Not To Worry The NRA Will Make Sure That No New Restrictions Will Ever Be Put In Place No Matter How Reasonable    



A Clamor for Gun Limits, but Few Expect Real Changes

The National Rifle Association has gone uncommonly dark since the weekend shootings here. A posting on its Web site expresses sympathies for the victims of the violence, and N.R.A. officials said they would have nothing to say until the funerals and memorial services were over.

In Washington, bills were being drafted to step up background checks, create no-gun zones around members of Congress and ban the big-volume magazines that allowed the Tucson gunman to shoot so many bullets so fast. Gun control advocates say they believe the shock of the attack has altered the political atmosphere, in no small part because one of the victims is a member of Congress.

Can America Learn From This  



Tucson shootings: Let us heal together, Obama says at memorial event

TUCSON – President Obama comforted a community suffused with grief and summoned the nation to recommit to a more civil public discourse as he delivered a eulogy Wednesday evening urging Americans to talk with each other “in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”

Evoking memories of the six killed here Saturday, Obama seized upon the mass shooting at a congresswoman’s supermarket meet-and-greet to tackle directly the subject of the nation’s harsh political dialogue. He sharply decried the “politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”

Don’t worry the media in the U.S. and its political leaders won’t allow this to happen as they enjoy conflict too much  



Spirit of unity after Arizona slayings may be fleeting

Reporting from Washington and Phoenix – Silence fell in Washington on Monday as President Obama, members of Congress and hundreds of officials bowed their heads in the wake of Arizona’s mass shooting and promised a new spirit of comity that harkened back to the days after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

“Harsh words are offered from both sides,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas). “I hope this tragedy will play a role in diminishing some of the strident statements that we have heard.”

Perhaps There Should Be A Look At Firearms Laws  

Gun control activists cite the shooting rampage as a reason to impose stricter background checks and reinstate an assault-weapons ban. Others say citizens should be armed for self-protection.

Focus turns to Arizona’s gun laws

Reporting from Tucson – It was a busy day at the Tucson Mountain Park shooting range Sunday, where the aroma of gunpowder filled the air one day after 20 people were shot, six fatally, at a shopping center.

Alex Anderson, 24, was armed with a 9-millimeter Taurus, the same caliber as the gun that authorities say Jared Lee Loughner used in the shootings. Anderson, who works at the Home Depot next to the Sportsman’s Warehouse where the gunman’s weapon was purchased, has a permit to carry his gun concealed but no longer needs that, thanks to a state law passed last year.

To Bad Those Who Incite Will Never Take Responsibility  



In Attack’s Wake, Political Repercussions

TUCSON – Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 18 others were shot Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents.

Six of the victims died, among them John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl, the Pima County sheriff, Clarence W. Dupnik, said.

Ms. Giffords, 40, whom the authorities called the target of the attack, was said to be in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons.

OFFICIAL OVERSIGHT

A woman in Fukuoka sued Google after she discovered that the company’s Street View service showed a photo of her underwear hanging on the veranda.

LDP lawmaker Hiroshi Nagai found himself in hot water after ordering Prince Akishino and his wife to sit down during a ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the opening of the Diet.

It was reported that a fire sergeant in Hiroshima had been driving emergency vehicles for the past 14 years even though he didn’t have a driver’s license.

The mayor of Utazu in Kagawa Prefecture was rebuffed in his plan to work for the entire year without a salary. Instead, the city council offered to halve his pay for the next two years.

A junior high school teacher in Aomori Prefecture was in trouble with the education board after posting a list of “foolish” students in the school corridor. Then doing it again.

He’s Back And No It’s Not Arnold  



Iraqi cleric urges resistance to U.S., Israel after return from exile

NAJAF, Iraq – A powerful cleric whose fearsome militia once battled Americans urged followers Saturday to resist the United States “with all means” in his first public address in Iraq after four years in exile.

Addressing an adoring crowd of thousands, Muqtada al-Sadr also called on the newly formed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to make sure all U.S. forces leave Iraq by the end of the year as planned.

And he warned that “we have the political means” to reject that governmentif it does not provide security and services to its citizens.

Spies Like Us: Please Speak Into The Pen Wait Not Working Try The Flower  



US woman arrested in Iran as spy: Why the story may not have teeth

Istanbul, Turkey

James Bond couldn’t have done it better. Which is why an unconfirmed 007-style story about Iran arresting an American woman with a microphone hidden in her teeth is grabbing headlines.

The report first emerged this week in the state-owned newspaper, Iran, which does not have a history of publishing truth-telling facts when it comes to alleged enemy spies.

Then on Thursday Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency, which is tied to the Revolutionary Guard, weighed in with its own unsubstantiated report: “Iranian authorities announced” the detention one week ago of 55-year-old Hal Talayan, it claimed. The story was titled: “Iran arrests US spy.”

Big Brother Meets McCarthyism  



Israeli parliament backs ‘McCarthyite’ investigation into human rights groups

A right-wing proposal to investigate some of Israel’s best-known human rights organisations for “delegitimising” its military was approved by the country’s parliament yesterday amid left-wing charges of McCarthyism.

After a highly charged and noisy debate, the Knesset approved by 41 votes to 16 the plan for a parliamentary panel of inquiry into the funding of a series of organisations which have criticised and documented human rights abuses by Israeli authorities, mainly in the occupied Palestinian territories. The vote is a political victory for the hard-line nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party led by the country’s controversial Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, one of whose Knesset members, Faina Kirshenbaum, introduced the proposal and is likely to chair the panel.

Texas Where Even The Innocent Are Guilty  



Texas man who spent 30 years in prison likely to have conviction quashed

An exoneration hearing for Cornelius Dupree Jr. is scheduled for Tuesday in Dallas. If his conviction is overturned, he would have spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any other DNA exoneree in Texas.

The district attorney’s office said on Monday it supports Dupree’s innocence claim.

Dupree was charged in 1979 with raping and robbing a 26-year-old woman and sentenced in 1980 to 75 years in prison for aggravated robbery.

He was released on parole in July. DNA test results came back 10 days after his release, excluding him as the rapist.