Monday’s Mini-Report

April 16, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Here’s the latest update on today’s horrific massacre at Virginia Tech. It appears at least 31 people have been killed, in what some have described as the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

* Asked whether horrifying crimes like this one might lead the president to reconsider his opposition to gun control, White House spokesperson Dana Perino expressed horror over the shootings but added: “As far as policy, the president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed. And certainly, bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting numbers — I don’t want to say numbers, because I know that they’re still trying to figure out how many people were wounded and possibly killed. But obviously, that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for.”

* Clinton, Edwards, and Obama emphasize the VT shootings on their campaign homepages. McCain, Giuliani, and Romney do not mention the tragedy at all. I find that odd.

* Paul Kiel: “The Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday that President Bush and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) had a phone conversation about U.S. Attorney David Iglesias sometime after the election last year, but before he was fired. The White House has yet to directly respond to that. Today we found out why. White House spokesperson Dana Perino said today that she hadn’t asked Bush whether there had been such a conversation. ‘I haven’t asked him,’ she said, but continued to say that she didn’t ‘think’ such a conversation had occurred, because she’d never heard anything about it.” Hmm.

* WSJ: “The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section is investigating connections between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House, a probe that may be affected by missing White House emails…. One focus of the Justice inquiry has been whether Mr. Abramoff obtained official favors in exchange for giving Bush administration officials expensive meals and tickets to sporting events and concerts. The White House has denied this.” Yes, well, the White House denies a lot of things; some of them incorrectly.

* I’ve decided that there’s really no point to fact-checking Dick Cheney’s appearance on Face the Nation from yesterday — news flash, the VP isn’t an honest person — but Dick Polman touched on the key highlights in an excellent post this afternoon. (Also note, Cheney tried to prove he’s not “isolated,” by mentioning that he went shopping recently.)

* “In the past three months, more than 30 gays have been executed in Baghdad. The bodies have been found tortured, mutilated – sometimes with signs of rape,” said Mustafa Salim, spokesman for the Rainbow for Life Organisation (RLO), a Baghdad-based gay rights NGO. “Notes were found near some of the bodies with messages saying that this is going to be the fate for any Muslim who denies the Islamic religion,” Salim added

* Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, one of the key players in the prosecutor purge scandal, is reportedly “quietly testing the waters for a new job. He may need one, if critics have their way. Some Democrats and conservative Republicans argue that the deputy attorney general, who so far has been relatively unscathed, should shoulder more responsibility for the mishandling of the firings, which has devastated morale at the Justice Department and embarrassed the Bush administration.”

* NYT: “Middle-class Americans, listen up: the I.R.S. is much more likely to audit you this year. Those caught cheating can expect to pay about $4,100 more on average in income taxes. Since 2000, authorities at the Internal Revenue Service have nearly tripled audits of tax returns filed by people making $25,000 to $100,000 as part of a broad change in audit strategy.”

* McCain on Iraq: “I have no Plan B. If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one. But I cannot give you a good alternative because if I had a good alternative, maybe we could consider it now.”

* Note to Drudge: Media Matters doesn’t take money from Soros.

* It sounds like George Tenet’s new book is going to raise a few eyebrows.

* And finally, reader V.S. alerted me to this unbelievable Fox News report on Kurt Vonnegut’s death, during which the FNC correspondent refers to the legendary author as “rich and irrelevant,” a “sacred cow,” “such an unhappy man,” “mumbo-jumbo,” with an unnecessary reference to a failed suicide attempt. It was crass and tasteless … and exactly what we’ve come to expect from Fox News.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

For what it’s worth, Reuters and CNN are putting the death toll at 33 as of the latest site updates.

  • That Faux News piece on Vonnegut really was disgusting. Again, this qualifies as journalism how exactly?

  • One thing to get the history straight: MSNBC has been running a headline on its site that this is the “worst mass shooting in U.S. history”. We need to see violence as such even when done by the “authorities”. One such event with over 300 fatalities, including possible friendly fire, was Wounded Knee. Remember Wounded Knee?

  • but i’m sure that all the dead at virginia tech died happy, knowing that their 2nd amendment rights were secure.

  • My heart goes out to those victims & their families in Virginia! This is another tragic, tragic example of an individual who should not have had access to guns ~ with lethal results. I don’t know all the specific details of this particular gunman and his history (eg. was he delusional, sick, a case of cold-blooded murder, etc.) ~ but, these incidents keep happening in our public places, like Salt Lake City recently, and our schools, like Columbine (this week, being the anniversary of this massacre). These gun violence incidents just cannot be allowed to continue. I don’t like seeing people killing other people in our country, via their firearms. We need to work on toughening our gun control measures, & making very certain that our lawmakers don’t succumb to gun-lobbyists’ pressures.

