Last month, there was a brief internet infatuation with James Robertson, a resident of the Democrat Stronghold of Detroit, Michigan. People were inspired by his 20 mile daily commute… on foot… to his factory job, and were so moved that they raised over $3oo,000 for him on GoFundMe, and a local Ford dealership presented him with a new car. And this was all done voluntary, without any bureaucratic coercion from the Federal Government, because people wanted to show support for someone who demonstrated good values and a good work ethic.

But after his story went viral, the parasites who make up the city that has been run (into the ground) by progressive left Democrats for fifty years decided that Robertson should… gee, how to say it… “Spread the wealth around.”

After that, everybody knew him. And everybody wanted something. The neighborhood started showing up on his porch with their palms out, though Robertson has yet to receive any of the money. His girlfriend — the one who owns the house and charges him 200 bucks for the bedroom — demanded a payout, he said. So did her ex-husband who lives with them. So did her adult son who lives with them. So did the other dude who lives with them.

Safe bet that none of those people would ever walk 20 miles a day to get to a job. The upshot is, Robertson had to move to a secret location, under police protection, because in Detroit, if people think you have some money, they will kill you to get to it.

I just wonder where they got the idea that just taking stuff from people who are better off than you was fair and just.

Well, one is a hate group that disrupts the lives of innocent people with obnoxious public tantrums and the other is… um… which is which?

Hmmmm….

Hey, what’s more annoying than protesters blocking traffic? Protesters interrupting your meal. Anti-cop protesters embarked on a mission today to ruin brunch for people in New York City.

Social Justice, Inc,. presents the 2015 White Guilt calendar.

EJI is proud to announce the release of our 2015 calendar, A History of Racial Injustice. This full-color wall calendar expands on EJI’s previous calendars with new historical entries and short essays highlighting historical events and issues in our nation’s racial history.

The 2015 calendar is part of a series of reports and educational materials that explore (America’s) legacy of … slavery, racial terror, and legally supported abuse of racial minorities.

Then again, this calendar may not be for you guys, because some elements of the Racial Justice Movement have decided that Gays are the Oppresor.

We can no longer sit idly by as you, mainstream LGBT organizations, center your movements and advocacy work on some within our varied communities but not others. We are no longer OK with the mainstream LGBT organizations among you who signal your complicity in anti-Black violence through your loud silence and deliberate ignoring of the types of systemic, institutionalized forms of anti-Black racism that negatively impact Black queer and trans people (and all Black people), disallow Black well-being, and deaden us.

Imagine the dillema now faced by Chris Lemon, Michael Sam, and RuPaul.

This Washington Post article is everywhere today, and with good reason. I just want to catch up anyone who may have missed it.

It appears that the fakery we’ve been discussing in the Rolling Stone / U-Va rape case is worse than we thought, and may have come from both “Jackie” (the alleged rape victim) and Sabrina Rubin Erdely (the Rolling Stone writer who turns out to be a past writing associate of the infamous fabulist, Stephen Glass).

First, a bit about Jackie’s seeming fakery. Going by the WaPo article, it’s possible that she invented her admirer “Drew”, whom Rolling Stone identified as her rapist:

Jackie told her three friends that she accepted the upperclassman’s invitation for a dinner date on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012.

Curious about Jackie’s date, the friends said that they tried to find the student on a U-Va. database and social media but couldn’t. Andy, Cindy and Randall all said they never met the student in person. Before Jackie’s date, the friends became suspicious that perhaps they hadn’t really been in contact with the chemistry student [via text messages to "his" number which Jackie had given the friends] at all, they said.

U-Va. officials told The Post that no student with the name Jackie provided to her friends as her date and attacker in 2012 had ever enrolled at the university.

Randall provided The Post with pictures that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in 2012. The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.”

The man said he was never a U-Va. student and is not a member of any fraternity. Additionally, he said that he had not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was in another state participating in an athletic event during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.

“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.

