The Waning of the GOP

By William F. Buckley Jr.
The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.
Meanwhile, George Tenet, former head of the CIA, has just published a book which seems to demonstrate that there was one part ignorance, one part bullheadedness, in the high-level discussions before war became policy. Mr. Tenet at least appears to demonstrate that there was nothing in the nature of a genuine debate on the question. What he succeeded in doing was aborting a speech by Vice President Cheney which alleged a Saddam/al Qaeda relationship which had not in fact been established. It isn’t that Tenet now doubts the lethality of the terrorists. What he disputed was an organizational connection which argued for war against Iraq as if Iraq were a vassal state of al Qaeda. A measure of George Tenet’s respect for the reach and malevolence of the enemy is his statement that he is puzzled that Al Qaeda has not, since 2001, sent out “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half dozen American shopping malls on any given day.” By way of prophecy, he writes that there is one thing he feels in his gut, which is that “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month. In South Vietnam there was an organized enemy. There is clearly organization in the strikes by the terrorists against our forces and against the civil government in Iraq, but whereas in Vietnam we had Hanoi as the operative headquarters of the enemy, we have no equivalent of that in Iraq, and that is a matter of paralyzing importance. All those bombings, explosions, assassinations: we are driven to believe that they are, so to speak, spontaneous. When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it. General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.” The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.© 2007 Universal Press Syndicate

Potentially habitable planet found
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP

For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."
The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.
There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.
"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."
The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.
The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.
The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.
Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.
However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.
Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.
The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.
"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."
Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.
Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.
"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.
"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."
The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.
"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."
Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.
Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.
But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.
Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.
Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.
The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.
Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.
A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.
"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.
___

Unintended Sophistry?

Cinematic Clues To Understand The Slaughter

Did Asian Thrillers Like 'Oldboy' Influence the Va. Tech Shooter?
By Stephen HunterWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, April 20, 2007; C01
Much has been made of the frightening similarity between "Oldboy," Park Chan Wook's dark 2003 movie thriller, and the deeds of Cho Seung Hui, who shot to death 32 people on Monday at Virginia Tech.
The search for movie influences is part of the search for the explanation behind the frenzy: We need to understand what caused this young man to step off into the oblivion of nihilism on a massive scale. What was the mechanism -- or was there even one? Too many movies? Too many video games? Too many rude shoves in the locker room? A genetic predisposition for mass murder? Too many date-night turndowns? Why?
So the movies seem like a propitious place to start, given the photographs in the package Cho sent to NBC News in his now infamous posthumous statement of principles. Thus "Oldboy" must feature prominently in the discussion, even if no one has yet confirmed that Cho saw it. On the surface, it seems a natural fit, at least in the way it can be presumed that Cho's hyper-fervid brain worked. It's a Korean story -- he would have passed on the subtitles and listened to it in his native language -- of unjust persecution and bloody revenge. A narcissist with a persecution complex would identify with its plot: A man named Oh Dae Su is simply snatched off the streets and made to endure 20 years in a cell without explanation. Released to the rubble of a life interrupted, he begins a quest to understand and achieve vengeance, which he finally does with a great spurt of violence, most of it employed with a hammer in extreme close quarters.
Among Cho's photos were close-ups of himself clenching a hammer in a pose that recalled the pose of the persecuted man in "Oldboy."
But there are problems as well. For one, "Oldboy" wasn't a gun picture. The only gun in it is a derringer that figures in the denouement. It's a movie about the bone-shattering force of hammers on limbs and skulls and the physical exhaustion of fighting. Its violence, though pervasive, is never beautiful or graceful. The violence is never idealized; you cannot look at it and be seduced by it. The capacity of a movie to enthrall, then gull, and finally seduce is not deployed. For that we must turn to other sources.
Many of Cho's pictures -- 11 out of 43 -- featured guns. And when I looked at them, another name struck me as far more relevant than Park Chan Wook. That's John Woo.
Woo, the Hong Kong director now working in the United States ("Face/Off" was one of his most successful films), almost redefined the action genre with a series of Hong Kong gangster movies made in the late '80s and early '90s, starring the Chinese actor Chow Yun-Fat and virtually every Beretta ever shipped to the Far East. As with the Park movie, it is not certain that Cho saw Woo's films, though any kid taken by violent popular culture in the past 15 or 20 years almost certainly would have, on DVD, alone in the dark, in his bedroom or downstairs after the family's gone to bed. They're not family fare; they're dreamy, angry adolescent fare. They were gun-crazed ballets, full of whirling imagery, grace, masculine power and a strange but perhaps not irrelevant religiosity. They were close to outlaw works of art: They celebrated violence even as they aesthetized it, streamlined it and made it seem fabulous fun. Their possible influence on Cho can be clearly seen in 11 of the photos that feature handguns.
