Republican senator attacks veterans groups for not attacking Shinseki

WASHINGTON -- A highly bitter war of words has broken out between veterans organizations and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs amid the brewing controversy over health care for former servicemen and servicewomen.

Late Friday afternoon before the Memorial Day weekend, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) penned an “open letter to America’s Veterans” in which he took several veterans service groups to task for being insufficiently critical of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Burr accused the groups (with the exception of the American Legion) of being more invested in maintaining access to the secretary than with fixing a troubled health care system. He questioned why they haven't called for a leadership change at the VA, and pointedly charged the groups’ leaders with not caring about the health and well-being of their members.

Burr’s letter was in response to the testimony that Shinseki and seven of these veteran service organizations (VSO) had given before his committee the week prior, concerning revelations and allegations of long wait times, bureaucratic malfeasance and insufficient care at the VA.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/25/richard-burr-veterans_n_5389296.html

Governor Corbett Blames Teachers Union for Child’s Death

When people write Pennsyvania Governor Tom Corbett to complain about the devastating effects of his budget cuts on the children of Philadelphia, he responds by blaming the teachers’ union for not accepting even deeper cuts. A few days ago, a first-grader died; there was no school nurse on duty. Her position had been cut from five days a week to one day a week plus another occasional day. This was the second child to die in a school where Corbett’s budget cuts had eliminated the full-time nurse. Corbett blames the teachers.

Governor Corbett accepts no responsibilty. His response to critics betrays a guilty heart, or a man without one.

This teacher, Steven Singer, describes what happened when he wrote a letter to Governor Corbett.

“Wow! I am flabbergasted by PA Gov. Tom Corbett’s reaction to the second Philadelphia student dying at school without a nurse on duty! As many of you did, I wrote him a letter asking him to please increase funding so tragedies like this are not repeated. He must be getting some heat because this is the first time he’s ever actually answered any of my correspondences.

“His answer was basically: (1) how dare the Philadelphia Teachers Union intrude on the family’s suffering to make a political point and (2) if only the teachers union would take concessions and work for less money, the state would have enough to pay for nurses!


http://dianeravitch.net/2014/05/25/governor-corbett-blames-union-for-childs-death/#comments

SF considers adopting law to compel some mentally ill persons to receive treatment

An effort to enact Laura's Law in San Francisco has re-emerged as a way to reduce the number of homeless people on city streets by compelling certain mentally ill people to receive treatment.

Supervisor Mark Farrell introduced a proposal Tuesday to implement the law locally, with support of Mayor Ed Lee. Laura's Law, a state law otherwise known as the assisted outpatient treatment law, allows court-ordered mental health treatment for individuals with mental illness with a history of unsuccessful treatment. Those authorized to request a court order include family members and probation officers.

If the Board of Supervisors doesn't approve the legislation, Farrell said he would place the measure on the November ballot, which would require the backing of three other board members.

"Laura's Law will provide appropriate treatment services for our most vulnerable, reduce hospitalization and incarceration rates, and improve public safety for our residents," Farrell said.


http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sf-considers-adopting-law-to-compel-some-mentally-ill-persons-to-receive-treatment/Content?oid=2804768

Dkos: No matter the murderous motive, the common denominator is always the gun

Because the fact is that in all these shooting sprees, the motives tend to be very different. Hasan, the original shooter at Fort Hood, was motivated by Islamist religious fundamentalism--a fact that the Right hyped strongly for their own prejudicial reasons, and still do. The Columbine shooters seemed to be motivated by a different sort of social resentment. Adam Lanza's issues remain unclear to this day. The Navy Yard shooter had personal grievances related to his service. Gabby Giffords' shooter was driven by paranoia. The Virginia Tech shooter had still other problems. That the Isla Vista shooter was motivated by a disturbing, manic, entitled misogyny seems more accident than pattern in this context.

All of these shootings do seem to have some form of mental illness at work, but that itself is a cop out. The vast majority of the mentally ill do not engage in mass violence, and many of the mass shooters were not formally identified as mentally ill until they performed their barbaric acts.

The single common denominator in all of these incidents is the gun. It's that simple. Most of the shooters either obtained the firearms legally (as the Isla Vista shooter did), or had easy access to them by living in a household with someone who had obtained them legally.

Without the gun, these killing sprees would have been far less deadly. Yes, the Isla Vista shooter killed his first three with a knife, but it would not have gone much farther than that had it started at all. Knife sprees are extremely rare and extremely difficult to accomplish. Guns depersonalize killing, embolden deranged killers who might otherwise be on the fence, and make their jobs infinitely easier once they decide to go through with the grim task. They also provide an easy blaze-of-glory suicide mechanism for them, when otherwise they might be looking at the possibility of a far less glamorous lifetime in prison.

Mental illness exists in other developed countries. Radical Islamism does, too. Sexual entitlement and misogyny certainly do. Unpopular loner kids exist, too, as do disgruntled employees. But none of these things are causes of mass murder sprees in, say, Germany, France, England or Japan.

SB shooter's family called authorities about mental state. At least three of his targets were male.

Elliot Rodger, the suspect in Friday night's deadly rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, fatally stabbed three men in his apartment before beginning his drive-by shooting spree on the streets of Isla Vista, where he killed three more people and wounded several others before turning a gun on himself, officials said Saturday night....

The police had crossed paths with Rodger three times before Friday. In one incident, he was involved in an altercation; in another, he accused a roommate of stealing three candles valued at $22.

On April 30, sheriff's deputies visited Rodger at his residence after a family member asked that they check on his welfare. The deputies "found him to be polite and courteous," Brown said, and "determined he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary mental health hold." Rodger told the deputies about troubles in his social life and said he would probably not return to school the following year.

States discusses bring back firing squad, hangings after botched lethal injections.

Wyoming lawmakers are talking about changing the law to allow the firing squad, while their counterparts in Utah have proposed repealing a law that ended firing squads for prisoners convicted after 2004. Missouri law allows for the gas chamber, and politicians from both parties last year suggested rebuilding one.

During the electric-chair debate in Tennessee, one lawmaker said he would support hanging and the firing squad, too. Another legislator, Republican Rep. Dennis Powers, the bill's House sponsor, shrugged off legal and ethical concerns about the measure.

"It's not our job to judge. That's God's job to judge," Powers said. "Our job is to arrange the meeting."

Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, said the new Tennessee law could be part of an effort to force death row inmates challenging lethal injection to back off.

"It might be the design that, 'Hey, if you fight against this hard enough and say we can't use lethal injection, fine, we'll strap your guy in the chair,'" Berman said.

"Maybe that will move the needle on the willingness of the defense bar in Tennessee to be as aggressive in complaining about what they see as problematic with lethal injection."


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/execution-lethal-injection-electric-chair

Pro-Gun Group Backs Down After Chipotle Rally Backfires

A Texas gun rights group has notified members that they are to "immediately cease" taking shotguns and rifles into private businesses unless invited to do so, backing down from a controversial strategy that has led several large restaurant chains to ask patrons to leave their guns at home.

The organization, Open Carry Texas, is one of many groups nationwide that advocate for the right of gun owners to wear and carry firearms openly in public. Photos from a rally by supporters of the group at a Dallas-area Chipotle restaurant went viral this week, prompting the burrito chain to declare that firearms are unwelcome in its restaurants.

On Friday, The Huffington Post reported that Chili's was also reconsidering its policy after a similar rally at one of its San Antonio restaurants. Video apparently taken by a participant in the rally shows a confrontation with a woman, apparently a patron, who scolds the men for bringing large guns into a restaurant where children are eating.

In the statement, also posted on its Facebook page, Open Carry Texas acknowledged that its tactics, which are intended to encourage broader acceptance of firearms in public, were having the opposite effect. Carrying rifles and shotguns into businesses is the approach that has "gotten the most resistance and suffered the largest setbacks," the group said.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/open-carry-texas-chipotle_n_5380338.html

Uninsured Oklahoma man dies because he feared cost of calling 911

What still haunts Lori is the reason why Allen died, she said.

Allen died alone in his apartment, potentially from a heart attack or other heart troubles. He was uninsured and afraid to call 911, fearful of how much it would cost to go to the hospital.

A few days before his death, Allen had complained of having trouble breathing and a pain in his left arm.

“Why didn’t you call 911?” Lori asked him.

“I don’t have insurance,” he told her.

She told him that didn’t matter, that he could go get help.

“If I die, I die,” he told her.

The last phone call Allen made was to Lori, probably to tell her he didn’t feel well, she said.


http://newsok.com/article/4850382

Gunman stabbed 3 to death before shooting spree

GOLETA, Calif. — A California gunman who went on a rampage near a Santa Barbara university stabbed three people to death at his apartment before shooting to death three more in a terrorizing crime spree through a neighborhood, sheriff’s officials said Saturday.

The three people in the apartment were among the six left dead Friday night during the shootings near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elliot Rodger, 22, the suspected gunman, apparently killed himself, authorities said.

At a news conference, Sheriff Bill Brown called it a “chaotic, rapidly unfolding convoluted incident” that involved multiple crime scenes.

Police provided new details about the scope of the killings as they described how he went from one location to another and opened fire on random people and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement before he crashed his BMW. Brown said the suspect had more than 400 rounds of unspent ammunition in his car.

http://nypost.com/2014/05/24/drive-by-shooting-reported-at-uc-santa-barbara/

Why is everyone shocked over the VA?

When I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, the local VA hospital in Allen Park, MI was notorious as a pit. It was dark, dirty and infested with vermin. Staff was incompetent. It was so bad that my dad's friend recalled yelling at the staff after visiting a patient. I THOUGHT things were getting better, but maybe not. What I really want to know is how all this somehow became Obama's fault.