Right to Opine

A pair of thieves try to steal an orange grove owner’s SUV, which was parked in a barn on his property. When it appeared they were going to run him over he fired a handgun, killing the passenger. The CNN reporter displays apparent surprise that he won’t be charged with a crime. Fortunately for the victim (that would be the SUV owner for those who aren’t clear) Florida has strong Castle and “No Retreat” laws to protect him.

You have to love the gun-grabbing Brady Campaign’s spin on the incident:

The Brady Campaign to prevent Gun Violence says Florida is one of 16 states that have enacted “no retreat” laws, which some call “shoot-first” laws. The laws extend the right to use deadly force beyond a person’s home and into public places.

“The shoot-first law is not needed,” said Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign. “This person, regardless of the situation, may have done the right thing, but he cannot be prosecuted for doing something wrong if he hit an innocent bystander,” he said.

As is usual for this group, the statement is a deliberate lie and, as CNN so often does, the reporter let him get away with it.

First, “No Retreat” laws do not “extend the right to use deadly force beyond a person’s home and into public places.” Rather, they remove the requirement of retreat when a victim is in a place he has a legal right to be. The right to defend yourself in public existed prior to enactment of the “No Retreat” law, but previously you had to demonstrate that you had done everything in your power to flee the situation first. This gives a blatantly unfair advantage to criminals, who are often stronger and faster than their victims. Turning to flee gives the criminal time to close the distance with the victim and press the attack directly. Now victims can use that time, instead, to present a weapon for self defense. That change in law was most certainly needed. (Note that, in any case, this crime was perpetrated on the victim’s own property rather than in public.)

Second, Florida’s laws do not allow indiscriminate use of a handgun. In order to avoid prosecution, the victim must have reasonable belief that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. Further, Florida has nothing on the books which would prevent prosecution for shooting bystanders. Gun owners are responsible for every bullet they fire, regardless of intent. In this case the criminals had a deadly weapon (the SUV) and were approaching the victim—a classic case of failure in the victim selection process which resulted in a dead criminal.

This headline (from the NY Times, of course) is indicative of one significant problem in our left-dominated education system:

Test Results Show Persistent Racial Gap in School Achievement

The article goes on to explain that under No Child Left Behind, the test scores of minority children have increased since 2004, but so have the scores of white students. So NCLB is a failure because all of our kids’ scores are improving? We can’t have that, now, can we? We really must do something that improves minority scores without improving whites’.

And the left accuses us of being racist. You really have to be a liberal to understand that logic.

What should we do when the high school dropout rate is around 30% and many students aren’t meeting standards? Lower the standards, apparently. Failing grades appear to be somehow unfair and engender a culture of failure. Good Lord we’re raising a generation of namby pambies. As Michael Petrilli of Stanford University comments,

This is clearly about dumbing down expectations for our students. Some of these children are just a few years away from being in the workforce, in college or even in the military, and in none of those environment will they be coddled like they are in these programs.

Next time you’re in an elevator on the 50th floor or driving across a freeway bridge, ask yourself who you’d rather have designing that structure: the product of a “no fail” education system or an engineer who had to pass a rigorous exam with no regard for his self esteem? I’ll take the latter, thank you.

That may sound callous, but as we “celebrate” the ten-year anniversary of the murder of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine, make note that their deaths resulted in absolutely zero improvements in the safety of our children at school. Think about it for a moment then send a letter to your state representatives and school boards. What, exactly, have they done to make our kids safer?

I should note the single exception, at least as reported in the American media: Harrold Independent School District (Harrold, TX) has changed their policies to allow teachers who have a CCW and who have taken specialized courses to carry concealed weapons on campus. Sadly their lone example of clear thinking doesn’t appear to be contagious.

Make sure to hug/kiss your kids goodbye before school each morning. There are a couple dozen parents in Columbine who can’t enjoy that simple pleasure.

Sob stories like this should become more frequent if we handle illegals correctly. Julie Quiroz’s mother was deported to Mexico, having given birth to her in the U.S.

“It’s not right what they’re doing — separating families.”