Woo pioneered postures with guns not seen in movies until that time (discounting cornball pre-World War II westerns). He was the first modern filmmaker (though there was Don Siegel's "Madigan" of 1968) to embrace the stylistic advantages of putting a gun in both hands of his hero, which became almost his signature. So when you see any of the famous photos of Cho with his arms outstretched and a gun in each hand, you cannot help but think, if you've seen any of them, of the Hong Kong gangster movies and the super-cool Chow.
But it goes even further than the resemblance between the photos of the blasphemy and the movies of the '80s. In at least three regards, Cho's activities so closely reflect the Woo oeuvre that it seems somewhat fair to conclude that in his last moments, before he blew his brains out, he was shooting a John Woo movie in his head.
First is the peculiar nature of the gun violence. Cho, it seems, wasn't a sniper, a marksman. He wasn't shooting carefully, at a distance. He wasn't, one can assume, aiming. He was shooting very much like Chow in the Woo pictures, with a gun in each hand, as witnesses state, up close, very fast. Woo saw gunfights in musical terms: His primary conceit was the shootout as dance number, with great attention paid to choreography, the movement of both actors within the frame. He loved to send his shooters flying through the air in surprising ways, far more poetically than in any real-life scenario. He frequently diverted to slow motion and he specialized in shooting not merely to kill, but to riddle -- his shooters often blast their opponents five and six times. Perhaps all that was at play in Cho's mind as well.
But it gets stranger: The first gunfight in Woo's most famous movie, "The Killer," is an almost eerie anticipation of the Cho attack. Chow's professional assassin moves stealthily down a corridor, approaches a door, knocks. Once it is opened, he dispatches the opener, then steps in to confront seated human figures. He darts among them, a gun in each hand, blazing away as they rise and flee. They're playing cards, not sitting in a classroom, and the setting is a nightclub backroom, not a school. But the kinetics of the remarkable encounter are strikingly similar to what must have happened Monday.
Second is the nature of the guns themselves. Cho's choice of weapons may well have been based on movie influences. The first and most famous was the Glock 19. This is the mid-size Glock, not the smallest for deep concealment (in pockets or under shirts), not the largest for maximum firepower, but basically a service automatic for undercover men who can carry guns comfortably in holsters, with a 15-shot magazine. The Glock, of course, is ubiquitous in popular culture as the firearm of choice of both the police and the bad guys, but it doesn't figure much, if at all, in the works of Woo, which were made before the Glock really took over. But the Beretta is about $200 more expensive than a Glock, and when Cho went to the Roanoke gun store, he may well have found it beyond his budget. Both guns fire 9mm cartridges; at the receiving end, the impact is the same.
His second gun is clearly another budget choice, a .22-caliber pistol that sells for about $300 and most closely replicates the plasticized aesthetic of the modern service pistol, the Glock, the Beretta or the Sig Sauer. It's a Walther P22 -- its design derived from a larger Walther 9mm service pistol, called a P99 -- a gun that looks more powerful than it is (it's still extremely lethal). Perhaps he chose it to resemble Chow in the photos he knew he would be taking of himself.
There are other weird handgun concordances in the work of Woo and the frenzy of Cho. For example, many have noted the peculiarity of the young man's careful removal of the serial numbers from the two pistols. What was the point of that? The point may be found in "The Killer," Woo's greatest movie, where the hero Jeffrey Chow (Chow Yun-Fat) is handed guns by his best friend before going off on a terrible job that will result in tragedy for all: "They're clean guns. No serial numbers. Untraceable." When he ground off the serial numbers, Cho may have been turning himself into Jeffrey Chow.
Then there's the issue of the two guns, one for each hand. Cho could certainly have done as much damage with the single Glock, given how quickly one can learn (and you strongly suspect he practiced) to reload them proficiently. That answer comes from Woo's 1992 "Hard-Boiled," or rather it is codified there, while evident in all the gangster pictures: "Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."
