There Was Silence in Heaven for Half an Hour

For God's sake, is there nothing that will shut up the chatter? Is there no tragedy so great, so profoundly disturbing we cannot note it with silence born of grief to deep to express?

Yet again we hear the mind-numbing blather of those who immediately politicize a tragedy. Take away the guns! Keep the guns! Analyze the killer! Reform the educational system!

Yet again we see odious reporters shoving microphones into the faces of stunned parents and grandparents while equally opportunistic photographers focus on the distorted faces of uncomprehending victims and bystanders.

Yet again experts rush in to administer instant palliatives to the bereaved, the shocked and the outraged.

Meanwhile, among the victims still alive and those who are close to the fallen, an almost feral instinct arises as confused and unrelated fragments of thought race through the brain. "Leave me alone! Stop! Get out of my face. I can't speak. My baby just died. God, I had his Christmas presents already bought. Jesus, this could have been Suzie. How do I tell her father about this? Mom-mom and Pop-pop! He was their only grandchild!"

Heartsick, broken in spirit and almost without words, they and we simultaneously offer hearts' grief heavenwards on behalf of slaughtered lambs even as we clutch the living to our hearts in gratitude they are still alive. Wordlessly, we instinctively hold out our hands.

Mortals can learn something from the angels and spirits living in a perfect realm. Even in Heaven, where it is said there are no more tears, there is a time for silence.

Could we imitate the angels and just shut up for at least half an hour?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/there_was_silence_in_heaven_for_half_an_hour.html#ixzz2F9xrWJja

Good Guns Can Kill Bad People

The progressives hadn't let the blood dry on the classroom floor in Newton, CT before they were using the deaths of all those children to leverage their cause of gun control. Had conservative broadcasters attempted to exploit such human suffering, they'd be roundly denounced as soulless ghouls and rightly so. When I first read online of the killings, I just shook my head in sadness then immediately steeled myself for what I knew was coming from the hysterical lefties. They did not disappoint although, I must confess to a certain despair that Mayor Bloomberg has become such a predictable old scold. Can we not somehow sue this turkey for calling himself a Republican?

Another horrific mass murder and if we could not predict its timing we could predict its site within certain parameters. With predictable regularity, the most lethal of these types of attacks take place in public venues such as shopping malls, restaurants, theaters, with the deadliest frequently being institutions of learning. We are all familiar with the Columbine High School killings in which 12 students and a single teacher died or the Virginia Tech massacre where 32 people died. Fewer remember the 2006 killing of five Amish schoolgirls by a milk truck driver or the Jonesboro, AR school shooting in which five died, gunned down by fellow students. How many remember the memorable name of Kip Kinkel, an Oregon high school student who murdered his parents and two students in 1998? Or what about that Red Lake, MN mass killing where nine died in 2005? Of course everyone remembers the Aurora, CO theater shooting, but what about the 2007 Arvada, CO school shooting that left five dead?

The point I'm attempting to make here is that these tragedies recur with an irregular chronological predictability, but with a largely predictable targeted area, school campuses, be they elementary as with this latest tragedy, or high school as at Columbine, or university as with Virginia Tech. Other than their educational bond, they all share another commonality, the one which most likely leads to their selection by the perpetrators as the scenes for their slaughters: they are all sites where the presence of firearms is strictly prohibited and enforced with zero tolerance. There is no one to shoot back and thus deter the shooter from his maddened mission. Think about it, most of these mass shootings end with the suicide of the killer after he has accomplished his goal. Few are ever killed by authorities or captured.

These killers control the events because they have picked the setting where that is most easily accomplished, where they can inflict the most pain and death in a very brief period of time before an armed response can be mounted. We hear them called cowards for killing the helpless. I believe they are more viciously cunning than cowardly, picking a target so vulnerable as to permit them to accomplish their goal of creating as much mayhem and death as possible in the shortest period of time.

It's a cliché to say there's never been one of these mass shootings at a gun show, but it's a cliché birthed in truth. How about at a shooting range where a madman could walk in fully armed with total impunity, unquestioned, with multiple lethal weapons and begin firing? His entrée would be easy. Problem is, so would his predictably rapid departure. How about gun shops or sporting goods stores where guns and ammunition are sold and in plentiful supply, filled with shoppers who have a much likelier chance of carrying concealed, unlike a mall theater or food court? Ask yourselves, when was the last mass shooting at a rodeo or a NASCAR race?

Ponder that for a while, those of you liberals who equate the presence and availability of guns with criminal shootings. The truth operates in the obverse: it is precisely where there are the most guns and people who know how to use them where the massacres do not occur. And it is precisely where guns are not present where these slaughters do take place. That is no accident; rather it is a demonstration of the awareness of mass killers as to where it will be most expedient for them to attack, where they will have the most time to conduct their slaughter.

Some may try to prove me wrong by pointing out the Fort Hood shooting but that argument is easily refuted. As a general rule, soldiers on US military bases are not allowed to carry firearms, so the shooting took place at a de facto gun free zone, the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a medical processing facility. Like all these other shooters, the cowardly physician who forsook his medical oath knew quite well he was targeting a place where no armed opposition would be present.

