Remedies that go too far, Part II

DR. DALE ARCHER: It's the Mental Illness
An undated photograph of Jared Lee Loughner released by the Pima County Sheriff's Office. By all accounts Jared Loughner’s early school years were relatively normal. He played in the band, had friends and a girlfriend; pretty much a regular guy.  Then sometime midway through High School things started to fall apart. He alienated friends, became more of a loner, started smoking pot and talked about weird ideas. He quit in his senior year, tried to enlist and was rejected by The Army an...

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, WED SEE PEOPLE BUYING GUNS RIGHT AND LEFT. And they were right
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, WE’D SEE PEOPLE BUYING GUNS RIGHT AND LEFT. And they were right! “Liberal TN congressman to get carry permit: After Saturday’s shootings in Tucson, Ariz., U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said that he plans to apply for a permit to carry a Handgun.” Related: Left Gives Up On Gun Issue, Moves On To Mental Health. “It is fair to say that many liberals have become unenthusiastic about pursuing the gun issue. Yes, there are still ad...

Time for 'If You See Something, Say Something' to Apply to Mental Health, Too
Many years ago before the deinstitutionalization of the nation’s mental Hospitals, the Secret Service would visit the psychiatric facilities to find out if patients posed a threat to the President or any other elected officials.  In the mid-1970’s most states responding to Court Cases by incarcerated patients began the process of closing mental hospitals and returning patients to the communities so they could be in the “least restrictive” alternative. -- The safe hav...

Using The Giffords Shooting To Destroy Free Speech
Now it is clear that Jared Loughner was stalking Gabrielle Giffords for years, long before Sarah Palin and her supposed “target” electoral map. Now it is clear that Loughner’s classmates were afraid of him months ago. One teacher wrote last summer: “Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.” A Student wrote: “He frightened the daylights out of me. I kept saying to people, ‘I’m afraid he’s going ...

The Tucson shootings: The blame game
SARAH PALIN once urged her supporters not to retreat but to reload. In the run-up to last year’s mid-terms her website carried a map of vulnerable Democrat-held seats, each marked with the cross-hairs of a gun-sight. Sharron Angle, a Republican Candidate in that election, once said that the Federal Government needed “second-amendment remedies”—the second being the one about the right to bear arms. Right-wing radio and television hosts routinely indulge in the language of ...

What Obama said after the Tucson massacre about "human understanding" and the "old assumptions" we ought to challenge.
Following the advice in the Shaker hymn that followed the President's Speech last night, I kept it simple. I highlighted the passage in the Speech about how we should take "a good dose of humility" and not "use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another." But I'm not a Shaker, and I'm a little wary when the Most Powerful man in the world advises the masses to be humble and come together as one. So I want to look at what he said just before that: Scripture tells us that there is ev...

Third gun control bill proposed since Tucson shootings
Stumble This! High-profile gun violence has historically renewed legislative interest in the cause of Gun Control, and the shootings of twenty people in Tucson, Arizona is no exception -- only this time, the measures face steeper hurdles than before. Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York, is the third congressman to propose a gun control bill in the wake of the Murders on Saturday. (The other two are also New Yorkers.) His bill seeks to accomplish a goal other gun control advocates have ...

Tom DeLay Says He Would Welcome Guns at His Public Events
Unrepentant but facing three years in Prison on a money-laundering conviction, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay maintained his innocence Thursday and also said he hasn't changed his hard-line stance on Gun Control in the wake of the Arizona shootings. DeLay, who represented a Houston-area district, was one of the Most Powerful and feared Republican members of the House of Representatives in the first half of the last decade -- and also an ardent backer of Gun Rights. On NBC's "Today" show,...

How Violent Talk Blocks Sane Gun Laws
WASHINGTON — The slaughter in Tucson hasn’t shaken us out of bad political habits. Instead of promoting a sober conversation about the dangers of violent political talk, it has reinforced divisions between left and right. Even responsible Conservatives have dismissed any suggestion that Saturday’s attack is reason enough to condemn the threats of violence that have become standard to the discourse at the extremes of their side of politics. More importantly: We have not focus...

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) To Propose Bill Allowing Guns On Floor Of U.S. House
Teabagger Rep. Louie Gohmert says he will introduce a bill authorizing members of Congress to bring guns to work. “It’d be a good thing for members of Congress who want to carry a weapon in the District,” he said. “I know friends that walk home from the Capitol. There’s no security for us,” he said, adding that the measure would deter people from attacking members. “There is some protection in having protection.” He said there were times during the Health Ca

How Violent Talk Blocks Sane Gun Laws
The slaughter in Tucson hasn’t shaken us out of bad political habits. Instead of promoting a sober conversation about the dangers of violent political talk, it has reinforced divisions between left and right. Even responsible Conservatives have dismissed any suggestion that Saturday’s attack is reason enough to condemn the threats of violence that have become standard to the discourse at the extremes of their side of politics. More importantly: We have not focused at all on how the...

Gibbs Noncommittal On Post-Shooting Gun Control Measures
WASHINGTON -- White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, briefing reporters for the first time since the Tucson shootings, was noncommittal when asked about the two pieces of gun-control Legislation proposed by lawmakers in the wake of the shootings. Instead, he reaffirmed the president's support for the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, and pledged to give any piece of Legislation -- whether it be a ban on high-capacity clips, or restrictions on how close a firearm can be carried to ...