The WaPo article covers much other ground, including tidbits such as Erdely having painted Jackie’s friends as callous and as having refused Erdely’s interview requests, while the friends say that they had always encouraged Jackie to report her rape story to the police and that Erdely never made the slightest effort to interview any of them.

It looks as though 2 troubled women, acting somewhat separately (or deceiving each other), managed between them to cook up a fraternity-blaming hoax that liberals rushed to believe because it fit liberals’ prejudices. Or as V says, because it fit The Narrative that liberals are out to push. Get this:

U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan…wants the university community to focus on prevention of sexual assault.

That may be good, but perhaps Sullivan should have the U-Va. community also focus on *prevention of hoaxes and/or witch hunts* that only punish scads of innocent U-Va. students.

UPDATE: A link to Erdely putting down Stephen Glass. Your daily dose of irony.

Was it “Fake but accurate”? Or just fake? You decide. Rolling Stone’s apology, via Ace:

To Our Readers:

Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university’s failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school’s troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone’s editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie’s account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor

Emphasis added. Once again, let’s underscore that Rolling Stone originally published their inflammatory story with zero attempt to check with the accused men. The accused fraternity is preparing to defend itself. Meanwhile, the media give minimal scrutiny to actual rapists – if they’re Democrats.

From the comments: Left-wing feminists go full-meltdown over losing The Narrative. SooperMexican has many examples of jaw-dropping Twitter illogic from Sally Kohn, Amanda Marcotte and others.

I simply must comment on one of the examples. Amanda Marcotte said “What I don’t get is if rape apologists are so sure rapes are hoaxes, why oppose investigating them and getting out that fact?” That’s mind-blowing revisionism, Amanda. The skeptics’ point was that we SHOULD investigate the UVa rape charges, thoroughly. Left-wing feminists had abandoned the duty to investigate.

One more: Melissa McEwan tweeted “I can’t state this more emphatically: If Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue, it doesn’t validate the reasons for disbelieving her.” Melissa, I can’t state this more emphatically: Your tweet is psychotic. The reason one would believe or disbelieve Jackie is PRECISELY IF her story happens to be true or untrue. So, the reasons for disbelieving Jackie are BY DEFINITION validated, if it turns out that Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue.

Update: In today’s world of smug fake-apologies, let’s give credit when we see a genuine apology. Anna Merlan wrote, “when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave’s doubts about the story and called them ‘idiots’ for picking apart Jackie’s account, I was dead f*cking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize.” Kudos!

Not to participate in the latest media frenzy after just criticizing such frenzies, but Garner’s story is tragically interesting. Because of that video. (Trigger warning: not for the faint of heart; shows a man dying.)

Here’s what I think:

• I don’t know enough of the background to second-guess the NYPD officer who chose to take Garner down.
• Having said that, apparently, the chokehold was a violation of the NYPD’s own procedure manual.
• And the NYPD does appear negligent in just standing there while Garner was dying. (Rather than trying to revive him. Remember, Garner was cuffed by then.)

Your thoughts?

UPDATES:

• Via Althouse, An NYPD Officer Opens Up About What Went Wrong in the Eric Garner Case.
• Hint: It wasn’t race. Garner’s arrest was overseen by a female black sergeant in the NYPD.
• Good commentary from Robert Tracinski. He says, “The contradiction of the left is that they want to inject government into every little aspect of our lives and mandate that the police confront us all the time over everything—and then they scream when some of those confrontations go wrong.” And much more about policing and the use of force, that is sensible.

This article at Breitbart is spot on about how America and Europe are essentially countries under Amazonian occupation; feminists dominate the institutions of law, academia, and Government and are using their positions of power to degrade and ultimately destroy masculinity.

Marriage is dead. Divorce means you’re screwed for life. Women have given up on monogamy, which makes them uninteresting to us for any serious relationship or raising a family. That’s just the way it is. Even if we take the risk, chances are the kids won’t be ours. In France, we even have to pay for the kids a wife has through adulterous affairs.

