Second shooter story sounds as if the shooter was found at Anna's house. Made me laugh. :)

Best quote on the North Korea issue

The threat drew an angry response from the South's defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok, who said that the North would become "extinct from the Earth by the will of mankind" if it took such an action.

From the BBC website.

Second best quote... "US remains unconcerned"

Not sure why everyone here in the US thinks North Korea's threats are funny...we have a lot of troops in South Korea and the north DOES have the ability to cause some nuclear chaos on the peninsula.

The lion had apparently escaped before. I predict a lawsuit in 3... 2... 1...

@ 3, while that's true, they were directly threatening US soil. They have yet to show that they could deliver a nuke to Seoul, never mind North America.

Nukes - the part that goes "boom" is only half of it.

Also, not a word about Colorado's gun control measures passing? For shame, intern.

Has there even ever been a school shooting in South Dakota?

Will parents be informed which teachers are carrying?

Sweet jesus, when I think of some of the deeply unstable men and women who taught me as a child, I just feel for those kids.

North Korea's just so cute playing grown-up like that. Don't you just want to pinch its cheeks and give it a li'l pat on the head?

*sniffle* Seems like it was just yesterday that little Hugo was doing the same thing.

Ever see one of those "The Earth After Dark" pictures? Ever looked at North Korea on one of those pictures? If it weren't for those millions of oppressed and starving people, North Korea would be just hilarious.

But one of these days an armed teacher will avert a massacre. I wonder what the talking points will be then.

@14:
Dream on nutjob!

@5,

Don't forget Portland! Us hipster & homo jackasses are proud, founding members of the "quinted states of gommorica!" Or is it "gaymerica"?

I get so confused by your nuanced and intellectual rhetoric.

Chavez's penchant for hyperbolic drama frequently made him look clownish. Some of his policies were excellent, and some were terrible. He built a cult of personality around himself, which his successor is attempting to use toward his own ends. I hear his body is even being embalmed and then put on permanent display in Caracas.

Venezulea is a resource power, with a larger proven oil reserve than any other. Countries like this often collapse into failed states, with the exception of Norway and Scotland.

That said, Chavez ran for and won election thrice in what outside observers have described as free and fair elections. That makes him better than those world leaders who attended his funeral. I doubt we'll ever see Lukashenko stand for election in a fair contest.

Thus, I respect Chavez to some degree. Admiration would be too strong a word, since his attempt to get the legislature to appoint him President for Life left a rancid taste in my mouth. His bizarre and all too often clownish pronouncements made me think he was totally batshit on more than one occasion. And yet he did do much to ease the plight of the working poor in Venezuela. And he never did seize absolute power, which he could have done.

He was thus quite an ordinary man. neither good nor evil, neither an idiot nor a genius. He will be remembered as being painfully average

@17: Scotland's not a *failed* state, but it's not a non-failed state--really more of an petro-ATM for the UK with delusions of independence.

60 minute documentary about fuel cells and hydrogen:

http://youtu.be/76ujMtLr5Z8

@ 14,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FopyRHHlt…

@8,
I didn't even know there were schools in South Dakota

@15: Go ahead and say that, but haven't stranger things happened? That's what makes the news.

Re: Last news item
Unless you're a White House tour guide. Why the administration did this is baffling from so many angles. But I do trust that it was not instigated merely to enable the First Lady to meander throughout the Executive Mansion with diminished decorum with her bangs in curlers.

boy, i sure hope there's a school shooter in SD that gets stopped by an armed teacher so raindrop can be right!

@ 25, there are already plenty of REAL WORLD reports of armed guards and police being useless at schools. Whether it's accidental discharges (which bring the reality of a dead child closer to us than that of a dead killer), or one who failed to do anything on the scene at Columbine High School, armed guards and police patrols already have a long record of abject failure, and not one instance of preventing murder.

Hence, @ 22. Please, watch the video.

19,

I find the rhetoric of the SNP to be hilarious sometimes. Scotland has not suffered the way Ireland did prior to independence. They entered Union voluntarily. There was no engineered famine there. Scots seeking employment or housing in England were not compared to dogs.

That said, I do support the referendum. I wish they would become a Republic instead of staying in the Commonwealth, but I'll take what i can get.

Now, Scotland is and no matter which way that referendum goes, not a failed state. The state still has a monopoly on violence, corruption is lower than it is here in the US, and they have a low GINI coefficient. If you measure the country in terms of Civil Rights, they're better than average. This is not the DRC or anything even close to it.

Lets leave hyperbole aside. I support Scottish independence because they clearly want to be their own nation-state. It strikes me as unethical to detain anyone against their will.

@15
It has already happened. in 1997 at Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi Vice Principal Joel Myrick, retrieved his personal Colt 1911 .45 automatic and stopped a school shooting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_…

As usual the Media suppresses stories where a gun is used for defense, it is kinda of a case of "dog bites man." Not unlike how the recent Portland mall shooting was stopped when the suspect was confronted by an armed bystander.

