Source: Georgia man, 69, accused of fatally shooting 22-year-old who drove into wrong driveway – Crimesider – CBS News. (CBS/AP) LILBURN, Ga. – A 69-year-old suburban Atlanta man faces a murder charge after authorities say he shot and killed a 22-year-old man who had mistakenly driven into his driveway. An arrest warrant states that Rodrigo Abad Diaz of Duluth, Ga., was fatally shot in the head Saturday as he tried to drive away from Phillip Sailors’ home in Lilburn, northeast of Atlanta. According to Diaz’s friends, who were in the vehicle at the time of the incident, the 22-year-old had … Continue reading Defending His Property….

Source: What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us – NYTimes.com. That Mr. Obama had to make such a decree at all is a measure of the power of the gun lobby, which has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun violence for 17 years. Research on guns is crucial to any long-term effort to reduce death from guns. In other words, treat gun violence as a public health issue. But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably … Continue reading What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us

 

Source: Grover Norquist: The tax pledge is forever | Power Players – Yahoo! News.

This week, Spinners and Winners went to Americans for Tax Reform to talk to the man behind the pledge. ‘The Taxpayer Protection Pledge’ has been signed by virtually every Republican office holder over the last 20 years, binding congressman, senators, and governors to promise no tax increases of any kind, ever.

There’s talk that pledge is now dead, but as you can see, Grover Norquist is not backing down.Those who have disavowed the pledge — such Senators Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz. — will hear from their constituents, Norquist says.

“I think that people should keep their commitment to voters. I think they need to if they get elected with an open promise, they should keep that promise to voters,” says the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.

We all know that Washington D.C. is about power. It consumes almost anyone who goes there. I’m absolutely sure that is also the reason behind Grover Norquist’s words above. He sees himself losing power after so many years and is doing anything possible to hang on to it.  He seems kind of like McCarthy in the 1950s who gained power by accusing many there of being a communist. He dominated the Senate for several years until one person took him down with one utterance. “Have you no shame!”. Continue reading “The Never Say Never Pledge???”

  Source: Lance Armstrong confesses to Oprah Winfrey about his doping – The Washington Post. The network’s Scott Pelley also reported that Armstrong is in talks with U.S. Justice Department officials, who are weighing whether to join a whistleblower suit against him, about returning a portion of the roughly $35 million that the U.S. Postal Service paid his cycling team in sponsorship dollars. I don’t follow sports much anymore but it is hard to not see that Lance Armstrong won a bunch of bicycle races that made him a multimillionaire and that he apparently won them because of drug use. It … Continue reading Your Actions Have Consequences….

Source:  Just the facts: Gun violence in America – U.S. News. The big picture: Every year in the U.S., an average of more than 100,000 people are shot, according to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence. Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention, the Brady Campaign reports. Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 people died from guns — more than the population of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh (307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, … Continue reading Sobering Statistics — Gun violence in America

Source: President Obama, Hamid Karzai: US Combat Operations in Afghanistan to End in Spring – ABC News. Roughly 66,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan. The military has proposed keeping several thousand troops in the country after 2014 as advisers, trainers and logistical support for Afghan forces; the White House has said it remains open to pulling out all troops entirely. Leaving no troops behind when we finally exit Afghanistan?  That would be a first for us.  We currently have troops stationed in about seventy-five percent of the world’s countries.  It wouldn’t be so bad to just leave some temporarily behind … Continue reading Leaving No Troops???

I am sometimes accused of criticizing too much on this blog. Some seem to think that if we were all just more positive as a society good things would then happen. Being a history buff I know that is not the case. Sorry if you disagree but that is my current line in the sand so to speak. Criticizing things is just about the only way to affect change in our society and if we need anything in today’s gridlocked world it is a change. Until enough people are critical of things nothing changes.

Yes, we could like the German citizenry did during World War II, ignore the problems around us and say every thing is fine and dandy. We could ignore all the unemployed and underemployed workers the same way they ignored all the millions of people who disappeared from their streets.  We could ignore the horrendously increasing cost of medical care in this country and how so many were locked out of the old system the same way they ignored the stench coming from some of their smokestacks. Let’s face it ignoring problems don’t make them disappear; if only that were a solution wouldn’t life be easy.

I do try to celebrate many things in today’s world. Not everything needs criticism. Continue reading “Criticizing Too Much……”

Source:  DNA of Newtown Shooter Adam Lanza to Be Studied by Geneticists – ABC News.

Beaudet noted that studying the genes of murderers is controversial because there is a risk that those with similar genetic characteristics could possibly be discriminated against or stigmatized, but he still thinks the research would be helpful even if only a “fraction” may have the abnormality or mutation.

“Not all of these people will have identifiable genetic abnormalities,” Beaudet said, adding that even if a genetic abnormality is found it may not be related to a “specific risk.”

“By studying genetic abnormalities we can learn more about conditions better and who is at risk and what might be dramatic treatments,” Beaudet said, adding if the gene abnormality is defined the “treatment to stop” other mass shootings or “decrease the risk is much approved.”

The successful mapping of DNA is perhaps the major accomplishment of our times. Determining what each point on that map means will prove to be even more significant.   A case in point should be learned from one-hundred years ago. In the early nineteen hundreds eugenics was the “scientific breakthrough” of the times.  Here is how Wikipedia defines that movement: Continue reading “Studying the DNA of Newtown Shooter – A Double Edged Sword…”