“Something has gone terribly wrong,” said Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, “when the biggest threat to our American economy is the American Congress.”It's from this article, which explicates further.
There's only so much sighing a person can do without hyperventilating and keeling over.In 2003, when a leaky gypsum stack at an abandoned phosphate plant threatened to kill a vast cross section of Tampa Bay's marine life, Charles Kovach came up with a solution that saved the bay.But this month, 17 years after he was hired by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Kovach was one of 58 DEP employees laid off by the agency. Kovach believes those layoffs were designed to loosen regulation of polluting industries."I've seen the way politics has influenced that agency in the past, but never like this," Kovach said. "It's not about compliance (with the rules). It's about making things look like they're compliant."
The nation might be in a better position to act if medical and public health researchers had continued to study these issues as diligently as some of us did between 1985 and 1997. But in 1996, pro-gun members of Congress mounted an all-out effort to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although they failed to defund the center, the House of Representatives removed $2.6 million from the CDC's budget—precisely the amount the agency had spent on firearm injury research the previous year.
Funding was restored in joint conference committee, but the money was earmarked for traumatic brain injury. The effect was sharply reduced support for firearm injury research. To ensure that the CDC and its grantees got the message, the following language was added to the final appropriation: “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out...
When other agencies funded high-quality research, similar action was taken...
... In 2011, Florida's legislature passed and Governor Scott signed HB 155, which subjects the state's health care practitioners to possible sanctions, including loss of license, if they discuss or record information about firearm safety that a medical board later determines was not “relevant” or was “unnecessarily harassing.”...The article doesn't mention which party has led the charges, so I have no idea.
The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, and Nevada. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000 for 2006. Each state has lax gun laws and higher gun ownership rates. By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death. Ranking last in the nation for gun death was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.Emphasis mine. But it should be everybody's.
What is there to say about the latest American mass murder? It’s all been said, and will be again, and nothing will change. I’m glad our president is addressing it, but I’m not optimistic. If there was a time for sensible gun legislation, it was the day after the first weapon was invented after the musket. Now, America is armed to its dentures, and guns don’t wear out; assault weapons and clips big as your arm are everywhere, no matter how much some, including me, may wish otherwise.
NRA president Wayne LaPierre and Tea Party congressfolk like Louis Gohmert want every citizen to be packing. Really? Think about the fact that when nineteen innocents were hurt in that police standoff in NYC, all of them were shot by police, among the most trained gun handlers we have. Consider the result if, in that theater in Colorado, a bunch of people had stood up in the dark and starting firing. Ask yourself how long a third grade teacher with a handgun would hold out against a madman with an assault rifle, wearing body armor. Arm everyone? I’d call that an admission that America is lost forever.
Prevention. Mental health care. How many times have we heard that killers had already been in therapy of some sort? We have no reliable methods for in-advance identification, let alone treatment, of killers. Maybe someday we’ll scan every brain at birth, turn a dial, and make them right. But not now. Medication might help some, but who’ll see that they take it? In Everett, we’re finally getting around to planning to provide inpatient mental health care. I don’t doubt it’s needed, and that it’ll be a godsend for many; but for people like the man in Connecticut, unless it’d be a permanent, preemptive (and, therefore, illegal) lockup, no dice.
No, in my view we’re sliding down the slope ever faster, with no brakes to apply. Which is not to say we should give in and give up. Let’s try gun control. Again. Let’s get cops and metal detectors and better security (and fund them!!) in every school. And let’s address (and fund!!) mental health care. It can’t hurt.
But there’s one thing I need to say, and I’m just stupid enough to do it: Deserving only one circle of Hell higher than the Connecticut killer himself is Mike Huckabee (and, a few days later, Newt Gingrich), who said, after the murder of those twenty beautiful children, that it happened because we’ve “systematically” removed God from our schools. What horrible theology.
Think about it: According to the former governor and would-be president, God caused the attack to happen. (Because, when you’re all-powerful, causing is no different from allowing. I assume he doesn’t believe God is powerless.) Me, I’d rather believe in a loving and compassionate God, one who’s like the best parents in the world, many of whom are now facing inconsolable grief, while Mr. Huckabee informs us of God’s workings.
When unimaginable tragedies strike, people naturally ask where God is. It’s been a question as long as there’s been sentience, and people must seek and find their own answers. But what kind of answer is Mr. Huckabee’s? And what sort of person could get comfort, or pleasure, from it? (In fairness to the rock and roll governor, other leaders, James Dobson for one, have chimed in even more unambiguously: shooting those innocent babies was the direct judgment of God.)
I abhor it. And I’d hope God would, too. It’s hard enough to maintain belief in the face of such occurrences, to pray for His help for the families when He seems to have left it outside the door of that school; but Mike Huckabee’s way ought to offend everyone. Twenty little kids, humanity’s most cherished and hopeful gifts, struck down, says Mike, because of our struggles with the meaning of our Constitution. Not content that America already has more people praying to him than any Western nation, or that He’s on our money, in our Pledge of Allegiance, that every president ends every speech calling upon His blessings, Mike Huckabee’s God lets little children die because schools are spending their time trying to teach them how to read and write, leaving prayer to their hearts and homes.
I don’t know how to make things better, but these guys aren’t helping at all.
On Friday, after a week of hiding, the National Rifle Association will attempt to explain why it has spent more than two decades trying to ensure that weapons of mass murder are accessible to madmen. They will probably make pious remarks about the children slaughtered one week ago, divert attention to the moral rot of Hollywood and secular society, and throw out other distractions as part of their promised “contribution” to solving a uniquely American pathology.He was exactly right about Wayne LaPierre, of course. And there's lots more worth reading in the piece.
The latest assertion came from former U.S. diplomat John Bolton, who, during the Dec. 17 edition of Fox News' "On the Record," insinuated that Clinton's "diplomatic illness"—in diplomatic circles, this is the feigning of an illness to avoid an engagement—kept her from testifying.
[...]
Bolton's claims came on the heels of an article in The Daily Caller by Jim Treacher, who wrote, "If she has a concussion, let’s see the medical report. Let’s see some proof that she’s not just stonewalling. If it’s true, then we can all wish her a speedy recovery. But it’s ridiculous to expect us to take her word for it."
Conservative blogger Lucianne Goldberg earlier had tweeted a message comparing Clinton to a kid playing hooky. "Hillary has given us a great new excuse. Don't call in with a cold or a bad tooth. Just say you have a concussion. It can last for days."
... And an opinion piece from the New York Post calls Clinton's illness "one of the most transparent dodges in the history of diplomacy."
