The Ft. Lauderdale Shooting, Barack Obama and the VA -- "Why Should Honor Outlive Honesty?"

Trump begins his last full week before his swearing-in as President, and events are beginning to swirl around him rather than around President Obama. • • • THE ORLANDO SHOOTING AND VA FAILURES. Reuters reported last Friday that Florida Governor Rick Scott called President-Elect Donald Trump, not President Obama after the Ft. Lauderdale airport shooting that left 5 dead and 6 wounded. Governor Scott told Reuters he has not spoken to President Obama regarding the airport shooting, but reached out to President-Elect Trump and has ''spoken to him and Vice President-Elect Pence multiple times'' because he has a "personal relationship" with them. And they told me, Scott said, that whatever resources we need from the federal government : "they would do everything in their power to make that happen. It's horrible what happened here. It's not time to be political, it's a time to mourn those that lost their life..." • • • THE FT. LAUDERDALE FACTS. A gunman believed to be a mentally unstable Iraq war veteran, opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale's international airport on Friday, killing five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said. Five people died and eight were wounded, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters at the airport, where air traffic was shut down. The gunman had arrived on a flight with a checked gun in his bag, Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca said on Twitter. The shooter claimed his bag and went to the bathroom to load the gun before coming out and firing, LaMarca said. • THE FT. LAUDERDALE SHOOTER. Fox News reported on Monday that the suspected killer in the Ft. Lauderdale rampage, 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, was charged on Saturday with performing an act of violence at an airport resulting in death, as well as weapons charges, which could lead to the death penalty if he is convicted. Earlier, the FBI announced that Santiago apparently traveled to the airport for the purpose of carrying out the bloody rampage. Santiago told investigators that he planned the attack, buying a one-way ticket to the Fort Lauderdale airport, according to the federal complaint. Authorities don't know why he chose his target and have not ruled out terrorism as a "potential motivation" for the attack, FBI Special Agent in Charge George Piro said during a news conference. Piro said investigators were scouring the 26-year-old suspect's social media footprint and looking into where he'd traveled before. Santiago was not on any no-fly list, according to the FBI. He allegedly carried out the attack with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, Piro added. • Police in Anchorage, Alaska, where Santiago boarded the first leg of his flight, said they had returned a handgun to the Florida airport shooting suspect which was temporarily taken from him when he underwent a mental evaluation late last year. Anchorage Police Chief Christopher Tolley said it was not immediately clear if it was the same gun used in Friday's deadly rampage. Officials told a news conference the gun was returned to the suspect because the Iraq war veteran had not committed a crime. Why the gunman may have chosen South Florida was unclear, because he had no clear connection to the state aside from relatives in the Naples area, a two-hour drive away, the local Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel reported. • Santiago had a history of mental health problems -- some of which followed his military service in Iraq -- and was receiving psychological treatment at his home in Alaska, his relatives said. Hernan Rivera, Santiago's uncle, told the media : "Only thing I could tell you was when he came out of Iraq, he wasn't feeling too good." Santiago deployed in 2010 as part of the Puerto Rico National Guard, spending a year with an engineering battalion, according to Guard spokesman Major Paul Dahlen. In recent years, Santiago -- a new father, according to his family -- had been living in Anchorage, Alaska, his brother, Bryan Santiago, told the Associated Press from his home in Puerto Rico, where Santiago grew up. Bryan Santiago said his brother's girlfriend had recently called the family to alert them to his treatment. In November, Santiago told FBI agents in Alaska that the government was controlling his mind and was forcing him to watch ISIS group videos, an unnamed law enforcement official told Reuters. The FBI agents notified the police after the interview with Santiago, who took him in for a mental health evaluation. Bryan Santiago said his brother never spoke to him directly about his medical issues : "We have not talked for the past three weeks. That's a bit unusual...I'm in shock. He was a serious person...He was a normal person." National Guard spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Candis Olmstead told the New York Times that while in Iraq, Santiago cleared roads of improvised explosive devices and at least two members of his company were killed. He was awarded a Meritorious Unit Commendation. Since returning from Iraq, Santiago served in the Army Reserves and the Alaska National Guard in Anchorage, Olmstead told the AP. He was serving as a combat engineer in the Guard before his discharge for "unsatisfactory performance. His military rank upon discharge was E3, private 1st class, and he worked one weekend a month with an additional 15 days of training yearly, said Olmstead, who would not elaborate on his discharge. The Pentagon said he went AWOL several times and was demoted and discharged. Still, he'd had some successes during his military career, being awarded a number of medals and commendations including the Iraq Campaign Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. His uncle and aunt, Maria Ruiz, who live in New Jersey, were trying to make sense of what they were hearing about Santiago after his arrest at the Fort Lauderdale airport when FBI agents arrived at their house to question them. Maria Ruiz told the media that her nephew had recently become a father to a son and was struggling : "It was like he lost his mind," she said in Spanish of his return from Iraq. "He said he saw things." Santiago was charged in a domestic violence case in January 2016, damaging a door when he forced his way into a bathroom at his girlfriend's Anchorage home. The woman told officers he yelled at her to leave, choked her and smacked her on the side of the head, according to charging documents. A month later municipal prosecutors said he violated the conditions of his release when officers found him at her home during a