Those who are so angry, frustrated and fed up with the futility of their lives that they have no desire to continue living have multiple ways of dealing with their problems. Fortunately, most finally accept that they must have external help and seek it, continuing to live. Others refuse that option and take their lives themselves. A few, perhaps more angry than most, go out in in flash of angry defiance, what we call death by cop. Tragically, we always have the few whose warped reasoning and boiling anger leads them to believe they must go out of this world on a stream of innocent blood from a place where the very lack of guns guarantees the fulfillment of their horrific madness.

If you liberals want to assign morality to firearms, consider: As any combat infantryman, and I am one, can tell you, guns don't kill people; good people with good guns do kill bad people. Unfortunately, bad people with bad guns kill good people unless they are stopped by those good people with good guns. When defensive guns are known to be in the target area, such as schools, the massacre-minded madman will have second thoughts about his target selection, perhaps sending him to a gun range or a gun show to perpetrate his madness.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/good_guns_can_kill_bad_people.html#ixzz2F9wiEGRT

Rampage Shootings: It's the Moral Decay of Society, not Guns

It should come as no surprise that the rate of mass shootings at schools and in other public places is increasing. The surge has nothing to do with guns, which have been widely available in the U.S. for years. Gun control laws have been increasing. Instead, there is a direct correlation between the increase in violence and the gradual degradation of morals, ethics and parenting. We are cultivating mental illness in our society.

Parents are allowing television and video games to increasingly babysit their children, even though both have become full of gratuitous violence. A New York Times study of rampage killers found that six of them were into violent video games. Research shows that violent video games and television desensitize people and promote aggressive behavior, despite claims to the contrary. A research scientist at the University of Michigan found that television was responsible for 10% of youth violence. Parents today are neglecting their children, and when things don't go well, rushing to get divorced instead of trying to work things out first. Children suffer emotionally when their parents fight or split up. Parents are ignoring their children so much they don't even see the warning signs that something might be wrong. The New York Times study found that 63 of 100 rampage killers had made threats of violence before the event.

Parents are no longer taking their children to church, where they would learn stability and morals. Fewer than 20% of Americans now regularly attend church. Every year there are 3000 fewer churches across the U.S, even though the population is growing. God and morality have been taken out of the public schools and replaced with political correctness and non-judgmentalism. “Public virtues” are no longer taught in today's schools. People who do not attend church are more likely than churchgoers to have stress and to be less optimistic about the future. When parents split up and there is no father to take the children regularly to church, the children are much less likely to become regular churchgoers than if their mother regularly takes them.

The New York Times study found that at least half the killers in 100 rampage attacks showed signs of serious mental health problems. 48 killers were formally diagnosed with mental illness, often schizophrenia. The mentally ill used to be kept in hospitals, where they were not a danger to others. Beginning in the 1950s in California, the ACLU successfully filed lawsuits to take the mentally ill out of hospitals, known as “deinstitutionalization.” By the 1980s, most state-run mental health hospitals had closed.

Now, most of the mentally ill are out on the streets or in prison. The laws have been changed to state that the mentally ill cannot be hospitalized until they've already attacked someone. As a result, more mentally ill people are incarcerated than in hospitals, with the seriously mentally ill three times more likely to end up behind bars than hospitalized. More than half of all people in prison report that they have mental health problems, and more than 40 percent of the seriously mentally ill have been in jail or prison. A study at the University of South Florida found that the highest users of criminal justice and mental health services were 97 people who had been arrested 2,200 times. It is ludicrous that those 97 people are not contained for their safety and others in mental health hospitals.

The 22-year old Oregon shopping mall gunman who killed two people earlier this week is sadly typical of the rampage murderers the decay of society has spawned. He had this written on his Facebook page, "I'm the conductor of my choo choo train. I may be young but I have lived one crazy life so far." One of his friends said he raised himself; his mother died at childbirth, he never met his father, and he left his aunt's home at age 14.

The left will use the high level of emotion stirred up by this past week's two rampage killings to push through new gun control laws. Liberal New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called upon President Obama to enact tougher gun control laws immediately after Friday's mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Yet demanding more gun control laws will not solve anything. Gun control advocates have already increased the number of laws around the country requiring background checks, waiting periods for purchases, and tracking of firearms. Many of the rampage killers obtained guns illegally. If they can't obtain guns, deranged individuals will find other ways to commit mass murders – by setting fires, making bombs or running people over with vehicles. One day after the shootings in Connecticut, a man in Beijing stabbed 22 primary school students with a knife.

The left should not be allowed to dominate the dialogue after these tragic events with a red herring argument for gun control, in order to sneakily distract Americans from blaming them for what they have wrought. Americans who believe in traditional values must speak up and denounce the degradation of society's morals as the root of the problem behind these rampages, or the tragedies will continue to escalate.

http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2012/12/15/rampage-shootings-its-the-moral-decay-of-society-not-guns-n1467549/page/full/

Slate does that story about the school shooting you knew they would

Obama administration, Congress quietly let school security funds lapse

Before Connecticut tragedy, administration eliminated emergency preparedness program,let school violence prevention programs lapse

Why It Matters:

Politicians across the country are vowing to do more to prevent school shooting tragedies like the one that unfolded Friday in Newtown, Conn. But over the last few years, the Obama administration and Congress allowed funding for several school safety initiatives to lapse.

