Broward County Deputy Sheriff Scot Peterson 'Never Went In' During Florida Shooting

This really makes me sad.

The school's "resource officer."

Here's the New York Times' headline, at Memeorandum, "Armed Sheriff's Deputy ‘Never Went In’ During Florida Shooting."

And at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Stoneman Douglas cop resigns; sheriff says he should have 'killed the killer'."

Sheriff Scott Israel said school cop Scot Peterson should have “went in. Addressed the killer. Killed the killer.” - Sun Sentinel https://t.co/ZnWkX0iCTK

— Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) February 22, 2018

And more on Twitter:

The armed school resource officer at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School responded to the shooting BUT NEVER WENT IN for “upward or 4 minutes” while the gunmen killed people, said Sheriff Scott Israel.

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) February 22, 2018

The armed school resource officer at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School responded to the shooting BUT NEVER WENT IN for “upward or 4 minutes” while the gunmen killed people, said Sheriff Scott Israel.

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) February 22, 2018

Sheriff Israel sat on that stage and pointed fingers @DLoesch last night. If he had an ounce of integrity he'd resign immediately. https://t.co/TI1gsBETY2

— Jesse Kelly® (@JesseKellyDC) February 22, 2018

Miami Herald: Parkland school cop 'never went in' during the shooting. There were other failures, too https://t.co/Z1Hkr4ULV8

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 23, 2018

This is horrific. “In November, a tipster called BSO to say Cruz ‘could be a school shooter in the making’ but deputies did not write up a report on that warning. It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons.” https://t.co/3gtwGPl6bo

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 23, 2018

FBI tipped off about Cruz, his guns, instability, DESIRE TO KILL PEOPLE in school shooting
-DID NOTHING

Deputies called to Cruz’s home 39x
-DID NOTHING

On-site Officer heard gunshots
-DID NOTHING@DLoesch pressed Sheriff Israel on inaction
-He deflected
-Audience jeered, booed pic.twitter.com/jdxtGVCput

— Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) February 23, 2018

You didn’t stand up for them when they repeatedly reported that this murderer was threatening them in messages that violated FL law, his parents reported he “held a gun to others’ heads;” 39 visits and 2 FBI reports and NOTHING. It’s literally your job. Not mine. https://t.co/KjQhfvQc2N

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 23, 2018

Additionally, @browardsheriff sat on that stage with me last night fully aware that his deputy had been outside and armed while this madman had four minutes to massacre — and said NOTHING.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 23, 2018

Were there any adults who didn’t fail?

The FBI failed.

Local police failed.

The security officer failed.

The people who set up the video feed failed.

Seventeen lives never should have been lost. https://t.co/1aYZUi6wU5

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) February 23, 2018

An Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right

I don't read National Review, but I swear this is good. I hate conspiracy theories. I don't, for example, read Gateway Pundit, and I quit watching cable news, both CNN and Fox. I just can't take politics anymore, which is bad, because I teach this stuff.

In any case, it's Kevin Williamson:

An Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right https://t.co/6bpQ6lD2GC pic.twitter.com/EBplElZ2BE

— National Review (@NRO) February 22, 2018

Religion, Patriotism, Fatherland in Poland

At the New York Times, "Poland’s Nationalism Threatens Europe’s Values, and Cohesion":

SNIADOWO, Poland — The young mayor of this small town deep in eastern Poland is extremely proud of its new Italian fire engine, which sits, resplendent, next to a Soviet-era one. Nearby, the head of the elementary school shows off new classrooms and a new gymnasium, complete with an electronic scoreboard.

All of this — plus roads, solar panels, and improved water purification and sewer systems, as well as support to dairy farmers — has largely been paid for by the European Union, which finances nearly 60 percent of Poland’s public investment.

With such largess, one would hardly think that Poland is in a kind of war with the European Union. In recent months, the nationalist government has bitten the hand that feeds it more than once.

The European Union has accused Poland of posing a grave risk to democratic values, accusing it of undermining the rule of law by packing the courts with loyalists. Western leaders have also criticized Poland’s governing party for pushing virtually all critical voices off the state news media and for restricting free speech with its latest law criminalizing any suggestion that the Polish nation bore any responsibility in the Holocaust.

