Screen Addiction Takes Toll on Children

Well, I imagine it could be worse, at least in my household.

My wife and I have raised pretty normal kids, despite the odds. It's definitely a battle fighting screen addiction. My oldest son's 19 now and I can't get him to read books. He says he's just "not interested." Oh well, at least he knows it's important, even if he's not into it. He's talking about wanting to move out with his best friend soon as well. Maybe when that happens some of the more "adult" life lessons we've been trying to impart will kick in, especially those about the importance of education and intellectual pursuits. I'm fighting the culture with him, that's for sure. As I've mentioned here many times my son's a real hipster with popular music and all. He goes to a lot of concerts, even seeing big stars like Taylor Swift multiple times. It's hard to top that with pleas for him to read some history books. I was a young hipster once, so what can you do?

As for my youngest boy, who'll be turning 14 next month? Well, he's an entirely different case. As I've mentioned before, he's got attention deficit issues, so too much screen time can be especially dangerous for his development. He plays outside a lot in the summer, which is good. But he's not reading enough when he's back inside. That said, he's not getting shortchanged for personal interaction, as he's surrounded by family all the time, and we have regular sit-down family dinners and so forth. Plus, he's still kind of a cuddly bear of a kid, and he likes to hang out with his dad a lot. We spend a lot of quality tine together. Indeed, that's one of the main reasons I don't like teaching in the summer.

I think he's going to be alright.

In any case, that's my family's travails. I consider it a continuing project.

But see the New York Times, "Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children":

Before age 2, children should not be exposed to any electronic media, the pediatrics academy maintains, because “a child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.” Older children and teenagers should spend no more than one or two hours a day with entertainment media, preferably with high-quality content, and spend more free time playing outdoors, reading, doing hobbies and “using their imaginations in free play,” the academy recommends.

Heavy use of electronic media can have significant negative effects on children’s behavior, health and school performance. Those who watch a lot of simulated violence, common in many popular video games, can become immune to it, more inclined to act violently themselves and less likely to behave empathetically, said Dimitri A. Christakis of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

In preparing an honors thesis at the University of Rhode Island, Kristina E. Hatch asked children about their favorite video games. A fourth-grader cited “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” because “there’s zombies in it, and you get to kill them with guns and there’s violence … I like blood and violence.”

Teenagers who spend a lot of time playing violent video games or watching violent shows on television have been found to be more aggressive and more likely to fight with their peers and argue with their teachers, according to a study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Schoolwork can suffer when media time infringes on reading and studying. And the sedentary nature of most electronic involvement — along with televised ads for high-calorie fare — can foster the unhealthy weights already epidemic among the nation’s youth.

RTWT at that top link.

Stormfront Founder Don Black Pictured Seated Next to Confederate Flag at New York Times Story on White Supremacists in the Internet Age

Nothing pisses off old Stogie at Saberpoint more than asking him why the Ku Klan Klan flies the Confederate flag. He threatened to ban me from his comments after I asked him about it at his blog.

From what I gather, the standard line, among Stogie and others, is that "only a small number" of people who support the Confederacy today are Klansman. By this time folks know how I feel about it. The heritage argument is fine so long as those advocating it don't completely discount (or lie about) the racist slaveholding foundations of the Confederacy. Stupidly alleging that the North was even more racist just doesn't cut it. Northerners long banned slavery above the Mason-Dixon line and by the 1850s they opposed expansion of slavery in the territories. Only Southerners sought to protect states' rights to own property in slaves. All the rest is bullshit, dumped by the Marxists and radical libertarians who hate the United States.

In any case, Stogie won't like this piece at the Old Gray Lady, but it is what it is, "White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites":

White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites http://t.co/UWhe33oU10 #newyorktimes

— Diego Palma (@1milhaodetweets) July 6, 2015

In late June, as much of the nation mourned the killing of nine parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church, The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website, was busy posting articles on a different issue: black crime against white people. “Adolescent Ape Jailed for Murdering White Man Out of Boredom,” one headline blared.

And after Dylann Roof, a white 21-year-old high school dropout and the apparent author of a vitriolic anti-black diatribe, was arrested and charged with the killings, commenters on another white supremacist site, Stormfront.org, lamented something else: the possibility of the massacre’s leading to gun control. “Jews want the white man’s guns. End of story,” one person wrote from Utah.

In the wake of the church massacre, many white supremacist groups have rushed to disavow any link to Mr. Roof and any role in the murders. And while Mr. Roof appears to have been in contact with some white supremacists online, investigators say it does not appear that those people encouraged or assisted in the deadly shootings.

Still, the authorities say, Mr. Roof had clearly embraced their worldview. As investigators comb through the data streams of Mr. Roof’s electronic equipment, a four-page manifesto apparently written by him before the killings offers a virtual road map to modern-day white supremacy. It contains bitter complaints about black crime and immigration, espousing the virtues of segregation and debating the viability of an all-white enclave in the Pacific Northwest.

That manifesto has refocused attention on a shadowy movement that, for all its ideological connections to the white racists of the past, is more regionally diverse and sophisticated than its predecessors, experts say.

They say it is capable, through its robust online presence, of reaching an audience far wider than the small number of actual members attributed to it.

“There’s really not a lot out there as far as membership organizations,” said Don Black, who runs Stormfront.org. “But there is a huge number, I think more than ever, as far as people actively working in some way to promote our cause. Because they don’t have to join an organization now that we have this newfangled Internet.”

Experts dispute the number of movement supporters but agree about its efforts to modernize. While the virulent racism of old can still be found online, the movement today also includes more button-down websites run by white nationalism think tanks with vanity publishing units. Most of the best-known organizations also claim to have disavowed the violence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Richard B. Spencer, the 37-year-old president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute in Whitefish, Mont., embodies this new generation.

He holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and studied for a doctorate in history at Duke University. Now he runs an organization that produces papers on issues like racial differences in intelligence and the crime rate among Hispanic immigrants.