Social commentators, journalists, academics, scientists and young men themselves have all spotted the trend: among men of about 15 to 30 years old, ever-increasing numbers are checking out of society altogether, giving up on women, sex and relationships and retreating into pornography, sexual fetishes, chemical addictions, video games and, in some cases, boorish lad culture, all of which insulate them from a hostile, debilitating social environment created, some argue, by the modern feminist movement.

In schools today across Britain and America, boys are relentlessly pathologised, as academics were warning as long ago as 2001. Boyishness and boisterousness have come to be seen as “problematic,” with girls’ behaviour a gold standard against which these defective boys are measured. … Boys are falling behind girls academically, perhaps because relentless and well-funded focus has been placed on girls’ achievement in the past few decades and little to none on the boys who are now achieving lower grades, fewer honors, fewer degrees and less marketable information economy skills. Boys’ literacy, in particular, is in crisis throughout the West. We’ve been obsessing so much over girls, we haven’t noticed that boys have slipped into serious academic trouble.

But why are we, as men, letting this happen? Why is there a phenomenon of men withdrawing into videogames and pornography instead of fighting back?

I’ve never played it or heard of it, until I just caught this on Breitbart (via Bruce’s Twitter stream).

I’m Gay and ‘Ass Hunters’ is One of the Funniest Games I’ve Ever Played
by Milo Yiannopoulos

The outrage bell is tolling this week over Ass Hunters, a game in which you play a safari hunter who shoots homosexuals with a shotgun, trying to avoid getting molested by them…The game is as hilariously silly as it sounds.

…the moral police on both sides of the political fence are up in arms…[including] the left, of course, which is screaming blue bloody murder about the supposed homophobic incitements to violence and hatred…

That’s why Google was yesterday forced to remove a mobile version of the game, which has been floating around on the web for years, from its Play Store. All of which leaves me a bit mystified as to what possible harm this ridiculously daft, cartoonish nonsense could possibly to do society.

…both camps have completely missed the joke…It’s actually a very funny satire…

Read the whole thing.

According to the New Feminism, women are delicate and fragile creatures, so ruled by their emotions that the slightest offense will cause them to crumple and wither like a cut flower, if we are to believe such feminists as Rose Eveleth and Janet Stemwedel.

In support of this hypothesis, let us consider recent occasions in which feminists have made the case that the delicate sensibilities of women must be protected from anything that might give them the vapors.

• Women who might have considered a career in science will instead relegate themselves to jobs as schoolmarms and telephone operators because the sight of a man in an aloha with cartoon women on it will send them to the fainting couches.
• Suggesting that the word ‘Feminist’ be stricken from the language gives women a sad and those who suggested it must be made to grovel and apologize for shocking the delicate sensibilities of the womenfolk.
• Women’s emotions can be so upset by innocuous messages on Twitter that they will demand that constables descend and apprehend the miscreant and that the Twitter service appoint the Feminist equivalent of the Saudi Arabian Morality Police to monitor the content of tweets so that women don’t risk being upset by rancorous argument.
• If video games designed by women are criticized in any way, women will quit participating in the video game industry and probably become nuns.
• Women can also apparently be frightened by cartoon logos depicting aggressive dogs, which make them feel unsafe.

One must conclude that if the feminists are correct, then women are simply too emotionally fragile to participate in most aspects of modern life, and perhaps should stay home with the doors locked and the curtains drawn and let the menfolk handle the heavy stuff.

The landing of the Philae probe on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko was the scientific achievement of the century (though it may have escaped the notice of the LIV’s who were too busy swooning over Kim Kardashian’s butt).

But, if you’re a bitter horrible feminist SJW like The Atlantic’s Rose Eveleth, it’s just an opportunity to throw a tantrum because one of the scientists involved sent her to the fainting couch by wearing a Hawaiian shirt with purty girls on it.

Trigger Warning: Feminists, read no further. What’s after the jump might give you the vapors.
(more…)

Part of what is bad about leftists is that they characteristically offer terrible solutions – the worst possible solutions – to real problems. In doing so, they muddy-up issues, misguide people and actually prevent genuine solutions.

