Yesterday, some college and high school kids around Dallas decided to ‘honor’ the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings by protesting gun violence in schools.

“We at El Centro (College) say it’s time to do more to stop gun violence, especially in our schools,” said student president Ashley Holmes in a news release. “School is not a place for guns. We have campus police and Dallas police available for our protection,” she later said at the event.

(emphasis mine)

I, obviously, don’t mean to disparage the men in blue. They have a tough job and for the most part collectively, do their job pretty well.

But Ms. Holmes needs a lesson in Logistics 101.

Gerald Massengill, a retired Virginia State Police superintendent and chairman of the commission, said campus police took 3 minutes to respond to West Ambler Johnston dormitory after Cho killed a man and woman there around 7:15 a.m.

He said it took police 8 minutes to get to Norris Hall, where the shooting spree continued, break through chains that Cho put inside the doors and reach the second floor, where Cho killed 30 people around 9:45 a.m.

If you want to trust the police to protect you in the rare event somebody decides they’re just going to try and gun down as many sitting ducks as possible, more power to you Ms. Holmes.

Me?

I’d prefer the option of carrying in class or having another responsible gun owner in my class to either deter the act from occurring or limit the possible damage that could be done.

Just 15 minutes into the show she brought up Vick’s conviction on dogfighting charges.

“You know from his background this is not an unusual thing for where he comes from,” said Goldberg.

“There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of our country.”

Co-host Joy Behar seemed shocked at Goldberg’s statements.

“How about dog torture and dog murdering,” Behar asked.

“Unfortunately it’s part of the thing,” Goldberg replied.

“You’re a dog lover. For a lot of people dogs are sport,” she added.

Behar continued to shake her head in disgust.

Goldberg said it seemed to her that it took a while for Vick to realize that the charges against him were serious.

“It seemed like a light went off in his head when he realized that this was something the entire country really didn’t appreciated, didn’t like,” Goldberg said, referring to Vick’s guilty plea.

She said if the case had involved somebody from New York City her feelings would have been different.

Goldberg pointed out that Vick was raised in the South.

“This is part of his cultural upbringing,” said Goldberg.

Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck said she was encouraged by the NFL suspending Vick indefinitely.

But Goldberg continued to defend Vick saying “This is a kid who comes from a culture when this is not questioned.”

It was Goldberg’s first day moderating the talk show. She took over from Rosie O’Donnell who quit the show earlier this year after feuds with Donald Trump and Hasselbeck.

The “Darwin vs. Design” conference, co-sponsored by the SMU law school’s Christian Legal Society, will say that a designer with the power to shape the cosmos is the best explanation for aspects of life and the universe. The event is produced by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based organization that says it has scientific evidence for its claims.

The anthropology department at SMU begged to differ:

“These are conferences of and for believers and their sympathetic recruits,” said the letter sent to administrators by the department. “They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask.”

Similar letters were sent by the biology and geology departments.

The university is not going to cancel the event, interim provost Tom Tunks said Friday. The official response is a statement that the event to be held in McFarlin Auditorium April 13-14 is not endorsed by the school:

“Although SMU makes its facilities available as a community service, and in support of the free marketplace of ideas, providing facilities for those programs does not imply SMU’s endorsement of the presenters’ views,” the statement said.

Physics professor Randy Scalise regularly teaches a class that is called “The Scientific Method,” but is generally referred to as “debunking pseudoscience.” He’s told his students to attend the conference – but he said he’s preparing them with material to put it into a scientific context.

But he wishes the conference wasn’t happening.

“I think that by having them on campus, we are giving them legitimacy,” he said.

“Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry,” Kruger said in a telephone interview from Albany, the state capital.

“This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand.”

Tech-consuming New Yorkers trudge to work on sidewalks and subways like an army of drones, appearing to talk to themselves on wireless devices or swaying to seemingly silent tunes.

“I’m not trying to intrude on that,” Kruger said. “But what’s happening is when they’re tuning into their iPod or Blackberry or cell phone or video game, they’re walking into speeding buses and moving automobiles. It’s becoming a nationwide problem.”

Now I’m still relatively young so I can’t pinpoint the day that Walkmans were all the rage. But was there a similar push to ban the usage of Walkmans while crossing the street because of a similar endemic?

Look, some people just don’t have much common sense. Taking away their iPod isn’t going to solve that problem.

State Prosecutor David Smith said he wondered why Julie Amero didn’t just pull the plug on her classroom computer.

