A decision by Georgia legislators to relax the state’s gun laws has led to a dispute over whether people can legally carry concealed firearms in the nation’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International.
A Georgia gun rights group filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Atlanta on Tuesday after airport officials said they would continue to enforce a ban on concealed weapons in the terminal despite the changes to the state law. The changes, which were approved by the Georgia legislature in the spring and took effect on Tuesday, relax the state’s prohibition on carrying weapons on public transportation and in some other areas, including restaurants serving alcohol.
“This is a matter of national significance,” Mayor Shirley Franklin told reporters at a news conference. Permitting guns inside an airport, even weapons carried by permit holders, would create an unsafe environment that “would endanger millions of people,” the mayor said.
Franklin vowed Tuesday to lobby Congress and federal officials to mandate that any public facility receiving federal money be declared a “gun-free zone.” That would affect airports nationwide.
The Georgia state law allowing civilians to carry concealed weapons on public transit, state parks, and restaurants has been highly controversial.
Still last week the Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle announced a new committee led by pro-National Rifle Association senators to study the state’s “complex firearms laws and recommend new legislation for the 2009 session.”
According to the resolution creating the study committee, it will “examine Georgia’s firearms law and the way these laws are applied in our state to ensure that the constitutional right to bear arms and the right to self-defense are properly protected.”
Is Barack Obama’s honeymoon with Europe over already?
After months of the most effusive and unrestrained praise for America’s first serious Black presidential candidate, some of Obama’s most energetic European backers - the Germans - are growing skeptical.
“In the end, a disappointment is a deceit. So it’s for the best that we cast a serous German glance in the direction of the American Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. He has called for the death penalty for child rapists, defends the right to possess firearms and is the first candidate since the Watergate scandal to reject public financing of his election campaign in favor of private, unlimited contributions. ‘Hey,’ some on this side of the Atlantic now ask, ‘we thought he was one of us?’ Far from it.”
“The facade of the wise, eloquent and charming golden boy has begun to crumble. There is a second - other Obama. And he’s about to be discovered: unscrupulous, selfish, and overambitious.’
“Who is the real Obama? Nobody knows for sure. For now because of his vagueness, it’s still possible to project various expectations onto him, in USA as well as in Europe. But here and there the impatience is growing: Obama, perhaps the first Black President, must not only be flexible, he has to take a stand.”
For a change, I will refrain from expressing my personal opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the District of Columbia’s ban on hand guns, and I will especially refrain from “characterizing“–glorifying or demonizing– the Supreme Court justices for the way they voted.
On the latter–and as an aside–it has been fascinating to observe the diverging reactions by some to the flurry of decisions rendered by the Court in recent days–some of them on very emotional issues, such as on the death penalty for child rapists, on habeas corpus for enemy combatants, and on gun control. I am referring to the cable and radio talk show hosts and other pundits who one day applaud the Court’s decision as the next best thing since sliced bread, and sanctify the judges, and the next day deplore the decision and vilify the judges as tyrants or “vermin-wearing-black-robes” –sometimes referring to the very same swing judge or judges.
But back to the D.C “gun control” decision. As we know, on Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own a gun for personal use and overturned the District‘s 32-year old ban on handguns, the strictest gun control law in our country ( And, again, the Court was either glorified or vilified). What struck me about this effort seeking to give D.C. residents the right to keep and bear arms is how little, if any, has been said or written about an even more important right: the right to vote.
Now, I am well aware that the landmark Supreme Court decision, one that ostensibly applies the Second Amendment to residents of the District of Columbia, will have a tremendous effect on gun control laws far beyond the District. It would be nice, however, if the same people, organizations (such as the NRA) and politicians (such as Dick Cheney) who have worked so hard to give District residents the right to keep and bear arms, would work just as zealously to give these same Americans a far more fundamental right: the right to elect a voting representative in Congress..
Setting aside the national ramifications of the gun control issue and ruling, it seems to me that some are of the opinion that D.C residents are sufficiently responsible to own and use firearms, but not responsible or deserving enough to vote for a real representative in Congress.
Our national schizophrenia on firearms defies rational explanation. In the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, both presidential candidates and, according to public opinion polls, most voters believe in “the right to bear arms.”
Yet only one out of three Americans owns a gun and, after mass murders like Virginia Tech, there is an upsurge of grief and outrage at the easy availability of deadly weapons.
Somehow, there is a disconnection between the idea of guns and the reality of what they do that can’t be explained away by NRA lobbying or the fierce protestations of “gun nuts.”
How do we reconcile the apparent contradiction that many of those who believe in preserving the life of fetuses are just as passionate about the right to own weapons that kill human beings after birth?
As most of you know the Supreme Court has been fairly busy the last few days handing down a series of rulings. I had hoped to post a little of my very amateur legal comments on the decisions but have been somewhat swamped by work lately so I haven’t had a chance to post until now.
Since it just came down today I thought I would start with the Heller decision (more properly District of Columbia v. Heller). This was another 5-4 ruling with the court liberals (Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens and Souter) on one side and the court conservatives (Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Roberts) on the other. As usual middle justice Anthony Kennedy provided the swing vote.
In this case he swung to the conservative side in helping to strike down the District of Columbia gun ban which had been in place since 1976. The suit was brought by Dick Heller, a security guard who was denied his application to keep a gun at his home in the District. Six others also joined as plaintiffs but Heller is the name we will remember.
In striking down the law, Justice Scalia stated that the basic right for individuals to keep and bear arms for self protection is protected by the 2nd Amendment. He rejected the argument by supporters of the law that the words ‘well regulated militia’ in the amendment meant that the right was only connected to military service.
His opinion goes into great detail, breaking down the words of the amendment part by part to support the position that the purpose is to protect gun ownership rights by individuals and that since the purpose of the right is, at least in part, to defend people against an oppressive government it would be illogical to then assume the right could only be exercised through the government (IE a formal government militia).
He also points out that at the time the amendment was adopted that militia had a much looser meaning, applying simply to the concept that the men of a given community would be expected to come to the defense of the citizenry in case of emergency, such as attacks by Natives.
The dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens takes a narrower view, interpreting the term militia in a more modern formal sense, saying that it applies only to legally recognized organizations such as the National Guard or a State (ie government) organized body.
Regardless of my personal views on the merits or flaws of private gun ownership, I would tend to side with Scalia on this debate. As he points out it would be ridiculous to say that on the one hand the 2nd amendment right is there to protect against an intrusive government but then to say that the only way to exercise that right is with government permission.
Of course this is just a cursory review of the opinions and I would urge you all to go to the various web sites to read it for yourself, I will be offering a more detailed analysis this weekend.
However it is also worth noting that the ruling really does not change that much. The DC law was pretty much an absolute ban on gun ownership, about as restrictive as you can get. The majority opinion makes it clear that they do NOT intend to strike down any gun restrictions, only ones as absolute as the DC law.
The court has previously affirmed laws that required gun licenses or waiting periods, as well as banning felons or the mentally ill from owning guns. They have also supported laws that restricted gun possession at schools or other public buildings. The ruling makes it clear that these positions still stand.
So if you have a local law that requires applications, permits, waiting periods and the like, it is unlikely anything will change. Guns will not be carried into schools or courtrooms, nor will the unstable be allowed to own them.
So as is often the case, the actual impact of the ruling is not nearly as broad as the hype suggests, though it is clearly a major statement of 2nd amendment rights.
I can have some real compassion for Huckabee’s gaffe. I appreciate a politician willing to speak off the cuff. I was impressed, for example, when Huckabee was able to call on his southern roots, to remember growing up “in a very segregated South,” in order to speak against the tide in support of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment, and you have to just say, ‘I probably would, too.’”
Still, the bottom line is the joke was Huckabee playing to his NRA audience. Some are willing to give that audience a pass. Todd Beeton spots an “uncomfortable pause” and Steve Benen says, “The response was far more muted after the second sentence.”
I’m not so sure. The laughs seemed plenty hardy to me.
To the extent that Huckabee did make them uncomfortable it was most likely because he exposed a mindset that is both prevalent and utterly and completely repellent. This is not the first time, nor the worst time, that mindset has made itself known. Here’s Ted Nugent onstage last summer, while brandishing two machine guns:
I was in Chicago last week, I said, “Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk!” Obama, he’s a piece of sh*t and I told him to suck on my machine gun! Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, “Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch. And since I’m in California, how about Barbara Boxer? She might want to suck on my machine gun! Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these, you worthless whore!”
Republicans are hoping to make political hay with the California gay marriage decision while John McCain is promising he’ll “nominate judges of a different kind, a different caliber, [and with] a different understanding of judicial authority” even as Democrats have had only 2 Supreme Court appointments in the last 40 years!
These issues — guns and courts — just don’t motivate Democratic voters. But, historically at least, they sure have motivated Republicans. Meanwhile we’ve got the appeasement flap. Right about this time you’ve just got to think that Democrats might be mad as hell. Do you think they’re going to take it any more?
A year after the massacre at Virginia Tech by the troubled Cho Seung-Hui, what has been done to address the root causes of that event - the worst at any American educational institution? Dietmar Ostermann writes for Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, “The debate over gun control erupts loudly and often, yet it’s a discussion without consequences. The way people with psychological problems are handled, however, is a silent scandal. Even after Blacksburg, American society is so uncomfortable with the topic that it was quickly suppressed.”
Ostermann goes on, “Even more than the U.S. mania for weapons, this bloody killing spree represents the often tragic consequences of a system in which mental suffering is not only ignored - it is criminalized.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tomorrow night’s debate in Philadelphia could be the turning point. If he is the masterful politician he seems to be, Barack Obama will seize the moment to rise above the squabbling and bickering to define himself for American voters.
Just as he broadened the Jeremiah Wright brouhaha into a statement about race in America in that same hall, Obama can use his “small town” misstep to address directly the doubts that exist and are being exacerbated about him and re-frame the issue of his trustworthiness.
In response, he can acknowledge understandable skepticism on the part of Americans who were told eight years ago that George W. Bush was a compassionate conservative who would not embark on nation-building, only to get a president with no empathy for their needs, a radical agenda to enrich the richest and a reckless foreign policy that would destroy another nation and squander our blood, treasure and reputation in the world trying to put it back together again.
Voters, Obama can point out, thought they were making a safe choice in selecting a familiar name and reassuring promises from a comforting source. Now they are being asked to give their trust to a dark-skinned man with an odd name and exotic roots who, they are being told, is “elitist” and “out of touch” with them.
But which is the greater gamble at this low point of Americans’ confidence in their future? More of the same or trusting someone whose judgment has thus far turned out to be sound and whose promise of change is not encumbered with a history of business-as-usual in Washington?
Playing it safe, Obama can truthfully tell Americans, is the biggest gamble of all.
Munitions merchants are not what they used to be. A century ago, in “Major Barbara,” George Bernard Shaw gave us Andrew Undershaft, an intellectual who philosophized about war and poverty. Today we have 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli, who peddles useless used weaponry and keeps getting arrested for domestic violence.
After “repeated inquiries” by the New York Times, the Army this week finally suspended his company, AEY inc., from future federal contracts, after learning Diveroli had sold them Chinese ammunition that he claimed to be Hungarian.
The company, which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach with a licensed masseur as Vice President, had supplied $300 million of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces, much of which turned out to be more than 40 years old…
Angela Winters’ earlier post on Barack Obama’s speech this morning has generated some wonderful discussion. I’m enormously grateful for those thoughtful comments, since I’m truly not an economy expert. (I’d describe it as barely literate…)
But there was also a bit of buzz before the speech, centered up on Mayor Bloomberg’s introduction of Obama. Is an endorsement in the offing? Or (even more politically affecting) is there the possibility of an Obama-Bloomberg ticket?
Personally — very personally — I hope not. I wrote about my problem with this Veep suggestion, here.
Déjà vu won’t do. Recurring nightmare is a better description for what happened yesterday on a college campus in DeKalb, Illinois–an armed-to-the-teeth gunman, random shooting, sudden deaths.
This time there were five victims, plus the shooter, who stepped from behind a curtain in a lecture hall and started firing indiscriminately before killing himself on the stage. He had a shotgun, a Glock pistol and another handgun.
Ten months after Virginia Tech, the body count is mercifully lower, but the aftermath will be the same.
A special agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is at the scene, promising to “be urgently tracing the firearms and learning the history of the weapons” to “learn where they came from and how the shooter came to possess them.”
Last April, John McCain responded to the Virginia massacre by saying, “We have to look at what happened here, but it doesn’t change my views on the Second Amendment, except to make sure that these kinds of weapons don’t fall into the hands of bad people…Obviously we have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.”