The third weird Woo vibration echoing through the Cho madness is thematic. "The Killer," for example, is almost lush with religious themes, as it tells a story of redemption through sacrifice. In the film, Jeffrey Chow has accidentally blinded a singer in an assassination. Consumed with guilt, he becomes her guardian and sets out to raise money to get her a restorative operation, which compels him to take on yet crazier and less survivable jobs. In a wild finish, he and a police officer, who's become his only ally, engage in a massive gunfight against evil gangsters in a church, through which, like symbols of Christian grace, doves flap majestically. Jeffrey Chow dies, saving the singer's life, and the money he's secured restores her vision. Many critics noted Jeffrey Chow's initials -- J.C. -- and that he is frequently seen in Christlike postures of the sort Cho later affected in at least one of his photos.
"The Killer" also features an intellectual posture that might have been extremely attractive to Cho's mental state. In it, the killer is presented as both hero and victim, rather than villain. His difference from other men, his moral nature, is repeatedly stressed. "He's no ordinary assassin," a cop says almost lovingly about him. "Fate controls everything," the killer muses, seeing himself as a puppet reacting to the larger forces beyond his control. "I always save the last bullet either for myself or my enemy."
These similarities between fact and fiction, of course, raise striking issues that all creative artists -- but especially those who deal in stories that offer visceral violence as part of their pleasure principle -- must deal with. Woo built engines of excitement and stimulation that pleased millions and made him a wealthy, internationally known man. Yet now, all these years later, a young man might have used them as the vessel of his rage and alienation, taken the icon of the movie gun and moved from the intimacy of the DVD player and the arena of his imagination to the public arena, and there reenacted the ritual. This time the carnage is for real.

Gunman Sent Video During Lull In Slaughter

Menacing Poses And Bitter Words In Mailing to NBC
By Michael E. Ruane and Chris L. JenkinsWashington Post Staff WritersThursday, April 19, 2007; A01
Cho Seung Hui paused Monday morning during the shootings at Virginia Tech to stop at a post office and mail to NBC News in New York a disturbing package of pictures, writings and video before returning to the rampage.
The communications sought to explain his actions but served mostly to display his anger and illness. With threatening images and in a menacing video, America's deadliest gunman photographed himself wearing black and a backward baseball cap and pointing handguns at the camera and himself. He blamed rich people and humanity at large for the perceived wrongs that drove him to kill.
A $14.40 U.S. Postal Service express parcel, which had the wrong Zip code and an incorrect street address, was sent from Blacksburg at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about two hours after Cho's first two killings at a dormitory, West Ambler Johnston Hall.
About 45 minutes after mailing the package, he went to Norris Hall and killed an additional 30 people before killing himself as police closed in. As if trying to justify his plot, Cho glared into the camera and in a rambling diatribe said: "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," according to excerpts aired last night by NBC. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off." "Jesus loved crucifying me," he said at another point. "He loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorizing my heart and ripping my soul all this time."
"I didn't have to do this," he said. "I could have left. I could have fled. But no."
Investigators have been mystified by the gap -- from 7:15 to 9:45 a.m. -- between the bursts of homicide Monday, and the university has been criticized for a perceived lack of urgency during the lull.
The Virginia State Police superintendent, Col. Steve Flaherty, said Cho's package "may be a very new critical component of this investigation. We are in the process . . . of attempting to analyze and evaluate its worth."
Cho, who has been described by classmates and teachers as brooding, withdrawn and silent, also left a rambling, angry, multi-page document in his dorm room. He wrote at least one bomb threat that police found, as well as a novel and some disturbing poems and plays.
Law enforcement sources said his letter to NBC was nearly identical to the ones found in his dorm room. All mention his disgust toward the privileged and contain the cryptic words "Ismael Ax," which also was tattooed on one of his arms. Authorities are trying to figure out what the words mean.
NBC received the package as fresh reports emerged yesterday of Cho's mental health issues and earlier interaction with Virginia Tech police.
The authorities had investigated Cho for bothering two female classmates in 2005, Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said at a news conference. Cho had hinted at suicide shortly afterward and was temporarily committed, against his will, to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
There he was assessed as "mentally ill" but not an imminent danger to himself or others, according to court documents. Because he was not a threat, he was released, the documents say. Campus police said they had no more encounters with Cho.
Both pieces of news came as the school was still trying to regain its balance after the calamity.