I could talk about gun control – where the leftie “solution” to crimes committed by armed law-breakers is restrictions that effectively disarm the law-abiding victims. (Thus empowering law-breakers.) But another example would be rape.

Like all serious crimes against life, limb, liberty or property: Rape is a real problem. In answer (and as this blog has recently discussed), feminists propose to violate the rights of everyone by abandoning standards of evidence, and to turn normal (consenting) sexual relations into absurd displays of feminist rules.

With lefties, because of the sad-but-simple fact that crimes can’t always be prevented and criminals can’t always be punished, the rest of us are to be punished. Even though we’re not criminals and we stand with the victims. It makes no sense, and usually worsens the problem.

What would be some better answers? Like I said, it is sad that crime can’t always be prevented or punished. Still, the answer is to keep making reasonable efforts at both.

Let people, especially women, carry guns or other means of self-defense – knowing well how to use them. Also, let young women be well-educated on the M.O. of date-rapists (especially the M.O. of powerful older men named “Bill” who want to give them private audiences).

When someone is raped: Let the criminal justice system work; let us all fight to maintain its integrity. Let the victim go to the police as soon as possible. However that goes, let her tell her story often (regardless of whether, or when, others may believe her).

By the way, take a look at the above links on Bill Cosby; they’re pretty chilling. Share with your friends and daughters; not to scare them, but to help them recognize how a “friendly” predator may operate.

From Concordia University (in Montreal) – Politically Correct lefties show how it’s done! Video here.

WARNING: Although it probably rates as only PG-13, it’s one of those things you won’t be able to “un-see”. Words can’t convey the full, un-sexy, un-romantic inanity of these indoctrinated “Affirmative Consent” robots.

Via Daily Caller. DC adds:

Yet in the course of the video, both lovers ask one another whether certain kisses and touches are acceptable only after they have already begun, a clear violation of the need for prior explicit consent.

Heh.

Nick adds: Not sure if it’s because I’m gay in the first place, but… Whoa, I am so flaccid now, dude.

It seems as though more and more news items lately have a common element: After decades of steadily attacking, hollowing out or abandoning its own culture, the Western world is showing major signs of social, political and moral decay.

Personally, I am no traditionalist. I think all traditions should be examined in the light of logic and justice – and revised or replaced, where they’re found lacking. This is one reason why I have never called myself a conservative (and have tried not to become GP’s “main blogger”).

But my intention, as a non-traditionalist, is to ‘keep things real’ and build on what’s best in the Western tradition: which is what Jonah Goldberg has called the Lockean Revolution, the idea that the individual owns herself – and is not owned by the Massa, feudal Lord, Village, Community, Tribe, Race, Party, State or Ummah. The leftists who have attacked the West from within, for decades now, have been after the exact opposite idea.

A civilization/culture doesn’t survive unless its young women and men will mostly (regardless of particular individuals’ sexual orientation or practices) do the following together: (a) get along; (b) find a genuine sense of purpose and meaning in that culture/civilization; and therefore (c) actually create and raise new generations for it. We are seeing more and more signs that the West is decrepit, on all three counts.

I could talk about the West’s declining birthrates, or its anti-child and self-terminating “environmentalism”, or its ever-growing political insanity. But, just to restrict it to current events, GayPatriot’s main page presently notices such news items as:

• Prominent public figures displaying little or no concept of personal responsibility.
• Little girls who have been programmed to screech anger and contempt at the rest of society.
• A president leading a government that can’t rationally address the threat of a major epidemic.
• Paid public journalists who can’t think rationally about said leader/government.
• The State ordering individuals to violate their own conscience.

And we can add more items:

• Westerners converting to Islam, then carrying out jihad against their own societies. When a culture’s intelligentsia do everything they can for decades to attack/destroy their own culture’s major religion, you don’t get a wonderful era of progressive enlightenment. No, no, no. You get the culture’s “average people” turning to a different religion, probably a hostile one.
• Especially, you begin to get the culture’s teenage girls doing it.

