RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364908/print

There is sad irony in the fact that Newtown, Ct. had a wonderful hospital for the mentally ill. Inmates were housed according to their security threats as well as needs. The buildings looked like Ivy League dorms, and the surrounding park was lush and planted. Treatment was humane, medications were correctly dosed and given to patients. They had sports, gardening of flowers as well as vegetables, and were given vocational training. Fairfield Hills was closed as part of the institutionalization trend which left thousands without homes, treatments or security….rsk

The report released by Connecticut yesterday on Adam Lanza’s massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown makes clear how well we protected his civil rights.

The report details his “mental health issues,” which in reality were strong evidence that he had developed a severe mental illness. He had been afflicted with an autism-like syndrome since childhood and had been formally diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder. This diagnosis by itself is not associated with an increased propensity for violent behavior. However, in recent years, Lanza had developed symptoms of a more severe mental illness, which occurs in approximately 5 percent of individuals who have autism-like symptoms or mental retardation in childhood. This mental illness, which has psychotic features and is similar to schizophrenia, is associated with an increased propensity for violent acts if not treated. It includes delusional thinking, including a belief that others are trying to control your mind or hurt you. Adam Lanza’s bizarre behavior, including covering his bedroom windows, is consistent with such beliefs.

Adam Lanza was clearly in need of evaluation and treatment. Forty years ago, he would have been admitted to Fairfield State Hospital, which was located in Newtown, close to his home, and given a trial of antipsychotic medication to improve his symptoms. If he responded and continued to take his medication, he might have led a useful life, maybe as a computer programmer or in a similar job.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/365022/print

Despite its obvious weaknesses, and undaunted by the usual hyperbole of the Obama administration and its bearers, beaters, and apologists, led by John (“unbelievably small”) Kerry, I think the Geneva agreement over the Iranian nuclear program is progress. Habitual readers will recall that I had effectively given up on this administration doing anything except, to conflate phrases of FDR and Mao Tse-tung, “stand idly by with folded arms” while the ayatollahs seeded the topography of Iran with launchers loaded with nuclear-tipped missiles. Of course, this would have led to similar arms in the hands of the Saudis, Egyptians, and Turks, which, with Iran, Pakistan, and Israel, would have made the Middle East a dense forest of nuclear missiles aimed heavenwards on their launchers, but angled at each other. At that point, a nuclear exchange would be practically inevitable, even if it were initiated by one of the Muslim countries in the region tacitly allowing a terrorist group to deliver a suitcase bomb in a container ship and then unctuously claiming not to have known anything about it (much as Mullah Omar, then the ruler of Afghanistan, did after the 9/11 attacks). The failed state is the refuge of the enemies of civilized, or even just powerful, countries, as it affords the world’s most odious people the excuse of claiming no direct responsibility for the outrages launched from such places, e.g., terrorism in Sudan or piracy in Somalia.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364929/print It’s not often that 60 Minutes, the high church of television journalism for over four decades, becomes late-night comedy fodder. But that’s what happened earlier this month when Saturday Night Live’s cold open featured 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan (Kate McKinnon) giving a sympathetic hearing to disgraced Toronto mayor Rob Ford (Bobby Moynihan). “I’m […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364937/hail-panderer-chief-jonah-goldberg ‘I’m not a particularly ideological person,” President Obama told an audience of donors in Seattle over the weekend. He added (in Reuters’s words) that “pragmatism was necessary to advance the values that were important to him.” This is an old refrain of Obama’s. As he said in his first inaugural, “The question we ask […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/iran-secrets-and-betrayal?f=puball Telltale clues to identify ally betrayal…..Here’s how to tell: 1.  Conduct secret negotiations with your ally’s mortal enemy, based upon wrongly presumed common interests & hence goals, including back-channel talks going back five years, even one found to be conducting one or another form of war on you & your ally, on a matter […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/paranoid-style-revisited?f=puball Alan Wolfe, the professor of political science at Boston College, has written a reprise of Richard Hofstadter’s 1965 book Paranoid Style In American Politics for the October 25th edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Hofstadter in the 1950’s attempted to explain the inner workings of the political mind, i.e., the conservative mind. For […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/breaking-news-supreme-court-to-take-another-crack-at-obamacare The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama’s health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees. The justices said they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/environmentalism-is-the-new-racism/print/ At the heart of all the left’s political agendas is wealth redistribution. That is as true of the Global Warming eco-scam as it is of anything else. The left knows that idealism is a puny force compared to the power of profit. It may employ the slogans of idealism, recruiting college students to wave […]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/obamas-munich/print/ The interim agreement negotiated by the Security Council and Germany with Iran is a serious advance toward what Winston Churchill called the Munich agreement: “a total and unmitigated defeat” and a “disaster of the first magnitude.” Nothing in the agreement guarantees that Iran will fulfill its promises, or that inspectors will be allowed access to all […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/america_as_the_protector_of_putin_assad_and_khamenei.html When protests broke out in Syria in late 2011, Russia hoped for a short, nasty war as a matter of Russian national interest — just enough to put the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Sunnis in their place.  Violence from its own Sunni Muslim population has plagued Russia for decades.  Saudi Arabia took over the defeated nationalist […]