Mark Bingham's mom vs. the terrorists

Alice Hoagland is one tough cookie, and she raised a tough cookie, too. You know him, at least by name: Mark Bingham was the hell-for-leather rugby champion who helped lead the charge against the hijackers aboard United Flight 93. Now she's going to court to look in the eye the Guantanamo captives on trial for plotting to end Mark's life -- and she's not blinking.

Hoagland is among the first 10 relatives selected by the Pentagon to witness next month's military trials of the accused Sept. 11 conspirators, the San Jose Mercury News reports. She says she'd probably kill Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the presumed mastermind, herself if she ran across him one dark night in a Pakistani wood. But her higher nature holds her back.

"There are things worse than death," she told the Merc, "and one of them is to spend your entire life in prison, under the control of people you hate. We owe it to ourselves to spare their lives, because we have a better respect for life than they do."

Another thing worse, she says, is living without her boy.

"I wish I could have been there" on Flight 93, she says. "I really do."

As it is, Hoagland, who lives near Los Gatos, Calif., uses "the wreckage of my life" to fight for five causes -- aviation security, anti-terrorism, sports for kids, "helping radical Islam to realize it has moderate roots . . . and to advance the LGBT cause."  Hoagland was raised a Mormon, and she baptized Mark in the faith; both left the church after Mark came out to her as gay in 1991. Many people were astonished to see her at Saturday's large protest against Prop. 8 in San Jose. But she says "it's the least I could do . . . (Marriage equality's) "time has come."