The tug of war has intensified as Eastern Europe becomes the incubator for a new model of “illiberal democracy” for which Hungary has laid the groundwork. But it is Poland — so large, so rich, so militarily powerful and so important geostrategically — that will define whether the European Union’s long effort to integrate the former Soviet bloc succeeds or fails.

The stakes, many believe, far outweigh those of Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit, as the bloc faces a painful reckoning over whether, despite its efforts at discipline, it has enabled the anti-democratic drift, and what to do about it.

The growing conflict between the original Western member states of the bloc and the newer members in Central and Eastern Europe is the main threat to the cohesion and survival of the European Union. It is not a simple clash, but a multibannered one of identity, history, values, religion and interpretations of democracy and “solidarity.”

“It’s yes to Europe, but what Europe?” said Michal Baranowski, the director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund, noting that Poland’s support for European Union membership runs as high as 80 percent but can be shallow.

The Polish government, which is dominated by the Law and Justice party, itself dominated from the back rooms by the party chief, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, seems to have its own answer to the question.

It is more than happy to take European Union economic support, but worries that Poland’s share could dwindle if the member nations use the budget to pressure Poland to fall in line. The country is to get nearly 9 percent of the European Union budget for 2014 to 2020, around 85 billion euros, or $105 billion.

But the vague threats to apply the brakes to the gravy train are unlikely to push the Kaczynski government to change. It has responded to European criticism by accusing Brussels and Germany — until recently Poland’s greatest ally in Europe — of dictating terms to newer members and trying to impose an elitist, secular vision. It has also positioned itself at the forefront of central and eastern European nations opposing migration quotas, saying it is acting in defense of Christian values.

The governing party has campaigned on Polish national pride and “getting up off our knees;” it has also portrayed predominantly Roman Catholic Poland, which traditionally sees itself as a victim of history, as the “Christ of nations.”

After being squeezed between empires and occupied in turns by fascism and communism, Poland is ready to take its place as an equal, Mr. Kaczynski asserts, no longer relegated to serfdom or secondary status...

Still more.

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Dana Loesch at #CNNTownHall

At CNN, "NRA spokesperson: 'Insane monster' shouldn't have been able to get firearm."

And at the Guardian U.K., "Who is Dana Loesch? The NRA's chosen defender after the Florida shooting."

'Alt-Right Conspiracy Theories' Following Stoneman-Douglas Parkland Mass Shooting (VIDEO)

Seems as though leftists are feeling their oats. Perhaps if they ratchet up the attacks enough they'll be able to shame the public and government office-holders into banning firearms, lawful gun-owners be damned.

And as for the conspiracy theories, I don't go for them. But it's weird that this David Hogg kid was just on the West Coast last year being interviewed on local CBS News 2 about some activist issue, and now apparently some viral videos show him rehearsing his gun control talking points before going on the national news in Parkland. You can see why people are slamming him as a "crisis actor."

It's creating a firestorm of controversy. At the Tampa Bay Times, for example, "Florida lawmaker’s aide fired after saying outspoken Parkland students are actors."

And here's far-left Anderson Cooper, who was in Parkland interviewing survivors shortly after the massacre. FWIW:

Barbara Palvin Photos

At Editorials Fashions Trends, "BARBARA PALVIN BY BEN WATTS FOR SI SWIMSUIT 2018."

PREVIOUSLY: "Barbara Palvin Returns (VIDEO)."

Social Justice 'Moral' Tyranny

This really is quite an essay.

At Quillette:

Interesting analysis. Advocates for dismantling oppressive power structures don’t take into account the power and oppression exerted by forcing their moral values onto others.https://t.co/42KJwl1AYv

— James Damore (@JamesADamore) February 19, 2018

Haley Kalil Sexy Belize Photo Shoot (VIDEO)

On Twitter here and here.

And watch:

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President Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy

From Professor Barry Posen, at Foreign Affairs, "The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony":

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to put an end to nation building abroad and mocked U.S. allies as free riders. “‘America first’ will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” he declared in a foreign policy speech in April 2016, echoing the language of pre–World War II isolationists. “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves,” he said—an apparent reference to his earlier suggestion that U.S. allies without nuclear weapons be allowed to acquire them.