The Problem With the Militarization of Rhetoric
Washington—The slaughter in Tucson hasn’t shaken us out of bad political habits. Instead of promoting a sober conversation about the dangers of violent political talk, it has reinforced divisions between left and right. Even responsible Conservatives have dismissed any suggestion that Saturday’s attack is reason enough to condemn the threats of violence that have become standard to the discourse at the extremes of their side of politics. More importantly: We have not focused a...

Sarah Palin's not interested in real guns, see it's mephatorical, stoopid
The alleged Arizona gunman Jared Loughner is, his bonkers online postings imply, obsessed with grammar. I think that’s the Chomskyan variety, rather than the Simon Heffer, Telegraph Style Book sort. Anyway, if that’s the case, he’d be delighted to hear the rest of the world struggling to agree on a satisfactory set of labels for him and his supposed actions. Mehdi Hasan, political editor of the New Statesman, has a piece in the Guardian today asking why we’d call a M

Attribution of Cause and the Events in Tucson
One obvious outcome of the Tucson shootings this past weekend has been the search for explanations. This search is, in part, a reflection of a basic human tendency to want to find explanations for high profile and unusual occurrences. President Obama took note of this fact of life in his Tucson Speech Wednesday night: You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations -- to try and pose some order on the chaos and make sense out of that which seems sens...

Why Gun Control (Still) Won't Work
It has been a dismal decade for Gun Control advocates. They lost the federal so-called assault weapons ban when it expired in 2004. The Supreme Court made history by proclaiming an individual right to own Firearms for self-defense. A Democratic president came into office vowing not to take away anyone's guns. So it's no surprise that anti-gun forces would take the Mass Shooting in Tucson as a rare opportunity to reverse their fortunes. It's also no surprise that their proposals are models of fut...

DJ Jaffe: Obama Left Out Jared Loughner and His Mom
Obama gave a great Speech Wednesday night. But I wish he had some prayers and hopes for Jared Loughner and his family. People with Mental Illness and their moms need our prayers and support. Jared's schizophrenia wasn't developed enough where his parents could differentiate it from being a 'crazy' teen. But even had they known chances are, there would be nothing they could do. I've met many a person with Mental Illness and many a mom of someone with serious mental illness. The moms would call...

Why the Left Bears Responsibility for the Arizona Shootings
Thursday, January 13, 2011 By Ben Shapiro Last week, mentally disturbed youth Jared Lee Loughner shot 20 people at a rally in Tucson, Ariz., including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). The left, led by Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, immediately capitalized on the bloody murders, stating without evidence that Loughner had been inspired by the "the anger, the hatred, the Bigotry" of our current political climate. Over the course of the following days, Dupnik and his allies bla...

Jared Lee Loughner and the Case for Single-Payer
The fallout from the shooting in Arizona has launched a thousand theories about the motives of the 22 year old shooter Jared Lee Loughner ranging from the interesting to the absurd.  Some decry his easy access to a weapon.  Others raise suspicions about a reading list that included the ideological odd couple of the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.  Yet, most miss a central point - Jared Lee Loughner, a deeply mentally disturbed young man, may not have been able to help himself ...

Iowa politicos differ on impact of heated rhetoric
Iowa Democrats and Republicans have drawn very different conclusions about what role heated political discourse may have played in the Jan. 8 shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and what changes politicians might make in the way they communicate following that event. Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said politicians can’t control who hears what they say and how they react to it, but it is politicians’ responsibility to monitor what they say. “I think ...

Media Point Fingers at a Favorite Enemy -- The Second Amendment
It was inevitable. After spending several days following the Tucson massacre working to curtail the 1st Amendment, the left and the media are now targeting the 2nd. As always, they have help from either those legitimately concerned for their safety or others trying to scavenge political points from the dead and wounded. Following the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is planning to push a bill “to ban the carrying of any firearm within 1,000 feet of what he describe...

Ed Schultz Set Straight On Gun Rights By Tucson Shooting Hero
Joe Zamudio was one of the bystanders who helped subdue Tucson shooter Jarred Loughren. He’s also a concealed carry permit holder, and when MSNBC blowhard Ed Schultz started railing about Gun Control in response to this story Zamudio took him to ask....

Latest Stanford Battle: Where To Treat His Medical Problems
Yahoo! Buzz Wow. Once upon a time, prosecutors and Defense Lawyers in the Allen Stanford matter argued over relatively commonplace matters, like whether to grant Stanford bail. Not anymore. Now all the fuss over Stanford seems to turn over his mental and physical condition, which has deteriorated significantly in recent months. Stanford, accused of leading a $7 billion investment Fraud scheme, seems to grow physically and emotionally sicker by the day. Earlier this month, the judge in the case, ...

January 13
January 13 Thursday, 01/13/2011 - 9:26 am by Tim Price | Post a Comment What you need to know to navigate today’s most critical debates. Obama Calls for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics (NYTimes) Speaking from Tucson, the president offered a remembrance of those lost and a message of hope for the America they believed in. How We Enable Crimes of Insanity (NY Observer) Joe Conason feels that the blame game kicked off by the Arizona shootings has overlooked the culpability we all sh...

Obama Arizona Memorial Speech: We Must Communicate 'In A Way That Heals,' Not 'Wounds'
TUCSON, Ariz. — Summoning the soul of a nation, President Barack Obama on Wednesday implored Americans to honor those slain and injured in the Arizona shootings by becoming better people, telling a polarized citizenry that it is time to talk with each other "in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds." Following a Hospital bedside visit with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the target of the Assassination, he said: "She knows we're here, and she knows we love her." In an electrifying moment, ...