News from Kansas

1. The Missus Old Retired Petty Officer gets into LAX tonight at a scheduled arrival of 2120 hours local. The Allegiant Air MD-82 is a non stop from Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. She has been at the Daughter and the Gang's visiting and taking care of certain things. Glad to have her back. After almost 27 years and the seagoing part being almost 17 years ago, not liking the separation. Unless it paid the bills like the ballast trains did.
2. Scott Roeder will be sentenced today for the murder of noted late term abortion provider George Tiller. Nola Foulston, the prosecutor, is going to ask for a hard 50. Roeder is 52. His days will be spent in a Kansas Correctional Facility to be named later. Sucks to be him. Regardless of how I feel about abortion, cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder is what it is. He admitted it. And he shot Dr. Tiller in church for crying out loud. Bag him and tag him, Nola.
We lived in Wichita for over eleven years. The subject of Dr. Tiller and abortion rights, anti-abortion rights and all is a testy one.

Roeder Guilty in 37 minutes

The jury came back at the Sedgwick County Courthouse in Wichita.

Dennis Roeder is guilty in the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the noted late term abortion provider. The minimum sentence life, with parole possible after 25 years. The County Attorney, Nola Foulston is asking for a hard 50. That means no possibility of parole until after 50 years. It woulde ensure that Roeder never has a day as a free man again.

Had Foulston pursued the death penalty it would have possibly turned Roeder into a martyr. She called it smart in that respect.

I am against abortion in it's use as a means of birth control. Always have been. As for medical reasons, I am not qualified in that respect, I am not a doctor but an ordinary guy.

But regardless of beliefs on the issue of abortion, the murder of Dr. Tiller was a premeditated assassination. And to do it in a house of worship is abominable in and of itself.

I myself would have preferred that Roeder receive the death penalty. But in the current atmosphere, the process could have taken a generation to carry out with the endless appeals involved. And that process could have become a media and cause celebre' feeding frenzy all it's own.

And it only took the jury those 37 minutes to decide. But with the witnesses that were available from that Sunday morning, I don't think the outcome was that much in doubt.