I recommend that last link, Lee Smith’s opinion piece titled “Why the Teenage Girls of Europe are Joining ISIS”, for your attention. When a given civilization can no longer persuade its own teenage girls to sign on with it: it’s cooked.

Apple, Facebook will pay for female employees to freeze their eggs:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc and Facebook Inc will help pay for female employees to freeze their eggs…

From January, Apple will pay both full- and part-time employees up to $20,000 for procedure and storage costs for female employees to freeze their eggs.

“We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cryopreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatments,” Apple said in a statement.

I’m pretty sure that Apple already covered its employees’ *medical fertility problems*. (If that’s mistaken, please correct me in the comments.) Something else must be new here. What is it?

Could it be, a benefit for egg-freezing as a pure career move? Let’s see:

“We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Facebook recently began covering egg-freezing for non-medical reasons…

Egg freezing is a pricey but increasingly popular option for women. It enables women to delay child bearing…

A sign of the times. Now that Facebook/Apple woman can freeze her eggs at 30, work years of 80 hour weeks, and then at 50 when she’s pulling 300K a year (and naturally infertile), pay a surrogate to do that other part of her life for her – you know, having kids from her eggs.

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with it – if she’s doing it all with her own money. The issue I see here is, Apple and Facebook are choosing to engage in a form of discrimination against their employees who don’t make (or shall we say, don’t need to make) that particular, optional choice.

Remember, the money comes from somewhere: the overall “employee comp” budget. Rather than pay tens of thousands of dollars for a hugely *optional* procedure for a special category of employee, why would Facebook/Apple not raise all employees’ bonuses by (say) a thousand dollars? That would empower far more women (and men, and transgenders) and be much more fair.

The free market will (or should) ultimately decide if Apple and Facebook have done the right thing here. In the meantime, some people appear not to grasp that freezing your eggs – purely as a career move – is optional:

“Egg freezing gives women more control,” said Jennifer Tye, marketing lead for Glow, a mobile application aimed at helping women avoid pregnancy or conceive.

“When I turned 30, I had this notion that my biological clock was ticking, but I didn’t know what my options were,” said Tye.

Really? At 30, she didn’t know what her options were? I hope she was misquoted; if not, it’s mind-boggling stupidity.

Ted Cruz will reportedly introduce a (beautiful and doomed) amendment to the Constitution that would empower the states to define marriage on their own terms, as has been the historical norm.

“Marriage is a question for the States. That is why I have introduced legislation, S. 2024, to protect the authority of state legislatures to define marriage. And that is why, when Congress returns to session, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws.

Limiting the power of the judicial oligarchy is a very good idea. If anything, there should be more amendments like this to tell the courts that not only marriage, but also abortion, tax policy, environmental policy, education policy, immigration policy, and a range of other issues are not their business. The courts should be limited to ensuring that the laws passed by the people’s elected representatives or the people themselves are followed. The social justice activism of the courts out to be clipped in a lot of areas.

Unfortunately, this amendment is about five or ten years too late. And instead of being viewed in its proper role as a restraining order on a dangerously out of control judiciary, it will be demagogued as “anti-gay” or whatever. The left is manipulative and dishonest, and their voters are emotional and ill-informed.

This combination of manipulation and emotionalism has already decided that a piece of paper stamped by bureaucrat that “legitimizes” a relationship is more important than liberty.

We here at GayPatriot care deeply about justice. In contrast to the political Left, we happen to care about real justice; rather than posturing and claims of “social justice” that are usually unjust and illegitimate. We know that 90-95% of the time, when the political Left is shrieking about “social justice”, it’s exaggeration – or often baloney.

Accordingly, we tend to favor law and order. But the law-enforcement system must be subject to constitutional limits. And it’s made of human beings like anything else, beings who can make mistakes or go wrong. There are times when law enforcement should be criticized, if not condemned, for doing something horribly unjust.

