There's sure to be a lot of back-slapping going on around Capitol Hill  today, now that the new veterans nursing home in Ogden is open for business. The state senate passed a bill back in March of 2008 that fronted $20 million in construction costs so that the facility could be built even as the state awaited federal reimbursement for the project.

There was a lot of back-slapping going on that day, too, as one by one, Utah's state senators took turns extolling their commitment to the nation's veterans.

The piece of legislation they passed, which would fund the construction of a veterans nursing home, was "a long time coming," one said. Yes, agreed another, the bill was evidence that legislators were prepared to "step up" for their state's vets. Indeed, said a third, the Ogden facility would be "an edifice of our support."

But there were more than a few raised brows and snickers among the dozens of aging veterans in the Senate gallery on that Friday morning. The waiting list at Utah's lone veterans home in Salt Lake City is hundreds of names long — and has been for years. And yet many of those same vets had watched as, for six years, construction costs rose as senators hedged over the funding for a second home in Ogden.

At issue were questions as to whether and when the state would be reimbursed for its investment by the federal government. Citing Utah's growing and aging population of vets, House members resolved to take a leap of faith on the reimbursement pledge as early as 2005.

But even as funding for the new home appeared on Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s recommended budget earlier in 2008, veterans advocates worried and wondered whether they would find support in the Senate, where lawmakers were worried that the feds might not make good on their pledge.

The Senate finally approved the funding — but only after a compromise was reached in which lawmakers agreed that the federal government must reimburse the state at least 65 percent of its investment on the Ogden home before another facility may be funded.

Veterans advocates say they'll challenge Utah's lawmakers to remove that stipulation so that work can get started on addittional facilities in St. George and Tooele.

In fact, I often tell people, journalism is an exercise in bias. And you can see that played out, every day of the year, in your daily newspaper.

From what we choose to cover, to where we put that news in relationship to other news, to what facts we choose to focus on, journalism is the process of determining what news is most interesting and most important for our readers.
Professional journalists seek to do this with fervor, independence, accountability and compassion. And we always seek to be fair.

But, in the end, there are only so many words in each article, only so many articles on each page and only so many pages in each newspaper. And so we have to make choices. And in doing so, we exercise our biases.

I did so just today.

Aaron Nemelka, one of 13 people killed in a Nov. 5 mass shooting at Ft. Hood, was laid to rest on Saturday in Utah. At the same hour as his funeral, an uncle who has been estranged from Nemelka’s family over religious differences, had pledged to hold a press conference “in protest of the way in which his nephew has been publically (sic) memorialized.”

Even if the times and locations hadn’t clashed, I wouldn’t have bothered with the uncle’s rant. To me it was not interesting, nor was it important. And that’s not even to mention that the entire situation reeked of bad blood and opportunistic evangelizing.

Journalism is not about giving everyone a voice. It is about determining which voices best tell our society’s stories. 
Aaron Nemelka’s voice was silenced last week. I wouldn’t dishonor that by giving voice to someone who sought to exploit his family’s tragedy to further his own causes. There is a time and a place for everything. And today, the pages of The Salt Lake Tribune were not the time or place for this fallen soldier’s uncle.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who admittedly orchestrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be prosecuted in federal court in New York, the Obama Administration  has announced.

It will be interesting to see, now, how prosecutors manage to handle their duties given the fact that Mohammed was repeatedly subjected to waterboarding and other torturous interrogation techniques while in U.S. custody, as it's extremely unlikely that any federal judge would permit evidence tainted by torture.

It's been more than 400 years since William Shakespeare coined the term "Band of Brothers," but the term still endures as a way to describe the close-as-kin relationships formed between those who serve together in combat.

And for activist and Iraq War veteran Jeff Key, that's the biggest problem with the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell: policy, which prohibits gay service members from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.

In a Veteran's Day article in The Tribune, Key said that the policy imposes "an essential dishonesty" into relationships that, by definition and necessity, need to be like family.

I'll be guest hosting Monday's RadioWest on 90.1 FM, KUER and we're planning a conversation about the Don't Ask policy. Is it essential to maintaining good order and discipline or has it had a contrary effect?

Join us and join the conversation. Monday at 11 a.m. and  p.m.

• In a statement about it's investigation into the Ft. Hood massacre, the FBI says "the alleged gunman acted alone and was not part of a broader terrorist plot."

• Yet The New York Times and other media outlets are reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies have intercepted communications between the alleged shooter and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings – so even if it wasn't a broad plot, it's going to be harder for many folks to ignore the hand of extremism in this case.

• President Barack Obama, in an address at Ft. Hood, declined to use the word "terrorism" to describe what happened last Thursday afternoon, saying instead that "twisted logic" was to blame.

• But perhaps in a nod to those, including some family members of the victims, who say the nation should not rush to dismiss religious extremism as a cause, Obama noted that "no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice – in this world, and the next."

That doesn't mean everyone will see eye-to-eye with Nemelka's opinions about what the United States should do in response to this terrible event. But it's clear that the 66-year-old retired professional basketball player and attorney represents a large number of Americans when it comes to how he views Thursday's attacks — the acts of a man he calls an "extremist Muslim."

"If the Army would let me, I would travel myself to Fort Hood and permanently end the life," of  Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Nemelka wrote me in an e-mail.

Nemelka believes that the War on Terrorism has a front in United States. And although he spent 35 years as an attorney, he wrote "prevention is far better than prosecution."

America, he wrote, needs "to be more active in finding" radical extremists inside it's borders. "I may be in the minority, but I would support an all out war on the terrorists that live here in the United States. A lot has been said about profiling by the police or other law enforcement agencies based on color or religion, but perhaps we need to do more to prevent acts of terrorism."

"This may require the use of new techniques or the softening of some alleged constitutional rights," Nemelka continued. "But we cannot stand by and watch our loved ones be murdered."

"We must act now to protect and defend our right to live in peace," he concluded.

What do you think? Are these the words of a man who has been deeply angered by the murder of his nephew, or is the massacre at Ft. Hood a sign that we need to take another look at whether religion influences violence in America? Comments here or e-mail me at military@sltrib.com.

Former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad is wrong.

After Afghans went to the polls on Aug. 20, incumbent President Hamid Karzai claimed victory. Then Karzai was forced to accept that widespread fraud made a run-off with top challenger Abdullah Abdullah necessary. Then, on Sunday, Abdullah unexpectedly dropped out of the race, saying that there were no evidence that the second round of voting would be anymore fair than the first. On Monday, the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission (which critics say is independant in name only, since its commissioners were hired by Karzai) announced Karzai the winner.

Khalilzad has said that Abdullah's withdrawal "puts the election issue behind us."

Hardly.

The U.S. government, which congratulated Karzai in a statement from its embassy in Kabul, may be content to whistle past the graveyard, but it's fighting history. This is, after all, the same nation that supported the corruption-laden leadership of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu  in Vietnam and Syngman Rhee in Korea. Both men ultimately lost popular support of their countrymen — and it's probably worth noting that both men died in exile in the United States.

Although he might maintain the support of the United States government, Karzai has little hope of cobbling together a legitimate government from the wreckage of this election nightmare.

Meanwhile, tens of thousand of U.S. service members, including no small number of local service members, are heading to Afghanistan. President Barack Obama's military commanders want even more troops. Popular opinion back home is hopelessly befuddled, though it seems to be turning against additional troop increases.  And the number of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan is on pace to more than double last year's number.

No, the election issue is not behind us. Not even close. No matter what course the U.S. takes in Afghanistan, this mess will fester for a long time to come.