I Likes It When You Call Me Cool Papa (Part II)

M & M met on Antigua sometime during the summer of 2000. Young Malvo landed on the island first, in January of 1999, to join his mother, Una James, a Jamaican "in search of opportunity and men who would help her." Una's desire for "the best for her son" did not prevent her from regularly leaving him alone or in the care of others.

Some years had passed since Malvo had last seen his biological father. While dating Muhammed, Una obtained a false birth certificate from him (forgery was a alleged side business) and used it to entered the U.S. Before bolting, she enrolled Malvo in a Seventh-day Adventist school where he hung with a group of boys who dreamt of becoming naval aviators. At that point, he entered Muhammed's home, joining three children whom the latter had "abducted" from his estranged wife.

Several months later -- after sneaking into Miami with his mother aboard a smuggler's cargo ship -- Malvo hooked up again with Muhammed, who had returned to Washington state. At the time, the Elder was struggling to keep afloat an auto repair business and was mired in a divorce battle. By the end of 2001, he'd fallen into Bellingham (WA) homeless shelter.

In October, Reverend Al Archer, the shelter's director, called the F.B.I. report the presence of a "strange man" with a Muslim surname. "I just felt like he was into something that was no good, and it had to do with maybe some kind of group or something," Archer said. "I thought that might be where he was getting his money. I felt like he needed to be investigated." Muhammed, whom the reverend described as "almost too nice," stayed at the mission for two more months. The
F.B.I. never showed up.

Despite hard times, "Muhammed took Malvo under his wing, teaching him karate, American manners, enrolling him in schools -- and exerting the same sort of iron hand that he had used on his own children before losing them to his ex-wife." By then, Muhammed had divorced and Malvo had left his mother -- who had married an American in Florida -- and was calling "father."

Malvo the Younger: Why do you think my mother left?
Muhammed the Elder: I'm not sure, son. Maybe she felt she couldn't take care of you, and your brothers and sisters.
Malvo the Younger: Do you think she still loves me?
Muhammed the Elder: She's your mother.
Malvo the Younger: But does she love me? It's been two years.
Muhammed the Elder: Una's complicated woman. Two years or twenty years. It makes no difference.
Malvo the Younger: Then why doesn't she want me with her in Florida?
Muhammed the Elder: (long silence) Target acquired.
Malvo the Younger: It doesn't have anything to do with those papers?
Muhammed the Elder: Concentrate on the task at hand, son. Access the target.
Malvo the Younger: Where?
Muhammed the Elder: Over there, the couple in the parking garage, packing the shelf in the back of their car.
Malvo the Younger: By the Home Depot?
Muhammed the Elder: Affirmative. Take your position in the nest. I'll reconnoiter.
Malvo the Younger: Yes, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: Caucasian male, caucasian female, mid-forties. Range 250 yards. Wind 2 knots, north-by-northwest. Elevation, zero degrees.
Malvo the Younger: Check.

As a weapon of mass destruction, the rifle holds a place of prominence in American military history. During the Revolutionary War, German and Swiss craftsmen developed a .45 caliber weapon known as the Kentucky rifle. It had an extreme range of 300 yards and was "deadly accurate" to 200 yards, capable of firing three rounds a minute.

Before then, weapons lacked the range and accuracy to reliably hit a man-sized target at ranges much more than 100 yards. Meanwhile, shooting somebody who was unaware of being engaged in combat was considered dishonorable. Consequently, guerrillas and rebels first employed the tactic.

The term itself is derived from bird-hunting. In Imperial India, British soldiers pursued a small, alert creature called a snipe. Shootists who "showed a flair" were dubbed "Snipers." The Brits were less appreciative when such skills were demonstrated by uncooperative colonials in America and Afghanistan.

"U.S. military doctrine," explains www.wikipedia.org, "uses snipers in two-man teams attached to companies or brigades for anti-sniper missions, civil pacification, assassination, scouting and surveillance. Snipers are usually far more highly trained than others, but doctrine limits their usefulness to small unit commands, the bread-and-butter of the Army."

Training is critical.

Snipers are trained to "reliably place bullets in a 30cm circle at 300m in all weather at all angles. Training selects personnel for talent, and then trains them over a period of several months of daily shooting with diverse ranges, angles and weather, especially winds. The critical talent is a willingness to look a man in the eyes, and shoot him between the eyes without flinching."

Typically, snipers are isolated because they give even soldiers on their side the willies. "It should also be realized that a psychopathic or sociopathic personality is often seen as necessary for an efficient sniper as, despite the image presented in books and films, most soldiers are not keen on killing (or being killed)," the encyclopedia said.


Muhammed the Elder: Name five famous persons or developments in sniper history.
Malvo the Younger: Major Patrick Ferguson, 71st Highlanders. In 1877, He stalked and nearly killed Washington at Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Muhammed the Elder: Excellent. Next?
Malvo the Younger: Colonel Hiram Berdan. During the Civil War, he deployed sharpshooters in key positions on battlefields to shoot opposition leaders and other important persons.
Muhammed the Elder: Continue.
Malvo the Younger: Major Koenig. During WWII, he was sent to Stalingrad to eliminate Sergeant Vasili Zaitsev who was demoralizing the German ground troops. A decade before the war, Zaitsev developed two-man sniper team tactics.
Muhammed the Elder: Very good.
Malvo the Younger: Marine Corps Sergeant Carlos Hathcock II. During Vietnam, he compiled 93 confirmed and several hundred unconfirmed kills.
Muhammed the Elder: Last shot.
Malvo the Younger: During Desert Storm, the military for the first time deploys .50-caliber Barrett rifles with Unertl Scopes.
Muhammed the Elder: Outstanding.

A chickenhawk Republican, Ashcroft prizes guns over butter.

In 2001, the National Rifle Association plastered his picture on the cover of its magazine, praising him as "a breath of fresh air to freedom-loving gun owners." In 1999, he lent his voice to radio ads endorsing an NRA-sponsored referendum to let people apply to Missouri county sheriffs for concealed gun permits.

As a Senator, he opposed the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Despite their support by most national law enforcement organizations, Ashcroft labeled the bans "wrong-headed." He also supported efforts to reduce the time allowed to conduct background checks of gun purchasers to 24 hours from three business days.

During his confirmation hearings, Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would defend the constitutionality of gun controls he had opposed as a senator, including a proposal to extend the racketeering laws to cover gun crimes. He also pledged to back the reauthorization in 2004 of an assault weapons ban he opposed while in the Senate. He said he would not impose his personal views on guns on government policy, the reports stated.

It's uncertain whether Ashcroft owns a Bushmaster XM-15, the .223 caliber semi-automatic rifle ballistics experts claim was used in most of the sniper shootings. The Bushmaster is a civilian version of the military M-16 assault rifle used by Army infantrymen.

Malvo the Younger: Do you think the gun shop owner will report us?
Muhammed the Elder: Not a possibility.
Malvo the Younger: Why not?
Muhammed the Elder: That clown shouldn't even be in business. If he weren't white, they would have yanked his license a long time ago.
Malvo the Younger: You think so?
Muhammed the Elder: No doubt about it. Probably doesn't even pay taxes.
Malvo the Younger: Really?
Muhammed the Elder: Your reconnaissance skills need some more work. Didn't you see all those background check forms stuffed beside the cash register? You think somebody like that is rushing to hand over his hard-earned money to the federal government?
Malvo the Younger: I guess not.
Muhammed the Elder: You guess correct.

Like Muhammed, Ashcroft sprang from fecund soil.

In 1818, the Missouri Territory had enough people to warrant admission into the Union. Because its "settlers" were primarily from the South, it was expected to be a slave state. However, a New York congressman proposed an amendment to a statehood bill that would have prohibited importing slaves. The proposal portended emancipation for all Territory-born slaves.

In February 1819, the amendment passed the House but not the Senate. The following January, the House passed a bill admitting Maine. The recent admission of Alabama brought the number of slave and free states to equal representation in the Senate. By pairing Maine and Missouri, representational balance would be maintained.

Ultimately, the two bills were joined as one in the Senate, with a clause forbidding slavery in Missouri replaced by a measure prohibiting slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36�30'N latitude, which served as Missouri's southern boundary. The geographical proviso held until 1854, when it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Not unexpectedly, the House rejected the compromise. After a conference committee was appointed, the House and Senate bills were treated separately. In March 1820, Maine was admitted while Missouri was authorized to adopt a constitution having no restrictions on slavery.

Still, Northern congressman objected the provision in the Missouri constitution barring the immigration of free blacks to the state. After Missouri's legislature pledged that nothing in its constitution would be interpreted to abridge the rights of U.S. citizens, the state was admitted in August 1821.

Twenty-five years later, a fine-boned man with a shock of woolly hair petitioned the St. Louis Circuit Court. Dred Scott won his freedom on the basis of his former residence in Illinois and Wisconsin territory. However, appeals to the Missouri Supreme Court by his owner Irene Emerson returned him to slavery in 1852. Scott's advocates, legal and otherwise, couldn't swallow the decision.

In 1854, another suit was filed in the United States Circuit Court in St. Louis. But a federal jury upheld the Missouri ruling. Scott appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States. By then, his case (one of a number of "freedom suits" that foreshadowed Civil Rights battles in the next century) had assumed political implications stemming from a national debate about the fate of slavery in Western territories previously controlled by Mexico.