Now, as the Republican nominee-to-be courts the favor of his from-my-cold-dead-hands constituency, will his response be any different? If McCain is consistent, the rest of us will have to mourn the victims without him.
Washington’s Walking Embarrassment is still sitting proudly in his Senate seat and, along with his Idaho colleague, Michael Crapo, is blocking President Bush’s nomination of Michael Sullivan to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
According to the Editorial Board blog of the New York Times, “Mr. Crapo’s spokesman said his boss is hearing from gun owners and dealers with ‘concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership.’ It may be, he said, ‘that the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven’t done anything wrong.’
“It’s a remarkable claim to make in a month in which a young gunman in Nebraska shot 11 people, killing eight of them, at an Omaha shopping mall, and another killed four young people in two attacks on religious organizations in Colorado, before taking his own life.
“The Colorado gunman, according to the Denver Post, spent a year buying guns and ammunition…and all of his purchases were within the law. When a large shipment of ammunition was sent to a post office box owned by the gunman, the authorities were alerted, the paper reports–and specifically determined that he had a legal right to receive it.”
Awaiting action by the Senate Ethics Committee on his little Minneapolis men’s room misunderstanding, Sen. Craig is maintaining the record that earned him an A+ from the National Rifle Association. The voters who saw him inducted into Idaho’s Hall of Fame this fall must be proud.
December 12th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
(photos on next page)
There was a fight on the Q train. The last car was filled with people rolling toward Brooklyn.
A young man, accompanied by his girlfriend, had just been wished Merry Christmas by another group on the train.
The young man happily answered back with, “Happy Chanukah.”
That’s when all hell broke loose.
One of a group of other young people on the train immediately hiked up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Christ. Fourteen men and women jumped the “Happy Chanukah” man, yelling, “He said, ‘Happy Hanukkah, that’s when the Jews killed Jesus…’ dirty Jews and Jew bitches.”
Much screaming, bellowing, blood loss and broken bones later…
The man who said “Happy Chanukah” is Walter Adler, 23, an honors student at Hunter College, who now has a broken nose and a split lip.
He had managed to pull the emergency brake as the train was hurtling toward DeKalb Ave. station
A horde of police came aboard. They arrested 10 people, charging six with assault and four with unlawful assembly.
Two of the men arrested that night have been arrested for race crimes before.
There’s a back-story: In the midst of the melee, Adler thought, “I’m bleeding all over the place, there’s lots of people, why isn’t anyone else doing anything?”
But one stranger on the train had risen to help. And he flailed away for all he was worth to help protect Adler as best he could. A bantam-weight man from Bangladesh. A young soul studying to be an accountant. His name is Hassan Askari. He is 20 years old.
Hassan Askari has two black eyes from the fight. But he also has a new friend. Adler.
Adler says Hassan is a hero. Hassan says his parents taught him to help those in need.
Like many a persons who, when faced with sudden threat, and through whom fierce angels suddenly surge , whatever one would call that Force of those moments of tension, that Force retreats when the threat is past….
leaving just the humble human form standing there, mumbling things like Hassan is saying now, “I just did what I had to do.”
And the ones who assaulted the travelers? Thus far, six were charged with assault, four with unlawful assembly. There may be additional charges.
from the NYPost by Jennifer Fermino, Erika Martinez and Peter Cox
One of those collared straphangers yesterday denied making anti-Semitic taunts and said his mother is Jewish.
Joseph Jirovec, 19 - the son of a city firefighter who is currently serving in Iraq - has pleaded guilty to a 2005 bias crime against blacks.
“We are not racist against Jewish people. That whole hate-crime thing is ridiculous,” Jirovec said.
He claims Adler’s group was drunk and taunted his group, and one yelled, “We killed Jesus.”
Jirovec will soon begin serving six months for his role in the attack against four men in Gerritsen Beach.
“I’m trying to stay out of trouble,” he said. “When I get out, I want to go into the military.”
(I sense what some readers might be thinking. Me too.)
Below are some of the pictures of the alleged attackers:
But, before we go there, just this. As you may have deduced, Hassan the brave Bangladeshi is a Muslim. And of course, Walter Adler is a Jew. And in that effusiveness that is beautiful, and for which many a Semitic person is known, Adler said… “A random Muslim guy jumped in and helped a Jewish guy on Hanukkah - that’s a miracle…”
Let us all who wish to, hold the thought that someday, in our lifetimes, such a matter will NOT be a miracle, that it will instead, be only USUAL and ordinary. And blessed, as always.