But seeing Cho in his burst of anger on television brought many back to the horrors of Monday.
"It was very scary because it's the closest we're ever going to get to seeing what [the people at Norris Hall] saw," said Kristin Fleming-Dahl, a 19-year-old sophomore. "For some of them, that were their last moments. Seeing the pictures made it more real. It was like a slap in the face."
Fleming-Dahl said NBC was too quick to release the pictures. "It probably would have been better to wait," she said.
Michael A. Mason, who heads the FBI's criminal investigations division, said Cho's mailing "feeds into exactly what he wanted to accomplish by this heinous act."
The package includes one nightmarish photograph of a menacing, black-gloved Cho posing in a black baseball cap holding two black pistols at arm's length. He is wearing a black T-shirt and what appears to be a tan safari vest, resembling an apparition out of a violent video game.
In the excerpted pictures and video, Cho has a military-style haircut. Parts of the video seem to have been shot inside a car. Some look as though they might have been shot in a dorm room with white-painted cinderblock walls.
NBC said the package apparently was delayed by the flawed Zip code. It was noticed by a postal worker in New York who spotted the Blacksburg return address and what Cho wrote as his name in the sender's box: "A Ishmael," similar to the well-publicized "Ismael Ax." NBC News President Steve Capus said the network re ceived the package in Tuesday's mail delivery. It was not opened until yesterday and did not include any images of the massacre, Capus said in a written statement.
Among the materials are 23 QuickTime video files showing Cho talking to the camera, Capus said.
The production of the videos indicated that Cho had worked on the package for some time, because he not only "took the time to record the videos, but he also broke them down into snippets" that were embedded paragraph by paragraph into the main document on a CD-ROM, Capus said.
Before the video was released, officials in Blacksburg spoke of their previous encounter with Cho. In December 2005, he was declared mentally ill and was temporarily but involuntarily sent to a Christiansburg mental-health center, according court records.
The night at the mental-health facility came a few weeks after police had been contacted by a female student upset over e-mails Cho had sent her, said Flinchum, the Tech police chief.
The student declined to press charges, and Cho was referred to the university disciplinary system, which took no action because the offense seemed too minor, the chief said.
The next month, a second female student complained to campus police, and within 24 hours, police got a call that Cho might be suicidal, Flinchum said. Police visited him and urged him to seek counseling, the chief said.
On Dec. 13, 2005, a temporary detention order, instructing that Cho be taken to the Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital in nearby Radford, was signed by a judge, according to court papers. The next day, a Virginia Department of Mental Health document recorded a mental-health professional's description of Cho as seeming blank and "depressed," but denying "suicidal ideation. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment seem normal."
The form described Cho as mentally ill but added that he did not present an imminent danger to himself or others and did not require involuntary hospitalization.
It was not clear yesterday how long Cho spent in the hospital, but the documents indicate it was one day.
University officials stressed that there was no threat in the e-mails, and the two female recipients only considered them annoying. Neither of the two women was among Cho's victims Monday. "No criminal activities had taken place," Flinchum said.
Ed Spencer, a university associate vice president of student affairs, said the school would not comment on Cho's disciplinary record. "Even upon death, that record is still protected," he said.
Whether the university should have done more after having this contact with Cho will be part of the major review that will begin soon by an independent panel, officials said.
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) announced yesterday that former state police superintendent Gerald Massengill will participate in the review of the university's response to the shootings.
The incidents came to light at a time when Cho's conduct and writings had raised concerns among several of his teachers in the school's English Department.
Authorities also revealed yesterday what was seized in their search of Cho's university residence, at 2121 Harper Hall.
The search warrant, filed late Tuesday in Montgomery County, Va., Circuit Court, said the items taken included a "folding knife and combination pad lock," a Compaq computer, various documents and writings from Cho's computer, nine books and two notebooks.
Officials also said that before purchasing the 9mm Glock handgun or the Walther P22, which he used in the killings, Cho would have had to fill out a Virginia State Police eligibility form for an instant background check.
One question on the form asks: "Have you ever been adjudicated legally incompetent, mentally incapacitated, or been involuntarily committed to a mental institution?"
Once Cho's background check came back clean, he would have had to fill out federal form No. 4473 asking once again if he had been adjudicated "mentally defective" or committed to a mental institution.
Cho's 24-hour detention before a hearing on his mental status probably does not meet the definition of being involuntarily committed, legal experts said. But there is a question of whether the detention would meet the broader federal standard.
