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Giffords: Part Two
“It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the capacity for moral self-reflection.” – Steve Almond I was a junior in high school when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed with guns and ammunition they should have never been able to possess, walked into Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, murdered 12 students and a teacher, and injured 24 others, before they turned their guns on themselves. In the aftermath of Columbine, America’s punditocracy seemed to obsess over the notion that our culture was culpable: Harris and Klebold listened to Marilyn Manson. They played violent video games. They…
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Giffords
Like most Americans, I was shocked and shaken by the tragedy that occurred yesterday in Tucson. It is, of course, far too early to know what, exactly, motivated this young man to carry out such an attack. As we’ve learned over the last 24 hours, he left a trail of online rants, including a few bizarre YouTube videos concerning currency and the gold-standard and his frustration with people, specifically people in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, who couldn’t speak English properly. It seems clear that the man wasn’t involved in the Tea Party movement, and it’s also clear that he’s not…
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Fire!
It’d be better if this story read as follows: Today in Oakdale, Louisiana, ten people, eight of whom were volunteer firefighters, were arrested for arson after creating a series of training exercises, some of which involved the immolation of structures. The Oakdale Fire Department currently employs only four full-time employees and relies on a voluntary force during emergencies. Most of the ten arrested for arson were under the age of twenty, and according to authorities, all but two of them were considered to be volunteer firefighters and members of the Oakdale Fire Department. “The Town of Oakdale allowed nearly a…
CenLamar | Est. 2006