Here is a video of Walter Adler (who is no weakling), his heartfelt lady friend, and a gentle Hassan Askari speaking about what happened. Many will like what Askari says about his way of seeing others through his Muslim faith. Many will like what Walter says at the end about transcending all the religious arguments that keep people on ’sides’ rather than in harmony.
December 9th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
UPDATE: It’s been determined that one man wounded five persons and murdered four persons at both churches which are about 60 miles apart. Matthew Murray, 24, a home-schooled son (one of two brothers) of a priminent Denver family did the shooting. Murray was five years ago an ‘associate’ At the Missionary Training Center, but was found ‘healthwise’ unfit for assignment after the 12 week training for missionary work. That Missionary Training Center was the shooter’s first target, befre he traveled to the other churxh and unleashed more mayhem. Today, the Director of the Center said Murray was believed to have been sending hate mail to the Center. Murray’s father is a neurologist and a prominent multiple-sclerosis researcher. More on the story here
At the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Murray killed two sister, ages 16 and 18. Their father was also wounded twice and is in hospital.
The story of the female security guard who killed the shooter, Miss Jeanne Assam, is here… “Security Guard: ‘God Guided Me And Protected Me’”
Today there were incomprehensible deadly shootings at two different churches in Colorado
…one shooting took place just after midnight in the youth dormitory at the Missionary Training Center, in Arvada, Colorado, a city just northwest of Denver.
There, the gunman shot dead two young people in their early 20s, one from Alaska and one from Minnesota. The gunman also seriously wounded two other young people there, one from South Dakota.
All were in a Youth Worship Mission together and were cleaning up after a Christmas party. Their pictures were flashed on television. Many tears. The police were unable to find the shooter.
…The other shooting took place today as noon services were ending in Colorado Springs at the New Life Church, also called by some, The New Life Megachurch, that has 14,000 members, 350 employees and a huge ‘campus.’
The gunman opened fire there (it may be the same gunman that was in Arvada earlier, but this is not confirmed) and killed two persons, one a teenage girl. He shot three others who are in hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The New Life Church had taken an extra precaution after hearing about the Arvada incident earlier in the day.
A female security guard on the scene at the Colorado Springs church, shot the killer dead. (She is currently lauded for saving lives. This is all the info that has been released about her thus far, the sheriff only referring to the guard as ‘her’.)
Now come more televised pictures of the victims’ yearbook photos. More tears. Sheriff with badge. News conference/ gaggle of mikes. Brave. Contained. Tragedy. People in Michelin Tire Man parkas embracing in the freezing cold. Steam rising as network affiliate reporters report. Governor’s message. Senator’s message. People shake when they try to speak.
The New Life Megachurch has had difficult times this past year as it is the church founded by Pastor Ted Haggard, who was let go for engaging with a homosexual prostitute. Haggard was, nonetheless, popular with his church members, and the church was recovering.
Focus on The Family run by James Dobson, is just down the road in Colorado Springs. No doubt the reverberation of this tragedy reached them quickly.
Meanwhile, across the nation, in basements, garages, bedrooms, cellars, attics, living rooms, other disturbed persons write the next or the last entry in their journals of screed. They count and recount the ammo one more time. They know, they just know they are going to abate Evil and set things Right in the world. They use Mapquest to figure out how to get to their targeted ground zero. Perfectly functional, can drive a car. Perfectly deadly, sick as rabid dogs.
And no one notices. Or tries not to. Or says, not my problem. Or says, well, we’re all a little odd. Or just stays away and hopes for the best.
I can only say, that once again, likely the person or persons who were the shooters at the churches, will have had a history of instability that too many did not recognize for its homicidal and suicidal nature, or misinterpreted the severity of what they were seeing.
Personal freedoms are so highly cherished in our country, that sometimes, people do not want to try to interfere, even when they know someone is quite mad and NOT harmless.
In California, even when a person suffering from severe mental illness poses a clear danger to themselves or to others, there are laws that prevent sincerely concerned others from helping the severely ill person get the help they need.
Is it such in our culture that in order to avoid ‘the slippery slope’ of people perhaps wrongfully being detained for a ‘mental health hold’ by their grubbing relatives, that we have accepted continual and unceasing mass murder by seriously disturbed people? Is this the only trade?
Half a century ago, TV created a new kind of American assassin, one who would escape insignificance by killing someone famous–a President or a star like John Lennon–and become famous for doing it.
Now we are in a new phase of this madness, where quantity has replaced quality in selecting victims. After yesterday’s random killing of eight people in an Omaha mall, police report finding a suicide note from the 19-year-old shooter, who had been fired by McDonald’s, saying he was going to be famous.
He joins the Virginia Tech rampage killer who left self-pitying videos in achieving notoriety through mass murder. Perhaps this new stage of insane fame was inevitable. Arthur Bremer, who was just released after 35 years in prison, wanted to assassinate Richard Nixon but settled for Gov. George Wallace because the President was too well-guarded. It’s so much easier to kill numbers of people at random.
In our grief, perhaps we should do with these sociopaths what the media do with rape victims, withhold their names, certainly not to protect them but to deny them the fame that motivated their savagery. It’s the least we can do out of respect for the victims.
October 11th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
How it goes.
After the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999 where 12 students and one teacher were murdered by high school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (who then killed themselves)… many people in the community, in the nation and in the world wondered could more people have been saved? What happened to spread the alarm? Who heard it, who did not? What was the students’ response? The teachers’? What should have been set in place long before? There were many other questions. We might have one more small answer now.
Today, an extraordinary film was released by CNN, a home video made yesterday by a Cleveland Ohio student, Warren Marks, of his teacher and classroom of students at his Success Tech Academy when a ‘code blue’ was called over the loudspeakers. The students in Mark’s math class didn’t realize it, but at that moment, one of their classmates was loose in the school with a loaded firearm.
The students as shown on the video are very slow to react to protect themselves. Precious time is lost until what appears to be an alert teacher climbs up and stands on a desk trying to quiet and focus the raucous students, shouting at them that this is not a joke, to stop laughing, this is to be taken seriously.
More moments before the message sinks in; til the students organize and finally lock down in the classroom. This chaotic and slow response comes in part from the students not immediately having enough specific information about the threat.
For many persons in general, when confronted with alarm, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to initially question or disbelieve there’s a real threat. Despite old media which no doubt will now seek out students who have been proximate to violence before and portray that as ‘the norm’, most students reacted normally… they still expected the inside of the school to be a protected place.
Asa Coon, the troubled 14 year old student who was the reason for the ‘code blue,’ subsequently shot two teachers and two students, and then took his own life. One teacher was shot in the back, one in the chest; the latter teacher having now had surgery and being listed in ‘fair’ condition.
We know the drill.
1. Troubled student
2. Students complained about the student
3. Teachers brought the issue forward
4. Evidence of ill intents found in troubled student’s writing, video, artwork
5. Others tried to intervene but were not supported
6. Other attempted to install precautionary rules /devices in school system
7. Nothing effective accomplished
8. Student gave warnings of impending homicide/suicide
9. Student had known serious mental distress
10. Student kept falling through cracks in terms of containment, help.
11. Harassment, ridiculing, scorning confrontations against/ with troubled student continue by others.
12. Firearm obtained
13. One last straw occurs
14. Psychotic break
15. Murder, suicide.
When he announces tomorrow, the former Senator/actor will start with a clean slate in the hoof-in-mouth department. His Republican opponents have had six months to say stupid things, and they have made the most of them.
Rudy Giuliani had to back off telling Barbara Walters that his wife would attend cabinet meetings and, more recently, his claim to have spent more time at 9/11 Ground Zero than the firefighters.
Mitt Romney has been so busy that Ana Marie Cox on her Time blog had to expand his Top Ten Gaffes to eleven, including the easily disproved claim to have been a hunter all his life, attributing a Castro slogan to Free-Cuba fighters in front of an audience of them, mis-stating French marriage laws, and making an admiring statement about Hitler’s energy policy, among so many others.
If Newt Gingrich decides to run, the floodgates of flubs would overflow.
But Thompson has the potential to catch up. He will no doubt ace his Jay Leno interview this week, but when he has to start defending his positions and his resume, Thompson’s tendency to be casual about such subjects as invading Iran is sure to emerge…
When most people talk about powerful American lobbies, they might list the NRA or AIPAC. The arms industry, however, is rarely mentioned. Yet its ability to sway events in Washington and pass legislation favorable to its interests is…well, frightening.
