Please drop by Sam and Mexico’s personal photographer a few times daily so he will get the requisite number of hits prior to Flag Day and will stop whining and blegging.

This entry in NPR’s This I Believe series should make you hungry if you eat meat. They should have the audio link up by now, but they have the text available.

You have to pay attention to this commentary, Digging for Hidden Bodies in Michigan , in which “funeral director Thomas Lynch muses about what it means to hide the bodies of mobsters, regular folks and soldiers.” It sounds weird when you read the blurb, but it makes sense. [I’m not saying that he equates the Shrubbery with the mob; that would be wrong…]

This final piece from NPR, Funeral Protest Ban Targets Anti-Gay Church , in which you get to listen to the dulcet tones of that master of the obnoxious and leader among the Religious Reich, Fred Phelps, complain about the actions to ban things like Anti-gay group protests at National Cemetery, which took place at Arlington today. [If I were a nasty person I might say something like: “If his parents had taken Fred to the vet for neutering and a rabies shot we wouldn’t have to put up with his garbage”, but I won’t.]

The CBS report, Deadly Attack On CBS News Crew, doesn’t go beyond the media involvement.

CNN is better with their report, 2 CBS News staff, U.S. soldier killed in Iraq blast:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Four people, including a U.S. soldier and two members of a CBS News crew, were killed Monday when a bomb ripped through the U.S. military convoy in which they were traveling.

CBS said cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, who was based in London, and sound tech James Brolan, 42, were killed in the blast.

The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi contractor also were killed in the attack on their convoy. (Watch activity around the charred vehicle at the blast site — :46)

Six U.S. soldiers and CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier were wounded in the attack, the military said.

The CBS crew was imbedded with the 4^th Brigade Combat Team of the 4^th Infantry Division. They had stopped and gotten out of their vehicles when an IED planted at the site was detonated.

The 4^th Infantry Division is based in Fort Hood, Texas, and the two CBS employees are British.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a responsibility for the soldiers sent to Iraq. The CBS people had a choice. If the media would report the deaths of the American military personnel with as much dispatch as they report the death and injury of journalists, something might actually get done about bringing this mess to an end.

This is a picture from one of the columbariums at the Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of many of those who served the United States since the middle of the 19^th century.

That is my Father’s marker. He didn’t know those located around his marker, but they all shared service to their country as part of their life.

The country continues to ask for service and people still respond to that call. As you think about the sacrifices represented by Arlington and other cemeteries, ask yourself if you have done what you could to prevent misuse of the willingness of some to serve.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

[Originally posted Memorial Day, 2005]