About three and a half years ago, an Islamic terrorist, Maj. Nadal Hasan, shot and killed 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas. He has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and faces the death penalty.
His defense attorneys are seeking to take capital punishment off the table. The reason du jour is not innocence, insanity, cost, racism, capitalism, militarism (I guess they couldn't really go for that one), or any of the usual shake-and-jive. No, this is the reason:
Defense attorneys argue that Hasan should be spared a possible death sentence because his rights have been violated -- including by the former judge who ordered that Hasan's beard be forcibly shaved. Hasan first showed up in court in June with a beard, later saying it was required by his Muslim faith, but facial hair violates Army rules.
Not that his beard actually got shaved off, mind you. Only that, at one point, he was ordered to shave it off.
The story is here, and my hat is off, I guess, to whatever defense lawyer thought of this one.
I once had the apparently mistaken impression that military courts were models of efficiency. This inept "prosecution" is a poor reflection on our military as was their "politically correct" failure to remove the perpetrator from his position in the first instance.
This inept "prosecution" has disabused me of the notion that the military justice system was a model of efficiency that prized swift and certain punishment.
Apparently, political correctness has mortally infected the military justice system just as it was responsible for failure to remove this radical Islamist from his position as a psychologist in the first instance.
The fact that we spend months or years arguing about a beard is just mind-boggling.
Is it any wonder terrorists view us as ripe for the picking? One of them kills 13 of our people. No sane person doubts he did it. But instead of forthwith trying and executing him for this well-planned mass murder, we tie ourselves in knots fretting about his facial hair.
When a parody of due process solemnly advertises itself as American "justice," the country is in big trouble.
The "judges" on that military court of appeals are plain idiots. First of all, military grooming standards are always enforceable. Second of all, since when does a military judge not have the inherent power to enforce grooming standards in his courtroom.