Beneath the expressions of grief, sorrow and disbelief over the Connecticut school massacre lies an uneasy truth in Washington: over the last few years the Obama administration and Congress quietly let federal funding for several key school security programs lapse in the name of budget savings.

Government officials told the Washington Guardian on Friday night that two Justice Department programs that had provided more than $200 million to schools for training, security equipment and police resources over the last decade weren't renewed in 2011 and 2012, and that a separate program that provided $800 million to put police officers inside the schools was ended a few years earlier.

Meanwhile, the administration eliminated funding in 2011-12 for a separate Education Department program that gave money to schools to prepare for mass tragedies, the officials said.

A nationally recognized school security expert said those funds had been critical for years in helping schools continue to enhance protections against growing threats of violence. But they simply dried up with little notice as the Columbine and Virginia Tech school shooting tragedies faded from memory and many Americans and political leaders had their attentions diverted to elections, a weak economy and overseas dramas.

“I was baffled to see funds and programs cut in these areas,” said Kenneth Trump, the president of the National School Safety and Security Services firm that helps school districts and policymakers improve protections for teachers and students. “Our political and policy leaders need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk about being concerned about school safety.

“We have roller coaster public awareness, public policy, and public funding when it comes to school safety. The question isn't whether school safety is a priority today and tomorrow,” Trump added. “The question is whether it will be a priority years down the road when there isn't a crisis in the headlines.”

Some liberal groups have increasingly voiced concerns about the increased spending on police and security at schools. For instance, the Justice Policy Institute, a think tank, wrote a report in 2011 entitled "Education Under Arrest" that concluded that "schools do not need school resource officers to be safe."

White House officials did not return repeated calls and emails Friday night seeking comment on the administration's rationale for letting the programs lapse.

http://www.washingtonguardian.com/washingtons-school-security-failure

Attorney General Secretly Granted Gov. Ability to Develop and Store Dossiers on Innocent Americans

In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report.

Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.

Whereas previously the law prohibited the center from storing data compilations on U.S. citizens unless they were suspected of terrorist activity or were relevant to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the new powers give the center the ability to not only collect and store vast databases of information but also to trawl through and analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior in order to uncover activity that could launch an investigation.

The changes granted by Holder would also allow databases containing information about U.S. citizens to be shared with foreign governments for their own analysis.

A former senior White House official told the Journal that the new changes were “breathtaking in scope.”
But counterterrorism officials tried to downplay the move by telling the Journal that the changes come with strict guidelines about how the data can be used.

“The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes,” Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the paper.

The NCTC currently maintains the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, or TIDE, which holds data on more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror activity or terrorism links, including friends and families of suspects, and is the basis for the FBI’s terrorist watchlist.

Under the new rules issued in March, the NCTC can now obtain almost any other government database that it claims is “reasonably believed” to contain “terrorism information.” This could conceivably include collections of financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages or even the health records of anyone who sought mental or physical treatment at government-run hospitals, such as Veterans Administration facilities, the paper notes.

The Obama administration’s new rules come after previous surveillance proposals were struck down during the Bush administration, following widespread condemnation.

In 2002, the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program proposed to scrutinize both government and private databases, but public outrage killed the program in essence, though not in spirit. Although Congress de-funded the program in 2003, the NSA continued to collect and sift through immense amounts of data about who Americans spoke with, where they traveled and how they spent their money.

The Federal Privacy Act prohibits government agencies from sharing data for any purpose other than the reason for which the data was initially collected, in order to prevent the creation of dossiers, but agencies can do an end-run around this restriction by posting a notice in the Federal Register, providing justification for the data request. Such notices are rarely seen or contested, however.

The changes to the rules for the NCTC were sought in large part after authorities failed to catch Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he boarded a plane on Christmas Day in 2009 with explosives sewn into his underwear. Abdulmutallab wasn’t on the FBI watchlist, but the NCTC had received tips about him, and yet failed to search other government databases to connect dots that might have helped prevent him from boarding the plane.

As the NCTC tried to remedy that situation for later suspects, legal obstacles emerged, the Journal reports, since the center was only allowed to query federal databases for a specific name or a specific passenger list. “They couldn’t look through the databases trolling for general ‘patterns,’” the paper notes.

But the request to expand the center’s powers led to a heated debate at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, with Mary Ellen Callahan, then-chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security, leading the charge to defend civil liberties. Callahan argued that the new rules represented a “sea change” and that every interaction a citizen would have with the government in the future would be ruled by the underlying question, is that person a terrorist?

Callahan lost her battle, however, and subsequently left her job, though it’s not known if her struggle over the NCTC debate played a role in her decision to leave.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/12/gov-dossiers-on-us-citizens/