The more I think about it, the less I feel that we can actually prevent things like this.

I personally know someone who (a friend's brother), at age 12, emptied several rounds into a sleeping homeless man and killed him. I knew that the kid would be in jail by age 15. Anyone who spent more than 10 minutes near him could see that he was a sociopath. He hurt animals. He hurt people. He found incredible joy in causing pain. I knew this, but as a 15 year old girl, my warnings fell on deaf ears.

When the shooting occurred, lots of people claimed that they had no idea this could happen, and he seemed like such a nice boy. Either these people were delusional, or he had never killed THEIR cats with his bare hands, or he was incredibly charming when he had to be - or maybe a combo of those factors.

In any case, a lot of people blamed the parents for having firearms, and I can attest that the shooting WOULD NOT have happened if there were no guns in the house. BUT, he would have eventually killed someone. Maybe in a Cho-style massacre. Maybe he would have been a serial killer.

The problem is that the signs are there, and you can't do a damn thing about them. Lots of people tried to intervene on Cho's behalf, but no one knew that the threat could be so horrible - at worst, they figured, he might kill himself. His parents even called the university with this fear.

My point is that there are two factors in most shooting deaths - the availability of fire arms and the mentality of the killer. I believe in gun control, I really do. But in this case, it would have made no difference. In the case of the 12-year old killer, it would have made no difference. The only thing that could have stopped these killings is locking the psychos up and throwing away the key.

And that's just somewhere that we can't go, as a society.

It's pretty disingenuous to a assume that because someone knows how to use a Glock, they must have served in a foreign military.

Citizen, non-citizen, American, Korean - the guy was psychotic. It has happened before, it will happen again, and racial and cultural background does not alter a disturbed mind. A Korean kid who is pressued too hard to excell in studies MAY become unbalanced, even commit suicide.

But it takes a special kind of crazy to brutally kill dozens of other people.

If I decide to give my hard-earned money to a candidate (and I'm pretty sure I've got my candidate for 2008 chosen - but damn you, Russ Feingold, for not running even though I respect your wishes and all that), I honestly don't care what they do with it.

If Edwards was my man, and my $400 went to a haircut, that's fine by me. If Obama were to spend my donation on sevearl cartons of cigarettes, fine. If Hillary needs to pay for expensive consultants, as long as they get the job done, that's A-OK.

I don't always contribute to political campaigns, but when I do, I either trust the cadidate fully, or just want them to win so badly that I don't CARE if they use the money to hire Uncle Gino to "take care of" their opponent.

Like all things satirical, The Onion can be a tad depressing at time. Yes, it's biting and funny and very smart. But sometimes I'll read something in there and thing "HA! Exactly!" and then pause and think, "Oh, shit. Exactly. Damn it."

I THINK that is where Clark-Foly is coming from here. She's not like that German dude with the abortion article.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/07/14/onion_blogger/print.html

What this told me was that the hospital was far more concerned with protecting itself from a potential lawsuit than in protecting my child's health.

Can you blame them? Seriously, I'm pretty sure that hospitals do not operate the way they do because scary male doctors want to take away women's sexy, oo-ahh, birthing power. Hospitals are responsible for the health of the mother and the baby, and the slightest problem these days results in outrageous lawsuits.

It's not really the hospitals and doctors that are cynical - it's people who just can't wait to sue for any problem related to their stay.

At least Falwell was honest about hating people. He didn't try to paint his Bible in a pretty light or take the text as anything less than literal. Much as I disagree with everything that that man every did, thought, believed, or said, he was never under the impression that the Bible was kind, gentle, loving, or accepting.

I'm not mourning him, either, but I'm not giving his ilk a pass on what I consider dishonest evangelical discourse. Even the "gay friendly" and "sex before marriage is OK" Christians are just ignoring parts of their canon.