Guns Don't Kill People, Ex-Husbands Who Threaten to Put a Cap in Ex-Wives Do

(source unknown)

Michael Luo recounts a chilling episode experienced by  a woman who obtained an order of protection from her former husband in a state that does not require him to relinquish his firearms. In all but a few states there is no law allowing a judge to force a threatening individual to do so. Why?

The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups "argue that gun ownership, as a fundamental constitutional right, should not be stripped away for anything less serious than a felony conviction — and certainly not, as an N.R.A. lobbyist in Washington State put it to legislators, for the 'mere issuance of court orders.'"

Ban poverty, not soda

If you don't know what a quarter water is and you've never resorted to drinking one when in need of liquid & carbs because 25¢ is all you've got, or because in the environment you were brought up in quarter water (or, on rich days, Tropical Fantasy) is what you know ... please don't pontificate on the subject of inner-city dietary choices. 

Ginia Bellafante knocks it outta the park in the New York Times today: "The articulated goal should not simply be to create a population of poor people who are thin, but to create a population of poor people who are less poor. In 2010, the poverty rate in the city remained what it was 10 years earlier, 21 percent. " AMEN. (Not to mention the poverty rate in NYC of children is 30 percent. Yes. In the 2nd richest city in the world.)

They died but, hey, we gained a strategic relationship

From military dot com, a piece about an Iraq War study done at Brown University:

Study: Iraq War Cost 190K Lives, $2.2 Trillion

 Remember the Team Bush estimate of war costs was $50-60 billion?

The Costs of War report, 

released ahead of the 10th anniversary
of the war, included "substantial" costs
to care for wounded veterans.

This piece quotes State Dept response to this report: "both countries made enormous sacrifices"... when 70% of the casualties were Iraqi civilians! (This is !!not!! to dismiss the sacrifice made by US troops sent over there, and their families ... who had no choice but to follow orders.) State Dept also points out that we have forged a "strategically important" relationship with Iraq ... I wonder what the legions of dead folks and their famlies might say about the importance of a US/Iraq strategic relationship when weighed against the cost of so many lives and so much destruction.