In March 1857, after eleven years of litigation, the Supreme Court denied Scott his freedom. In a 7-2 opinion, Chief Justice Robert B. Taney ruled that as a slave, Scott was not a citizen of the United States, and therefore had no right to bring suit in the federal courts on any matter. He declared that Scott had never been free, due to the fact that slaves were personal property; thus the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, and the Federal Government had no right to prohibit slavery in the new territories.

The decision -- which appeared to be sanctioning slavery under the terms of the Constitution -- became one of the Court's most infamous and hastened the Civil War. (We recently enjoyed another day of infamy when the Court, by a 5-4 vote, amputated Al Gore's legs and ensured George Dubya's coronation. As in the 1876 presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic nominee Samuel L. Tilden, Republican graybeards upheld a disputed election -- in the face of the wholesale disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of AfroAmerican voters -- in the sunny state of Florida.)

Before the Civil War, educating AfroAmerican children was illegal.

After the war, slaves and freemen toiled under "black codes." The statutes, adopted by ex-Confederate states, permitted newly-freed blacks to marry, own property and sue in court. They also provided for the segregation of public facilities and placed restrictions on freemen's status as laborers, their rights to own real estate and their rights in court. (The following century, Dutch Afrikaners used the codes as models for South African Apartheid.)

Some Northern states, despite having their own black codes, saw them as an attempt at re-enslavement. As a result, the Freedman's Bureau was created. Its duties included preventing enforcement of the codes, which were later repealed by radical Republican state governments. (The Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice is, in essence, an organizational descendent of the Bureau.)

After the War, Missouri's state constitution approved separate schools. St. Louis stayed segregated until 1955. In 1972, white flight alighted on the "Gateway to the West."

In a lawsuit, attorneys for Craton Liddell alleged AfroAmerican youngsters were trapped inside the St. Louis' under-funded, segregated schools while white children enjoyed bountiful suburban resources. Eight years later, a judge ordered city and suburban school districts to start discussing an inter-district solution. The federal order -- which included a busing provision -- followed an appeals court ruling finding Missouri responsible for educational apartheid.

In turn, Ashcroft -- the state's attorney general from 1977 to 1984 -- ordered his office to contest the court order. The move was viewed as an effort to elicit a protracted court battle. It just so happened he was running for governor and positioned himself -- like Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace before the doors of the University of Alabama in 1963 -- as the candidate best equipped to keep black folk in their place.

At the time, an Ashcroft deputy noted, "When the attorney general drafts a lawsuit on behalf of 10,000 people, because of the power given the attorney general, that is often also very good politics."

("Keepin' the niggers down," as the Randy Newman song "Rednecks" goes, used to be the Democrats' job. In a move to court AfroAmerican voters, however, the "moderate" President Harry S. Truman introduced a tentative civil rights program that included desegregation of the military. Disgruntled southern Democrats, nicknamed Dixiecrats, bolted and formed the States' Rights party, culminating in (now Republican Senator) Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential bid in 1948.

Predictably, the Dubya "administration has been a full partner in the effort to resurrect, legally and politically, the 'States' Rights' philosophy on which the segregationists grounded their opposition to federal civil rights measures. The administration has failed to enforce civil rights laws, reversed previous DOJ positions on some civil rights cases, and nominated judges with troubling civil rights records," charged People for the American Way.

"At the electoral level, Republican Party candidates and operatives around the country continue to engage in a wide range of activities designed to suppress African American voter participation....... The GOP's 'Southern strategy' to build power by encouraging and exploiting a backlash against the successes of the civil rights movement is unquestionably a part of this nation's recent political history," the People noted.

Meanwhile, Ashcroft tried to prevent the federal judge from appointing a state education official to help design an integration plan. Conversely, the judge accused Ashcroft of "extraordinary machinations" to prevent a settlement and charged him with filing "feckless appeals" to further himself politically.

Almost two decades later, Ashcroft told Judiciary Committee members that his opposition was not based on race. "I want to have the opportunity to say with clarity that I do not support segregation," he said. "I support integration." (Ashcroft's assertion serves as counterpoint to Wallace's inaugural speech when he stood in the state capitol and proclaimed: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!")

Instead, Ashcroft's opposition was based on Missouri's having to pay the cost of busing students while not having "been found really guilty of anything." When pressed, he admitted the court in 1980 had ruled the state a "primary constitutional wrongdoer."

Muhammed the Elder: The target is down. Stow the weapon. I'll get us out of here.
Malvo the Younger: Was it a head shot?
Muhammed the Elder: Affirmative.
Malvo the Younger: Another one?
Muhammed the Elder: A sniper doesn't show off, son. You did what you were trained to do.
Malvo the Younger: (mildly disappointed) Yes, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: We'll find a place to bivouac for the night, then prepare for the Operation Family Planning.
Malvo the Younger: Already?
Muhammed the Elder: This is what you've worked for, son. All those hours in the gym, on the range. It's time for my X to pay the piper.
Malvo the Younger: Outstanding.