Guns Dont't Kill People. People Kill People.

IF guns don't kill people, BUT people kill people, THEN what kind of people kill people? What kind of people are ready, willing and able to kill people? People with no love of God in their hearts and no knowledge of God in their head.
The debate that is raging misses the point. All the legislation in the world will not stop cold-hearted people from killing each other. A heart without God is cold.
Our education system and our politicians have failed us. Our children are not taught about God or the sacredness of human life. God is leaving us to our own devices. We were created with the ability to choose, and we have chosen to shut God out of our schools, city halls, and our homes. He has not rejected us; we have abandoned him. Now, we are killing each other. If there were no guns, we would choose the most convenient and available method to kill. We are a blood thirsty people, without God. We have become spiritually and morally bankrupt. We would rather be politically correct than morally correct.
We live in an embarrassing, politically correct culture that exalts and rejoices in the bizarre; aggressively promotes an “anything goes” value system.
We will scratch around the margins of the violent mass killings, looking to government to solve the problem, but we will accomplish nothing. We will be doing little more than rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic. Without God, we can do nothing.

On the morning of December 14th, evil descended in full force on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Our eyes beheld a profound scene of weeping, and grieving families. Our hearts are broken; our words are too feeble to comfort the children who witnessed the bloodshed.   The mothers and fathers who kissed their children and said," See you when school is over", have come too soon, to pick up a lifeless child. The pain is deep, and will ravage their lives forever. It will scar our nation for some time. We thank all who came into this helpless situation to rescue, counsel, and comfort, for they were God's heart, hands and feet in this tragedy.

I am reminded of a similar scene described by the words of the prophet Jeremiah long ago:

 "...a voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more."

Like the Psalmist, I raise my voice to God and ask, "Why have you abandoned the children and teachers?" Yet a small voice in the midst of my anguish, reminds me that God was weeping, and in deep mourning that day as well. With outstretched loving hands, He received the souls from Sandy Hook Elementary school. He is wrapping Himself around the grieving families, and will remain so as long as they hunger for comfort.

There’s something terribly wrong. Something stinks. Something is rotten in America.
Something is causing young loners to pick up guns and slaughter people.
Cops, psychologists, sociologists, politicians and various other talking heads will jabber incessantly about why they think a young man snapped and killed a bunch of bubbly young children who were looking forward to Santa Claus.
They will offer their opinions on what they think can be done to stop future psychotics from committing mass murder. They all will be guessing.
Some blabbermouths already are using the Connecticut school massacre to promote their anti-gun agenda even though more gun laws won’t prevent a psychotic from getting a gun and killing us.
Others will say we need even more security in schools. While this may be true, other mass slaughters have occurred at restaurants, shopping malls, churches and movie theaters. Violence can strike anywhere at any time.
Some will argue we don’t have enough mental health treatment programs, while others will argue that we can’t violate the privacy and civil liberties of the mentally ill.
Others will blame video and computer games and the entertainment industry. They will argue that a constant stream of graphic violence turns some disconnected young men into bug-eyed, raving lunatics who commit mass murders.
They will all be scratching around the margins of the problem, possibly afraid to admit the truth, rather than cutting to the heart of the matter.
The heart of the matter is that our Humpty Dumpty culture has taken a great fall.
Like an iceberg, we only periodically see the psychotic manifestation, the tip of our shattered culture, but what lies just beneath the surface is a gigantic cultural cancer that is rotting America from within.
The ugly and dangerous truth is that we live in an embarrassing, politically correct culture that exalts and rejoices in the bizarre; aggressively promotes an “anything goes” value system; and vilifies, condemns and mocks traditional societal values and customs at every opportunity.
We’ve embraced a culture of contempt that attacks the very institutions that make for a healthy and strong society, and then we’re shocked when it spirals out of control. The only thing I’m shocked about is that anybody is shocked.
More laws and more restrictions won’t fix our culture. The problem we face is much deeper and more insidious. What ails us is a spiritual bankruptcy of cultural values that actually matter. More laws and restrictions can’t cure that.
Until we admit what’s at the heart of the matter, we will continue to put a Band-Aid on gaping wounds and try to convince ourselves we’ve done something meaningful.

As with most things, the cure to this mess begins and ends with the family. Traditional family values have been under siege for decades by our culture of contempt. In the absence of a solid family, the whole thing slowly unravels and rots.
Our greatest fear should be that we’ll scratch around the margins by looking to government to solve the problem  . With the best of intentions, our government will hold commissions, write lengthy reports and pass a new law or two. Like we always do, we’ll then move along, convinced that we’ve done good and pretending we actually accomplished something.
Meanwhile, somewhere in America, another bug-eyed young man is planning the next massacre.

(Nugent, Ted, Connecticut Killings A Result of Moral Decay, Washington Times,19 Dec. 2012, Commentary, p. B1)

ObamaCare Is Dead In The Water

ObamaCare was a poorly conceived and is a constitutionally deficient statute. The Supreme Court's ruling upholding the law has simply made it worse. In the future, that decision is likely to be seen as a prime reason that the federal court judges should just judge and never legislate—even in the cause of rescuing an otherwise unconstitutional law from oblivion.
In the ObamaCare ruling, the Supreme Court correctly held that Congress could not impose the individual mandate as a constitutional regulation of interstate commerce and that Congress could not constitutionally use its spending power to coerce the states to expand Medicaid.
Rather than strike down the law, however, the court construed the insurance-purchase mandate and its penalty as a "tax" on the failure to have health insurance. The justices also interpreted the Medicaid-expansion requirements as optional—permitting states to opt out of these provisions while staying within the traditional Medicaid program. Given that interpretation, the court's majority upheld the statute as constitutional.
The court's determination to preserve ObamaCare through "interpretation" has exacerbated the law's original flaws to the point that it has become palpably unworkable. By transforming the penalties for failing to comply with the law's requirements into a "tax," the court has given the public a green light to ignore ObamaCare's requirements when it is economically beneficial. Law-abiding individuals, who might otherwise have complied with the law's expensive purchase mandate to avoid being subjected to financial penalties, can simply now choose to pay a tax and not sign up for coverage. There is certainly no stigma attached to simply paying a tax, and noncompliance with the law's other requirements—such as those imposed on employers—is arguably made more attractive on the same basis. This effect fundamentally undercuts Congress's original purpose, which was to expand health-care coverage to the greatest number of people, not to improve federal revenues.
Similarly, having reviewed the likely costs and benefits, states are now taking advantage of the court-granted flexibility. Seven states, including Texas, Mississippi and Georgia, have so far opted out of the Medicaid-expansion provisions, and eight (with more certain to come) are refusing to create the insurance exchanges, leaving this to a federal bureaucracy unequipped to handle these new administrative burdens. As a result, a growing number of low-income Americans will be unable to obtain the free or cost-effective insurance that Congress originally meant them to have, although they remain subject to the mandate-tax.
On December 7, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation establishing a state-run health insurance exchange. This was just after he had visited President Obama at the White House to discuss Superstorm Sandy cleanup costs. Governor Christie said he blamed President Obama for failing to provide answers that he needed to make a fiscally sound decision on the best way to comply with the ObamaCare law.
States have until December 14th to decide whether to establish a state-based exchange. They have more time to decide whether to partner with the federal government or to let federal bureaucrats design and run the state exchange. ((Santi, Angela, Christie Vetoes ObamaCare, Washington Times, Dec. 7, 2012)
Policy problems aside, by transforming the mandate into a tax to avoid one set of constitutional problems (Congress having exceeded its constitutionally enumerated powers), the court has created another problem. If the mandate is an indirect tax, as the Supreme Court held, then the Constitution's "Uniformity Clause" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1) requires the tax to "be uniform throughout the United States." The Framers adopted this provision so that a group of dominant states could not shift the federal tax burden to the others. It was yet another constitutional device that was simultaneously designed to protect federalism and safeguard individual liberty.
The Supreme Court has rarely considered the Uniformity Clause's reach, but it cannot be ignored. The court also refused to impose meaningful limits on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce for decades after the 1930s, until justices began to re-establish the constitutional balance in the 1990s with decisions leading up to the ObamaCare ruling this summer. And although the court has upheld as "uniform" taxes that affect states differently in practice, precedent makes clear that a permissible tax must "operate with the same force and effect in every place where the subject of it is found," as held in the Head Money Cases (1884). The ObamaCare tax arguably does not meet this standard.
ObamaCare provides that low-income taxpayers, who are nevertheless above the federal poverty line, can discharge their mandate-tax obligation by enrolling in the new, expanded Medicaid program, which serves as the functional equivalent of a tax credit. But that program will not now exist in every state because, as a matter of federal law, states can opt out. The actual tax burden will not be geographically uniform as the court's precedents require.
Thus, having transformed the individual mandate into a tax, the court may face renewed challenges to ObamaCare on uniformity grounds. The justices will then confront a tough choice. Having earlier reinterpreted the mandate as a tax, they would be hard-pressed to approve the geographic disparity created when states opt out of the Medicaid expansion. But that possibility is inherent in a scheme that imposes a nominally uniform tax liability accompanied by the practical equivalent of a fully off-setting tax credit available only to those living in certain states. To uphold such a taxing scheme would eliminate any meaningful uniformity requirement—a result that the Constitution does not permit.
(The Opening For a Fresh ObamaCare Challenge, Rivkin, David B. and Casey, Lee A.p; WSJ, Dec. 6, 2012)

How the Supreme Court Doomed the Affordable Care Act to Failure

January 9, 2013
The Supreme Court's surprise ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has left many observers wondering about the implications of the ruling on the law itself, says Thomas A. Lambert, the Judge C.A. Leedy Professor of Law at the University of Missouri Law School.

• In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the ACA is constitutional.
• In writing the opinion, Chief Justice Roberts, argued that the individual mandate is nothing more than a tax.
• However, the Court struck down the provision that would deny Medicaid funding to states that did not expand their Medicaid roles.

Together, the ruling has a profound impact on the health care market and is likely to raise premiums and the cost of medical care. For example, the cost of paying the tax for not having insurance is not steep enough to encourage young, healthy individuals to enter the health care market. These individuals would rather take the risk and pay the penalty because it would be cheaper than acquiring health insurance.
This is problematic considering that the infusion of younger and healthier individuals is necessary to spread risk in the market and lower overall premiums. In addition, the decision also limits Congress's ability to increase the penalty.
Proponents of the ACA argue that the subsidies in the bill will entice younger people to purchase insurance. However, the subsidies are too small and out-of-pocket costs for insurance will be much higher than simply paying the tax.
Additionally, the efforts to reduce medical costs are likely to fall short of achieving their goals. The ACA has aimed at doing the following:

• Increased funding for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.
• Price controls on Medicare charges.
• Emphasis on preventative care.

There are other measures as well but none of them attack the root of health care inflation: the lack of competition in providing medical services. If consumers were put in a position to pay more for their health care, there would be more emphasis on finding an affordable insurance plan. As a result, insurance companies and other medical services would compete to lower their prices and attract new customers.
( Thomas A. Lambert, "How the Supreme Court Doomed the ACA to Failure,")

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Don't Issue An ID Card.

With repeal last year of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law, many military people, including senior leaders, assumed that married gay and lesbian couples had gained not only job security but also equality in allowances, benefits and access to family support programs. That assumption is wrong.
Since the law took effect 14 months ago, the Department of Defense has kept in place policies that bar spouses of same-gender couples from having military identification cards, shopping on base, living in base housing or participating in certain family support programs.
Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, says Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack, 39, "simply just prevented me from losing my job. It didn't do anything else."
Mack's spouse, Ashley Broadway, also 39, can shop in stores on nearby Fort Bragg, N.C., only in the status of "caregiver" for their son, Carson. Lacking a military dependent ID card, Ashley has been challenged by checkout clerks when her shopping cart includes items such as deodorant that clearly aren't needed by their two-year old.
If Mack is reassigned, the couple will have to pay Ashley's travel and transportation costs out of pocket. Mack draws housing allowance at the higher "with dependents" rate only because of their child. Marriage alone for same-sex couples, though recognized as legal by 11 states and the District of Columbia, doesn't qualify a military sponsor for married allowances or civilian spouses for entry onto bases.
 If Mack were killed during her next deployment, Ashley would not qualify for full "spousal" survivor benefits, even though, by paying higher premiums, she could be covered as an "insurable interest."  And as a surviving widow, Ashley would not qualify for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation from the Department of Veterans or be eligible to receive the folded flag off the coffin in the graveside ceremony, Mack says, because to the military and the VA, Ashley would not be next of kin despite spending a career together.
A heterosexual soldier "who meets someone on a Friday night and Saturday gets married would have full benefits," Mack says. "But you have partners who have been together 15 years or more and they can't even go on base and shop…That's a quality of life issue."

Some disparities of treatment for same sex couples won't end unless Congress repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as solely between a man and woman, or unless the U.S. Supreme Court rules that DOMA is unconstitutional. The high court was expected to announce soon if it will review and rule on conflicting opinions on the constitutionality of DOMA by appellate courts in recent years.
The Obama administration views the law unconstitutional and won't allow Justice Department attorneys to defend it in court. By default, the government's defense of DOMA is being led by the general counsel for the Republican-led House of Representatives.
While the law remains in effect, it prohibits extension of many federal benefits, including military allowances, travel reimbursements and health coverage to same-sex spouses. But Stephen L. Peters II, president of the gay and lesbian advocacy group American Military Partner Association, says the Department of Defense has authority to do much more than it has to date to support service members and spouses of same-sex marriages.
It could give gay and lesbian spouses access to base housing, commissaries and exchanges, base recreation facilities and legal services. It could direct the services to open more family support programs to them and to offer relocation and sponsorship at many overseas duty stations. The services could also extend dual-service couple programs to same-sex marriages thus ensuring these couples too get co-located on reassignments.
No DoD official would be interviewed on this issue. The department instead issue a statement explaining that a work group continues to conduct "a deliberative and comprehensive review of the possibility of extending eligibility for benefits, when legally permitted, to same-sex domestic partners."  Benefits are being examined "from a policy, fiscal, legal and feasibility perspective" and "laws and policies surrounding benefits are complex and interconnected."  The work group, it says, has been striving "to fully understand the scope and interconnectivity."

Life in service is better for gays and lesbians since repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But the department's unresponsiveness to qualify-of-life concerns raised by same-sex married members for the past year, unrelated to DOMA, continue to impact not only families but readiness, Peters argues.
"It's not like the Pentagon doesn't know which benefits it can extend…These have been repeatedly pointed out," he says. "Not only has the Pentagon failed to take action but its silence on the issue is deafening."
Mack, assistant chief of staff for the 1st Theater Sustainment Command at Bragg, is pregnant and due to deliver their second child in January. This time Ashley won't have to pose as her sister to be present at the birth in the post hospital. After maternity leave, Mack expects to deploy again.
She believes commanders would be pressuring policymakers on quality-of-life challenges for same-sex couples if they knew more about them. Mack's own boss was surprised before Mack's promotion in October to be told the Army treats married lesbians like her as if they aren't married.
"He said, ‘That's not true. With repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, you get all the benefits.'  I said, ‘No. Any gay or lesbian soldier, regardless of their marital status, is considered a single soldier.'  He had no clue," Mack says.
As a lieutenant colonel, Mack knows she is better able to afford $500 a month in extra health insurance for Ashley, and to cover her travel costs when the family is reassigned. Enlisted members can't afford to handle these disparities, and that's something leaders can't ignore, she says.
If these spouses could at least be issued ID cards, and gain access to base amenities, she says, it would go a long way to improving quality of life.
By Tom Philpott
(Tom Philpott has been breaking news for and about military people since 1977. After service in the Coast Guard, and 17 years as a reporter and senior editor with Army Times Publishing Company, Tom launched "Military Update," his syndicated weekly news column, in 1994. "Military Update" features timely news and analysis on issues affecting active duty members, reservists, retirees and their families. Tom also edits a reader reaction column, "Military Forum." The online "home" for both features is Military.com.)