A horrible tragedy. The bottom line is that sometimes awful things happen in life and there’s not a satisfactory explanation as to why. Sometimes people fail to recognize this.
There’s a lot of idle chatter regarding whether or not Virginia Tech handled the situation properly. I’m reserving judgment until more facts come out (interesting concept, cable news). I will say it’s a lot easier to fault decision in the hindsight of a disaster than it is to make them in real time with incomplete information.
In the interest of saving many hours of TV airtime, I’ll answer a few questions:
–Yes, this could happen at X college. (Whatever your nearby school is.)
–There are no security measures which will stop people intent on going on Kamikaze-style killing sprees.
–No, we don’t need metal detectors and other fortress-like security measures on college campuses.
–No, right-wing radio, the fact that the shooter was an alien does not mean international students are about to lay waste to America.
–This could have occurred regardless of what the Blacksburg gun laws are.
–This could have occurred regardless of how many violent movies or video games were sold last year. [Not that those aren’t legitimate issues, but speculative cause/effect chatter on these topics before you know anything about the suspect’s background is silly.]
A trivial matter in the grand scheme of things, but I thought this clip yesterday afternoon is insightful in how our news media works. Here Wolf Blitzer asks if President Bush will be attending today’s ceremony at Virginia Tech:

HENRY: No indication yet. Obviously, that’s one event certainly the White House is weighing.
Typically in situations like this, although there’s never been anything quite like this on a college campus — but whenever there’s some sort of a disaster or tragedy, the president, and this president in particular, tries to stay away in the early days, let local and state official do what they need to do. And then within a few days he usually goes, after they’ve had a chance to grieve, but also deal wit situation on the ground — Wolf.

Huh? Where did reporter Ed Henry get that analysis from? Sounds to me like he merely repeated a talking point the White House floated as it decided whether or not Bush would attend. Anyway, it was obviously wrong. Apparently, Mr. Bush is going to get in the way of local officials doing what they need to do.

I got 8 out of 9 correct on this Pew Research Center news quiz (via Nashville is Talking). I’m too embarrassed to admit which one I got wrong. But I did score at the 91st percentile. Nice to see that all those hours of watching Anna Nicole Smith and American Idol coverage on the cable news channels have finally paid off.
Speaking of news IQ:

A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans’ knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little.
. . .
Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Colbert Report.
. . .
Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly.

Heh.

• South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier calls for the removal of the confederate flag from the state capitol. I agree; it’s time to turn the page.
• David Bauder writes on Democratic presidential candidates boycotting Fox News Channel debates:
  

  The risk to this strategy is it could make the candidates look like, well, weenies.
  “If you can’t handle the people at Fox News Channel, it makes people wonder if you can handle the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Russians and maybe even the Canadians,” said Ellis Henican, a Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor.

  To which, if I was in one of the campaigns, I would respond using in-kind rhetoric: “We don’t what to reward bad behavior by appearing on Fox News.”

• R. Neil notes inefficiency in a ethanol subsidies. Don’t forget the higher food prices.
• What is web 2.0? I really don’t know. But this video is pretty cool:
  

Finally we’re getting to the heart of the matter. We learn (via Fark) that the real reason Don Imus was fired was because he was about to reveal 9/11 secrets:

In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically ‘connected’, and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country.

There you have it.
On a more serious note, I might as well weigh in on this saga.
I note at the outset that I don’t feel sorry for Imus. He’s been saying stupid and offensive things for years and it finally caught up with him.
That said, I find the media reaction to this to be one of the more interesting angles to the story. As Gwen Ifill pointed out today, we’ve had elite news and opinion leaders going on air for years as Imus carried on his act, and they hardly said a thing about it. Then, magically, the switched flipped and it suddenly became cool to pile on Imus under the guise of a national discussion on civility/meanness/racism/whatever.
Why were all these people seemingly okay with the coarseness until last week? I heard more than one “journalist” attempt to justify his/her change of heart on the incident after seeing the Rutgers basketball players being paraded before the TV cameras. I’m not sure when we started needing victim impact testimony to determine if a remark was sufficiently offensive or not. What if several Rutgers players had come out and said that Imus’ remark didn’t bother them at all? Would that have made his comments okay?
Anyway, I’d like to believe that this was truly the start of a national conversation and soul-searching about public racism, mean-spiritedness, and shock radio. But my suspicion is that issue has a shelf-life of no more than three more news cycles or the next media pile on, which ever comes first.

In advance of his congressional testimony this week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has opinion piece in today’s Washington Post.
In short, Gonzales says, “I’m sorry you’ve been so confused about what the Department of Justice did”:

What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

What Gonzales fails to say, and what has never been satisfactorily explained, is how the firing of these eight U.S. attorneys benefited the Justice Department.
What we do know, or rather all Gonzales thinks we should know, is that the dismissals were not “improper”:

I know that I did not — and would not — ask for the resignation of any U.S. attorney for an improper reason. Furthermore, I have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. attorney for an improper reason.

That’s a unsurprising non-admission.
Even you accept what the Bush administration says at face value–that the attorneys were not fired for political reasons–there’s no real way to get around the big “C” word. You know, the issue that’s plagued the administration since day one: competence.
Gonzales offers his own indictment:

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

Eight U.S. attorneys were fired, and Gonzales can’t remember if he made that decision? Is anyone running the Justice Department? If so, who?