Another Sad Story From Kansas

One of the first responders critically injured in Friday's Kansas tornado died today, but not until after his daughter was married in his hospital room:

A police officer who was critically injured in the tornado that tore apart Greensburg was removed from life support early Tuesday, a few hours after his daughter was married at his bedside. His death raised the tornado's toll to 10.

Robert Tim Buckman, a 46-year-old officer from nearby Macksville, suffered a head injury in Friday's storm that killed nine others in Greensburg, officials said. He died early Tuesday at a Wichita hospital, his son Derick Buckman told The Associated Press.

"He died being a hero," Derick Buckman said. "He was sworn to protect people, and that's what he was doing the night he got picked up by a tornado."

During his final hours, Robert Buckman symbolically gave away his 18-year-old daughter in a marriage ceremony at his bedside, his son said. The family's hometown preacher officiated at the ceremony for Kylee Buckman and her boyfriend, Josh Mondello, 22, Derick's best friend.

"He was there with his daughter to give her away," said Derick Buckman, a 25-year-old firefighter.

Meanwhile, the Kansas Dem Governor Kathleen Sibelius took a cheap shot at the Bush Administration by claiming that the National Guard response to the storm was severely hampered by the deployment of people and equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan, a claim that was quickly swatted down by the White House. Even after proof was presented on the Senate floor that the state had everything it said it needed, Harry Reid got up and repeated the spurious charge.

Dem female governors have not had a sterling record in handling natural disasters in the last couple of years, and I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't another case of somebody clearly out of their element.

UPDATE: The meme that National Guard deployments are preventing adequate emergency response in Kansas is now officially a Democratic talking point as Barack Obama also jumped in during a speech in which he declared that 10,000 people died in the Kansas storms. The actual death toll was 12 and Obama later corrected his body count, but not the misinformation about the availability of National Guard troops and equipment.