Well, it's a headline that should be showing up in the press, for several reasons. Most recently because of a revelation that has come out of the Norway tragedy. The headline reads: "Norway gunman touted lax US gun laws." (To read the story go to this link.)

Arguably, Norway has equally as much right to go to war with the US as we did with Afghanistan. We criticized them for harboring terrorists. We are arming the terrorist that attacked Norway. As a matter of fact, that is what we used as a justification for invading Iraq.

Judge Finds Jared L. Loughner, Accused in Tucson Shooting, Unfit to Stand Trial

Jared L. Loughner, accused in the Jan. 8 shooting spree that seriously injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and left six others dead, was ruled incompetent to stand trial by Federal Judge Larry A. Burns on Wednesday.

Before the ruling, Mr. Loughner was dragged screaming from the courtroom in Tucson after disrupting the hearing; he watched the rest of the proceedings on a monitor in a holding cell. The court heard testimony from two expert witnesses that Mr. Loughner suffered from schizophrenia.

We spend billions or even trillions of dollars trying to insure security for ourselves, in a world fraught with violence and destruction.

What constitutes rape, exactly? This question is being discussed, on some level, over the news pages and in the blogosphere because of a phrase included in Bill H.R. 3, also known as "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act."

Sec. 309 reads:

‘TREATMENT OF ABORTIONS RELATED TO RAPE, INCEST, OR PRESERVING THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER.

‘The limitations established in sections 301, 302, 303, and 304 shall not apply to an abortion --
‘(1) if the pregnancy occurred because the pregnant female was the subject of an act of forcible rape or, if a minor, an act of incest; or
‘(2) in the case where the pregnant female suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the pregnant female in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself. (Emphasis mine).

Hello, Readers. Sorry I have been MIA (Missing in Action), graduate school has really been kicking me hard, with the increase in papers and the tons of research for my prospective thesis, blogging has been put on the back-burner. But, I have a little free-time so I am going to be trying to post at least one-two blogs a day, or a week; give-or-take my schedule. Glad to be back.

Today, while perusing the internet I came across a startling article from PressTV about the recent increase of violence against Argentian women. According to PressTV, "a recent study by the non-governmental organization La Casa del Encuentro, 260 cases of crime against women were committed in Argentina in 2010, almost five per week, a Press TV correspondent reported on Wednesday."

What's so shocking in this article is the reports are claiming that in the study many of the attacks reported are by the de-facto spouse or by the victim's husband.

According to PressTV, "a survey published by the National Women's Council, one in three Argentinean women suffer from physical, psychological, sexual or economic abuse in her home."

After the horrible Tucson shooting, John McCain and even Roger Ailes, the Fox News president, joined President Obama's call for a more civil discourse. Ailes told his anchors and reporters to “tone it down.” McCain agreed with the President’s call for “… every American who participates in our political debates… to aspire to a more generous appreciation of one another and a more modest one of ourselves.”

But if the recent history of ACORN is a guide to the future, Obama’s attempt to jolt the nation into civility, something we desperately need, will fail. And unless Obama fights to protect his base from the upcoming attacks by the Right, he will undermine our chance for a resurgent movement based on respect, equality and democracy.

Imagine how Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News commentators from Sarah Palin to Glen Beck would have responded to the Tucson violence if we discovered the gunman had some connection to ACORN, the group demonized by conservatives as a dangerous, even criminal organization.

Would they have pushed their current talking points about the assassin being a lone wolf, a paranoid schizophrenic completely unaffected by the political rhetoric of the left?

We have experienced a tragic event that has both united and separated us. We are united in our grief and emotional sympathies for those directly involved in this tragedy. We are divided and defensive when faced with who is responsible for this heinous event. We want to run and hide undercover to avoid our liability in this event. When our cover is pulled and we are forced to face reality, we flail about and find every conceivable way to place the blame on someone else.

Indeed! We are prone to divide society into categories that will validate our own opinions. And, sometimes, those divisions are valid to back up those opinions. Often, though, they are meant only to inflame emotions for or against.

Was it Hillary Clinton who said that "it takes a community to raise a child?" She was absolutely right. It also takes community to define a nation. We, as a nation, are inclined to base our opinions and justify our actions solely on our own selfish desires and benefits. We excuse our selves and blame the community, when things appear to have gone wrong. We puff out our chests and claim personal credit when things appear to have gone right.

More and more is coming out about what a disturbed young man the young assassin was. It is not even clear he was processing anything from the world around him, political or otherwise.

Perhaps the time is ripe to discuss a very pressing problem: the situation of the mentally ill in our country - and our vulnerability when they are not adequately respected with treatment.

Time and again, communities will be aware of someone actively mentally ill like this, with peers complaining; professors kicking them out of class until they have a mental evaluation...which never occurs.

Fox Sports has managed a new low in tastelessness. To preface my remarks, let me say that this is not a political attack as it seems (although I haven't kept up with corporate 'mergerdom') that MSN (parent company to the progressive/liberal leaning network MSNBC) is affiliated with the right wing Fox network to produce content for their website. Still, it's called Fox Sports and presumably Fox's editors have control over content.

Back to the tastelessness.

The latest low comes in the form of a story (link posted here) involving an NFL player who, along with his girlfriend, a cheerleader, was attacked by a former boyfriend where they were pistol whipped and the player had to jump from a second story window to save his life. A truly horrible home invasion! But apparently that wasn't "sexy" enough of a story for Fox as they decided to embed photo essays of other NFL cheerleaders performing on the field as well as trampolines. It reminds me of that line in the song, Everything Zen by Bush ...There's no sex in your violence." At Fox Sports I guess they've taken that mantra to heart and are determined to turn tragedy into soft core porn.

We Americans just love our evil. We not only demonize our criminals, but we relish doing it. It permeates our society. Our literature and movies are rich in evil protagonists, and we buy innumerable guns to protect ourselves against bogeymen of all sorts — even as we have a voyeuristic fascination with them.

The concept of evil permeates also our institutions. We codify it in our criminal judicial system, and we have the highest incarceration rate of any Western industrial society to show for it. Not satisfied only to elect politicians who champion the death penalty for violent offenders, we use a punitive approach even for nonviolent crimes as well — all under the banner of justice.

But just what exactly is evil?

April 19, 2010—a date marked by two different headlines in the Wichita Eagle. One on the front page trumpets a poll that maintains: “…distrust of government rising,” accompanied by a picture of President Obama. The other, on the inside page, deals with the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. This act of domestic terrorism killed 168 and injured more than 600 federal employees, daycare workers, children, and others who happened to be in the Federal Building where Timothy McVeigh parked his explosive-filled truck.

McVeigh and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols were mad at the government. McVeigh said they were mad at Bill Clinton and those in his administration after the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents. Who knows what else they were angry about? However, the dead and injured in Oklahoma City had nothing to do with motivating their anger as far as anyone could tell.