…How has the arms industry been able to influence policymaking so much? Besides the obvious impact of large campaign donations, weapons manufacturers have also made inroads in Congress because they’ve been highly effectively in “sanitizing” what they’re selling. Rather than portraying them for what they actually are — instruments that maim, kill and cause terrible destruction — the arms industry has been effective in downplaying the purpose of their product. Regular ads from Lockheed Martin and Boeing present their products as a feat of technological magnificence, and reports from both companies tout their weaponry as “precise” and “surgical,” spreading the false notion that war is little more than a game where only the bad guys get hurt.
The marketing tactics have paid off. By presenting themselves as honest businessmen (rather than peddlers of a murderous technology) and their weaponry as a product like any other, representatives of the arms industry have been able to gain greater influence in Congress. Indeed, marketing tactics have improved the reputation of ‘defense lobbyists’ so dramatically in the past few decades, they are now able to meet with Congressmen without the risk of a political backlash. Unfortunately, all the face-time that arms lobbyists are getting with Congressmen means that other, much-needed voices are not being heard. You can be sure, for instance, that the arms industry has a lot more sway in Congress than do smart, pragmatic, peace groups like the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Yet, are not our priorities screwed up as a nation when the arms industry gets 10, 20, 50, even 100 times more room to air their views than do thoughtful members of the pro-peace lobby?
August 6th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
UPDATE
CNN reports that two males, 28, and 15 years old are in custody regarding the lining up and execution style murders of three students. A fourth student shot in the head and knifed, Natasha Aeriel, 19, survives in hospital and has been able to speak to police and give information. She is under heavy police guard.
It’s reported that Jose Carranza, 28, of Newark, New Jersey, surrendered to police. He came with his lawyer to turn himself in near 11 pm Wednesday night.
“We put him in handcuffs and we walked the individual into the office. I personally helped the detective to sit him down and I left,” the mayor said. Citizens in Newark have criticized the mayor for diminishing Newark’s high homicide rate.
Ballistics evidence, information from the shooting’s lone survivor and a fingerprint lifted from a beer bottle at the scene led to the major break in a criminal case that has outraged a city numbed by street violence.
An arrest warrant had sought Carranza’s arrest for three counts of murder, a single count of attempted murder, four counts of robbery, conspiracy and weapons offenses.
“We believe that others were involved in this heinous crime. We are looking for them,” Dow said.
The 15-year-old was not identified because of his age, but Dow said she would seek to try him as an adult.
Newark has become accustomed to violence but the slayings on Saturday night touched a nerve.
The four friends, ages 18 to 20, were shot while listening to music at the schoolyard.
Three of them — Terrance Aeriel, 18, Dashon Harvey, 20; and Iofemi Hightower, 20 — were forced to kneel against a wall and were shot in the head, execution style.
My questions in the earlier story were to ask why it seemed this story was not being reported heavily… it took two days to rise to the top of the foam, and even as two suspects are in custody today, it appears there are no big satellite trucks from all networks and cable news parked on the police station lot, no five thousand mikes being thrust in anyone’s face who comes out of the mayor’s office or police station.
I still ask, what/ who decides how dense, how broad the coverage of kids lined up on their knees and executed.
The surviving witness is brave to give testimony about the alleged murderers, a huge story in itself that is also silenced … It may be that because some murderers are well known to silence witnesses by making very sure they are dead… the second time around…perhaps that is the reason for silence.
But, propriety is not necessarily usual amongst news gatherers. That the prosecutor in Newark is a woman, could also be an interesting story. So could the story of the people’s rage at the mayor be a place to begin fleshing out a story. My point being not to praise or to dun, but to ask, where is the story, the whole story… and why is it taking so long to tell it?
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Here is the previous article asking why it took the big media two to four days to either mention or else put the story on their front page even for a few hours.
I’d add one more question, in the article above written by CNN, the phrase in bold, “Newark has become accustomed to violence but the slayings on Saturday night touched a nerve.†You know me, insert your own fiery cuss word here.
Meanwhile, today, four days after these murders, news readers and reporters are talking about Plastic bottles on CNN, and that’s there’s a heat wave and how to enjoy the shade, are the momentary stories on Fox and MSNBC
