Hundreds of active duty Air Force personnel joined the SE Texas Patriot Guard riders today to honor Spc. Joshua Molina as his body arrived at Ellington Field. The procession stretched over a mile long as it wound its way around Houston’s 610 Loop to Bellaire’s Earthman Funeral Home.

Spc. Molina was KIA on Thursday, March 27th when an IED exploded near his vehicle. He graduated from Elsik High School in the Alief ISD after attending Bellaire High and being a member of the ROTC. He planned to attend college and become a Border Patrol or FBI agent after his military service ended.

By all accounts, he was full of life and was the life of the party.

Comrades remembered Molina, 20, as an expert saw-gunner and gifted comedian who could always get his audience to smile, Capt. Emmanuel Sioson, 1st Squadron’s rear detachment commander, said.

“Josh was a great story teller. His stories would take five to 10 minutes to reach a punch line,” he said.

He was fulfilling a lifelong dream when he enlisted in the Army.

He was remembered as the man who liked to have fun and as someone who was always smiling. His brother said he wanted to be in the military since he was a child.

“Since he was a little kid he liked to play war and guns and we would just play around. He loved the military, especially the U.S. Army,” said Molina.

In January, he came back to Houston and visited his family and friends. His sister recounts her last visit with him.

“I was going to get up and give him a hug and he said, ‘No, just stay there. I’ll see you again,’ ” remembered Fredrickson, 27. “I told him, ‘Don’t be a hero. Just do what you have to do and come back safe.’ ”

That was the last time she saw him alive.

She typed this message in her grief and posted a picture of herself with her brother.

On behalf of my family I would like to thank everyone for their lovely messages and for having us in your thoughts and prayers, we are grateful and I’m sure that so is my brother, once again thank you.

to my brother Joshua(my chachi) aka Big Mo I love you, I miss you, I’m proud of you and we will see each other again, You are my HERO.

You are ours too, Spc. Molina. RIP.

 

 

Background:
Click2Houston/MSNBC
Houston Chronicle
Legacy Guest Book
Stars and Stripes

The Houston Chronicle editorial board is pretty well known for saying very stupid things, but the editors have outdone themselves.

Now they want the Federal government to assume $1.3 trillion worth of crappy mortgages:

What Congress should do is refinance the subprime mortgages of homeowners who can make reasonable payments on their house (sic). This would limit the neighborhood-blighting, life-ruining foreclosures that will keep home prices falling and the economy hobbled.

Yeah, let’s insulate stupid and greedy people from the natural consequences of their stupidity and greed. I’m sure they’ll learn their lessons.

[Note: A version of this appears on my personal blog.]

In today’s mail, I received not one, not two, but three different pieces of mail from you for your campaign. Not one of them seek to establish you as the most qualified candidate in the race for the District Attorney’s Office. Rather, they are all negative campaign pieces against Kelly Siegler.

When you did do your 11th hour announcement for your candidacy, I was disappointed, but not surprised. Face it, you like to run for things. It was nothing personal. You had your ideas. The other candidates had theirs. That’s what the Democratic process is all about, right?

But then you took such a turn, didn’t you? You realized that an ex-judge that last held elected office in the last millennium (1994) and had never tried a criminal case couldn’t hold a candle to a brilliant trial attorney like Kelly Siegler.

Siegler won tough cases like Dror Goldberg and David Temple against arguably the most skilled and reputable defense attorney in the State of Texas, Dick DeGuerin. In what was billed as a “Clash of the Titans”, Kelly Siegler made the District Attorney’s Office proud.

How could you compete with that?

The short answer: You couldn’t.

So you resorted to every last low-rent, muckraking, and scummy tactic that you could possibly resort to.

In a Country that prides itself on letting “the best candidate win”, you strive to do nothing more than trying to drag your opposition down the bog that you seem to politically dwell in. You found your greatest enabler in the morally decrepit and despicable Terry Lowry, and even he charged you $5,000 to help spread your desperation.

Of all three mailers that I got on your behalf tonight, nothing in your lists of qualifications brings you even close to Kelly Siegler. To put it bluntly, even I am more qualified for this Office than you are.

Perhaps the most incredibly dishonest and despicable thing you listed (out of a field of many) is your first item on your latest mail out. Under the heading of “Tainted Evidence”, you wrote:

Used evidence obtained by deceit causing the reversal of two killers’ death sentence convictions. Siegler brags about the conviction — but doesn’t talk about the reversals, or the agony of the victim’s family having to endure two trial, again!

In those two sentences, you absolutely, positively prove yourself to be a liar and a shameless one at that.

Both of the “two killers” cases centered around the murder of Farrah Fratta. You, as a former judge, would know better than anyone that the reversals had nothing to do with any sort of misconduct on the part of Kelly Siegler or the State of Texas. And yet you continue to mislead the general public about what was the true reasoning behind it.

And of the “victim’s family having to endure two trials again” (one of which has already been sentenced to death again), the father of Farrah Fratta is a man named Lex Baqer. You speak on his behalf without his request or his desire.

Lex Baqer is one of the victims who personally spoke on Kelly Siegler’s radio commercials, commending her for a job well done. He also took time out of schedule to go walk door-to-door for Kelly during her campaign.

You don’t speak for him.

And you should be ashamed of pretending that you do.

W. Gardner Selby reports that Ron Paul’s activists had a bit of success during the Republican district conventions this past Saturday.

As Democrats tussled over their presidential candidates at recent regional conventions, Paul backers unexpectedly took control of a GOP convention in Austin and the Victoria County convention.

And the old guard Republicans didn’t like it at all.

Gail Suttle, active in GOP circles since the 1980s, watched the takeover in horror. Suttle e-mailed Republicans afterward: “This group is NOT Republican and they will not work together — remember this when you do have to be in contact with them.”

At the confab at a local middle school, she’d likened the Paulies to Hitler youth, saying they were to the right of Attila the Hun.

Hmm. To the right of Attila the Hun, you say? Did Attila inhale?

Street by street, Paul supporters identified independent-minded voters willing to come to the precinct caucuses on primary night. McDonald said the canvassers looked for Paul yard signs and independent-oriented bumper stickers, even marijuana-leaf stickers—”anything indicating that person is a freedom-minded person.”

I can understand that strategy in Austin but Victoria? I didn’t realize that there were that many pot heads living out there. Maybe the lyrics should have been “Freedom’s just another word for….lightin’ up a blunt”.

In a move that just might be the irony of ironies, the Rombies approved a resolution that is quite interesting.

Delegates approved a resolution honoring Gov. Rick Perry.

Who’d a thunk it? These freedom loving dopers honor a guy that pushed a business tax on us, is trying to steal the land of farmers everywhere and desperately fought to inject little girls with an unproven vaccine. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Michelle sighting! Doesn’t she look proud of her country?

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