Last Days: The Week in Review

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 This week began in the exact same manner as last week: with an armed toddler seriously wounding a family member. Details come from the Associated Press, which tracks the scene to the town of Lorain, Ohio, where yesterday two children—a 4-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister—were reportedly playing alone in a bedroom. According to police, the boy found a loaded .40-caliber handgun in a dresser, and soon after shot his sister in the head. “A police report says the father of the 3-year-old girl was holding her in his arms when officers arrived,” writes the AP. “The report says the 4-year-old boy was crying and that he repeatedly told an officer he was sorry.” The tragic case will now be taken up by the Lorain County prosecutor’s office, which will determine if criminal charges are warranted.

>>Meanwhile in New Jersey, a man was gravely wounded in a manner even stupider than being shot by a toddler. The setting: Jersey City, where this morning the aforementioned man was delivering sheet rock to a construction site. Simultaneously, 50 feet above him, a tape measure broke free of a worker’s belt and gravity took over. “Carly Baldwin, a spokeswoman for the city’s public safety department, says the 1-pound tape measure…struck construction equipment about 10 to 15 feet from the ground,” reports the AP. “It then ricocheted and struck the man, who wasn’t wearing a hard hat. The man was taken to a hospital, where he died.” Condolences to all.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 Speaking of terrible news, the week continued with 2014 midterm elections, in which Republicans won big all over, gaining control of the Senate for the first time in eight years, securing its biggest majority of the House since World War II, and sweeping even the fringiest GOP candidates into office. (Scariest examples: Gary Glenn, who won a seat in the Michigan state legislature after holding forth on his belief that homosexuality should be recriminalized as “a proven threat to public health and safety,” and Gordon Klingenschmitt, who won a seat in the Colorado state legislature despite expressing his belief that only those going to Heaven deserve equal protection under the law and declaring that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should never have been repealed since gay soldiers are constantly “taking breaks on the combat field to change diapers all because their treacherous sin causes them to lose control of their bowels.”) In better news, voters in Washington, DC, Alaska, and Oregon legalized recreational use of marijuana; voters in Colorado and North Dakota rejected “personhood” measures aiming at expanding rights for the unborn by restricting rights of grown women; voters in Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved raising the minimum wage; and voters in Washington State approved a measure mandating background checks on gun sales and gun shows while voting down a measure preventing the expansion of such background checks. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that Republicans now control both houses of congress and all decent citizens should brace themselves for some seriously upsetting legislative battles.

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