Dana Loesch's Hands Off My Gun Out in Paperback!

Don't miss Dana's book in paperback, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.

How About a Debate Over Common-Sense Mental-Health Laws?

At WSJ, "A Shooting in Oregon":

As we went to press Friday, federal, state and local authorities in Oregon were trying to piece together the inevitable puzzle of motive that led to the slaughter of at least nine students at a community college in the small town of Roseburg.

Sheriff John Hanlin of Douglas County, like law officers elsewhere recently, has ordered his staff not to use the name of the alleged killer, lest it merely glorify what he did. This is an understandable, if ultimately quixotic, gesture in the modern media age. The whole world soon will be saturated with the name of Chris Harper-Mercer and every possible detail—some of it true, some of it barely verified—of his life and the tragedy at Umpqua Community College.

One certainty in the wake of the massacre is that gun control will be discussed avidly for the next few weeks, as after past incidents. This debate emerged after a crazed gunman killed 12 individuals at the Navy Yard in Washington in 2013. And after a classroom in Newtown, the movie theater in Aurora and after Virginia Tech.

President Obama called for gun legislation: “This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America.” But Americans did not choose to set a madman loose with a gun. Mr. Obama also called for “common-sense gun-safety laws.” The American people, we suspect, would like more evidence of which “common-sense” policies will work and which won’t before they consent to abrogating the Second Amendment.

Our own view remains that what deserves equal if not greater political attention are common-sense mental-health laws. It is now established that Harper-Mercer attended the Switzer Learner Center, in Torrance, Calif., which treats teenagers with emotional disabilities and mental-health problems. He ended up in Roseburg.

The element of untreated mental or emotional disturbance is present in most of the individuals who commit horrific mass killings in the U.S. If it is preordained that talking heads must argue for days now about guns in America, at least let some specialists enter the debate to discuss how identifying and treating disturbed brains might contribute to forestalling the madness of murdering innocent strangers...

More.

Leftists don't want a debate on mental health. They want to abolish the Second Amendment.

Just Out from Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar

Well, Putin certainly seems more impressive by the day. This last week's maneuvering in Syria, with Russia bombing U.S.-backed rebels, was quite the move --- and with no repercussions from the Obama White House!

See Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.

Disneyland Raises Annual Pass Prices (VIDEO)

When he was in high school, we bought our oldest son annual passes a couple of years in a row. They were about $400.00. Now the top-level pass is going for $1,000.00.

At the O.C. Register, "Disneyland raises annual pass prices, introduces $1,000 pass, and discontinues Premium pass."

Angels Still Feel Sense of Achievement After Season-Ending Loss

Well, I was saying so much the other day.

At LAT, "After season-ending loss, Angels still feel a sense of achievement":

The adrenaline rush from three weeks of playoff-intensity baseball and the euphoria of several heart-stopping victories gave way to the emptiness of a long, cold winter for the Angels on Sunday.

Postseason longshots after a 10-19 August, the Angels kept their playoff hopes alive right up to the final day of the season, going 20-10 in September and October, winning 12 of 13 one-run games since Sept. 9 and staging a remarkable comeback with a five-run ninth inning Saturday.

But those visions of a momentum-fueled run through October were dashed amid a flurry of walks, fielding miscues and hits during a 37-minute seventh inning in which the Texas Rangers scored six runs against five Angels relievers en route to a 9-2 victory in Globe Life Park.

Left-hander Cole Hamels, acquired from Philadelphia in a July 31 trade, gave up two runs, three hits and struck out eight batters in a complete-game effort to help the Rangers clinch their sixth American League West title and knock the Angels out of playoff contention.

Adding salt to the Angels' wounds: Houston lost to Arizona on Sunday. Had the Angels defeated Texas, they would have forced a one-game tiebreaker against the Astros on Monday to determine the second AL wild-card team. Instead, Houston will play the New York Yankees in Tuesday night's wild-card game...

More.

Plus, "Angels' rallying cry next year: Remember Game No. 161."

Gerod Roth Fired from Polaris Marketing Group for Racist Facebook Post

At the Atlanta Blackstar, via Memeorandum, "Multiple Firings After Racially Charged Facebook Remarks Mocking a Black Child Go Viral."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "White marketing employee fired after posting a selfie and hateful racist comments with the son of a black colleague calling the little boy a 'slave'."

Just one more reminder that social media often brings out the worst in people, and also that people are way to casual about the kind of stuff they post to their feeds, thinking that their indiscretions won't be seen by the wider world out there. Times have changed folks. While personally I've seen much worse online, clearly, especially given how adorable that kid is, some people need to dig down deep in search of some moral well of decency.

Claire Danes Discusses 'Homeland'

Season five's first episode was great. I especially liked agent Peter Quinn's debriefing on his two years spent in Syria, in a meeting to top CIA honchos (he says the U.S. needs 200,000 boots on the ground, if we're serious, and that Islamic State has a strategy, plans for a caliphate, while the U.S. has bupkes).

See Variety, "‘Homeland’ Recap: Meet the New Carrie Mathison in ‘Separation Anxiety’." And at WSJ, "‘Homeland’ Season Five Premiere: An Intelligence Expert Weighs In."

Obama Not Welcome in Roseburg, Says Local Newspaper Publisher (VIDEO)

You gotta love it.

From Lee Stranahan, at Big Government:

David Jaques, the publisher of the conservative newspaper the Roseburg Beacon, says he believes that President Obama would not be welcome to the town after making remarks politicizing the shooting that left nine dead and nine injured at Umpqua Community College on October 1. Jaques told Breitbart News that he believes officials of Douglas County would also not welcome the President using the tragedy to score political points for a gun control agenda.

Any visit by President would be “a campaign stop for agenda to take away American citizen’s right to own firearms” said Jaques in an exclusive interview...

Plus, watch here, "Roseburg Beacon publisher David Jaques says a problem Obama is not welcome after his comments politicizing the shooting death of nine people at Umpaqua Community College."

Discrimination Against Asian-Americans in College Admissions

It's not a new problem, but as we get even more diverse, especially with Chinese immigrants emerging as the fastest growing immigrant group, expect to see more controversy over race-based affirmative action policies.

See Robert Stacy McCain for the write-up, "Anti-Asian Discrimination: The Hidden Secret of Elite Educational ‘Diversity’."

And see if you can get to this piece, which I can still recall from back in the day, at WSJ, "Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asians at Elite Schools?"

Also, on Facebook, Asian Americans Against Affirmative Action.

U.S. Freighter El Faro Sunk by Hurricane Joaquin (VIDEO)

Jeez, this is freakin' rad.

At the New York Times, "US-Based Cargo Ship With Crew of 33 Sank in Storm."

The Breakdown of the Black Family

From Kay Hymowitz, at the Atlantic, "Mass Incarceration and the Uncomfortable Realities of Black Family Life":

With the publication of “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” Ta-Nehisi Coates has added an elegant and forceful voice to the growing frustration with the inefficacy and injustice of America’s criminal-justice system. Mandatory-sentencing laws, the War on Drugs, juvenile-justice sentences that seem to do more to create than deter criminals, racial arrest and sentencing disparities: All are ready for a tough national cross-examination.

But even in the unlikely event that Washington and state legislatures successfully adapt the nation’s crime policies to a safer, more racially sensitive era, the nation will still look around to find more black men in prison than it might expect or want. There’s a simple reason for that, one that Coates himself notes: Relative to other groups, blacks commit more crimes. To understand why is to tackle some very hard-to-talk-about realities of black family life.  And on that issue—and despite his announced interest in the topic—Coates has been the opposite of lucid.

Coates puts forward two interconnected, but flawed, theories about mass incarceration. First, he argues that there is no relationship between crime and incarceration rates, pointing his readers to a chart showing two apparently disparate trend lines. The first line shows crime levels rising dramatically after 1960; the second shows the rise in incarceration rates coming some 15 years later. Because of the 15-year gap, Coates concludes something other than a crime wave must have led Americans to lock up so many black men after 1975. “Imprisonment rates actually fell from the 1960s through the early ’70s,” he writes “even as violent crime increased … The incarceration rate rose independent of crime—but not of criminal-justice policy.”

That conclusion ignores something American history teaches over and over: The democratic process is groaningly, and often tragically, slow. Policy lags the most pressing social problems: Today’s exhibit A is immigration. “Thought leaders were slow to catch up,” after crime rates began falling and incarceration rates rising in the early 1990s, Coates observes. So too were they slow to catch up in the 1960s as crime was on the rise while incarceration rates moved not at all. It takes time to distinguish trends from blips, national changes from local upticks; witness the current debate over the significance of murder rates that are rising in Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., while remaining relatively flat in New York and Los Angeles. Contemporary surveys of public opinion show precisely the expected reaction to rising crime. “Popular support for liberal policies on crime and rehabilitation grew steadily” from the 1930s until the mid 1960s,” according to Thomas and Mary Edsall. “At that juncture public opinion shifted decisively in a rightward direction as crime rates rose sharply.”

Courts and legislatures dawdled, as they often tend to do. Today’s agonizing pictures from Europe, though, illustrate how people, particularly parents, living under the threat of violence will vote with their feet if they possibly can. In the 1960s, whites still living in increasingly crime-ridden urban areas, and more than a few blacks, simply left for safer suburbs. (An excellent chronicle of how this played out in the South Bronx can be found here.) Those blacks who remained, often because of the discriminatory housing policies Coates describes, joined local community and church groups to demand more aggressive policing and harsher penalties for crimes, including for drug offenses.


Black alarm about crime raises doubts about Coates’s second theory, that “the carceral state” was a new “system of control,” of black people. According to this line of thinking, the reason Americans started putting more people in jail circa 1975—“mass incarceration” wasn’t “mass” for years after it started—was that they wanted to perpetuate a racial caste system, or as Coates puts it, to keep blacks “unfree.”

Keep reading.

Hymowitz is the author of, Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age.

Hillary Clinton Exploits Oregon Massacre to Push for More Gun Control

At Bloomberg, "Clinton Proposes New Gun Measures, Staking Claim vs. Sanders."



Also at Memeorandum.

Image Credit: Ms. EBL.

Delta Force Secretly Killed Iranian Agents in Iraq — with IEDs

From Sean Naylor, at the New York Post:

The Iraq war was, in part, a proxy battle between the US and Iran. But fighting it had “political restrictions,” author Sean Naylor writes. In his new book, “Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command,” Naylor reveals that US special operations forces came up with a solution, one that would let them conduct secret assassinations without anyone — even our own FBI — finding out.

By early 2007, some US intelligence estimates held that as many as 150 Iranian operatives were in Iraq. Many were member of the Quds Force, the covert arm of Iran’s Shi’ite theocracy. Their mission was to coordinate the violent campaign being waged against US forces by Iraq’s Shi’ite militias.

“It was 100 percent, ‘Are you willing to kill Americans and are you willing to coordinate attacks?’ ” said an officer who studied the Quds Force’s approach closely. “ ‘If the answer is “yes,” here’s arms, here’s money.’ ”
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) set up a new task force, named Task Force 17.

Its mandate was simple: go after “anything that Iran is doing to aid in the destabilization of Iraq,” said a Task Force 17 officer...

Keep reading.

I blogged Naylor's book last night, "Sean Naylor's New Book, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command."

Putin's Aggression in Syria Taking Advantage of Obama's Inaction, New Regional Architecture

A great piece, from Caroline Glick, at Town Hall, "Israel's Risk Aversion Problem":

On Wednesday the Obama administration was caught off guard by Russia’s rapid rise in Syria. As the Russians began bombing a US-supported militia along the Damascus-Homs highway, Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at the UN. Just hours before their meeting Kerry was insisting that Russia’s presence in Syria would likely be a positive development.

Reacting to the administration’s humiliation, Republican Sen. John McCain said, “This administration has confused our friends, encouraged our enemies, mistaken an excess of caution for prudence and replaced the risks of action with the perils of inaction.”

McCain added that Russian President Vladimir Putin had stepped “into the wreckage of this administration’s Middle East policy.”

While directed at the administration, McCain’s general point is universally applicable. Today is no time for an overabundance of caution.

The system of centralized regimes that held sway in the Arab world since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago has unraveled. The shape of the new order has yet to be determined.

The war in Syria and the chaos and instability engulfing the region are part and parcel of the birth pangs of a new regional governing architecture now taking form. Actions taken by regional and global actors today will likely will influence power relations for generations.

Putin understands the opportunity of the moment.

He views the decomposition of Syria as an opportunity to rebuild Russia’s power and influence in the Middle East – at America’s expense.

Russia isn’t the only strategic player seeking to exploit the war in Syria and the regional chaos. Turkey and Iran are also working assiduously to take advantage of the current absence of order to advance their long term interests.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exploiting the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to fight the Kurds in both countries. Erdogan’s goal is twofold: to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdistan and to disenfranchise the Kurds in Turkey.

As for Iran, Syria is Iran’s bulwark against Sunni power in the Arab world and the logistical base for Tehran’s Shi’ite foreign legion Hezbollah. Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei is willing to fight to the bitter end to hold as much of Syrian territory as possible.

Broadly speaking, Iran views the breakup of the Arab state system as both a threat and an opportunity...

Keep reading.

Rose Bertram Takes Topless Dancing to Another Level (VIDEO)

Watch, at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, "Topless dancing. Endless twerking. A bikini-clad SI Swimsuit rookie. If that doesn't get you excited for this video, I don't know what will. Rose Bertram visited St. John in the US Virgin Islands for her photo shoot and I'm not sure the folks of this quaint island knew what hit them."

No Room for Indifference on anti-Semitism

From Professor Michael Curtis, at American Thinker:

Actions speak louder than words, but nevertheless it is a welcome sign of change that the European Commission is holding its first annual Fundamental Rights Colloquium on October 1-2, 2015 in Brussels. Its theme is tolerance and respect, preventing and combating anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hatred in Europe.

The Colloquium is not simply an opportunity for a widespread discussion of issues. Participants, governments, political, civil, religious, and academic leaders, are expected to explore concrete ways to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred. However, it should be said at the outset that while anti-Arab and anti-black attitudes are contemptible and should be opposed, they do not have the same resonance as anti-Semitism.

The need is urgent. A 2013 EU Fundamental Rights Agency survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews found that more than three quarters of those surveyed felt that anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitism on line, has got worse in the countries in which they lived. It is surprising that about three-quarters of Jewish people do not report anti-Semitic harassment to the police. More correct and accurate data on the perceptions and experiences of Jews is essential if corrective action is to be taken. A related problem is that the number of officially recorded incidents is so low that it is difficult to measure a long-term trend.

Evidence is clear that a worrisome increase in hate incidents concerning Jews has occurred in recent years. Some of the recorded data is as follows...

Oh, there's plenty of evidence, but keep reading.

High School Shooting Plot Foiled in Tuolumne County — 4 Boys in Custody (VIDEO)

Phew, good thing.

And sheesh, it's chilling.

At the Modesto Bee, "Tuolumne County sheriff offers details into arrest of four in Summerville High shooting plot":

SONORA - Deputies have arrested four male students after uncovering a shooting plot targeting Summerville High School, authorities said.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Tuolumne County Sheriff Jim Mele said the case came to him Wednesday when students noticed three suspects acting suspiciously and notified administrators. School staff on the Tuolumne campus immediately called the sheriff’s department.

During the investigation, detectives identified a fourth suspect. While serving two search warrants in the case, Mele said, authorities found “evidence verifying a plot to shoot staff and students at Summerville High School,” which the suspects later confessed to in statements to investigators. He said the plot was detailed, and included a list of victims, locations and methods for the attack.

“They were going to come on campus and shoot and kill as many people as possible on the campus,” Mele said. “It is particularly unsettling when our most precious assets —which are our students, their teachers — are targets for violence.”

Authorities said the plot was in the beginning stages and no students or adults were hurt. Mele said he wanted to emphasize that there is no current danger to students or staff at the high school and the department is confident they have all the suspects involved in custody.

“I believe, with all my heart, the reason we were able to stop this was because we have a level of trust within our community,” Mele said. “When you have a level of trust with the law enforcement, your education – we meet monthly, we meet constantly – you can do this.”

Detectives arrested all four students on charges of conspiracy to commit an assault with deadly weapons on Friday afternoon at their homes and turned them over to the Tuolumne County Probation Department. The suspects’ names were not released because they are juveniles. Mele also would not release their ages or grade levels. Mele said all of the suspects’ families have cooperated fully with the investigation.

Mele said the plan was uncovered when students overheard the suspects talking about it at school and alerted staff Wednesday afternoon. Evidence was later found included paperwork with statements and a list of potential victims including “several students and/or staff” who would be targets at an upcoming event on campus. Three of the students were taken out of school immediately on Wednesday and as the investigation continued the fourth was taken out of school on Friday morning.

No weapons were found, but Mele said the students were in the process of trying to obtain some to carry out the attack...

Keep reading.

California Capital Airshow 'After Dark' (VIDEO)

Hmm... It's a big weekend for air shows.

Watch, at KCRA News 3 Sacramento, "Planes set sky on fire during airshow."

Sean Naylor's New Book, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command

At Amazon, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command.

Since the attacks of September 11, one organization has been at the forefront of America's military response. Its efforts turned the tide against al-Qaida in Iraq, killed Bin Laden and Zarqawi, rescued Captain Phillips and captured Saddam Hussein. Its commander can direct cruise missile strikes from nuclear submarines and conduct special operations raids anywhere in the world.

Relentless Strike tells the inside story of Joint Special Operations Command, the secret military organization that during the past decade has revolutionized counterterrorism, seamlessly fusing intelligence and operational skills to conduct missions that hit the headlines, and those that have remained in the shadows-until now. Because JSOC includes the military's most storied special operations units-Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, the 75th Ranger Regiment-as well as America's most secret aviation and intelligence units, this is their story, too.

Relentless Strike reveals tension-drenched meetings in war rooms from the Pentagon to Iraq and special operations battles from the cabin of an MH-60 Black Hawk to the driver's seat of Delta Force's Pinzgauer vehicles as they approach their targets. Through exclusive interviews, reporter Sean Naylor uses his unique access to reveal how an organization designed in the 1980s for a very limited mission set transformed itself after 9/11 to become the military's premier weapon in the war against terrorism and how it continues to evolve today.

 Buy the book, at Amazon.

Rangers Win American League West; Angels Playoff Hopes Shattered (VIDEO)

Well, considering all the ups-and-downs of the Angels' season, I think the players can be proud. They have no quit in them, and yesterday's spectacular comeback win was one of the best ever.

Frankly, I'm surprised they stayed in contention right to the very last game of the season. There were a couple of times in the last month or so that I'd pretty much given up on them.

Better luck next year.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Rangers use seventh-inning outburst to eliminate Angels from playoffs."

Also at ESPN, "Rangers win AL West on final day; Angels' loss puts Astros in playoffs."

Plus, watch, at MLB, "10/4/15: Rangers clinch AL West behind Hamels' gem."