I loved my 105mm on the M60-A3 and M-1. I really loved my 120mm smoothbore on the M1-A1. But, as much as it pains me to admit, the guns of the world’s navies have managed some things that are absolute masterpieces of killing art.
So beautiful, they bring tears to my eyes.
Sometimes, being an assassin is hard.
The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request by Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin to have conjugal visits with the woman he says he married by proxy.
Yigal Amir, who is serving a life term for the Nov. 4, 1995, killing of the prime minister, had sought permission to have conjugal visits with Larisa Trimbobler.
In its ruling, which upheld a lower court decision, the Supreme Court said that Amir has not abandoned his violent aims, has shown no remorse and has become a role model for extremists. It also said it would be difficult to supervise such visits.
Trimbobler and Amir, both Orthodox Jews, insist they were married secretly over the phone by a rabbi last year. But rabbis and the Israel Prisons Service dispute the claim, saying the wedding was not valid under Jewish law because Amir was not joined by two witnesses.
Prison officials have barred him from consummating the marriage with Trimbobler, a divorced mother of four who fell in love with Amir while he was in prison.
“This entire affair is an example of sadistic maltreatment of us. They can kill us but they can’t separate us,” Trimbobler told Army Radio.
Amir, an ultranationalist Jew, said he killed Rabin to stop the handover of land in Israeli-Palestinian peace deals and has shown no regret. The assassination was a major blow to peace efforts.
Israeli authorities have grown increasingly concerned about extremists as the government prepares to pull out of the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements this summer.
Although a rare occurrence, killers who experience an erection for more than four hours should seek immediate medical attention.
Tshwane (Not Pretoria).
In a symbolic break with apartheid, officials in South Africa’s capital voted Monday to rename the city Tshwane, retaining the name Pretoria for the city center only.
The decision was taken at a special meeting of the governing African National Congress-dominated metropolitan council, the South African Press Association reported.
“By embarking on this process and project of transformation, our country is making a clear distinction between the old and the new, the past and the present,” Executive Mayor Smangaliso Mkhatshwa was quoted as saying during a four-hour debate.
The city of 2 million, established by white settlers in 1855, was named after Andries Pretorius, a leader in the Afrikaners’ “Great Trek” into the interior of the country. Tshwane, which means “we are the same,” was the name used by some of the region’s earliest African settlers.
The South African Geographic Names Council is expected to approve the change when it convenes in October and begin the process of changing the city’s name on maps.
Monday’s vote is the latest in a series of geographic name changes since South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994 ended decades of white-minority rule.
The government says South Africans should not have to live in cities, towns and streets named after the people responsible for their racial oppression.
Opposition councilors argued Monday that the process was a waste of money, and said the move to rename Pretoria threatens to split the capital along racial lines.
Why did Pretoria get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the South Africans.
(Apologies to They Might Be Giants and their incredible rendition)
A first for the blogosphere, and a major coup for blogger Garrett M. Graff.
With an official credential hanging from his neck, a young man stepped into the White House briefing room Monday as perhaps the first blogger to cover the daily press briefings. He found the surroundings to be dilapidated and cramped and concluded that his morning at the White House was “remarkably uneventful.”
Graff’s site, fishbowlDC, labels itself a “gossip blog about Washington, D.C. media” and has the seemingly standard list of left-wing links, right down to the obligatory Instapundit link for an illusion of balance. Still, that said, hats off to Graff for his pioneering accomplishment.