This is another one of those pieces attempting to reconcile what we know of our culture and country, and still have it make some sense after another round of innocents have been slaughtered.
Just one more voice in the trying-to-be-OK choir and chorale, here, wondering how it is we had another place of learning and laughter turn into a one-sided OK Corral.
Many people are doing the same, to greater and lesser degrees of futility or utility. Some people are so far past the deep end, they're wheeling out all the things they already hate, plugging in their old lists as legitimate new causes.
There's blaming aplenty here, with the Sandy Hook deaths hung on everything from Godless schools or courts to Obamacare, then caroming off to the evils and perils of abortion, then ricocheting past the rights of gays to make a contract and marry, the bullet points bounding back around again, arguing that, if only there had been more male teachers in the school...
Yes, and dunce politicians spray their ideas around like clouds of DDT, wanting teachers transformed and armed, playing SWAT Leader at recess and football practice as easily as they perform the Seal Team Shuffle at dance practice or during civics. These are not compatible skills -- providing nourishment and care to kids on the one hand, but always ready to slip into an assassin's role -- and it's a stunner to realize how infrequently this sort of poison-pill idea is being pointing out as such.
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
In its 38 years of existence, the USA TODAY Editorial Board has never endorsed a candidate for president....
