MIT and Watertown Police dramas, right now. 1 officer killed, 1 at large. Oy. — Page 20

"But they didn't. They used bombs."

Oh. I must have missed that.

I think proposing questions of the sort that the article Ghostlight posted can be insightful about a wide range of issues. Dismissing them by making entirely false equivalences and turning them into farce is a kneejerk, rather blinded reaction.

Some hypotheticals are helpful and can point out connections, failings, or successes that aren't immediately apparent. I have to agree that I don't see what there is to become defensive or dismissive about. The article certainly isn't belittling the human cost of the attack in any way.

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And of course I can't speak for the author, but I didn't get the impression he was saying it would have been better had guns been used (in the way that yes, we can all agree water balloons would have been better for the victims).

Updated On: 4/27/13 at 01:28 PM

"To the dead, and to those in their lives, does it matter if it were guns or bombs?"

Absolutely not. And I don't think that was any part of the writer's point.

I still don't know the fine points about pre-Miranda information. I'm gathering it's a pretty murky subject.

There is a public safety exception in Miranda, which I think was validly used in this case. One invoked by government the court would have to determine if there was proper justification for the delay IF the government wants to introduce the evidence at time of trial. Even if the courts find the public safety exception does not apply, the only consequence would be that the statements made by Little Douche when he was in custody by the authorities and before he was Mirandized would not be admissible.

What would be admissible is everything else - including his admission to the person he carjacked that he was the bomber.

In this instance, since we did not really know if this was an isolated attack or something coordinated, I think there was good reason to delay the reading of Miranda.

To me the fact of them being Muslim mean as little to me as Timothy McVeigh's religion.

That's where the specifics of the case become particular. Did Timothy McVeigh act out of a sense of duty to his religion? If not, his religion matters little as a motive.

Did the older Tsarnaev brother act out of a misguided sense of duty to his religion? If so, was that misguided sense of duty fostered by his mother or by "Misha," the Armenian mentor who radicalized him (in Cambridge, not in Dagestan) and persuaded him to stop studying music because, Misha said, it was not right to make music or even listen to it in Islam.

If Tamerlan's religion was indeed a motive for him, then it does mean indeed something, and it's not being Islamophobic to pay attention to it. If his religion was incidental to his crime, then, as you say, it matters little.

And remember, the NY Times quoted Tamerlan's brother-in-law as saying that Tamerlan "was angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.” (Apparently uttered sans irony.)

So he built a coupla bombs.

I was also struck by a feminist critique of the Massachusetts judge and jury that dismissed the case against Tamerlan for the domestic abuse claims, not by the wife whom he impregnated and abandoned after her conversion, but by the girlfriend he admitted slapping.

Her hypothetical, which I think is more intelligent than the one in the New Yorker, was "What if Tamerlan had been properly prosecuted for domestic violence? Maybe he would not have bombed the marathon."

And what of Tamerlan's three friends, including the dope dealer, who were brutally slain in a murder that remains unsolved?

Rather than ask, as does yet another think piece currently making the rounds of Twitter and Facebook, entitled "Are the Boston Bombers Just Douchebags," I'd like to see a think piece called "What If the Tsarnaev Brothers Were Homicidal Psychopaths?"

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So douchebag or little douche is ok but monster or animal is not? I smell double standard.

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YWIW, thanks for the info. I find it reassuring.

And I certainly agree (always did) that the first priority, beyond anyone's legal rights, is public safety.

I was a little uncomfortable with them not reading him the Miranda rights (still am, though I do get the idea of the public safety exception), but an important thing to remember is this: just because they didn't read him his Miranda rights doesn't mean he doesn't have them. He still had the right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer.

I think of them as a palate cleanser.

According to that report, the younger brother had no gun and as a result, did not fire on the police from the boat or shoot himself there. There was no "exchange of gunfire". Has any news outlet ever verified that he ran over his brother?

But they did not know that he was unarmed. Or that he did not have explosives strapped on him.

Updated On: 4/27/13 at 11:39 PM