Back at Virginia Tech, the NBC video was the talk of the campus.
Maddy Barnes, a junior English major from Leesburg, had a British literature class with Cho in 2005, when he was briefly hospitalized.
"It's so disturbing," Barnes said of Cho's videos.
"It's horrifying," agreed Pete Hughes, a junior theater major. "It just showed how calculating he was. It definitely gave the answer that he woke up intending to do this."
But, he added, "It's comforting to a degree." Barnes, nodded, saying she understood that. It showed he was not a normal guy who just snapped, she said.
Both students thought the videos showed how narcissistic Cho was. He clearly knew this would bring him attention.
Others, though, said the video did not help them understand.
"I personally don't care what he has to say," said Daniel Frawley, a 2003 graduate, who lives in Blacksburg. "There is no possible good reason for anything that happened. No possible explanation he can offer."

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Treatment shows promise against diabetes
By LINDSEY TANNERAP MEDICAL WRITER
CHICAGO -- Thirteen young diabetics in Brazil have ditched their insulin shots and need no other medication thanks to a risky, but promising treatment with their own stem cells - apparently the first time such a feat has been accomplished.
Though too early to call it a cure, the procedure has enabled the young people, who have Type I diabetes, to live insulin-free so far, some as long as three years. The treatment involves stem cell transplants from the patients' own blood.
"It's the first time in the history of Type 1 diabetes where people have gone with no treatment whatsoever ... no medications at all, with normal blood sugars," said study co-author Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University's medical school in Chicago.
While the procedure can be potentially life-threatening, none of the 15 patients in the study died or suffered lasting side effects. But it didn't work for two of them.
Larger, more rigorous studies are needed to determine if stem cell transplants could become standard treatment for people with the disease once called juvenile diabetes. It is less common than Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity.
The hazards of stem cell transplantation also raise questions about whether the study should have included children. One patient was as young as 14.
Dr. Lainie Ross, a medical ethicist at the University of Chicago, said the researchers should have studied adults first before exposing young teens to the potential harms of stem cell transplant, which include infertility and late-onset cancers.
In addition, Ross said that the study should have had a comparison group to make sure the treatment was indeed better than standard diabetes care.
Burt, who wrote the study protocol, said the research was done in Brazil because U.S. doctors were not interested in the approach. The study was approved by ethics committees in Brazil, he said, adding that he personally believes it was appropriate to do the research in children as well as adults, as long as the Brazilian ethics panels approved.
Burt and other diabetes experts called the results an important step forward.
"It's the threshold of a very promising time for the field," said Dr. Jay Skyler of the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami.
Skyler wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study, saying the results are likely to stimulate research that may lead to methods of preventing or reversing Type I diabetes.
"These are exciting results. They look impressive," said Dr. Gordon Weir of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.
Still, Weir cautioned that more studies are needed to make sure the treatment works and is safe. "It's really too early to suggest to people that this is a cure," he said.
The patients involved were ages 14 to 31 and newly diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. An estimated 12 million to 24 million people worldwide - including 1 to 2 million in the United States - have this form of diabetes, which is typically diagnosed in children or young adults. An autoimmune disease, it occurs when the body attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
Insulin is needed to regulate blood sugar levels, which when too high, can lead to heart disease, blindness, nerve problems and kidney damage.
Burt said the stem cell transplant is designed to stop the body's immune attack on the pancreas.
A study published last year described a different kind of experimental transplant, using pancreas cells from donated cadavers, that enabled a few diabetics to give up insulin shots. But that requires lifelong use of anti-rejection medicine, which isn't needed by the Brazil patients since the stem cells were their own.
The 15 diabetics were treated at a bone marrow center at the University of Sao Paulo.
All were newly diagnosed, before their insulin-producing cells had been destroyed.
That timing is key, Burt said. "If you wait too long," he said, "you've exceeded the body's ability to repair itself."
The procedure involves stimulating the body to produce new stem cells and harvesting them from the patient's blood. Next comes several days of high-dose chemotherapy, which virtually shuts down the patient's immune system and stops destruction of the few remaining insulin-producing cells in the body. This requires hospitalization and potent drugs to fend off infection. The harvested stem cells, when injected back into the body, build a new healthier immune system that does not attack the insulin-producing cells.