@31: So that it doesn't nag you for the rest of the day, you can rest assured that I watched that video.

Off topic, but I miss the 'Friends of Slog/Enemies of Slog' list on the right margin. It was a good "resource".

@33: He got the gun out of his truck and accosted the disturbed young man outside of the school after two people were already dead and seven more wounded. He didn't have a gun inside the school or on his person.

@33 It reads more like the shooting was over-with when the shooter was apprehended by the principal

The school's assistant principal, Joel Myrick, retrieved a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol from his truck and, spotting him near the parking lot [running away, after the shootings], shouted for Woodham to stop. Woodham instead got into his mother's car and tried to escape. Myrick, a U.S. Army Reserve commander, detained Woodham until authorities arrived.

I'm not saying that there are NO examples of what you're talking about (since there are anecdotes of everything), but this does not appear to be one of those exemplary situations.

Awww, Jinks!

@36 & @37 having already made the intelligent-person interpretations of @33's hurr-durr-gunzeverywhurr "argument" for armed school personnel, I'll confine myself to the following points:

1) While Mr. Myrick, as an Army reservist, showed uncommon restraint in not blowing away the perpetrator of the assault but instead assisted his live capture for trial and conviction, it was Woodham's youth and inexperience that caused him to lose control of the getaway vehicle, bringing him to a stop conveniently close to Myrick.

2) Most normal people would view this story as an argument for highly controlled access to school campuses, which is standard practice in many jurisdictions now anyway.

3) I encourage the NRA to take up the banner of real reform for mental health care in this country—instead of calling for the branding and incarceration-without-trial of individuals exhibiting disturbed behavior in order to divert attention from gun-control legislation, support (i.e., put the power of your membership and lobbying budget behind) the mandatory provision of broad mental health care services in all employer- and government-provided health-insurance plans, including but not limited to outpatient psychiatric services and medications, along with revamping civil commitment procedures and resurrecting state psychiatric hospitals to include compassionate-care principles, heavy outside oversight, timely due process, and multiple re-integration pathways.

@25:
It's far more likely there will be more deaths in schools from a teacher getting careless.
Teachers are only human. They get tired and stressed and make mistakes.
I hate to imagine what would happen if a teacher's gun got into the hands of some of my classmates.

I was going to talk about the GMO labeling thing, but nobody in this thread is even worked up about it. Man, you guys are no fun. Well, here's my bit anyway.

It seems it would be easier to just label things that aren't genetically modified, which would basically be, what, primordial ooze? Do they even sell that any more?

"I am Chavez" doesn't have the ring of "I am Spartacus!"

Just sayin.

@18 Thanks for that. I'd take Chavez over Reagan or the Bushes on any day, and what Nixon and the CIA did to Chile on Sept 11, 1974, was absolutely criminal. Chavez told the imperial U.S. to shove it, and for that we made him into one of our boogie men.

Rob! @40, sadly, those ideas are way too complex for the herpy-derpy NRA members to understand, much less actually advocate.

Much easier for them to just keep repeating their 'Yay, guns is good!' drivel.

Things Hugo Chavez has blamed the U.S. for

Specific wars
Wars in general
The word 'War'
Star Wars
The word 'Raw' (just in case)
The coming of winter every year
Opal Fruits being renamed as Starburst
Blue cheese
The fact that girls see him as a kind of pseudo-military lawn ornament
The Audio Cryptic Crossword
Scratched DVDs
Taxes not being paid to him
S Club 7, but not S Club 7 Juniors of which he is a fan
Bonekickers, not the television show but people who kick bones in general
The Rose Bowl (the US has conceded that they are indeed responsible for this)
The Rose Bowl (Hampshire County Cricket Ground), and all related traffic problems
Harshing his mellow, man
Vanilla Ice
Jonny Wilkinson still being injured
The Book of Hosea
Italian Ice
The loss of feudalism in Sark
Reverend Wright
Music which you can't hum to
Dry Ice
Chad & Jeremy (which were actually the fault of Great Britain)
The changing of Burma's name to Myanmar
The guy who does OxyClean commercials that yells really loudly and looks like a caveman
Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
The sackings of Rome and Constantinople (455 and 1204 respectively)
His inability to beat level four of Resident Evil
His lack of a breakthrough Hollywood role
For stealing the bottom half of the circle of stars on the Venezuelan flag, for use on their own
That time, when he was eleven, and he stubbed his toe
Synchronised swimming
The collapse of the British Empire (he got that right at least)
The fact that his flag looks likes a sad face
The 1975 motion picture Mitchell staring Joe Don Baker
The pornographic nature of his Ugly Betty fanfiction
Princess Di
Princess Di's Death
Princess Di's Affairs
Diana and Charles' Divorce
Liverpool's poor start to the season
Justin Bieber
Volcanoes
Boob Quake
Crazy People
BNP
Child birthing
President Bush

47,

¿Por qué no te callas?

No wait! King Juan Carlos finally got his wish! Hugo has finally shut up at long last!