I’m not a fanatic about gun control—guns are dangerous tools, but so are chainsaws—but sometimes…man, sometimes I think we ought to put more restrictions on them to keep them out of the hands of dangerously stupid people. Take this story, for instance. A police officer hears a noise in his basement, suspects it’s an intruder, and the idiot takes a shot at whoever it is. Unfortunately, it turns out to be his 18 year old daughter sneaking into the house after a late night out.

So basically this guy was firing a handgun in his house at someone he hadn’t even tried to identify, using deadly force before he was at all confident it was necessary. He’s an incompetent boob, a danger to his family, and he shouldn’t be employed in a position where we have an expectation of responsible weapon use. Now that bozo is a walking argument for gun control.

Fortunately, the tragedy was minimized here because he only took out his daughter’s knee rather than slaughtering her.

(via lolife)

Orac has the latest news on the Tripoli Six, the health care workers who were falsely accused of spreading AIDS in a Libyan hospital and were sentenced to death. The good news is that they aren’t dead yet, the Libyan government is still wheedling for reparations, and they’re showing some signs of backing off from a hard line position. Nothing’s certain, but at least the negotiations are creaking along slowly in the right direction.

You’ve probably all read Glenn Greenwald’s withering dissection of a mock scandal ginned up by right-wing bloggers. If you haven’t, you should—the short story is that the fact of a war falling into ignominious failure is driving the apologists to desperate acts of rationalization, and the latest effort to save face involved a fairly inconsequential memo from Iraq that mentioned some temporary difficulties. That memo had to be discredited—I don’t quite see why, even if we were winning I’d expect occasional setbacks—and they turned to their usual tactic of peering at the profane text intently until they could find something that would justify their suspicions—in this case it was the discovery that the logo looked like a picture of a Hummel figurine found on the internet.

Like an entire cast of Keystone Kops, some of the loudest voices on the right-wing side of the blogosphere stumbled all over themselves to crow triumphantly over this ‘victory’…and then the U.S. Embassy in Iraq cheerfully revealed that the memo was authentic. It would be embarrassing for them if they had any shame.

Personally, I wouldn’t give a damn if that piece of paper were real or fake. The reality of the war does not hinge on the words in one memo or a thousand — the military produces memos like a blizzard produces snowflakes — but on the fact that people are dying. The dead do not walk nor are the wounded made whole if only some far right cheerleader for destruction can find vindication in a scrap of paper. It’s as if they hope their myopia gets even more severe, so the blood in the background will blur out of focus and text on a screen becomes the only reality.

In California, the state’s spending on prisons is about to exceed their spending on universities. They’re about to spend $7.4 billion on new facilities, with an operating budget over $10 billion.

I wonder how much of that budget is consumed in ridiculous efforts to punish non-violent drug users, or in the zealous application of three strikes laws?

For only $399, you can send your kids away to spend a few days this summer with Ollie North, professional traitor, frolicking about on a military base and pretending to be brave warriors with absolutely no risk. It’s the perfect activity for young Republican chickenhawks-in-training. It’s an organization called the “Freedom Alliance Military Leadership Academy”, and it claims to be training the next generation of American leaders.

That’s really all we need: a generation of leaders who think of war as a fun summer outing.

It’s clear, though, that the real intent of this exercise is to let Republican kids put “Military Leadership Academy” on their résumés—look at what they claim for their program:

Academy graduates are highly motivated, physically fit and goal oriented. Many have pursued careers in the military and as DOD civilians, such as the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, while others go to college or directly to the workforce.

The “Academy” is five days spent on a military base, making field trips to local military hardware, and the worst hardship the kiddies might face is a little rain. I don’t think the academy can take much credit for anything, unless Republicans are really that shallow and easily impressed by the word “military” on a CV.

Neddie finds something rather disturbing: a border guard leaving a comment in a blog, flaunting his knowledge of the comings and goings of the blogger at a border crossing. It’s vaguely threatening, in a “I know where you live” kind of way. The assertion that “you do not have a right to privacy” is even more creepy—I think someone on the border patrol is a little too full of himself.

I’ve driven up to Canada a couple of times now, and the remarkable contrast has been how pleasant and casual the guards at the entry into Canada have been, and how surly, snide, and officious the guards coming back into the US have been. I don’t quite understand the point of having the guards at the border treating people as potential criminals; it’s not as if real criminals and terrorists are going to be at all dissuaded by supercilious snottiness, but legitimate visitors to our country are going to be dismayed by our gracelessness at the doorway.

Even us residents aren’t at all thrilled with their behavior. After showing multiple forms of ID and answering all their questions, they still acted suspicious and resentful, as if they were offended that I had dared visit a foreign country, and they weren’t sure if they should let me come back home. (Uh-oh…next time I visit Canada, are the guards going to mutter about my blog and subject me to a strip search now?)