Sarah Palin is still crazy. I know that's not news, but it sure is infotainment. I hate to feed her terrifying ego, but I'm already over the event horizon: on Hannity's show, she said she already knows that the Fort Hood shooter was a terrorist. (Well, he was a Muslim.) She and many others on the right maintain that those unfortunate soldiers were the victims of political correctness.
The (apparently unfortunate) truth of the matter for people who hold such views is that we have something called "due process" here in the United States–you know, that system whereby someone must be presumed innocent until the matter has been brought to trial. There are reasons to believe that Hasan may actually prove to have ties to jihadists, but only a fool would presume to really know: it may seem in every respect that someone is guilty, but they still get a trial, every time, here in Western democracy. It's deeply irresponsible to presume guilt. Not that we should expect responsible speech from the most rabble-rousing politician of recent years.
The FBI may not know and more-responsible citizens may not know, but Palin and others possess the ability to know someone's guilt in advance. Maybe they could start sharing this knowledge with the rest of us in advance, like Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report"? (And hey, they're even a minority!)
You may wonder how Palin in particular knows what happened. Well, she said we should have done "simple things, like looking at his business card that had the secret code word for who it was that he actually…"
And to be fair, Hasan may have actually been that remarkably dumb. On the other hand, the FBI decided he wasn't a problem in an investigation that started back in 2008:
FORT HOOD, Texas, Nov. 9 (UPI) — The FBI said Monday the man accused of the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre came to its attention in December 2008 but was not suspected of "terrorist activities."
In a statement, the FBI said it took notice of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as part of an unrelated investigation being carried out by a Joint Terrorism Task Force — an FBI-led team made up of FBI agents and investigators from other federal, state and local law enforement agencies.
"Investigators on the JTTF reviewed certain communications between Major Hasan and the subject of that investigation and assessed that the content of those communications was consistent with research being conducted by Major Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center," the statement said. "Because the content of the communications was explainable by his research and nothing else derogatory was found, the JTTF concluded that Major Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning."
So who knows? We'll just have to wait and see. Well, the rest of us. Due process, of course, applies regardless–there is apparently some real evidence, but it still requires a conviction. What if it turns out (and no, I don't think it will) that his "secret code word" in his case, stood for something entirely different than what we think? We owe all our citizens the chance to have a trial, even if we "know" they are terrorists. But nuance and Palin aren't friends.
She may be guano-suckin' crazy, but she's onto something here–if all these dudes carry terrorist business cards with secret code words, solving the terrorist problem is going to be much easier than anyone thought. We just have one of those contests where you drop your card in a bowl to win a party at Chuck E. Cheese, then we round them all up when they've taken their shoes off for the big thing full of plastic balls. Thanks, Sarah!
ADDITIONAL:
If Dick Cheney is planning to run in 2012, does that finally prove he's an android? And isn't there a law that you can't serve three terms as president?
