{"id":10260,"date":"2015-07-21T16:55:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T16:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10260"},"modified":"2015-07-21T16:55:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T16:55:07","slug":"thank-you-mr-president-for-honoring-those-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10260","title":{"rendered":"Thank you, Mr. President, for honoring those victims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>President Obama heard the critics and he responded.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the president ordered the White House flag, along with flags flying over all other federal buildings, to be lowered to half-staff in honor of the five men slain in Chattanooga, Tenn. The five men &#8212; four Marines and a sailor &#8212; were killed by a gunman who then was shot to death by police.<\/p>\n<p>Many had criticized the president for not lowering the flags immediately. His reasons for the delay aren&#8217;t clear, but now that he&#8217;s acted, I&#8217;m glad that he did. Yes, I was one of the critics who said the White House flag needed to be lowered.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"jrIcZ9ToeW\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/national-security\/248646-obama-lowers-white-house-flag\/\">Obama lowers White House flag<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Obama lowers White House flag&#8221; &#8212; The Hill\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/national-security\/248646-obama-lowers-white-house-flag\/embed\/#?secret=EkYqQ4CKFa#?secret=jrIcZ9ToeW\" data-secret=\"jrIcZ9ToeW\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, who happens to be my congressman, urged the president to &#8220;do the right thing&#8221; and lower the flag.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure whether this announcement and the president&#8217;s stated tribute to the young men will assuage the criticism of those such as Thornberry, who&#8217;s been a constant critic of Obama, but we all should now take heed of the act and honor these men&#8217;s memories and their dedication to the country they loved.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama heard the critics and he responded. Today, the president ordered the White House flag, along with flags flying over all other federal buildings, to be lowered to half-staff in honor of the five men slain in Chattanooga, Tenn. The five men &#8212; four Marines and a sailor &#8212; were killed by a gunman &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10260\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thank you, Mr. President, for honoring those victims<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[540,935,1947,2849,5247],"class_list":["post-10260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-news","category-national-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-chattanooga-shooting","tag-gop-critics","tag-mac-thornberry","tag-white-house-flag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}