Prequel” films failed.

Earth Alliance Destroyers (Babylon Five). In the Babylon Five universe, all the starships seem to be built with an organic feel along these elegant flowing lines. Except the massive, brick-like Earth Alliance cruisers. Huge block of engines in the back, bulky rotating section in the middle with a sledge hammer-like bow and bristling with guns on every surface, this is the realistic progression of “What if we did have to take battleships into space?”

Shadow Vessels (Babylon Five). The living embodiment of pure chaos, damn-near impervious, incredibly destructive and with their own consciousness, the spider-like shadow vessels competes with the Borg cube for most scary starship in SciFi TV. As an audience member, whenever you saw either of these ships, all you could think was “Oh, shit…”

Discovery One (2001). “I’m sorry Dave. I can’t do that.” Ranking up among most iconic of the evil/scary ships, Discovery took Hal and mankind to the thin line between God and science with murder and mayhem making the Discovery’s appearance in 2010 creep-out factor 10.

(Though I have to admit being partial to the Leonov and it's atmospheric braking in 2010.)

Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker Guide to The Galaxy) With infinite improbability drive, no more mucking about in hyperspace. One of the late Douglas Adams more brilliant conceptual creations blending science and philosophy in a nonsensically funny mix, Heart of Gold was one of the reason why the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy took off the way it did. And could any other space ship be classified as Dada-equse?

Borg Vessel (ST:TNG). Resistance is Futile. You could destroy 80% of this vessel, and it would just. Keep. Coming. That’s IF you can actually do that much damage. Considering one Borg ship pretty much wiped out the entire Federation fleet at Wolf 359, chances of that were slim to none. I recently rewatched “Best of Both Worlds” and Q’s gift to the Federation can still send a chill down your spine.

Tardis (Dr. Who). 40+ years in television, they must be doing something right. This concept of the ultimate in time space travel was given the random British twist when it’s “chameleon circuit” was fused so the ship permanently looks like a London Police box...flying through time and space. The concept of it’s interior being much larger than the exterior has made "Tardis" a catch phrase in British popular culture for anything bigger than it looks.

Satellite o’Love. Home to Joel (later Mike) and the ‘Bots: Tom Servo and Crow (and Gypsy and cambot) of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fame. "It's just a show, so you really shoudl just relax..."

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix series). A hovercraft. A fast and agile hovercraft. Not technically a starship, but Morpheus ride was just so utterly cool I wanted one.

Moya/TinMan (Farscape/ST:TNG). The concept of a living starship that bonds with terrestrial being for navigation and care is a very interesting one. I believe the motif has been used in SciFi literature for quite some time, but Star Trek was the first TV show to play with it. Moya is the most complete examination of that concept onscreen to date, and a very cool one it is.

Battlestar Galactica (the original series). I know the new ship is sleek and all… but it’s sleek and all. The original ship had such class, plus the Colonial Vipers were like the muscle cars of space.

I also understand that the Liberator of Blake 7 is also a ship worthy of note, however I have not seen the series. So I will leave the commentary to the better informed. Other ship mentioned in the discussion were the Narn Dreadnoughts, Cygnus of The Black Hole, The Event Horizon, starfighters from Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, the Eagle from Space 1999, Red Dwarf and Space Ball One. I know that Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyers are an iconic sillouette in SciFi, but I just never took to them.

If you really want to get your geek on, have a look at this site which actually mapped out the relative sizes of *all* the ships in the more famous series (and some not so famous) for comparison so you can really get an idea how big they are vs. one another. Everything from Dyson Spheres to Federation Shuttles. And you can drag them around!

Bonus: I also recommend scrolling down to the bottom of “1 Meter per Pixel” page to check out the sizes of various buildings vs. Godzilla and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.)

So enjoy your family and friends everyone and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

You Know Al…

Sunday evening when I talked about the Fishbone song, I mentioned that there were a lot of apocalyptic songs running around during the 1980’s. And there were.

On top of Party at Ground Zero, 99 Luft Balloons, and Cities in Dust, you had Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, All Fall Down by Migde Ure, Land of Confusion by Genesis, Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel, Minutes to Midnight by Midnight Oil, Russians by Sting, Seconds & Unforgettable Fire by U2, Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears and the list goes on and on and on.

In fact, here is a page that lists all the song about nuclear war from the 1980’s. It will surprise you how many there were.

Thing is, no one singled these songs out as being political. They were played on radio station regularly with Duran Duran and Bananarama with no one saying boo beyond, “cool song”. The threat of nuclear holocaust was such a common and constant part of life that artists sang about it with the aplomb artists of most era would sing about love or the way artists of today sing about malaise/ennui. Truthfully, no one thought much of it.

Now during those 50+ years we lived with the idea that one man had the power to wipe out all of human civilization with the push of a button, we did get paranoid once. We did allow the government to run away with our fears, once. Then the Attorney General for the Army stood up to Joe McCarthy and the Congressional Committee and said, “Have you no decency, sir?”

Last week, the nation's Attorney General claimed that people who attacked the Warretless Wiretapping program as limiting American freedoms (and indeed it fly directly in the face of the Fouth Amendment)…

"But this view is shortsighted," he said. "Its definition of freedom one utterly divorced from civic responsibility is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."


(Anyone like the 1984 “goodspeak” there? “Curtailing of freedom is liberty”. Orwell would be so….utterly dejected at being proven right.)

Joe McCarthy went after due process by allowing people to be dragged before the congressional committee based on anonymous hearsay and spraying invective and innuendo on innocent people's good names. That’s it.

The Bush administration has attacked rights Joe McCarthy wouldn't even dream of touching. He has allowed torture, he has closed hearings of terrorism suspects to the public (the McCarthy hearings were on TV), he has fostered the program to spy on American citizens, he has done away with the right of Habeus Corpus paving the way for arbitrary arrest and indefinite detainment all because we are supposed to be terrified of what?

A bunch of guys with box cutters and IEDs?

More terrified of them than we were of Khrushchev, a man with a nuclear arsenal who banged his shoe on the podium at the UN and said of America “We will bury you!”

The fact is America said to McCarthy, “Y’know even if there are communists in the government (and you haven’t proven there were) it’s not worth giving up the ideals this nation was founded on. Shove off.”

And look what happened: We rested our faith in the American freedom and democracy and lo and behold, the Soviet system collapsed under it’s own weight. We were right.

Why can’t we have that faith now? Why can’t we entrust that American freedom and democracy will prevail over the murderous thuggery and religious zealotry of terrorism. Why have we lost faith in America such that believing in our freedoms is seen as being “utterly divorced from civic responsibility”?

Have you no decency Attorney General? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?