routine check. He told police he had lived there since he was released from custody the previous month. His Anchorage attorney, Max Holmquist, declined to discuss his client. Law enforcement officers were at the girlfriend's home Friday afternoon, and officers guarding the property outside told a reporter who approached the home to step away. Senator-elect Nelson Cruz, who knew the family and represents the town where they live in Puerto Rico, said he had been talking regularly with Bryan Santiago since the shooting. Nelson Cruz said of Santiago's brother and mother : "They're very humble and very Christian people. They want to tell the families of the victims that they're extremely saddened and extremely upset by what happened." • THE PUBLIC STORY. We have heard form the FBI, local law enforcement authorities, and the media about the mental state of Esteban Santiago. We have heard his relatives describe him as someone who had "lost his mind," "saw things" and was struggling after serving in Iraq. He went AWOL several times and was discharged for "unsatisfctory performance." He had a domestic violence order against him. He went to the FBI himself to tell them that "the government was controlling his mind and was forcing him to watch ISIS group videos." He was receiving psychiatric treatment in Alaska. • WHERE WAS THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION? Esteban Santiago could not fit more perfectly the post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on by serving in Iraq and other current US war zones. Some young soldiers bear up under the stress. Others do not. And, the VA has said time and time again that they have specialists, a hotline and a care unit in place to help those who come home broken by what they saw or experienced in the Middle East. WHERE was that Unit for Private Santiago?? WHERE were the specialists who hade to be alerted by local police to his aberrant behavior -- was it because the FBI didn't bother to send a report to the VA?? WHERE was the vaunted Obama No-Fly List's value when someone who should have been on it bought a one-way ticket to Ft. Lauderdale and had a supposedly noted weapon in his checked baggage?? WHERE were the federal and state gun licensing checks that should have flagged and prevented Santiago from possessing a gun?? • • • WHY ARE OBAMA AND HIS GUN CONTROL SUPPORTERS SILENT? Could it be because everything they say will prevent gun deaths in America is a pack of lies. Could it be because they have lost the presidency and so they no longer, and never really did, care about gun control -- didn't care because it was just a ploy intended to garner leftist and Progressive votes?? Do they know that on their watch the VA has failed so miserably to protect American veterans that one word from the smugly pious mouth of Barack Obama about Santiago would unleash a volcanic eruption of deeply relevant criticism?? • Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Alaska, the victims and America were killed and wounded by Friday's shooting rampage. But, nobody was more mistreated than Esteban Santiago. And, now, there is the possibility of the death penalty -- for a psychotic soldier-veteran whose only fault was to be abandoned in his extreme need by the military and the VA whose duty it was to help him. Is it as Edmund Burke thought : "Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants." Is there some feeling of shame in the heart of Barack Obama and at the highest levels of the VA because of the apparently easily avoidable Ft. Lauderdale shooting? Or is it as Shakespeare asked in Othello : "But why should honor outlive honesty?" Is this why Obama and his VA Administrator are silent? Have they so completely lost their honesty by telling America years worth of lies about how they love soldiers and care for them after service that their honor has long since evaporated? • • • DEAR READERS, there are hints of answers to these questions about character and honesty and integrity in the Obama White House. A federal judge ruled against the Obama administration on Saturday, putting the President’s transgender health mandate on hold and handing the White House yet another legal defeat for its unconstitutional governance by executive order. US District Judge Reed O’Connor granted plaintiffs a temporary injunction against an Obamacare rule that requires doctors and hospitals to treat patients the same, regardless of gender identity. In his 46-page decision, O’Connor said the rule would “likely violate” the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He also surmised that the Obama administration had no legal basis to treat gender identity as an issue deserving state protection. Judge O'Connor laid out the argument against extending Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to transgenders : “The government’s usage of the term sex in the years since Title IX’s enactment bolsters the conclusion that its common meaning in 1972 and 2010 referred to the binary, biological differences between males and females. Prior to the passage of the ACA in 2010 and for more than thirty years after the passage of Title IX in 1972, no federal court or agency had concluded sex should be defined to include gender identity.” The ruling means that the federal government will not be able to force doctors to betray their religious beliefs or their own medical judgment. The original rule, put into place by the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services agency, did not explicitly require doctors to perform gender transition surgery; it merely mandated that doctors provide their usual services to transgender patients. However, as we’ve seen with this administration, there is no rule or law they cannot bend for the sake of their leftist agenda. • But, hopeful as this decision is for Title IX, its message reaches farther -- into the heart of Barack Obama. In a statement, the White House denounced the ruling with these words : “Today’s decision is a setback, but hopefully a temporary one, since all Americans -- regardless of their sex, gender identity or sexual orientation -- should have access to quality, affordable health care free from discrimination,” said White House spokesperson Katie Hill. • WHY, WHY, OH WHY, President Obama does not the same concern you have for transgender Americans extend to the soldiers who fight to preserve the rights of all Americans?? If transgenders deserve "quality, affordable health care free from discrimination," WHY do not Veterans deserve the same?? Especially veterans whose military service left them mentally unstable and likely to harm themselves, through suicide, or others, through uncontrollable rampage???