The
Justice Department will prove that the Standard and Poor credit
rating agency caused the financial meltdown of 2008 by reporting
falsely inflated values of mortgage-backed derivative securities.
In
a suit filed in the central district of California, the government
alleges the agency, which is a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill, engaged in
three types of fraud to bilk investors – many of them banks and
credit unions – out of an estimated $500 billion.
While
Standard & Poor is “disappointed” with the performance of
residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and collateralized debt
obligations (CDO), the statement says, “S and P's ratings were
based on the same subprime mortgage data available to the rest of the
market, including the U.S. Government...”
When
S and P declared “massive downgrades” of the securities, it “more
than any other event triggered the beginning of the financial
crisis,” according to the Senate report.
Midlothian
– A team of police officers nearly surrounded Eddie Routh, the
25-year-old Marine Corporal who is charged with the capital murder of
Chief Chris Kyle and Chat Littlefield, as he pulled into his driveway
in a truck he stole from one of the two victims following the
shooting.
Chad Littlefield
The
pair took him shooting at Rough Creek Resort and Conference Center in
an effort to ease his suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
lawmen and news reporters learned from a neighbor, after his mother
Jodi Leigh Routh reached out to Chief Kyle for help.
Eddie Routh, former Marine Corporal
A
visitor to the gun range found their lifeless bodies about 5:30 p.m.
The
sprawling 11,000-acre complex is located about 5 miles west of Glen
Rose, and is the site of numerous gun sporting events to benefit
wounded veterans.
Chief
Kyle, president and founder of the tactical weapons training
organization Craft International, also operated a charitble
foundation to benefit wounded warriors named FITCO. Reached for
comment, an anonymous spokesman for the resort complex said, “I
think it was just a private thing, just the three of them getting
together to do some shooting.”
Chief
Kyle and Mr. Littlefield, 35, were fellow soccer parents and neighbors. The highly decorated SEAL had been decorated with the Silver Star, numerous Bronze Stars and Navy and Marine Corps Commendations.
As
the desperate accused killer pulled into the driveway of his mother's
home at Midlothian, none of the officers who surrounded the large
4-wheel drive F-150 Ford covered in Rhino armor and emblazoned with
the Craft corporate logo made a move to detain him. A female officer
armed with a shotgun made no attempt to put him in detention.
They
speculated that a semiautomatic handgun they found at the house may
have been the murder weapon used to shoot his victims.
Lawmen
later apprehended him at about 9 p.m. near his home in Lancaster when
they placed spike strips across the road to flatten the truck's
tires. A magistrate set his bond at $3 million following his
arraignment for two counts of capital murder.
Despite what your momma told you...Violence does solve problems... - corporate logo
Glen
Rose – In the world of total hostility represented by the art of
war, there's nothing quite like sniping.
Ask
any Marine or special ops hand, and he'll tell you he's going nowhere
without the hospital corpsman, plenty of ammo and morphine syrettes,
and snipers deployed on both flanks, fore and aft, at a range of not
less than 300 yards, minimum.
It's
all part of standard Navy and Marine Corps doctrine; it's printed
right there in the Scout-Sniper manual.
But
when the sniper who holds the record number of confirmed kills at 160
effective hits gets it on a rifle range, of all places, eyebrows go
up all over the lot.
And
this was not just any Scout-Sniper.
Chris Kyle was a member of SEAL
Team 3 who fought insurgents in the Iraqi Freedom war from 1999 to
2009. Mr. Kyle made one of his confirmed kills from a distance of
2,100 yards when he spied an insurgent readying a rocket propelled
grenade launcher in his scope.
He
was a certified hero, so he wrote his own biography to keep some unscrupulous dime novelist from taking credit. The book is called
“American Sniper.”
There's
more.
Logo for Craft International, founded by Chris Kyle
The
so-called “rifle range” wasn't just the standard GI issue number.
Rough Creek Resort and Conference Center, located at 5165 County Road
2013 in this resort city, is situated on 11,000 acres “nestled in
the foothills of the Hill Country.”
There
are a number of diversions, including bass and crappie fishing on an
80-acre lake, skeet shooting, golf, four-wheeling through a lot of
very scenic country, and – presumably – some hunting.
Did
we mention that a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent recently named the
resort one of the top 5 places to get married?
Yeah,
you got it right. It's a place to go after the hell of war. Mr. Kyle,
a native of the area who went to Tarleton State University in
Stephenville, did four tours there.
And
then someone left he and another man dead on the ground at 5:30 p.m.
on a Saturday afternoon amid all this opulent luster.
Authorities
have not yet said whether he was shot in the front – or in the
back. Nor have they said what kind of firearm the assailant used in
the killings.
The
upshot is that the People of the State of Texas will seek to prove
that ex-Marine Eddie Ray Routh, 25, of Lancaster, committed two
counts of capital murder when he left Mr. Kyle and an unnamed second
victim dead at the rifle range and booked in Mr. Kyle's Ford F-150
pickup with huge tires and rims and entirely encased in Rhino Liner.
The
cops found him at home, and he gave them a brief chase before
surrendering, according to Sgt. Lonny Haschel with the Texas
Department of Public Safety.
No
one has discussed his motives for the attack he is alleged to have
committed. But, then, the state will be under no burden of proof as
to his motive, or lack of motive. They need only prove he did it, to
the exclusion of all other people.
The
key points media outlets are hammering on are these:
Mr.
Kyle held a record for a number of confirmed kills.
His
assailant killed him at a “rifle range.”
At the battle of Ramadi, insurgents nicknamed him "The Devil," and placed a $20,000 price on his head. He
is the proprietor of a security training company that charges
military and law enforcement clients as much as $500 per training
session to learn advanced techniques in handling firearms. Craft International is scheduled to put on a Rough Creek Shoot-Out at $2,950 a head charged to train civilians on the uses of pistols, shotguns, rifles and an optional instruction module in firing machine guns in April.
His
corporate logo, the skull outline of the Marvel Comics action hero
called “The Punisher,” is a fearsome symbol used by many
proponents of gun rights.
Good
luck, shipmate. We will miss you at the radar station.
