The Chicago Sun-Times says:

Aaron Swartz was “killed by the government,” his father, Robert Swartz said at a memorial service Tuesday morning for the 26-year-old tech genius who killed himself in the face of felony charges he’d stolen millions of files from MIT.

Swartz said his son was “hounded by the government, and MIT refused him.”

Everything about this story makes my heart hurt.

...but, um, yeah. Not sure how I feel about this case:

A pair of identical twins have died after seeking euthanasia when they discovered they were both going blind. The 45-year-old twins were born deaf and requested to die after being told they would never see each other again.... [In Belgium] the option to die is usually only available to patients suffering unbearable pain who can also make their wish to die expressly clear. The twins’ case was unique therefore, as neither was suffering extreme physical pain or was terminally ill. David Dufour, the doctor who presided over the euthanasia, told Belgium's RTL television news channel that the twins had taken the decision in "full conscience." He said they were "very happy" and it was a "relief" to see the end of their suffering.

Joel Connelly will have lots to say about this, I'm thinking. Discuss.

NBC:

The FBI has arrested a woman suspected of lying about her connection to a victim of the Newtown school shooting earlier this month to collect donations from charitable citizens looking for a way to contribute in the wake of the massacre.

A couple of kids even try to defend themselves with brooms...

I'm beginning to be believe that guns are not the problem; the NRA is the problem. Remember Fort Hood?

The Gun Nut Lobby (GNL) did a very good job at eviscerating the gun-check law. When US Army Major Nidal Hasan purchased a super powerful pistol for the purpose of killing several of his fellow soldiers, the law required a background check which was processed by one part of the FBI as per usual. That information … that there was a purchase of a deadly weapon … could not be made available in any other way, so the other part of the FBI, which was busy looking into Hasan as a possible security threat, was not allowed to know about it.

Gun Nuts: You owe the family members of those slain at Fort Hood an apology, and you should not expect them to accept it. Your misguided paranoid libertarian fears and your inappropriate political meddling have made real and effective gun control legislation impossible. That really has to stop, and perhaps the formation of a “Fort Hood commission” will help bring some sense to this issue.

Responding to the NRA's preposterous idea that we ought to appoint armed guards in all of our schools—a proposal so plainly reckless that anyone with a half a brain or a single vertabrae in her spine would have the sense to immediately laugh it out of the room—the Seattle School District sent this gutless statement earlier today:

Dear media: Many of you have asked us for a response to today’s recommendation from the National Rifle Association for armed security guards in every school. Our statement is below.

We are forming a joint working group with the Seattle Police Department to study all recommendations for improving our school safety, and this effort will begin early in 2013. Together, we will formulate sustainable plans for implementing improved safety measures across the District.

The security of our students and staff is our highest priority, and we look forward to working with our staff and community partners to implement improved safety measures across the District.

Who wrote that bullshit statement, Sally Clark? Jesus Craven Christ. Show some goddamn spine, you milquetoast Clarksonian Sally Clarks. Thank god that someone at the school district isn't a Sally Clark. Superintendent José Banda and School Board President Kay Smith-Blum released this statement:

Continue reading »

If you die today, then the Mayan calendar was correct. Why? Because to die is the end of the world. The world is ending all of the time. All it takes is just one death, and the whole world is gone, billions of people are gone, the whole universe is no more. Every death is an apocalypse.

If anyone needs a gigantic chocolate chip cookie with a frosting Santa Claus on it, the whole thing bordered with still more frosting and covered in sprinkles, they have that.

She is not one of their dead, the positive dead. Though killed by her son (in her sleep), in death she is with her son, the negative dead.

As this heartbroken town tries to process Friday’s horror, there is considerable anger toward Lanza’s mother. Her name is noticeably absent from many of the impromptu shrines, memorials and condolence notes placed around town.

“Why would a woman who had a son like this, who clearly had serious issues, keep assault rifles in the house and teach him how to shoot them?” she said. “To deal with that, there’s a feeling here that we’re just going to focus on the 26 innocent people who died at the school.”

This is how the US does it...

This morning, Sen. Jay Rockefeller introduced legislation in the Senate “to arrange for the National Academy of Sciences to study the impact of violent video games and violent programming on children.” It’s depressing to see lawmakers rushing after diversions in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, when the conversations we ought to be having should be about gun control and mental health treatment, among other structural factors. And it’s even worse when you consider that Rockefeller’s wholly redundant bill has hit the floor of Congress before any gun legislation was introduced.

People keep talking about this...

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them... So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion...

Borked.

Slate estimates that Adam Lanza fired 200 bullets in what amounts to no time...

According to police in Newtown, Conn., Adam Lanza blasted his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday with three semi-automatic weapons, numerous 30-round magazines, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He killed 20 children and six adults. But that isn’t the chilling number. The chilling number is how long it took him to inflict this carnage: just 10 minutes.

It's being reported by a number of sources that the mind of Nancy Lanza, the mother of the mass killer, was convinced that the world would end soon and that she and her son could survive (fend, hunt, collect wood) in the ruins of this civilization...

Last night it also emerged Nancy was a member of the Doomsday Preppers movement, which believes people should prepare for end of the world.
Her former sister-in-law Marsha said she had turned her home ‘into a fortress’. She added: ‘Nancy had a survivalist philosophy which is why she was stockpiling guns. She had them for defense.

‘She was stockpiling food. She grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. She was skilled with guns. We talked about preppers and preparing for the economy collapsing.’

He tweeted....

Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides.