Gun-totin' soccer mom

What can anyone possibly add to this?


Woman who carried gun to daughter's football match found shot and killed

A US woman who caused a stir last year by packing a pistol on her hip at her five-year-old daughter's football match was found shot to death in her home late yesterday with her husband. Police in Lebanon, Pennsylvania said they were not looking for a suspect in the killings.

Meleanie Hain, 31, and her husband Scott Hain, 33, had been having marital trouble lately, a neighbour told local news media. Neighbours reported hearing a boom and children screaming about 6pm; the couple's three children were home at the time but were unharmed.

Hain, a Lebanon, Pennsylvania gun enthusiast, last September wore a high-powered Glock pistol on her hip to a youth football match at a public park, alarming parents and children. After the game the opposing coach confronted Hain, who replied by giving him a pamphlet explaining her gun rights under the US constitution. Organisers of the football league told her to keep her gun away from future games and warned if she brought it again they would call police.

Meleanie Hain wears a loaded Glock 26 to her 5-year-old daughter's football match in Pennsylvania in September 2008. Photo: Jim Zengerle/AP

Parents complain to local authorities, and six days after the game Sheriff Michael DeLeo revoked Hain's license to carry a firearm. He cited a provision in Pennsylvania gun law forbidding individuals whose character and reputation portend a likelihood to threaten public safety from having a license.

Hain sued and a judge restored the license, though he questioned her judgement and asked her to keep the gun concealed if she brought it again to the football pitch.

Hain believed DeLeo violated her constitutional rights and targeted her unfairly. She said publicity surrounding the case had caused clients to pull their children from her baby sitting business, and said she had been ostracised by her neighbours. In November, she sued him, seeking $1m in damages.

The Brady Centre to Prevent Gun Violence, a national advocacy group, offered to defend DeLeo for free.

"It is a case that calls out for common sense," Brady Center attorney Daniel Vice said at the time. "It's ridiculous to bring a gun to a child's soccer game."
The case was delayed when an attorney was injured in an auto accident.

Hain became a heroine to gun rights advocates who favour loosening restrictions on carrying firearms, but her practice of carrying the gun when she went about town provoked a dim response from her neighbours.

"The way people look at me sometimes when I am out running errands, I feel as if I am wearing a scarlet letter, and really, it's a Glock 26," she told the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Patriot News last year.

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland. “Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

I never had that trouble.

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement. “I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

An A was something to shoot for, not expect.

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading. “I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.

James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “ In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view. “I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

Huh?

An About-Face on Gay Troops

This is a fascinating essay that deserves being posted in full.

February 9, 2009 - Op-Ed Contributor
An About-Face on Gay Troops
By OWEN WEST

GENERALS are scolded for preparing to fight “the last war,” but if President Obama intends to keep his promise to allow gays to serve openly in the military, he would do well to study President Bill Clinton’s attempt of 16 years ago.

The Clinton argument, based largely on protecting the civil rights of gay troops, was systematically dissected by senior officers and legislators, who focused on how the presence of homosexuals could affect combat readiness. Generals circulated videos made by conservative groups depicting “gay agendas.” Senators brought television crews into cramped berthings. Congress reached a bizarre compromise: a law rendering homosexuality incompatible with military service, but allowing gays to serve under a closet-friendly “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The lesson for President Obama is that this fight is not about rights, but about combat readiness. This is a propitious moment for seeking change: a nation at war needs all its most talented troops. Last year the principal architects of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” former Gen. Colin Powell and former Senator Sam Nunn, said it was time to “review” the policy.

That’s a polite way of saying they’ve changed their minds. So have many of us who wore the uniform in 1993 and supported a policy that forced some of our fellow troops to live a lie and rejected thousands who told the truth.

There are other aspects of history that may be helpful as well. The armed forces initially resisted President Harry Truman’s 1948 order to integrate the ranks. But the Korean War forced trials by fire — in fact, the units with the highest casualty rates in Korea integrated the swiftest — and the Pentagon ultimately acknowledged that recruiting from across America’s socio-economic spectrum produced the best force. After that, the military swiftly set the standard for race relations.

Servicemen continue to be fierce believers in the idea that diversity equals strength, yet during the Clinton effort on gay troops most of us rejected analogies to racial integration. The homosexual threat to good order and discipline was behavioral, we argued, not physiological, and therefore unrelated.

It was a flawed argument. The underlying fears were the same as with integration: homosexuals jeopardized unit cohesion not because of their own conduct — after all, military law and command discretion encompass behavioral breaches — but because of the perceived reaction of those xenophobic troops who didn’t want to cohabitate with people different from themselves. Today, this sounds like one of the “worn-out dogmas” President Obama identified in his inaugural speech. And it does a disservice to the ranks.

Maintaining “don’t ask, don’t tell” ignores a vast social shift since 1993. Only 26 percent of Americans supported Truman’s order, so it was little wonder that desegregation stalled. When President Clinton announced his initiative, 44 percent of Americans were in favor of homosexuals serving openly, which perhaps explains the split decision of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

But today nearly 80 percent of Americans feel that way. As our troops tend to reflect the values of our society, lifting the homosexual ban will be easier now.

In addition, six years of war have clarified priorities. The battlefield has its own values, starting with courage. Sexual orientation falls somewhere below musical taste. What a person chooses to do back stateside, off-duty, in his own apartment is irrelevant in a fight. For months I lived with 12 other American advisers on an Iraqi outpost. There was a single pipe shower next to a hole that masqueraded as a sewer. But the reality of combat dominated personality quirks — nobody wondered about sexual orientation.

Most military jobs are office-based and provide sufficient individual privacy. Even in Iraq many of our fighting forces are comfortably housed with compartmentalized showers.

A 2006 poll of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans showed that 72 percent were personally comfortable interacting with gays. Bonnie Moradi, a University of Florida psychologist, and Laura Miller, a sociologist at the Rand Corporation, summarized the study this way: “The data indicated no associations between knowing a lesbian or gay unit member and ratings of perceived unit cohesion or readiness. Instead, findings pointed to the importance of leadership and instrumental quality in shaping perceptions of unit cohesion and readiness.”

The other readiness argument concerns recruiting. To fill its swelling ranks, the military now grants one in five recruits waivers for disqualifications that run the gamut from attention-deficit disorder to obesity to armed robbery convictions. In a press conference last fall, Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, the head of Army recruiting, said the relevant question in considering such applicants was, “Does that person deserve an opportunity to serve their country?” That’s exactly right. And to choose a felon over a combat-proven veteran on the basis of sexuality is defeatist. Ask any squad leader.

In the end, however, there is one factor that outweighs public opinion, troop morale and recruiting combined. The military is a dictatorship, not a republic. It is built to win in combat. Its strict codes of conduct ensure good order and discipline.

If “don’t ask, don’t tell” is rescinded, military leaders will ensure smooth compliance, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has said. Cohesion depends on leadership. Our troops will follow the lead of our combat-tested professionals who base their opinions on what a soldier brings to the fight, and little else.

Owen West, a commodities trader, served two tours in Iraq with the Marines.

Cárcel a besucones y groseros en Guanajuato

Careful how you kiss, or what you say; might get you arrested.

Bando también sanciona la mendicidad y las marchas

Xóchitl Álvarez Corresponsal
El Universal
Viernes 16 de enero de 2009
GUANAJUATO, Gto.— Con el fin de preservar el espacio público como un lugar de convivencia y civismo, la autoridad municipal mandará a prisión a las parejas que se besen con intensidad en lugares públicos; a quienes adopten actitudes obscenas que ofendan o causen molestia y a las personas que, sin permiso, realicen manifestaciones públicas.

Un beso “de olimpiada” o gritar “guey”, serán causa de arresto o multa de hasta mil 560 pesos, una vez que entren en vigor las reformas al Bando de Policía y Buen Gobierno, aprobadas el martes por el ayuntamiento, explicó el alcalde panista, Eduardo Romero Hicks.

En el caso de las personas que se dan un beso leve, no hay problema; sin embargo, “hay unos agarrones que son de olimpiada, je, je, je,” ejemplificó el edil.

Mario N., guía turístico del Callejón de Beso, dijo que al lugar llegan parejas que se dan besos de todo tipo: “De monaguillo, hasta entrar y tocar la campañilla, de torero agarrando la oreja y el rabo. Los novios más penosos se lo dan de piquito”.

Para los turistas es una tradición visitar el estrecho “Callejón del Beso”, en la zona centro, subir al tercer escalón y representar la leyenda de doña Carmen y don Luis, expreso Mario.

El alcalde señaló que antes de la aplicación del Bando de Policía, se realizará una campaña de concientización entre los ciudadanos y se dará capacitación a los policías sobre la aplicación de la normatividad.

En artículo 36 del Bando describe como infracciones contra la moral del individuo y de la familia el proferir palabras, adoptar actitudes de carácter obsceno en lugares públicos y que ofendan o causen molestia a terceros, así como realizar tocamientos obscenos en espacios públicos.

“Un beso se considera como un tocamiento, así como abrazar a alguien o tomarlo de la mano”, dijo el regidor priísta, José Luis Camacho.

José Luis Hernández Ayala, regidor del PRI, señaló que en las nuevas disposiciones moralistas del reglamento, diseñado y aprobado por la mayoría panista, se aprecia un ejercicio epistolar del gobierno conservador y como un instrumento opresor carente de técnica legislativa.

El regidor panista, Marco Antonio Figueroa, justificó la reforma en el capítulo de moral, porque en la sociedad se aprecia que las nuevas generaciones derivan en embarazos de secundaria, que significa que algo no estamos haciendo como autoridad.

El bando sanciona a quienes realicen marchas, prohíbe la mendicidad y sanciona con arresto y el equivalente de 30 salarios mínimos a quienes crucen las calles sin usar los puentes.