I’m on the west coast on business and last night at about 8pm Pacific time, I was getting frantic texts from home: “Obama will be giving a major national security speech from the solemnness of The White House at 10:30pm. Very weird, especially for this President who prefers cheering audiences as much as his TelePrompTer.

And then came the words I had longed to hear for nearly 10 years: Osama bin Laden is dead.

I began to cry as I thought of the thousands incinerated, slaughtered, and fell to their deaths on Sept. 11, 2001.

My heart goes to the family of our close friend — Joe Ferguson — who died when Flight 77 slammed into the side of the Pentagon that bright blue September morning. I hope they will have some sense of closure. The War isn’t over, but the AQ Commander In Chief has been defeated in battle.

My hearty thanks goes to our intelligence and defense communities. A big thanks to President Obama, CIA Director Panetta and SecDef Robert Gates for what appears to be a rare coordinated intel/military ops that worked flawlessly.

Finally, nothing can express my grief and sadness toward the families of 9/11 victims and to those families who gave our nation their sons and daughters in the first round of the Global War on Islamic Terror.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!!!!!

I’m not sure how I feel about President Obama’s reversal of George W. Bush’s policy of disallowing media coverage of the return of fallen military members to Dover AFB. Perhaps I’ll never really settle in on how I feel about such an emotional subject. I give myself that latitude.

But I definitely want to take the opportunity today to give the president credit for the classy way in which he welcomed my falled brethren early this morning.

Jake Tapper has the details.

Unlike Dan (below), I did watch the president’s speech to Congress tonight and couldn’t have been more disappointed in his choices.

While there is a lot to say that I’ll address when I get a chance to reflect a bit more on the text of the speech, I didn’t want to go to bed tonight before making the following observation and getting something off my chest:

The last time a Joint Session of Congress was addressed by a president for other than the State of the Union (and a SotU-lite after being Innaugurated) was September 20, 2001 when President George W. Bush addressed the Nation as being “a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom.” We were about to enter a war that persists to this day.

Nearly eight years to the day after terrorists attacked defenseless civilians in the most dispicable act of destruction on the United States by a foreign entity in history, following the deadliest month so far in the war that ensued, and as a weary Nation begins anew to waver on the necessity of the battle, our current president decided that matters were so dire that another Joint Session needed to be called for an address by him. Things indeed are so grave, that, in his own words, if we do not act, “more will die”.

Only problem is that what was so dire to him is not the very existence of our Nation at the hands of these terrorists, nor the desperately needed pep-talk to reinvigorate the spirit that led us once to nearly unanimously support the need for action in this battle.

No, it was the need he feels to Stalinize the most productive and effective health care industry in the world.

In fact, so unimportant are our troops’ current efforts to defeat the terrorist threat to their Commander in Chief that the words “Afganistan” and “Iraq” passed his lips exactly one time each, and in the same breath, and only to dismiss them as having cost more (in dollars, mind you, not lives) than his (erroneous) projection for this government take-over. What’s more, his use of the present perfect sense (to nit-pick) makes it seem as though he’s speaking of a war already over, not currently being waged.

I have given this man incredible credit over the past 8 months for correct positions he has taken on (some) national defense issues and military concerns. His timing and explicit avoidance of those of us who are fighting and dying daily in the war he did support on the eve of this solemn anniversary and on the heels of such a devastating month of losses is completely inexcusable.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

This is a “repost” from my Twitter account:

$50 says Jacko is still alive and will burst out of his casket with Bubbles and Macaulay Culkin and burst into song while fireworks explode.

I half-expect it to happen.  Only MJ could get away with it too.  Mostly.

In the meantime, real heroes are dying in ever increasing numbers in Afghanistan — Obama’s War.

“Mr. Jackson received days of wall-to-wall coverage in the media,” Martha Gillis wrote to the Washington Post. “Where was the coverage of my nephew or the other soldiers who died that week?”

Gillis’ nephew, Lt. Brian Bradshaw, 24, died in Kheyl, Afganistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Bradshaw, of Steilacoom, Wash., was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division in Fort Richardson, Alaska. He was one of at least 13 U.S. soldiers to die in Afghanistan since Jackson’s death on June 25.

Since January 20, 2009, over 70 American servicemen have died in Afghanistan.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)