Let’s correct the record:

1. “They” didn’t separate your family. You did. You were given the choice of going to Mexico and living with your mother and siblings or staying in the U.S. without them. No one forcibly separated you.
2. What’s “not right” is that your mother put you in this situation by entering our country illegally. Unfortunately for you, the illegal acts of one party often have consequences for others as well.

After a brutal attack which left a man dead and his wife in serious condition in a hospital, the residents of a northern Virginia suburb held a march to…well, I’m not sure about the purpose exactly.

“We’re taking our neighborhood back,” said Lansdowne resident Beverly Bradford, who sent out a notice to residents last week calling for the gathering.

How they intended to achieve that goal wasn’t entirely clear. Marching with candles and flashlights is nice, but it doesn’t do anything to make your area safer. The goblins who perpetrate these kinds of beatings don’t really care how many verses of Kumbaya you sing even if, as in this case, you throw in an original verse for good measure.

Arm yourself. Get some good training and a CCW permit. Works better than candles and choruses.

Maybe I misjudged the man. Consider his take on the AIG executive bonuses:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday said taxpayer bailout recipient AIG would be forced to pay the government to compensate taxpayers for $165 million in employee bonuses as a condition for receiving a further $30 billion in government funds.

Let’s do the math. AIG pays the government back $165 million. The government gives AIG $30 billion. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Folks, we’re really screwed when the bright people Obama puts in his cabinet come up with stuff like this. Hold on. It’s going to be a rough ride.

Over a 4 year period a hospital in the UK had around 400 unnecessary death due to horrendous emergency care. Per an inquiry into the outrage,

managers pursued targets at the detriment of patient care.

Targets, in this context, being financial targets set in order to keep costs down. This is what happens when medicine becomes more about cutting costs than treating patients. What else do you expect when the government runs the (increasingly expensive) show?

Gotta love the quotes from British politicians.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb, called for a “cultural change so that every part of this trust has open and transparent systems in place to ensure patient safety”.

and

Bill Cash, Conservative MP for Stone, said: “There have been systemic failures in the organisation and I have asked for resolute action to be taken.”

Mr. Lamb, that “cultural change” would be called the Hippocratic Oath. It makes the patient’s health a pretty darned high priority. There must be someone in the UK who’s heard of it.

Mr. Cash, how about this for “resolute action”: scrap socialized medicine. Otherwise you’ll just keep fighting this battle over and over again.

This is, of course, what you get when medical decisions are made by bureaucrats. Obama’s proposal for universal healthcare includes provisions for decisions regarding the availability and coverage for specific treatments. This will lead to denial of care and a reduction in the quality of healthcare we receive…just like we see in the UK.

For the last few weeks all we’ve heard from the President is that if we don’t pass his two gargantuan spending bills, our economy could decline to a point from which it would never recover. Now,

The president boldly declared that the national crisis is “not as bad as we think”

Uh, which is it? He pushed through a trillion dollars of largely wasteful and unnecessary spending because disaster was impending. If things aren’t really that bad, then what, exactly, was the motive for these massive bills? (Hint: many of us believe it begins with “S” and ends with “ocialism” which begins with your huge—no, massive—expansion of government.)

A disturbing number of teachers in the Washington, D.C., school district have been assaulted by students, including one who was held down on a desk and choked. Even a single such incident should be unacceptable, but administrators appear to be siding with the students, charging that the teachers are

distorting the situation to deflect attention from their own professional shortcomings.

…

Teachers who complain or eject too many students say they are tagged as weak in “classroom management” by administrators determined to keep a lid on behavior issues. Slade wrote in his guide to teachers that any instructor who refers students to his office every day “will risk placement on some type of improvement plan,” a probationary status such as the 90-day plan.

No mention is made of the consequences for students who are habitually disruptive. Teachers shouldn’t have to be child psychologists or trained juvenile behavior experts. So-called “classroom management” techniques are helpful in quashing chatter and minor misbehavior; they won’t help a teacher who’s having books thrown at them or being choked. Those acts are, legally, assault and should be prosecuted as such rather than swept under the rug.

Teachers wake up. The liberals you vote for are responsible for the conditions in which you work.