Current events

For the "well, duh" file:

When firearms sales in the Old Dominion rose by 16 percent from 2011 to 2012, gun crime dropped 5 percent, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

At least they're not in denial. Maybe that's a sign things will improve:

The Chief of Staff at the VA Northern Indiana Healthcare System has reviewed the Department of Veterans Affairs inspection of its hospital and it agrees with the findings.

I swear, the media can gin up a phony controversy over the stupidest things:

NEWTOWN -- Newtown eighth-grader Thomas Hurley III was thrilled to be chosen as a contestant on the Kids Week episode of the television game show "Jeopardy!" that was filmed in February and aired this week.

Cool duel of the day. Paul Krugman: Those Republicans are against reality:

Question of the day: Do we really need car dealerships?

Yikes! As an editorial writer, I'm somewhat taken aback when I see that an opinion page editor got fired for a headline he put on an editorial:

The most outrageous "blame the victim" defense you're likely to hear all year:

At Thursday’s emotional, 4-hour sentencing hearing, Cleveland murderer, rapist, and kidnapper Ariel Castro said, “I am not a monster. I am sick.”  He denied he was a violent person and said he was a “happy person inside” but suffered from a porn addiction.

[. . .]

I knew I'd come to rely more and more on my smartphone, but I didn't realize how dependent I'd become on it until one day this week when I got home for lunch and realized I didn't have it. Looked all over the house, looked in the car, looked in the office when I got back to work. I finally did find it -- it had slipped out of my pants pocket and down beside the driver's seat. Whew! That was three hours of near panic.

Howard Dean doesn't know what he's talking about:

First of all, lesson number one, for Rand Paul, who is, by the way, not a libertarian. If you believe you ought to be able to tell women what to do with their reproductive rights you are not a libertarian.

A group called Morality in Media tried to get the Pentagon to ban the sales of magazines like Playboy and Penthouse on military bases, but the Pentagon declared that the magazines do not violate department rules against selling sexually explicit material on military property. But the Army has decided to stop selling adult magazines in PXes anyway. Not for the reason you might be thinking: