Random Thought: The Tom Clancy beatdown letter is a must read: http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/NetLoss/NetLoss-ClancyLtr.html
And I wholeheartedly agree with him on every single point. When 'Never Again' is talked about, it means this...people standing up for each other and not allowing it to pass by unspoken. I'll stand up for my friends, and I know they'll stand up for me. Fuck these people.

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I was last there in 2001. It's a remarkable place. It's difficult to know how to describe it, because one cannot use the terms one would use for other museums of its caliber. I suppose I can only say that I think everyone should go, and it's an emotionally draining experience. One of the traveling exhibits that was there when I went was a room full of shoes. These were actual shoes from Holocaust victims. At first you see simply a mass. Then, here and there you start to see individual shoes. Then you see the children's shoes, and it's heart wrenching. Then you see a pair of shoes similar to ones you own or have owned, it's inevitable. And that moment stole the air from me. It's not something in distant history, this is something very close and near.

Today in the news, there's reports of the shooting there. It's early on, but it appears that the gunman intended to kill as many people as possible. He went there to slaughter people in the name of hatred.

He was stopped by the guards, at the expense of the life of one of them.

Instead of reading of a massacre, I'm crying reading about heroic men on guard duty who put their lives on the line...and one who paid with his life...to stop this man and prevent a worse tragedy.

And this too is difficult to find words for, thank you seems so inadequate. Instead of that bastard gaining infamy and attention to his rhetoric of hate by a massacre, we have a shining example of Stephen Johns and the other guards who stopped him.