Ever since I first heard of Yousef Nadarkhani, the Iranian Christian pastor held captive in that horrible subnormal nation by its rulers for the crime of apostasy, I’ve had as my homepage at work the American Center for Law and Justice website which had been counting the days of his incarceration.

That count has ended.

While I was out of town this weekend with my partner and away from the news, Pastor Nadarkhani was released by the court that had originally sentenced him to death. The charge of apostasy has been reduced to that of evangelizing, and his punishment to time served.

There is so much to say that if I did would look like gift-horse material. For now, let’s all just say a prayer of thanksgiving that he has been delivered from these savages and is currently back in the embrace of his family.

Let’s also further pray that now that he’s out of jail he will find safety. All to often in places like Iran, prisoners of conscience are released from official bondage only to be torn apart by the mobs that populate such backward countries.

If you’d like to know more about Pastor Nadarkhani and his trials, check out the link to the ACLJ above.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HHQ)

Kudos to Bruce Drake for another report getting at the real problem posed by the Tucson shooting:

A top official in the Pima County sheriff’s office said Sunday that his department did not begin an investigation or take earlier action regarding Jared Lee Loughner despite his history of erratic behavior because his contacts with police were “relatively benign” and did “not rise to the level of causing us to be necessarily concerned about him committing a violent act.”

Richard J. Kastigar, chief of the sheriff’s Operations Bureau, acknowledged the controversy over the question of whether authorities should have moved earlier to look into the case of Loughner, who gunned down 20 people Sept. 8 outside a Tucson supermarket, killing six and critically wounding Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

“A lot of folks have suggested that there were clues to his mental stability,” Kastigar said on ABC’s “This Week. “But we’re governed by laws. And the laws allow us to do certain things and restrict us from doing other things.”

Kastigar may well be right.   (This bears investigation.)  Do existing Arizona laws grant the sheriff’s department in Pima County (or other law enforcement body for that matter) the tools they needed to detain and/or incarcerate the disturbed young man who would become the shooter?

If this Pima County official is right, this then is the real problem for the Arizona legisalture:  how to craft a law that would facilitate the detention of mentally unbalance individuals who pose a danger to society without threatening the liberty of eccentric or otherwise moderately troubled individuals who pose no such danger.