Patients were hospitalized for about three weeks. Many had side effects including nausea, vomiting and hair loss. One developed pneumonia, the only severe complication.
Doctors changed the drug regimen after the treatment failed in the first patient, who ended up needing more insulin than before the study. Another patient also relapsed.
The remaining 13 "live a normal life without taking insulin," said study co-author Dr. Julio Voltarelli of the University of Sao Paulo. "They all went back to their lives."
The patients enrolled in the study at different times so the length of time they've been insulin-free also differs.
Burt has had some success using the same procedure in 170 patients with other autoimmune diseases, including lupus and multiple sclerosis; one patient with an autoimmune form of blindness can now see, Burt said.
"The body has tremendous potential to repair," he said.
The study was partly funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, Genzyme Corp. and a maker of blood sugar monitoring products.
---
AP reporter Carla K. Johnson in Chicago contributed to this report.
---

NBC, CBS Suspend Imus' Show for Two Weeks
Sharpton, Jackson Say Imus Must Go; Will Radio Host Share Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder's Fate?
By ANDREW FIES
April 9, 2007 — - Don Imus, the radio personality beset by a wave of criticism for racially insensitive remarks made on his "Imus in the Morning" program last week, took his effort to salvage his career into the camp of his most vocal critic today. Despite his overture, however, both NBC and CBS announced that they would suspend their broadcasts of the show temporarily.
Imus accepted the challenge to appear on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio program, "The Al Sharpton Show," and announced that he was trying to meet with members of the Rutgers women's basketball team, the targets of his insulting comments.
Sharpton, who has called for Imus to be fired, was not satisfied and led a sharp exchange in which he pressed Imus to quit.
On his broadcast Wednesday, Imus said of the Rutgers women's team, which had just played in the NCAA championship game, "That's some nappy-headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that."
His on-air apology two days later has not quelled the controversy stirred by that remark. The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a group of protesters in front of NBC's offices in Chicago today, calling for Imus to be fired.
If that does not happen, Jackson said he would lead a boycott of all products that advertise on Imus' show.
On the NAACP Web site, chairman Julian Bond said of Imus, "It is past time his employers took him off the air."
NBC will indeed take him off the air -- at least for a while. The company announced today it would suspend its simulcast of Imus' show for two weeks, beginning Monday, April 16. The broadcaster doesn't employ Imus, but its cable outlet, MSNBC, simulcasts Imus' program along with more than 70 radio stations around the country.
CBS Radio, Imus' employer, followed suit. It announced, shortly after NBC that it would suspend its broadcast of the show for two weeks beginning April 16. Earlier, the network called his comments "completely inappropriate" but had no further comment on its decision to take Imus off the air.
Should Imus Remain on the Air?
The fact that Imus is still on the air five days after his remarks surprises some media observers.
USA Today sports columnist and ABC News consultant Christine Brennan told "Good Morning America," "It's really stunning to me in 2007 that you can say these things about African-American women and keep your job."
But Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said Imus remaining on the air is no mystery. His 30-year-old "Imus in the Morning" program is a ratings leader at MSNBC and an important property for CBS Radio.
Said Thompson, "There's a whole calculus to this. When it happens, management takes a look at what he can deliver, what they expect he can deliver in the future and, if they fire him, who do they put in that time slot? How do they come anywhere close to delivering that same audience?"
Still, though Imus has weathered the storm so far, Matthew Felling, at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, believes his career is severely damaged. Given that his show's popularity depends to some extent on regular appearances by newsmakers, including presidential contenders, Felling wonders, "Do the politicians keep playing on his playground? Do they have to respond to outside pressures and boycott his program?"
Felling believes his prominent guests will stay away now. "He can stay on and enjoy a slow bleed or just turn in his 'thanks for the ride, folks' paperwork." That slow bleed may already have begun. Late today, baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, who is promoting two books, canceled an appearance on the show, according to his publicist, John Maroon. "In light of recent remarks made on the program, Cal will not appear on the show as part of his national book tour," Maroon said.
History Suggests Zero Tolerence
Imus' comment about the Rutgers players conjures up past sports-related racial gaffes that have ended the careers of those who uttered them, however, he has yet to suffer the fate history would suggest.
In 1987, Al Campanis -- then general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers -- appeared on ABC's "Nightline." When host Ted Koppel asked why there were so few black managers in baseball, Campanis' reply, that blacks "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager" stirred controversy and protests that quickly cost him his job with the Dodgers.
Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder's career as a CBS Sports commentator ended in January 1988 when he told a Washington NBC TV station that blacks are better at sports than whites because they are "bred to be the better athlete." He said this started during slavery when "the slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid."
Though he offered a "full heartfelt apology to all I have offended", CBS fired Snyder the next day.
Famed sportscaster Howard Cosell's career never recovered from a remark made during a Monday Night Football game in 1983 between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins.
As Redskins receiver Alvin Garrett ran down the field, Cosell exclaimed "look at that little monkey run!" That Cosell had famously defended Muhammad Ali as a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam was not enough to save him from the wrath of viewers who thought him racist. Two months, later he was gone from ABC.
In October 2003, Rush Limbaugh had to resign his position as an ESPN commentator soon after he said that Donovan McNabb gets more favorable press attention than he should because "the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well."
Looking back at this history, Thompson notes there used to be "zero tolerance for this sort of thing."
"Now we're in a period where the landscape has gotten so much more complicated," said Thompson. "You've got things like Chapelle's show, and South Park and hip-hop music lyrics where things that were simply not acceptable in any context whatsoever have begun to infiltrate the culture in some contexts where they are acceptable."
Factor in Imus status as a "shock jock" whose job description, said Thompson, "is to occasionally do things that will almost but not quite get you fired," and you've got another reason why Imus may survive what Campanis, Snyder and Cosell could not.
Aside from the discomfiting changes in our culture that might allow Imus to survive this controversy, Matthew Felling said it raises a troubling and ominous question: What sorts of behavior go on at smaller-market radio stations that don't get this sort of exposure and this amount of criticism?
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Unintended Consequence of Child Protection Laws
5 sex offenders live under Miami bridge
By JOHN PAIN
Because an ordinance intended to keep predators away from children made it nearly impossible for them to find housing, five convicted sex offenders are living under a noisy highway bridge with the state's grudging approval.
The five men under the Julia Tuttle Causeway are the only known sex offenders authorized to live outdoors in Florida, said state Corrections Department spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.
They have fishing poles to catch food, cook with small stoves, use battery-powered TVs and radios and keep their belongings in plastic bags. Javier Diaz, 30, has trouble charging the GPS tracking device he is required to wear; there are no power outlets nearby.
"You just pray to God every night, so if you fall asleep for a minute or two, you know, nothing happens to you," said Diaz, who arrived this week. He was sentenced in 2005 to three years' probation for lewd and lascivious conduct involving a girl under 16.
The conditions are a consequence of laws passed here and elsewhere around the country to bar sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places children gather. Miami-Dade County's 2005 ordinance - adopted partly in reaction to the case of a convicted sex offender who raped a 9-year-old Florida girl and buried her alive - says sex offenders must live at least 2,500 feet from schools.
"They've often said that some of the laws will force people to live under a bridge," said Charles Onley, a research associate at the federally funded Center for Sex Offender Management. "This is probably the first story that I've seen that confirms that."
Forced to contend with rats, some of the men sleep on raised cardboard mats. Some have been staying under the bridge for weeks.
"This is not an ideal situation for anybody, but at this point we don't have any other options," said Plessinger. "We're still looking. The offenders are still actively searching for residences."
She said the problem would have to be addressed.
"If we drive these offenders so far underground or we can't supervise them because they become so transient, it's not making us safer," Plessinger said.
County Commissioner Jose Diaz said he had no qualms about the ordinance he created.
"My main concern is the victims, the children that are the innocent ones that these predators attack and ruin their lives," he said. "No one really told them to do this crime."
The whoosh of cars passing overhead echoes loudly under the causeway, which runs over Biscayne Bay, connecting Miami and Miami Beach.
About 100 feet away are the bay's blue-green waters, where a family with young children played in the water this week. In the near distance, luxury condominiums rise from the coastline.
Javier Diaz said he and the other men fear for their lives, especially because of "crazy people who might try to come harm sex offenders."
The five committed such crimes as sexual battery, molestation, abuse and grand theft. Many of the offenses were against children. The state moved the men under the bridge from their previous home - a lot next to a center for sexually abused children and close to a day care center - after they were unable to find affordable housing that did not violate the sex-offender ordinance.
Twenty-two states and hundreds of municipalities have sex offender residency restrictions, according to a California Research Bureau report from last August.
© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.