Kajieme Powell’s death is one of those times. If you haven’t seen this video already, WARNING – it’s tragic and not for the faint of heart:

(Via Zero Hedge; edited video is also at HotAir.)

At the risk of being obvious, I’d like to state what was so unjust in the police killing of Powell. First and obviously, it was out of proportion to anything Powell did. He allegedly stole food items from a convenience store. And he reportedly waved a knife while resisting police arrest. And for those bad things, he should have been knocked to the ground (to get the knife away from him), or tased, or (at the very most) shot in the leg. Not riddled with a stream of bullets.

Second – and perhaps less obviously; some Democrats may need to have this spelled out for them – it was far out of proportion to what others have done. Others like, for example, DEMOCRAT Jon Corzine who, to this day, still has not been charged for stealing on a scale so vast that poor Kajieme Powell couldn’t begin to dream of it.

An America where Powell is riddled with bullets over a few food items while DEMOCRAT Jon Corzine never faces charges, is not a place of justice.

This is what our society has come to. And I don’t think it’s about race per se, as much as it is about political status & connections. Remember, Corzine’s key political connection was President Barack Obama. Powell probably had no connections.

P.S. I apologize for my tardiness in getting to the Powell matter. Without going into detailed excuses, let’s just say that (1) writing posts is time-consuming work, the way I go about it; (2) I had a busy summer; and so (3) I simply wasn’t writing in August when this happened, and I’m only now getting caught up.

Woman shoots ex-boyfriend during home invasion:

A man was shot in the chest early Friday morning after trying to break into the home of a former girlfriend, according to police…

…she called officers regarding a former boyfriend kicking her door. Police said the woman fired two shots at the man once he made entry into the unit, hitting him once in the chest. The man fled…

The [home invasion] victim sent FOX5 a series of screenshots she said detailed numerous texts and online messages from [the home invader]. She wrote in a blog that a stalker forced her to move, obtain a restraining order and acquire a license to carry a concealed weapon…she had been sleeping with a chair in front of her door to keep her stalker out.

Via HotAir. (Note: The term “ex-boyfriend” may be an overstatement; other information suggests he was a plain stalker.)

Somebody went on a Smart car tipping spree in San Francisco, in the last couple of days:

Motive is unclear. Some are trying to make it into a social-conflict story, but this fun-looking example from 2011 looks to me like young guys doing it “because they can”.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll cites it as an example of the Luddite Left. Sorry, Ed. I know that the Luddite Left is real, but let’s not over-interpret. Smart cars are surely too lame to have inspired any serious Luddism.

From Kelly Riddell at the Washington Times:

With a cadre of like-minded, wealthy donors, Mr. Soros is dominating the pro-legalization side of the marijuana debate by funding grass-roots initiatives that begin in New York City and end up affecting local politics elsewhere.

Wait a minute, “grass-roots”? I get the pun, but when a billionaire secretly bankrolls groups to push his agenda, isn’t the proper term “astro-turfing”? Anyway:

Through a network of nonprofit groups, Mr. Soros has spent at least $80 million on the legalization effort since 1994…

His spending has been supplemented by [recently-deceased billionaire] Peter B. Lewis…an unabashed pot smoker who channeled more than $40 million…

What is it, with the Democrats/Left giving a pass to all their manipulative billionaires?

Mr. Soros’ Open Society Foundations have annual assets of more than $3.5 billion, a pool from which he can dole out grants to pet projects, according to 2011 tax returns, the most recent on file for his charitable organizations.

David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who often are cited for their conservative influence, had $308 million tied up in their foundation and institute in 2011.

Finally, I may as well state my own view, and readers can agree or disagree. I do oppose prohibition of marijuana for the same reason I oppose prohibition of alcohol: the prohibition doesn’t work and creates more problems than it solves. Having said that, I don’t use the stuff and find its heavy users (or addicts) repellant.

There will be plenty of time to understand what happened and make appropriate points. For now, our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.