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Ah, yes, it's starting already.

No matter what the govenment will do to prove the accused guilty, there will always be those who mistrust the government so much, they will be convinced the two are innocent.

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Legion Opposes OMB on VA Funding

WASHINGTON, November 14, 2003 - The morning after President George W. Bush delivered his Veterans Day message at Arlington National Cemetery, the administration’s Office of Management and Budget – in writing – opposed an additional $1.3 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs health care budget and reiterated its call to charge many veterans seeking treatment at VA a $250 annual enrollment fee and to raise the pharmacy co-payment from $7 to $15.

“A veteran is a veteran,” American Legion National Commander John Brieden said. “The law was changed in the ‘90s to allow all veterans to seek treatment at VA. Although OMB is willing to wield the budget to repel veterans from seeking treatment at VA, the men and women of The American Legion as well as Republicans and Democrats in Congress remain determined not to let that happen.”

Brieden made the Legion’s case to Congress perfectly clear Sept. 16 when he testified here before a joint hearing session of House and Senate committees on Veterans’ Affairs. Simply put: Health care for veterans is the delayed cost of war. Therefore, if Congress can meet the president’s request for an additional $87 billion to fund the ongoing war in Iraq, then Congress also can raise an additional $1.8 billion next year, and a $3 billion increase the following year, to meet the health care needs of veterans.

A blueprint passed by the House in April called for a Legion-backed $27.1 billion for the system, but in July the House approved an appropriations bill that called for $25.3 billion. Therein lies the $1.8 billion spending gap that the Legion, the nation’s largest veterans organization, is fighting alongside other veterans groups to close. As the spending bill for VA-HUD and Independent Agencies makes its way through the Senate, an amendment offered by Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri -- an amendment that has bipartisan support -- could fill the chasm by $1.5 billion. Congress is also poised to remove the Senate Appropriations Committee’s “emergency” designation from $1.3 billion targeted for VA health care, and to send the entire increase directly to VA.

How badly does VA need the money? The American Legion’s “I Am Not A Number” survey in May identified scores of the more than 200,000 veterans who had been waiting from six months to two years for their initial primary-care appointments at VA. Recent news media accounts noted veterans of the ongoing war on terror also having trouble accessing the system. Although VA reports tremendous recent success in whittling down the backlog, about 164,000 veterans in the lowest of VA’s eight priority-treatment groups have been suspended from enrolling in the VA health care system since January because VA lacks the resources to serve all of the veterans who are lawfully eligible for treatment.

The American Legion is fighting to switch the VA health care budget from discretionary funding, which Congress must approve each fiscal year, to mandatory funding, just like Social Security and Medicare, whereby federal dollars are allocated by a formula to meet the system’s demands. The nation’s largest veterans organization also wants to end the restriction that keeps veterans from using their Medicare benefits to pay for treatment at VA.

Read the entire Statement of Administration Policy:

Download Statement (PDF file)

Now I don't think they are innocent. They were after all aprehended in the tricked out Chevy, which had no other purpose other than as a place to shoot from fairly close without being seen, with the AR-15 in their possession at the time. (Not due to any great feat by law enforcement, the suspicous vehicle, parked at a rest area, was reported and watched over by a trucker, not based on any description of the vehicle...IOW it wasn't a white van) The ballistics evidence alone wouldn't be sufficient, IMHO, but it's another piece of the puzzle adding up to "beyond a reasonable doubt". I do wonder about matching ballistics, even when you have the gun on a .223. I guess it would depend on what sort of bullets there were using. Often there's not much left when a high velocity hollowpoint does it's thing. This is not as true with a .223 as with some higher velocity .22 caliber "varmit" rounds, so maybe they at least got enough of the base to make the match. Having the gun, if it hasn't been very long (IOW, not many rounds fired, if any) since the bullet(s) retrieved at the crime scene, probably does allow for a pretty good match. Much better with handguns than with rifles, especially the higher powered ones.

You have raised two separate questions: first, whether the evidence, taken as a whole, will convict the shooter--and we don't know the answer to THAT question, in one case, yet.

Secondly, though, is the question of 'ballistics.' The gist of the news article would seem to cast doubt on the concept of "fingerprinting" guns and CERTAINLY casts doubt on 'metal-matching.'

Not all bad. Think of another Janet Reno-type as AG and you know why gun-owners are happy to see this article.