“America as it is currently constituted — and I don’t just mean the government; I mean America as constituted spiritually and ideologically — is the fundamental problem,” he said in an interview. “I don’t support and agree with much of anything America is doing in the world.”

But precisely because the movement is more atomized and has been rendered more anonymous by the Internet, law enforcement officials say it has become harder to track potentially violent lone-wolf terrorists who might draw inspiration from white supremacist sites without being actively involved in the organizations.

“White supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers warning efforts,” said a Department of Homeland Security report issued in 2009. The report came under fierce criticism from conservatives, who said it unfairly painted them as terrorists.

If the movement has a leading edge, it is Stormfront.org, an online discussion forum. With about 40,000 visitors a day, it is perhaps the most popular supremacist site in the world based on page views, with more than a million a month (a figure that includes repeat visitors).

Mr. Black, its 61-year-old proprietor, straddles the movement’s generational divide: a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama decades ago, he later ushered in the movement’s Internet era with Stormfront.org in 1995, and followed up with a two-hour weekday Internet radio show.

Stormfront’s website, operated by Mr. Black out of his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., features the slogan “White Pride World Wide.” It is primarily a chat room, with discussion threads that range from innocuous cooking tips to diatribes against gays, immigrants, Jews and blacks.

Mr. Black said he had broken from the Klan because it had a history of “random and senseless violence.” But he also said he could not rule out violent conflict as white people tried to promote what he called “our heritage, our values,” and attempted to realize the dream of a separate all-white enclave.

“I personally would like to see it play out peacefully,” he said. “Unfortunately I took too many history classes, and history is not filled with a lot of peace. America is becoming balkanized just like the Balkans; we are breaking apart because of Hispanics — particularly in the Southwest — and other races.”

More.

You can see the Confederate flag at the tweet embedded above, but it's very prominent at the photo accompanying the article.

It doesn't matter how many of these idiots pose with the flag. That's just going to ruin it for everyone else, all the "heritage buffs" and so forth, because it feeds into the most terrible associations people have with white supremacy. Unfortunately, Stogie and his ilk simply help the left and its attacks on conservatives. Indeed, Stogie's a leftist as far as I'm concerned, particularly in his postmodernist Derridean social constructionist relationship to the truth.

BONUS: "What the Left, and Sadly, Some Conservatives Just Do Not Grasp."

PREVIOUSLY: "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut," and "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative."

Leftist Stogie at Saberpoint Joins Marxists and Radical Libertarians on Civil War Revisionism

If you've been following the Stogie-Donald debates on the origins of the Civil War, one clear pattern you've seen is Stogie's vehement ideological hostility to facts that disprove his cherished yet deranged view that the South stands for all that's good in the world and the North is the epitome of evil. In fact, history does not conform neatly to partisan, ideological debates, and those who want it to must distort the truth to conform to their historical revisionism and partisan blindness.

Frankly, as I've pointed out, Stogie's basically a leftist. He's been deploying classic postmodernist Derridean social constructionist interpretations of the Civil War that are in fact grounded in Marxist and radical libertarian programs. It's pretty sick and disgusting, when you boil down to it. But Stogie's views are based on hatred and unreason. Indeed, he declared me an enemy in the comments at his blog last week --- this after us being good friends online for 8 years!

In any case, Professor Larry Schweikart, the conservative author of the extremely popular anti-revisionist textbook, A Patriot's History of the United States, is an historian of the Civil War who's published widely in peer-reviewed outlets, including the Journal of Southern History, Southern Studies, and Civil War History. Schweikart took his professional training at Arizona State University and the University of California at Santa Barbara, two institutions not widely known as bastions of "Yankee-biased" historical research.

Another popular book Schweikart's published is 48 Liberal Lies About American History: (That You Probably Learned in School). There you'll find a penetrating discussion whereby Professor Schweikart demolishes Stogie's lunatic ravings on the coming of the war. See for yourself at the photos below, "Lie #39: Northern Capitalist Greed --- Not Slavery --- Drove the Civil War":

"It's hard to believe that with all the available evidence a fusion of Marxists and radical libertarians still want to discount the central place of slavery as the causative factor in the Civil War."

Actually, it's not that hard to believe at this point. Stogie's been offering a full repertoire of far-left, radical libertarian fever-swamp talking points that only a tinfoil crackpot could love.

As always, I'll continue to debate in good cheer. So, don't miss future iterations of the Stogie-Donald debates!

TV Land Yanks 'Dukes of Hazzard'

Hey, America's still "The Land of the Free," right?

Well, maybe not.

At Variety, "TV Land Yanks ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ Amid Confederate Flag Backlash."

And at AceofSpadesHQ, "Viacom Removes "The Dukes of Hazzard" Reruns from TVLand Schedule, Because Urge to Purge":

‘Dukes of Hazzard’ episodes pulled from TV Land schedule in wake of Confederate flag debate: http://t.co/M7rgYa3Hal pic.twitter.com/ZUZMZPNKu9

— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) July 1, 2015

Obviously.

Some time ago, Bill Quick attacked me, claiming, wrongly, that I was inconsistent to support a baker's right to not make a gay wedding cake when of course I would be fighting, racistly angry about a Muslim who insisted on Islamic dress codes in his own store.

I am republishing this essay because it's directly on-point.

America is in a dark chapter of its existence -- we have faced worse external threats, but not worse internal threats.

The threat now comes from within.

There are those who are insistent that we shall all have the same bland gray vanilla corporate non-culture culture, and that we shall all bow to the strange gods of the left.

As Andrew Breitbart once said:

Fuck you. War.

Below, my essay on what America is, and what is not, and how cowards, idiots, weaklings, and cuckolds want to turn America into a dark perversion of itself...

Continue reading.

The Stogie–Donald Debates: Debunking Abraham Lincoln's Fort Sumter 'Plot'

Stogie attacked me at the comments of my earlier post, "Abraham Lincoln 'Plotted' to 'Force the South' to Fire the First Shot at Fort Sumter?":

Donald, instead of insulting me, why don't you actually read a book or two? Yes, Lincoln deliberately provoked the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. He planned it, he plotted it. This is proved by historical research and reference to original documents, like . Read "Lincoln and Fort Sumter" by Charles Ramsdell, the Southern Historical Association, 1937. It is now in the public domain. Lincoln admitted his pleasure at the South firing the first shot, in a letter to a Captain Fox. He wrote:"You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result." [starting the war]. The result was that thousands of angry Northerners joined the army, falsely believing that the South's attack on the fort was unjustified.

And my response:

Who's insulting whom, Stogie? Obviously I read books all the time. It's simply that any countervailing evidence cannot penetrate the tinfoil redoubt you've built up to defend this so-called Southern heritage. Why is the Klan campaigning to keep the Confederate flag up in Columbia? Doesn't that bother you to have the KKK for an ally?

Less belligerently, as readers of course know, I read books all the time. It's pretty much what I do when I'm not blogging, besides eating, sleeping, watching news and sports, and hanging out with my family. I've got until the end of August to lollygag around until the fall semester starts.

So, I'm reading all kinds of things, like I always do.

Perhaps Stogie might check out Richard Nelson Current's, Lincoln and the First Shot, a history of the roughly two-month period leading to the outbreak of hostilities at Fort Sumter. In his afterword, Current reviews the evidence that Lincoln "plotted" to force the South to fire the first shot, and he follows that discussion with more recent scholarship that debunks the memes of the Southern heritage partisans by citing the works of historians James Randall, David Potter, and Kenneth Stamp. I've photographed the key sections. As the summary of Professor Randall indicates, "Lincoln intended and expected a peaceful provisioning of the fort."

You can read the full passage below. Clearly, partisans will adopt their favored views, but Stogie is delusional if he thinks that Lincoln "plotted" to force the South to strike first. Indeed, Stogie's ravings are right in line with the feverish rants of Marxists and radical libertarians, positions that are way outside mainstream and authoritative interpretations of the origins of the Civil War.

And by the way, Stogie has yet to respond to the announcement that the Ku Klux Klan will march to support the Confederate flag in Columbia, South Carolina. Clearly, those KKK ghouls haven't gotten the "innocent Sorth" memo.

Jeb Bush Calls Confederate Flag a 'Racist' Symbol

I don't care for Jeb Bush, but coming out so forwardly and unashamedly attacking the Confederate flag as "racist" is no doubt an extremely calculated political move.

Lots of conservatives love that flag, and in a number of important states, they'll be a crucial bloc of voters. And Jeb's blowing them off. Or, he's signaling to them that the Confederate flag's just not going to be up for debate in the GOP primaries, and if you're going to make it an issue you're going to be demonized as no different from the KKK. It's pretty harsh, but I suspect that calculation is the reality of the top brokers at the heights of Republican power and money.

At the Washington Post, "Campaigning in South Carolina, Jeb Bush calls Confederate flag ‘racist’."

South Carolina Legislature Has the Votes to Take Down Confederate Flag at Statehouse Grounds

I don't know.

Leftists want it down. A majority of Americans want it down. State legislators want it down.

Shoot, the only ones that want to keep it flying are the Southern heritage folks and their KKK allies.

At the Charleston Post & Courier, "Majority of House, Senate support taking down Confederate flag":

Dam breaking? Just added another “yes” to the house, after passing 2/3rds majority in favor http://t.co/JMtM0HQqPU pic.twitter.com/XcK4cEnyqU

— Jason Emory Parker (@jaspar) June 29, 2015

The S.C. Legislature has amassed the support necessary to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds, potentially ending a decades-long, divisive battle over the banner’s fate, according to a survey of lawmakers led by The Post and Courier.

he poll of lawmakers has determined that both the House and the Senate have achieved the two-thirds majority needed to take the flag down, if all supporters were to cast their votes. At least 33 senators and 83 House members say the flag should go.

“I just think that it’s time,” Rep. Mike Forrester, R-Spartanburg, said Monday. “It’s causing too many problems. ... I think it needs to be in a place of honor, but probably not on the Statehouse grounds.”

The issue has heated up following the June 17 killing of nine people, including a state senator, at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, allegedly by a white supremacist who is pictured with a Confederate flag in photos on the Internet.

Members of both chambers have been notified that they are scheduled to return to Columbia on July 6 at 1 p.m. to tackle vetoes and the flag debate. A vote in the Senate could potentially occur that same day...

Keep reading.

Ku Klux Klan to Rally for the Confederate Flag at South Carolina Statehouse

The debate continues with Stogie at Saberpoint, who has responded to my earlier post on Fort Sumter. See, "Did Lincoln Deliberately Instigate War at Fort Sumter? Yes, He Did."

Meanwhile, remember at the crux of this debate is not so much who started the war, but why the belligerents were willing to go to war. The North, of course, under President Lincoln's leadership, fought initially to preserve the Union. The South, ultimately, fought to protect states' right to own property in slaves. (The whole debate is at the search link.)

Stogie has consistently said that the South fought to defend against Northern aggression, and that the protection of states' rights to own slaves was never a cause of war.

Okay, well, I guess the KKK never got the memo.

At the Charleston Post & Courier, "Ku Klux Klan to protest removal of Confederate flag on July 18 at Statehouse":

KKK to rally for #ConfederateFlag July 18 at #SouthCarolina Statehouse. http://t.co/giUg8mqutO #scnews #chsnews pic.twitter.com/s25xBfTP2z

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) June 29, 2015

The Ku Klux Klan has been approved to hold a protest rally at the Statehouse next month against removing the Confederate battle flag, with the group calling accused mass murderer Dylann Roof a “young warrior.”

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan applied for the permit last week to hold a rally for 100 to 200 people on July 18 on the north side of the Statehouse.

That’s where the Confederate battle flag presently flies.

Brian Gaines, spokesman for the S.C. Budget and Control Board, said the state provides rally space at the Statehouse site when space is available or previously not reserved.

The move was not endorsed by Gov. Nikki Haley. “This is our state, and they are not welcome,” she said in a statement issued by her press office.

In its application permit, the Klan lists equipment needs as a podium and public address access. The group is headquartered out of Pelham, N.C.

Robert Jones, grand dragon for the group, said on Monday that the Klan is a civil rights organization dedicated to white culture and history as symbolized by the rebel banner.

During a phone interview, Jones gave words of support for Roof, saying he erred in going after black people while they worshipped. On the Klan group’s telephone answering machine is a recorded message that refers to Roof as a warrior.

Roof, 21, of Eastover is charged with nine counts of murder in the June 17 shooting at Emanuel AME Church.

All the victims were black; Roof is white, and has reportedly promoted white supremacist activity in his writings and on the Internet...

Interesting that this Robert Jones dude praised the suspect Roof "as a warrior," and he tacitly endorses the murders when he adds the qualification about how Roof was only wrong to the extent that "he erred in going after black people while they worshipped" [sic].

Hey, if those darkies hadn'ta been worshiping, lock and load ye whippersnapper!

I'm sure Stogie's got some canned response to the KKK's support for the suspect Roof and the Confederate flag. I mean, Southerners loved and protected their slaves, right? They protected them right up until the slightest whiff of a fugitive escape, and then slave masters would use their legal rights to beat and whip their black chattel back in line.

Democrat Party racism and violence. That's some Southern heritage, I'll tell you. That's some real sick Southern heritage.

PREVIOUSLY: "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut," and "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative."

BONUS: "What the Left, and Sadly, Some Conservatives Just Do Not Grasp."

Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection Drugs for Death Penalty

This case broke down along the Court's classic 5-4, right-left split, with Samuel Alito writing the majority opinion.

At LAT, "Supreme Court OKs use of controversial sedative in executions":

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Oklahoma and other death-penalty states to execute convicted murderers with a lethal injection that relies on a substitute sedative.

The 5-4 decision rejected claims from death-penalty foes who said the drug in question, midazolam, is not reliably effective and could subject an inmate to a cruelly painful death.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the prisoners who challenged the use of this drug "failed to establish that Oklahoma's use of a massive dose of midazolam in its execution protocol entails a substantial risk of severe pain."

Moreover, they failed to suggest a reasonable alternative drug, since the most effective barbiturates are no longer available, he said.

In one of two dissents, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned the constitutionality of the death penalty itself.

"I believe it is highly likely that the death penalty violates the 8th Amendment" and its ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

He said the court should hear arguments on that question in the future...

As the Obergefell case showed, the Court slavishly hews to public opinion. And so as long as a majority in public opinion supports the death penalty --- and public support is still at 60 percent now --- then the Court will continue to uphold it.

One wildcard is Anthony Kennedy, of course. He's basically a leftist. Frankly I'm a bit surprised he didn't rule against Oklahoma's drug cocktail in this case.

More at Memerandum.

Democrat Bill Clinton Commemorated the Confederacy on Arkansas State Flag in 1987 — #TakeDownTheFlag

Look, leftists aren't too well informed on their racist history.

I'm getting all these lunatic commenters screaming about how it's really the Republicans who're the KKK confederacy racists. That takes some serious denial bordering on literal insanity, but then, that's what you get in today's genuinely unhinged Democrat Party left.

Here's the low down on Bill Clinton's racist commemoration of the Confederacy when he was serving as the Democrat Party governor of Arkansas in the 1980s:

Flashback: As Governor, Bill Clinton Honored Confederacy On Arkansas Flag http://t.co/NXKhaKfigR

— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 20, 2015

You cool with Arkansas flag that flew at Bill and Hillary's house for 12 years and his library today? @chrislhayes pic.twitter.com/8yJ5ExLDzA

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 21, 2015

#TakeDownTheFlag pic.twitter.com/2053dwVpmA

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) June 21, 2015

So you mean this flag? #takedowntheflag pic.twitter.com/Lcnx3Sbvlh

— iPayMyJizyaWith.357 (@SonofLiberty357) June 21, 2015

Well, isn't THAT interesting? pic.twitter.com/HBVdnC5h5Y

— Bill Sanderson (@mrgeology) June 21, 2015

The designer of the second national flag of the #Confederacy, explaining what it stood for: pic.twitter.com/KY8nlO8mgp

— Jonathan Wilson (@jnthnwwlsn) June 18, 2015

From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building

Oh brother.

Here we go. Black radicals are "anguished" and ready for an all out "race war."

At the New York Times:

Ferguson. Baltimore. Staten Island. North Charleston. Cleveland.

Over the past year in each of these American cities, an unarmed black male has died at the hands of a police officer, unleashing a torrent of anguish and soul-searching about race in America. Despite video evidence in several of the killings, each has spurred more discord than unity.

Grand juries have tended to give the benefit of the doubt to police officers. National polls revealed deep divisions in how whites and blacks viewed the facts in each case. Whites were more likely to believe officers’ accounts justifying the use of force. Blacks tended to see deeper forces at work: longstanding police bias against black men and a presumption that they are criminals.

Then, on Wednesday night, a young white man walked into a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., and joined a group of worshipers as they bowed their heads over their Bibles. He shot and killed nine of them. In his Facebook profile picture, the suspect, Dylann Roof, wore the flags of racist regimes in South Africa and the former Rhodesia.

The massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston was something else entirely from the police shootings. But it, too, has become a racial flash point and swept aside whatever ambiguity seemed to muddle those earlier cases, baldly posing questions about race in America: Was the gunman a crazed loner motivated by nothing more than his own madness? Or was he an extreme product of the same legacy of racism that many black Americans believe sent Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Tamir Rice to their graves?

The debate has already begun.

“I just think he was one of these whacked-out kids,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a white Republican from South Carolina who is running for president, said in a telephone interview with CNN, echoing a sentiment that had begun to blossom. “I don’t think it’s anything broader than that. It’s about a young man who is obviously twisted."

Mr. Graham later amended his remarks, calling Mr. Roof “a racial jihadist” and saying that the only reason the victims had died was their race.

Bryan Stevenson, a black lawyer who has specialized in death-penalty cases and chronicled the legal system’s unfairness to African-Americans, sees deep and systemic connections between Mr. Roof’s actions and the police killings of black males, as well as the rough actions of a police officer breaking up a pool party in McKinney, Tex.

“This latest violent act is an extreme and terrifying example, but not disconnected from the way black men and boys are treated by police, by schools, by the state,” Mr. Stevenson said in an interview. “The landscape is littered with monuments that talk proudly about the Confederacy and leave no record about the lynchings of the era.”

America is living through a moment of racial paradox. Never in its history have black people been more fully represented in the public sphere. The United States has a black president and a glamorous first lady who is a descendant of slaves. African-Americans lead the country’s pop culture in many ways, from sports to music to television, where show-runners like Shonda Rhimes and Lee Daniels have created new black icons, including the political fixer Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and the music mogul Cookie Lyon on “Empire.”

It has become commonplace to refer to the generation of young people known as millennials as “post-racial.” Black culture has become so mainstream that a woman born to white parents who had claimed to be black almost broke the Internet last week by saying that she was “transracial.”

Yet in many ways, the situation of black America is dire...

Yes. Dire.

Because a literal lone wolf leftist murdered some beautiful black Christians in the Old South.

Leftists never let a crisis go to waste.

More.

Dylann Roof Planned College Campus Shooting Instead of Church, Says Black Drinking Buddy Christon Scriven

At London's Daily Mail, "Charleston killer planned to shoot up college campus instead of a church, claims black drinking buddy who says they were 'homeboys'."

Yeah, his "drinking buddy" was a black kid, just like all the Southern homeboys hanging out with their black bros.

Stogie at Saberpoint has more, "Sick Freak Murders Nine in Black Charleston Church; Irrational Outpouring of Outrage Ensues."

PREVIOUSLY: "Leftist Flag-Burner Dylann Roof's 'Last Rhodesian' Manifesto Rooted in Democrat Party Ku Klux Klan Racism."

And, "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative," and "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Leftist Flag-Burner Dylann Roof's 'Last Rhodesian' Manifesto Rooted in Democrat Party Ku Klux Klan Racism

Well, one thing's for sure.

Dylann Roof hates the American flag like any classic leftist today.

On top of that, his manifesto is a throwback to the white supremacist racial segregation era of the Jim Crow Ku Klux Klan Democrat Party South. The kid confesses right off the bat that he wasn't raised in a racist home --- obviously because his family just doesn't fit the left's white supremacist stereotypes. As he writes at his racist left-wing screed:

Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.

Interestingly, Roof combines his Democrat segregation-love with classic leftist BDS-style anti-Jewish hatred. He spews perfectly dead-on memes of the left's global anti-Semitic, anti-Israel annihilationist ideology:

Unlike many White naitonalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldnt cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on.

And he's no anti-immigration "Minuteman," as he indicates that he likes Hispanics and Asians. And he just hates the American flag. He hates it with all the combustible disgust of America that you'd find in an Occupy Wall Street rape-infested protest camp. He's a perfect emo-prog flag-hating loser:

I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But im not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940's American than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I dont blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for.

He's a sick, racist deluded lefty-prog who glommed onto sick anti-American, pro-Confederacy hate sites. A weird product of progressivism, Israel-hatred, and segregationist Democrat legacies.

He's a weirdo, frankly.

More at the the Telegraph UK, "Dylann Roof: The Charleston killer's racist manifesto."

And at the New York Times, "Website With Manifesto and Photos of Suspect Surfaces."

PREVIOUSLY: "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative," and "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag

I don't care about the Confederate Flag. I think it's a kind of scary emblem when I see it displayed on redneck pickup trucks, and what not. But folks from the South routinely speak about the symbolism and heritage. Stogie at Saberpoint had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He speaks often eloquently about that heritage, but he's no racist. His family is multicultural in fact. So it's an extremely complicated issue.

If you're on the left it's an easy call because the Confederate Flag is supposedly the ultimate symbol of racial oppression. Ta-Nehisi Coates posted an emotional and overwrought harangue against it earlier, at the Atlantic, "Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now." That's just race-bait for the hateful demons of the regressive left's fever swamps.

Still, lots of good black folk down in South Carolina are pained at this image, regular folks, holding down jobs and holding together families. I imagine they'd like to see it go.

In any case, the New York Times reports, FWIW, "Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag":

On Thursday, hours after a white gunman killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, S.C., a Confederate flag continued to fly over the grounds of the state’s Capitol.

The Supreme Court ruled the same day that Texas did not violate the First Amendment by refusing to allow the flag on its license plates.

The conflict over the banner of the Confederacy has been raging for decades between those who feel it is a symbol of free speech, and others who see it as a symbol of white supremacy. But with a photo emerging of Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old suspect in the Charleston church shootings, posing in front of a car with Confederate plates, the debate has been reignited on social media and beyond about whether the flag should be displayed, and whether politicians should continue to defend the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage.

Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a Republican, and the state’s Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, are both drawing criticism for their views on the flag. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mr. Sanford called the idea of removing the flag a “Pandora’s box” and a “complex issue within our state.”

Ms. Haley, who on Friday called for Mr. Roof to face the death penalty, was also facing criticism for referring to the flag as a “sensitive issue” but refusing to remove it in the past.

A Haley spokesman told ABC that use of the Confederate flag — seen flying high in the South Carolina capital while other flags flew at half-staff — could not be altered without approval from the state Legislature.

Cornell William Brooks, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., said on Friday that those who said the flag was “merely a symbol of years gone by” had it all wrong. The flag, he said, is an “emblem of hate” that should be banished from public life.

“That symbol has to come down,” he said, speaking at a news conference in Charleston. “That symbol must be removed from our state Capitol.”

Several hashtags, #takedownthatflag, #takeitdown and #ConfederateTakeDown, were also being used Friday on Twitter as an informal campaign to prompt South Carolina politicians to remove the flag.

Elsewhere, writers and academics found fault in the argument that the flag was meant to preserve a Southern way of life. In a post for The Atlantic titled “Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that the argument that the flag preserves a heritage of racist behavior was what motivated Mr. Roof to attack black people.

“More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded — with human sacrifice,” Mr. Coates wrote.

Edward E. Baptist, a professor at Cornell University who specializes in the history of slavery, said in a series of posts on Twitter that the flag had been used as justification for attacks on blacks since the Civil War...

Continue reading.

In Aftermath of #Charleston Church Slayings, a Day of Forgiveness and Thought

At the Charleston Post and Courier:

These people are genuine Christians. It's humbling. https://t.co/hgGIlNqgXL

— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) June 19, 2015

Dylann Storm Roof stared at the camera in front of him and blinked occasionally.

He saw a judge on a video screen and heard crying. But he couldn’t see the rest of the courtroom on the other end of the video link. He couldn’t see the people who fought through tears and stood up in the crowded room.

He heard the words of Felicia Sanders as she rose and spoke. Roof had been accused of killing her son and eight others as Sanders watched two nights earlier at a downtown Charleston church.

“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms,” she said. “We enjoyed you, but may God have mercy on your soul.”

The bond hearing Friday afternoon served as the first opportunity for family members to talk to the 21-year-old Eastover man suspected of fatally shooting the nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. They spoke of hurt, grief and longing for a chance to say goodbye to the people they loved. They also offered forgiveness, despite the accusation that Roof, a white man, had carried out one of the worst American hate crimes of the generation at the historically black church.

Roof also could not see beyond the courtroom, where Charleston has been transformed by tragedy into a ground zero for the racial strife reignited in recent years by a call of “black lives matter.” He faces nine murder charges in the attack that some say exposed an underbelly of the Deep South that bubbled to the surface in a bloody way around 9 p.m. Wednesday at 110 Calhoun St.

The Confederate battle flag still flew above the Statehouse, despite calls from critics nationwide to take it down. And some pointed to the bond judge who faced Roof as another example of deep-rooted problems here. The judge, who has been reprimanded and suspended for using the N-word in the past, called Roof’s family members victims, too.

“Saying that semblances of that ugly underbelly does not exist would be a disservice to the lives that were lost,” said Antonio Tillis, a longtime African studies professor brought to the College of Charleston amid the school’s turmoil over the hiring of a Confederacy memorabilia aficionado as its president. “We need to question our national identity and Americanism. Who gets to claim it? To hear a young man say that black people have taken over the country, we have to question that.”

But that man also couldn’t see the wall of flowers being built on the sidewalk in front of the church, each bouquet with a message from people in Sheridan, Wyo.; Crawfordsville, Ind.; and Madison, Miss. Black and white visitors from other states knelt next to residents from Charleston and cried as they penned messages on a banner. Roof also couldn’t hear what they said.

“Where is our country going?” Donna Lea Needham, 83, of Sanford, Fla., said as she cried. “How many times is hatred going to cause this kind of sorrow? This has gone on for long enough.”

That call on Calhoun Street echoed from the courtroom with the victims’ families, to Charleston City Hall, to California, where President Barack Obama again spoke out against the violence.

“It is not good enough to simply show sympathy,” he said. “We as a people have got to change. That’s how we honor those families.”

Keep reading.

How Our Touchy-Feely Feminized Society Creates Young Male Mass Killers

From Milo Yiannopoulos, at Big Government, "TO STOP MASS KILLERS, WE HAVE TO STOP DRUGGING OUR YOUNG BOYS" (via Blazing Cat Fur):

As America comes to terms with a monstrous shooting in Charleston that has left nine churchgoers dead, bewildered members of the public are seeking rationality in apparently wanton and inscrutable crimes.

We may never know quite what drives some people to kill. But it seems that in young Dylann Storm Roof, we have further evidence of a trend that should worry us all. I’m talking about his dependence on prescription drugs: suboxone, to be precise.

Roof is just the latest in a long line of young men who have committed appalling crimes after a lifetime on psychotropic drugs. If you don’t believe me, consider some of the most notorious young male shooters in American history.

Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza? Lexapro and Celexa. Red-headed Aurora killer James Holmes? Clonazepam and sertraline. Virginia Tech mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho? Prozac. Charles Whitman, the “Texas Tower Sniper”? Dexedrine. Columbine executioners Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Zoloft and Luvox.

You get the idea. These young men were all on prescribed medication. Feminism helped to get them there. In particular, female teachers who either dislike men or are completely ignorant of healthy behaviour norms for boys are creating a generation of emotionally stunted, drugged up young men.

Millions of young American men are prescribed powerful drugs after being diagnosed with the phantom condition “ADHD,” better known as a mixture of natural boisterousness and poor parental discipline. The mere fact of being male has become pathologised.

When they get into their teens and early twenties, they graduate onto drugs like Zoloft and Prozac, drugs that can produce a powerfully dissociative effect in the mind, muddying the distinctions between reality and fantasy. All this, because boys are now treated as though they are defective girls.

I once clumsily wrote that video games helped to “shape the fantasies” of Isla Vista gunman Elliot Rodgers. I intended not to incriminate video games in his spiral into madness and murder but rather to point out that young men who lose grip on the real world often retreat into imaginary ones, which can then have a stylistic effect, if you like, on their crimes.

After a year of reading the research on what America is doing to its men, and interviewing hundreds of young men in preparation for my book on the GamerGate controversy, I have come to believe that in most cases it’s not games, or movies, or “misogyny,” or “racism” that drives young men to kill. It is the increasing sense of isolation and disorientation young boys feel in a world that now feels architected against them...

Well, I'm not sure that feminism and ADHD are causal factors here, but certainly there's something to this idea of the "isolation of disorientation young boys feel." It's a point I raised earlier today in my essay, "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative."

Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative

My post yesterday got a lot of attention, "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Notice the leftists disagreeing angrily in the comments, and of course go on Twitter and notice how the left's murderous lynch mobs have taken the debate hostage from reason.

Roof's thoughts are certainly racist, but the idea that the kid fits some common stereotype of the Southern red-neck Confederate flag-waving cracker --- who for leftists is essentially a racist mass murderer in waiting --- is a joke. The right-wing "racist mass murderer" premise is itself a joke. But then, leftism is a joke. Leftists are not rational people. They don't care for science. From abortion politics to global warming, leftists reject science and adopt faith-based arguments that cannot not be repudiated with empirical evidence. Anyone who attempts to do so is a heretic who must not only be shunned, but destroyed. Professor Mark Regnerus, the Texas sociology professor who published a rigorous study on the life chances of children of same-sex marriages, was attacked as a "hateful bigot," and the leftist outrage industry fomented an investigation of him for "academic misconduct" by the University of Texas. Deranged leftists wanted him fired. Similar cases have become legion more recently, most immediately on the issue of the so-called "rape culture." It's now so bad that outraged progs have started eating their own in a kind of Thermidorian Reaction that's just now getting going.

In any case, folks need to read Robert Stacy McCain's essay on the national reaction to the shooting, "Dylann Roof: A Ninth-Grade Dropout Who Was Playing Too Many Video Games." Robert's a journalist's journalist who uses evidence to reach to conclusions, rather than attempting to pigeonhole the facts into some  kind of preexisting narrative.

As I noted yesterday, Roof is not mentally fit. He's a drug abuser whose racist views have been formed quite recently, likely the result of an alienation process developing out an extremely dysfunctional home life. He shuttled around from school to school as his family broke apart due to marital separation. He dropped out of school and became increasingly aimless. He was arrested and charged twice with felonies. His dad had been haranguing him to stop playing so many videos games. Somewhere along the line he glommed onto some white supremacist websites and unconvincingly adorned the paraphernalia of a Southern Klansman.

This is not the basis for an ideological program. It's the basis for involuntary commitment.

But be sure to read Robert's piece:

Charles Manson was a hippie guru whose cult followers did a lot of drugs, listened to Beatles records and committed mass murder, but most hippies who did drugs and listened to Beatles records were neither cult members nor mass murderers. So what lessons could we, as a society, have derived from the notorious “Helter Skelter” killings? Most people at the time recognized the Tate-Labianca murders as conclusive proof that the whole 1960s peace-and-love tune-in-turn-on-drop-out mythology of hippie culture was a lie. Manson collected his followers from among the broken flotsam and jetsam of castoff kids and runaways who flooded into San Francisco during the late 1960s. It was the Law of Large Numbers, really. When millions of kids climbed aboard that kind of bandwagon — rejecting parental authority to pursue a lifestyle of drugs, sex and rock-and-roll — it was inevitable that very bad things would happen to some of them.

You see that the example of the Charles Manson cult is not one chosen at random in this case, because Manson’s “Helter Skelter” fantasy was to incite an apocalyptic race war in America, and Dylann Roof’s murders had the same motive. Also, Dylann Roof had a drug problem. For that matter, Dylann Roof even had a Beatle haircut. Whether or not he was listening to the White Album backwards, we don’t know.

Please excuse my habitual sarcasm, but if you’re following the liberal media coverage of the Charleston shootings, you keep seeing allegedly intelligent people making a few simple-minded connections that may not actually have much to do with Dylann Roof’s crimes. “It’s the guns! It’s the racism! This happened in South Carolina! OMG! They fly the Confederate flag there!” All of this is obviously true, but exactly how much of this is really relevant? There are about 3 million white people in South Carolina, many of whom are racists and gun owners, but they didn’t kill people in Charleston, nor do they condone hateful violence.

As always, the liberal biases of the media lead them into a hasty pell-mell rush to assign collective political blame for a high-profile crime, a bias that fosters false beliefs which in turn have the effect of psychologically disarming society. We cannot prevent crime if we don’t understand crime, and understanding crime requires us to focus on the individuals who commit crime. Yes, the hippie culture of the 1960s was dangerous. And yes, we may say that South Carolina is a particularly “racist” environment. However, most hippies were not mass murderers, nor are most South Carolinians, and the attempt to defame white people in South Carolina by assigning collective blame to them — which is what the liberal media are so obviously doing — is the exact opposite of what responsible journalism is about. Let’s focus on the criminal:

According to classmates, Roof is a frequent abuser of prescription drugs.

Court records from Lexington, [South] Carolina — where he has been living in a trailer park — reveal he was arrested twice this year on charges of trespassing and drug possession. . . .

Roof used to skateboard in a Lexington suburb in South Carolina when he was younger and had long hair then.

Childhood friend Joey Meek had seen him as recently as Tuesday, said Meek’s mother, Kimberly Konzny. . . .

‘I don’t know what was going through his head,’ Konzny said. ‘He was a really sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had a few friends.’Joey Meek alerted the FBI after he and his mother instantly recognized Roof in a surveillance camera image that was widely circulated after the shooting.

In the image, Roof had the same stained sweatshirt he wore while playing Xbox video games in their home recently, Konzny said. It was stained because he had worked at a landscaping and pest control business, she said.

Roof attended ninth grade at White Knoll High during the 2008-09 school year and went there for the first half of the following academic year, district spokeswoman Mary Beth Hill said. The school system gave no reason for Roof’s departure and said it had no record of him attending any other schools in the district.

According to CBS News, school records show that between fourth and ninth grade, Roof attended six different schools, and repeated the ninth grade.

He dropped out of school after ninth grade. His parents were divorced, and his father and stepmother also reportedly had divorced. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dylann’s father had been pressuring him to stop playing video games constantly, and to find steady employment. His grandfather is reportedly a lawyer. His father is a contractor. There are some very interesting clues in this Mother Jones story:

Ken Mathews, an attorney who has been representing Roof in an ongoing drug-possession case, was, he says, “very shocked” to hear about what Roof had allegedly done. He tells Mother Jones, “The dealings I had with him, he was just a normal kid.”

Mathews, a Columbia, South Carolina, attorney, notes that so far in the drug case he has had “very limited dealings” with Roof. He says he saw “nothing that would indicate that [Roof] would take this type of action.” . . .

Mathews has known the Roof family for years, dating back to a custody dispute between Dylann’s father Ben and mother Amy over visitation rights concerning Dylann. . . .

So his family life was disrupted, he was shuttled from one school to another from the time he was nine or 10 years old, he dropped out of school as a teenager, became a drug-addicted loser living in a trailer park, constantly playing video games and, also, Dylann Roof was a racist who sewed Rhodesian flag patches on his jacket and had a Confederate flag tag on his car...

Continue reading.

And check Ace of Spade HQ's Twitter feed for regular dose of sanity amid the left's hysteria:

It is the left, not the right, who views "terrorism" as merely a propaganda term to describe "political violence we *don't* support."

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

I don't support any political violence, so I call it what it is. It's the left that distinguishes between terrorism and "resisistance."

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

If I were a left-winger, I'd call Roof an Understandable case for sympathy, who was betrayed and let down by the Society he lived in.

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

But I'm not a left-winger, and I don't have to thus make excuses for wretched murderers. And thus I call him a racial terrorist.

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

Remember when it was white Boston society that was ultimately the cause for Djokhar Tsarnaev's understandable rage?

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

btw, look at this skinny, runt-of-the-litter, UGLY, 9th-grade-dropout idiot and mental patient--and tell me he wan't "marginalized" by life

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

I make no excuses for his nihilistic demonic murders based on his "marginalization." Will the left join me in that principle? OF COURSE NOT

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

Secrets of 'Tormented' Germanwings Pilot Coming Into Focus

This guy was all f-ked up. He'd even planned for something "spectacular' to happen, to make him famous. We'll, he's famous now. Infamous, in fact.

Very sad.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Germanwings copilot had health, psychological problems, reports say":

Additional evidence emerged Saturday to suggest copilot Andreas Lubitz had health issues that should have prevented him from being allowed anywhere near the controls of the Germanwings A320 Airbus that he apparently deliberately flew into a mountain in the southern Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people aboard.

As well as medical findings, one of the copilot’s former girlfriends came forward to tell a German newspaper that Lubitz, 27, told her, while they were dating last year, that he planned a spectacular gesture to make sure everyone would “remember” him. She described Lubitz as a “tormented” person who knew how to hide secrets.

The German newspaper Bild spoke to the young woman, identified only as Maria W, 26, and said she dated Lubitz for five months in 2014 during which time he said: “One day I will do something that will change the whole system and then everyone will know my name and remember it.

“I never knew what he meant, but now it makes sense,” the woman was quoted as saying.

She revealed that the pilot had suffered nightmares and that their relationship ended because his behavior scared her.

“At night, he would wake up and scream: 'We’re going down!'”

She said if Lubitz did indeed deliberately bring down the plane, “it is because he understood that because of his health problems, his big dream of a job at Lufthansa as captain and as a long-haul pilot was practically impossible.”

More.

And at the Other McCain, "German Co-Pilot Commits Mass Murder":

You might think that this incident seven years ago — when Lubitz was 21 and “depression” interrupted his training — would have caused someone to question his fitness to be a commercial pilot. Oh, but that would be discrimination against the mentally ill, which is unacceptable. Misguided ideas about “human rights” thereby result in putting a murderous psychopath in the cockpit so he can kill 149 innocent people by flying into a mountain at 400 miles an hour.

“You only hear the screams in the final seconds.”

 Yeah, well, wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of the regressive enablers of death, or anything.

Speaking of which, don't miss the broad-brush smears over at No More Mister, "ISLAMOPHOBES FIND A GERMANWINGS STORY THEY LIKE":

No reputable media outlet has reported on any possible motivation for the downing of Germanwings Flight 9525 apart from the claim that copilot Andreas Lubitz was suffering from a significant level of depression -- so elements of the Islam-hating right are now just turning him into a Islamist terrorist, based on evidence that appears to be nothing more than wishful thinking on their part.

And who would be the "Islam-hating right" to which No More Mister smears?

Well, Jim Hoft, a.k.a., "Gateway Pundit." That's it. Oh, actually, there's also Debbie Schlussel, of whom no one --- and I mean literally no one on the right --- considers one of their own partisans. She's simply a nutbag.

But hey, the idiot Steve M.'s got his "Islamophobe" meme and he's going with it!

Isla Vista Victims' Families Sue Sheriff's Dept., Apartments Where Killer Lived

I guess someone's gotta pay, right? I mean, he was literally psycho, but somehow he fell through the cracks. And someone's gotta pay.

Sad. A lawsuit won't bring back loved ones.

At LAT, "Families of Elliot Rodger's slain roommates sue sheriff's, apartment."

High School Girls Basketball Coach Suspended After Running Up Score in 161-2 Blowout (VIDEO)

Er, I guess that was kinda harsh on the losing team's self-esteem.

And remember, the self-esteem movement says we should nourish each and every child. Winning is mean!

And of course, anyone who violates this precious esteem movement catechism shall be mercilessly punished! Winning decisively shall not be tolerated!

At CBS News Los Angeles:



Also at Fox News, "California girls high school basketball coach suspended after 161-2 victory."