Such statements, coupled with his mistrust of free trade and the treaties and institutions that facilitate it, prompted worries from across the political spectrum that under Trump, the United States would turn inward and abandon the leadership role it has played since the end of World War II. “The US is, for now, out of the world order business,” the columnist Robert Kagan wrote days after the election. Since Trump took office, his critics have appeared to feel vindicated. They have seized on his continued complaints about allies and skepticism of unfettered trade to claim that the administration has effectively withdrawn from the world and even adopted a grand strategy of restraint. Some have gone so far as to apply to Trump the most feared epithet in the U.S. foreign policy establishment: “isolationist.”

In fact, Trump is anything but. Although he has indeed laced his speeches with skepticism about Washington’s global role, worries that Trump is an isolationist are out of place against the backdrop of the administration’s accelerating drumbeat for war with North Korea, its growing confrontation with Iran, and its uptick in combat operations worldwide. Indeed, across the portfolio of hard power, the Trump administration’s policies seem, if anything, more ambitious than those of Barack Obama.

Yet Trump has deviated from traditional U.S. grand strategy in one important respect. Since at least the end of the Cold War, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have pursued a grand strategy that scholars have called “liberal hegemony.” It was hegemonic in that the United States aimed to be the most powerful state in the world by a wide margin, and it was liberal in that the United States sought to transform the international system into a rules-based order regulated by multilateral institutions and transform other states into market-oriented democracies freely trading with one another. Breaking with his predecessors, Trump has taken much of the “liberal” out of “liberal hegemony.” He still seeks to retain the United States’ superior economic and military capability and role as security arbiter for most regions of the world, but he has chosen to forgo the export of democracy and abstain from many multilateral trade agreements. In other words, Trump has ushered in an entirely new U.S. grand strategy: illiberal hegemony...

More.

Leftists Allege U.S. Separating Illegal Alien Families

Actually, that sounds like a plan. But to leftists, it's just evidence that immigration enforcement is evil.

At the Los Angeles Times, "U.S. is separating immigrant parents and children to discourage others, activists say."

Collapse of the Global Elite

From Professor Eliot A. Cohen, at the Atlantic, "Witnessing the Collapse of the Global Elite."

Everyone at #MSC2018 is a has-been. Same with Davos. No new ideas coming out of any of these ego-stroking circle jerks. https://t.co/XudyBjcudW

— Milena Rodban (@MilenaRodban) February 20, 2018

Cold Weather Forecast

I was in Fresno over the weekend and blogging was sporadic. I missed posting Jennifer Delacruz's forecast. (She's so lovely.)

Meanwhile, here's Garth Kemp, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

West Boca High School Students March to Protest Gun Violence (VIDEO)

At the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Student walkouts underway in push for gun law changes and school safety."

Nikolas Cruz Was Reported Over 30 Times (VIDEO)

Here's Dana Loesch, for the N.R.A.:



And see, "Warning signs in Florida school shooting have officials taking a hard look at procedures."

Katherine Heigl Selfies

At Drunken Stepfather, "KATHERINE HEIGL SLUTTY SELFIES OF THE DAY."

Claudia Romani in Sheer Black Dress

At London's Daily Mail, "Playboy pin-up Claudia Romani exhibits her model body as she wears a see-through dress with nothing but a black satin lingerie set."

Also, at Egotastic!, "Claudia Romani Sexy Valentines Lingerie Shoot."

The Dark Stain of American Gun Exceptionalism

Boy, each new shooting brings out more and more of the worst people. And even military personnel can go batshit crazy on stuff like this.

Freaky.

At Task & Purpose, "The View From Afghanistan: The Dark Stain of American Gun Exceptionalism."

The View From Afghanistan: The Dark Stain Of American Gun Exceptionalism (Jared Keller / Task & Purpose)https://t.co/T21r1MrogPhttps://t.co/QstzI32Z8D

— memeorandum (@memeorandum) February 21, 2018

Samantha Hoopes in Tropical Nevis (VIDEO)

The new Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition is on newsstands.

Here's the lovely Ms. Samantha: