I knew a Major Major in USAF. He left the service before being promoted to Lieutenant Colonel Major.
My employer had a pilot named Pilot. Now retired.
I wonder if your acquaintance Major Major got promoted more quickly than usual just because having his title match his last name was amusing.
Probably not. The only thing bigger than USAF’s bureacracy’s ponderous size is its truly ginormous lack of humor and wit.
So, apparently, the trial is scheduled for October. Sooner than I would have expected, but apparently because he declined to wave his right to a speedy trial:
Thanks.
Idaho and firing squads goes together like, I don’t know, maybe peanut butter and jelly. Or mental illness & murder.
Put him in Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell with some fentanyl laced cocaine and let the Secret Service do the investigation.
C’mon, Dude. Steak and Potatoes
Whom should he have waved it at?
The LDS church (Mormon) has a long tradition of punishing the most serious crimes by firing squad. It’s part of a doctrine called “blood atonement”. IIRC the theology holds that execution by firing squad results in more likely forgiveness in the hereafter for the criminal than with other forms of execution.
There is a significant LDS population in Idaho. Even more so in Utah, where Gary Gilmore was executed for murder by firing squad in 1976.
I have no objection to firing squads. I dislike the elaborate medical clinical fantasy of so-called humane executions. We’re killing somebody; if we as a society can’t stand to call that spade by its proper name & stare the reality in our collective faces, naybe we oughta get out of that business.
Whether we should ever execute anybody is a separate debate I’m disinclined to open right here.
But assuming we’re gonna … do it right w eyes wide open.
If you aren’t LDS, then I’m very impressed with your knowledge.
The idea is that there are some sins which are so heinous that Christ’s death does not atone for the sinner and that person must have their own blood spilled to obtain forgiveness.
Murder is on top of the list, as well as apostasy. Fortunately for me, the Danites aren’t as active as they were previously. Infamously, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was allowed to happen because of this principle.
Thank you, and thanks for filling in the gaps in my knowledge (I’m not LDS).
IIRC the father of Mark William Hofmann (who committed murders in an attempt to cover up his forgeries) suggested that his son ask for the death penalty, so that the family could be together in the afterlife. The son ended up pleading guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
I’m a lifelong atheist who’s ambivalent about the death penalty. But I think any religious doctrine which grants complete salvation/forgiveness for the worst crimes is deeply flawed. So I have always had more respect for the idea that some things can’t be completely swept away.
It’s possible there is a bit of good in theory, but the problem is the part about blood atonement being for apostates and even people just passing through the area (see the link about Mountain Meadows Massacre) outweighs anything positive.
[/hijack]
Didn;t a movie get made about that, a TV movie?
IDK if it was a TV movie or a movie meant for theatrical release that performed very poorly, but there was September Dawn.
And then definitely on the TV side, but as a miniseries, Under the Banner of Heaven explored a number of… inconvenient truths about the origins of Mormonism, including the massacre, with “blood atonement” featuring prominently as a potential motive in the main storyline (based on a real life double murder in Utah).
I haven’t seen the movie, but did just recently watch Under the Banner of Heaven (streams on Hulu) and would recommend it.
I did go and check and the movie I thought may have covered the massacre did not. But it did take place back when Brigham Young was still alive.
I actually agree. I’m against the death penalty, but if you’re going to kill someone, kill them. Don’t dick around.
Here’s an odd footnote to the story.