-By Warner Todd Huston
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the 24-year-old Santa Monica shooter had a history of mental illness but leads a June 9 story with the claim of an “unnamed source” who said that the killer had a “fascination with guns.”
In the Times report the story about killer John Zawahri leads with two paragraphs detailing the claims of this unnamed source, but the spends many more paragraphs discussing his mental health problems and run-ins with the law.
It is interesting that the paper leads with this claim when there is far more evidence of Zawahri’s run-ins with the police in the past, his reputation as a young man with an explosive temper, and his undefined mental problems.
Yet the paper quotes an unnamed person said to be familiar with the murderer and his family who feels he had “a fascination with guns.” This unnamed person also claims that many people were worried about Zawahri’s gun fixation and also wondered where he got the money for the firearms.
But the Times finds that Zawahri had a history of emotional problems. He was upset over his parents divorce and police had been called to his family home in 2006 over an incident of domestic violence.
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LA Times Pushes ‘Gun’ Angle Instead of Mental Illness on Santa Monica Shooter Story”
Liberal economist and leading modern Keynesian, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, has been one of Barack Obama’s biggest cheerleaders, but suddenly he is a bit down on the Obama administration saying that he is afraid that the country is becoming an “authoritarian surveillance state.” 
Once again Democrats tried to get a bill passed in the House of Representatives to fund an expansion of U.S. prisons in order to house terror suspects in the U.S. heartland instead of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As in years previous, however, the measure was defeated.
The National Security Agency (NSA) has been in the spotlight since news broke that the agency has been collecting massive amounts of data from everyday Americans and with some of the worst timing ever, the NSA is now advertising for new employees for positions as “Digital Exploitation Specialists.”
Democrat State Senator Kevin De Leon has introduced a plan to hike cigarette taxes (
CNN is drawing criticism for a feature story on a Palestinian soccer player who is in the news for boycotting Israel. The cable network is being criticized because its glowing treatment of the Palestinian protester neglects to mention that he is a member of the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). In fact, the piece seems to reject any claim that he is a member of the group.
Noah Rothman recently did an excellent job detailing what the progressive media said about Condoleeza Rice when George W. Bush appointed her as his Secretary of State in 2005. Rothman noted how the media dismissed Condi Rice as merely a “friend” of Bush and otherwise made it seem as if her appointment was just a payoff for loyalty instead of the appointment of a qualified person. In contrast, Obama’s appointment of Susan Rice as his national security advisor is not being so quickly dismissed by that same media establishment.
On the afternoon of June 6, Breitbart correspondent Ben Shapiro 
Calls have been coming from all across the political spectrum for President Obama to fire U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. But some reports now are presuming that Obama simply won’t do it and that AG Holder will weather yet another firestorm of controversy.
Recent polling of likely voters by the Rasmussen polling firm finds that trust in government is at a low ebb with nearly half of voters feeling that the Justice Department’s seizure of reporters’ phone records and the IRS targeting of conservatives are serious scandals. Yet the media is still not widely trusted.
The hand-in-hand nature of this White House and some of the nation’s biggest corporations is seen in yet another incident as Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign data team is now moving from team Obama to team Google.
He’s gone from Obama’s tech-savvy wunderkind to just another administration attack dog, but to seal that transformation Obama adviser David Plouffe used long discredited attacks to smear Representative Darrell Issa.
Chicago has been one of the most dangerous places in the country to live for the last several years with gang shootings wracking the city. To address this plague of gangs, Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) proposed that some 18,000 gang members be rounded up and prosecuted. Now several African American leaders in Chicago are lambasting Kirk for his idea and one former gang member turned Congressman is demanding a meeting with the Senator.
One can’t be surprised that Obama’s home state of Illinois is one of the worst five states in the nation–like it is for most other things–in the Mercatus Center’s study of the level of freedom in each state. Naturally Illinois ranks close to the bottom of the most free states.
Now we get to the height of idiocy with a school “no tolerance” policy with a boy who was suspended just for saying the word gun.
On June 1, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer went to 
A new study of the most controversial entries on Wikipedia, the crowd sourced, online encyclopedia, shows that in the English language entry the most fought over is the biography of George W. Bush.
152 new sex abuse allegations have been made against dozens of BBC employees as well as its most famous TV presenter. The new allegations have been brought in the Jimmy Savile sex scandal that erupted last year. About 40 of the accused BBC employees still work for the broadcasting giant.
The Charlestown Gazette recently published the editorial by a Marshall University professor who advocated using an “M1A Abrams tank, supported by an F22 Raptor squadron with Hellfire missiles” to kill NRA members, Republicans, Conservatives, and those who support the Second Amendment.
Former CNN on-air anchor Soledad O’Brien was chosen by students to deliver Harvard’s 2013 Class Day speech–an address delivered to seniors the day before graduation. O’Brien had two important bits of wisdom to pass on to the graduates: “Most people are idiots” and “don’t take anyone’s advice.”
President Obama’s home state of Illinois has gained a new distinction: it tops the nation in the growth of the number of its citizens on food stamps.
A coalition of 27 Congressmen have joined together to sign a letter urging the Department of Justice and Attorney General Eric Holder to rescind an order to deport a German family whose only crime was to homeschool their children.
Bob Shrum, a longtime Democrat operative, has decided that President Obama’s handling of the White House during this IRS scandal is bad. Maybe not “Nixonian” bad, but is instead a sort of Carteresque incompetence because of the way the President has handled these recent crises.
Charles P. Pierce of Esquire once wrote a book titled Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, but after his latest blog post it seems clear that he first learned of those idiots in America a little closer to home: himself.