The six-person jury Friday may have been wondering the same thing when they convicted Amero, 40, of Windham of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child. It took them less than two hours to decide the verdict. She faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School, Amero claimed she could not control the graphic images appearing in an endless cycle on her computer.

“The pop-ups never went away,” Amero testified. “They were continuous.”

The Web sites, which police proved were accessed while Amero was in the classroom, were seen by as many as 10 minor students. Several of the students testified during the three-day trial in Norwich Superior Court to seeing images of naked men and women.

Computer expert W. Herbert Horner, testifying in Amero’s defense, said he found spyware on the computer and an innocent hair styling Web site “that led to this pornographic loop that was out of control.”

“If you try to get out of it, you’re trapped,” Horner said.

But Smith countered Horner’s testimony with that of Norwich Police Detective Mark Lounsbury, a computer crimes investigator. On a projected image of the list of Web sites visited while Amero was working, Lounsbury pointed out several highlighted links.

“You have to physically click on it to get to those sites,” Smith said. “I think the evidence is overwhelming that she did intend to access those Web sites.”

Among the sites Amero visited were meetlovers.com and femalesexual.com, along with others with more graphic names.

Here’s the lead paragraph from the actual story.

(AP) BOSTON Massachusetts is considering following New York City’s lead and banning restaurants from serving artery-clogging artificial trans fats—a move some lovers of greasy food are giving a thumbs-down.

Now here’s Bruce with a ‘what if’.

(AP) BOSTON Massachusetts could become the first state to ban the HIV-spreading behavior of anal intercourse if a bill to be filed today wins legislative support.

Read the whole post.

As the Red Raiders were walking toward the bench for a time out, Knight stopped sophomore Michael Prince after a couple of bad plays by the Tech forward.

Prince’s head was down and while Knight was talking, the head coach pushed Prince’s chin up and said, “Look at me.”

Prince says it was no big deal. His mother says it’s no big deal.

But like the father of one of Bob Knight’s closest friends in the sports world, Bill Parcells, was wont to say, “It may not be your fault, Knight. But you’re always there.”

And I don’t buy the lousy defense that Fran Fraschilla threw up yesterday.

“I feel if this was anybody else—and I said this on the air—than it wouldn’t be a big deal,” Fraschilla said. “I don’t think it’s fair to Coach Knight for all the attention that it’s getting.”

Well, Fran. There’s really no way to know that because no other coach has ever done the things Knight has done. You know, like kick and choke players, throw chairs across the court, and pound his fist on the scorer’s table.

I can wager, though, that if another coach in any sport grabbed one of his players’ by the chin while lecturing them, they’d be simlarily admonished in the court of public opinion. And rightfully so.

Cross posted from Grapevine’s Sports Ramblings

Who better to turn to than one of the architects of the 1994 Republican Revolution, Dick Armey, who wasted no time in pointing the finger of blame in the direction of fiscal irresponsibility.

Eventually, the policy innovators and the “Spirit of ‘94” were largely replaced by political bureaucrats driven by a narrow vision. Their question became: How do we hold onto political power? The aberrant behavior and scandals that ended up defining the Republican majority in 2006 were a direct consequence of this shift in choice criteria from policy to political power.

Nowhere was this turn more evident than in the complete collapse of fiscal discipline in the budgeting process. For most Republican candidates, fiscal responsibility is our political bread and butter. No matter how voters view other, more divisive issues from abortion to stem-cell research, Republicans have traditionally enjoyed a clear advantage with a majority of Americans on basic pocketbook issues. “We will spend your money carefully and we will keep your taxes low.” That was our commitment. This year, no incumbent Republican (even those who fought for restraint) could credibly make that claim. The national vision—less government and lower taxes—was replaced with what Jack Abramoff infamously called his “favor factory.” One Republican leader actually defended a questionable appropriation of taxpayer dollars, saying it was a reasonable price to pay for holding a Republican seat. What was most remarkable was not even the admission itself, but that it was acknowledged so openly. Wasn’t that the attitude we were fighting against in 1994?

(emphasis mine)

As Rob is wont to say, read the whole thing.

Especially if you’re a Republican who was just booted out of the House or Senate, will be up for re-election in 2008, or is thinking of running for Congress in 2008.

For the most part, Conservatives may differ on social issues such as gay marriage and stem-cell research. The one issue that unites us all is the concept of limited government and fiscal responsibility.

It’s also the primary issue that caused moderate to conservative voters to leave the party this year. Go back to those concepts, and you have another chance in two years.