    Kelli

  • The Vonnegut report on Fox was shameful. Yes, you can call Vonnegut an eccentric.

  • Senate has agreed to postpone Gonzales’s testimony until Thursday given the events at VAT.

  • My guess is Vonnegut would consider it an honor that the likes of Fox would try to slander him. It shows that, even in death, he was important enough to bother some really evil people.

  • “Middle-class Americans, listen up: the I.R.S. is much more likely to audit you this year. Those caught cheating can expect to pay about $4,100 more on average in income taxes. Since 2000, authorities at the Internal Revenue Service have nearly tripled audits of tax returns filed by people making $25,000 to $100,000 as part of a broad change in audit strategy.”

    Yes, and they have dropped the audits of those making more than $500,000 per year. Most of the new victims won’t be able to afford the kind of legal representation it takes to survive an IRS audit, so will not be able to negotiate such things as paying 10 cents on the dollar for taxes in arrears, the way the rich do. Not to mention, these people without legal representation will not be able to appeal and use the system to protect themselves.

    Why is this sort of news regarding the Bush Maladministration completely unsurprising?

    Let’s get an additional $4,000 from the guy making $35,000 a year while we forget all about the $1,000,000 owed by the guy making $50,000,000 a year.

    Why do I have the vision of Orcs sitting down to dine when I think about this?

  • The I.R.S.’s most recent estimate is that $290 billion in taxes due were not reported and paid. But studies have suggested the figure is higher, mostly from hidden investment gains, multinational businesses and entrepreneurs.

    I’m sure there are just thousands and thousands of people making less than $100,000 who are involved in these schemes, where perhaps we might get that $290 Billion. But since most of them would turn out to be Bush Rangers, well…

  • Didn’t the assault ban law expire sometime in the last congress?

    What weapon but an assault weapon could shoot apparently 60 people in such a short timeframe? Was this weapon available for purchase in the USA, available for purchase without background check?

    It makes me wonder.

  • i hate fox for saying that, you can laugh off their stupidity for everything else, but that was totally uncalled for, and should be put at least in the same context as what Imus did…

  • Wow, that was THE most rude, dickish obit I’ve ever seen on any news station. I hope Kurt got a chuckle outof it, wherever he is.

  • i believe vonnegut said being dead was purple with a loud, humming noise.

    btw, regarding the treament of gays in baghdad: if you rape a gay guy to show how outraged you are by homosexual behavior – what does that make you?

  • The killer’s name should be buried along with him. The media should just call him the VT killer or some such. Don’t immortalize his name.

  • “There is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed.”

    Actually, the law WAS followed.

    But it was the Law of the Gun. Anywhere guns are present, the only meaningful law is gun-made law, not man-made law. At Virginia Tech today, the Law of the Gun was the supreme law.

    We have a word for this. It is called “anarchy.”

  • Hows does a nation at war, under heightened Homeland Secuirty allow a person, who is apparently here less than three months on a temporary VISA buy a gun?
    Aren’t they prevented from buying guns?

    Seems like a brilliant example to show the terrorists.
    Who needs a plane, just hit a gun show and have at it.

    Why can’t guns be outlawed? That way the terrorists will never get them when they get here!

    I was in third grade when the 1966 Texas Tower shooting occured. The next day we all just watched the church steeple across the street.
    I will look at them, that way again.

  • Can we start a count-down for how long it will be before Perino starts drooling and wets herself in front of the cameras? She sounds completely deranged.

    The curse of Babel was upon them. With a giant stick.

  • Between 100 and 140 men, women, and children were killed at the Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857. Mitt Romney have any comment about that?

  • News reports I have read say the VaTech shooter used a pair of handguns on the rampage. Can we now start to call handguns “handguns of mass destruction?” It’s a more apt description that way.

    As the NRA likes to say “you’ll have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands.” They did just that to this shooter today. Are they still proud of that expressions?

  • Vonnegut’s first regret about Fox News was undoubtedly that he didn’t concoct such a thing himself. Seems like just the sort of place Kilgore Trout may have gotten a platfrom, where he would have said something brilliant, but would have been interpreted as brilliant for the wrong reasons by the Fox crowd.

    And having a bunch of snotty yobos who’ve never had dirt under their fingernails spit on his grave, even as they sport yellow ribbons, would be precisely the sort of thing that Billy Pilgrim would have endured.

    These fools don’t deserve Vonnegut.

  • There’s an interesting report out about how the Brits are dropping the “war on terror” phrase for describing what it is we find ourselves involved in. The following passage explains why:

    “International Development Secretary Hilary Benn, a rising star of the governing Labour Party, said the phrase strengthens terrorists by making them feel part of a bigger struggle.

    “In the U.K., we do not use the phrase ‘war on terror’ because we can’t win by military means alone, and because this isn’t us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives,” Benn told a meeting in New York organized by the Center on International Cooperation think tank.

    He said the real struggle pits the “vast majority” of the world’s people “against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world and their idea of being part of something bigger.”

    “What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others without dialogue, without debate, through violence,” Benn said. “And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength.”

    Well put. There are a lot of words of wisdom in what Benn said, stemming from a more lucid worldview than what our Republican leaders can muster.

  • Kelli : Yes because the laws he already were breaking obviously slowed him down. How about some specifics on how you would toughen gun laws in a way that would of prevented this?

    david : Great now you guys are trying to classify handguns as assault weapons. The first shots occured 2 HOURS before he even started on the other side of the campus according to what I’ve read. He probably didn’t even legaly own the guns which is the case with the vast majority of gun related crimes..

    goofticket : I love the assumption on your part that he legally procured the weapon which I give about a 5% chance of being true.

    “Who needs a plane, just hit a gun show and have at it.”

    THis is my favorite statement as it’s ludicrous to believe someone can kill +3500 people with a gun anywhere as quickly as with a plane.

    “Why can’t guns be outlawed? That way the terrorists will never get them when they get here!”

    Well because there’s thousands of farmers/ranchers/rural folks who use guns every year to protect themselves and their property from various threats. Not to mention the millions of sport hunters out there.

  • You know I must be crazy for thinking that the violent society we live in today has more to do with what’s “socially acceptable” by culture then the amount of guns in existance.

    Could someone point me to a good book or a study of gun violence rates of 100/200/300 years ago in comparison to today?

  • When hasn’t America been accused of having a “violent society”? What we have is greater access to weapons that can cause a higher rate of murders at one time.

    When you allow the sale of semi-automatic pistols with high-capacity magazines that can be loaded quickly, and then have relatively lax gun laws like Virginia ( http://www.stategunlaws.org/viewstate.php?choose_state=Go&st=VA ) you’re only asking for trouble.

  • You know, I always find myself torn on gun laws when it comes to what happened at VT yesterday.

    On the one hand, if we were to outlaw guns, the only people who would have them are criminals and the government … which is redundant, but the point still holds. It is vital that citizens have access to guns to go hunting, personal protection, and to keep the government from steamrolling over honest citizens (and with Bush Co., I wouldn’t put it past them).

    On the other hand, it is way, way, waaayyyy to easy for people to get guns that have absolutely NOTHING to do with hunting or personal protection. Sorry, but there’s no logical reason for anyone to have access to an assault rifle. What are you going to do, make deer sausage on site? And if you can’t hit your target with a 9 round clip, maybe you shouldn’t have a gun in the first place.

    My solution would be to ban any clip of more than 9 rounds, make it a month waiting period to get a gun (during which time gun safety classes would be mandatory), and make gun shows follow the same laws a sporting good store does (I know that was discussed at one time, but not sure if it took effect).

    I’d also make it a priority to remove illegal guns from the streets, whether through the FBI, ATF or new gun-control agency.

    Just my 2¢ … keep the change.

  • It is vital that citizens have access to guns…to keep the government from steamrolling over honest citizens

    Does somebody actually think this makes sense? Do you think “the gov’t” is coming after the citizens in the form of 3 deranged FBI agents with snub nosed 38’s? Or that a gaggle of yahoos with deer rifles in the backs of their pickups are taking on the 1st Armored, or even the National Guard? It’s just stupid; I challenge you to come up with a scenario in which this makes sense. Hint: “Red Dawn” doesn’t count.

  • les–
    While I see what you’re getting at, you’ve obviously never been to southern Missouri. Trust me … if the government tried to impose martial law (which Bush now has the unchecked power to invoke whenever the hell he feels like it) you can be damn sure a bunch of “yahoos with deer rifles in the backs of their pickups” would take on whoever the hell tried to impose it.

    And as Iraq is sadly proving, an armed populace can do a great amount of damage to a trained military, including “the 1st Armored.”

  • I agree Mellowjohn, Petorado, 2Manchu, and Les … and how many more horrific incidents of people killing people, via guns, in this country do we have to see ~ or experience ~ before Americans wake up to the fact that our lax attitudes on guns & our “gun culture” is only hurting us?

    Kelli

  • Kelli @ #29–
    Which is why banning handguns is a good idea.

    I still think hunting rifles and shotguns should be legal, but that’s because my family is full of hunters. I should note that I have never done it and don’t — nor ever would — own a gun, so please don’t think I’m some NRA-loving rightwinger. I’m not.

    Also, I think glorifying all sorts of violence — in video games, movies, TV shows like “24” — is a big part of the problem. But that’s probably best left to another thread.

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