Why Does John Boehner (Boner) Want To Keep 40 Million Americans From Buying Guns? Philip Bump thewire.com April 4, 2014
Reacting to the shooting at Fort Hood on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner reiterated a popular NRA talking point: "There’s no question that those with mental health issues should be prevented from owning weapons or being able to purchase weapons." Those suffering the same diagnosed illnesses as the shooter — depression and anxiety — might be surprised by Boehner's willingness to take away their Second Amendment rights. Ivan Lopez, the alleged shooter, was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder at the base, where he was stationed and lived with his wife. According to CNN, Lopez "was undergoing a variety of treatments for conditions including depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances," according to Army Secretary John McHugh. Lopez "was prescribed drugs that included Ambien" and "was fully examined last month by a psychiatrist." An estimated one-in-10 Americans suffers from depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control. That's about 31 million people, skewed told older people and women. The National Institutes of Health puts those suffering from "major depressive disorder" at the lower figure of 14.8 million. As for anxiety? The NIH says that 40 million Americans suffer from that. Even if Lopez had been diagnosed with PTSD, that's still sweeping up 7.7 million Americans — 2.5
percent of the country. Who John Boehner, it seems, doesn't think should be allowed to have a gun. That's almost certainly not actually what he believes. His comments, as The Hill's Russell Berman reports, came in the middle of an event at the Capitol. After saying there was "no question" that people with mental illness shouldn't be allowed to buy or own guns, he went on: "we need to continue to look at to find a way to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them." In the wake of the Newtown massacre, the NRA reiterated its call for one of the few gun control measures it supports: a database of the "actively" mentally ill, which gun sellers could use to screen buyers. Such databases exist, but usually with standards that are far, far more rigorous than anything Lopez was close to manifesting. Current federal law prohibits those who've been committed to an institution or officially determined to be "mentally defective" from buying a gun. That wasn't Lopez. This is the problem with using mental health as the screen for gun ownership: for many of those who commit acts of random violence, those acts are the first manifestations of more serious mental health issues. And, furthermore, as the millions of depressed and anxious Americans can attest, only a tiny, tiny percentage of those with mental illness — mild or strong — would ever commit such acts. But if Boehner is willing, at last, to support dramatic gun control efforts, there are almost certainly people on the other side of the aisle who'd be happy to work with him.
Eric Holder Defends Using Injustice Department Airplane For 27 Personal Trips Joel Gehrke Washington Examiner April 4, 2014 Attorney General Eric Holder disputed a Government Accountability Office report on his use of Justice Department airplanes for personal trips, saying it overstated the number of trips he took and failed to recognize that some trips were job-related.
"My staff keeps telling me to take it easy, you know, well, this is one that gets me," Holder told Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. "There was this notion that we've taken -- I think it was described as hundreds of personal trips. That was wrong. GAO counted flights, not round trips. And we looked at it and figured out from the time period that they were looking, we took not hundreds, but 27 personal, four combined -- official and nonpersonal trips -- and none of the trips that I took or that the [FBI] director took ever had an impact on the mission capability of those airplanes."
Holder made the comment when asked if he would report those trips to the General Services Administration in the future. "We didn't have a reporting requirement that existed before," he said. "If they want to change those rules, we'd be more than glad to make sure that we share that information with the appropriate organization, but this is something that is really wide open." Holder noted that he has responded to multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and provided the information to GAO, as well as to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "Just so that people understand that we're making appropriate use of DOJ aircraft," Holder told Wolf. "A lot of this stuff was described as mission and nonmission, and the way in which that was defined was not necessarily correct, because a nonmission trip -- for instance, the trip that I took to Newtown to visit the school after the shooting -- was described as a nonmission trip."
Rejection: 5 Fluoride Victories Of 2014 Christina Sarich naturalsociety.com April 4th, 2014 As more Americans become aware of the dangers of fluoridated water, and the fact that 97% of countries in Europe don’t fluoridate their water supply, communities are speaking out and changing the quality of municipal water supplies. Who would want to consume a toxic byproduct of the fertilizer and petroleum industries anyhow? Even with compelling evidence that water fluoridation lowers IQ scores and causes neurological impairment, as evidenced in multiple Harvard studies, the American Dental Association, our government agencies, and corporations want to keep dumbing down the next generation with fluoride. Here are 5 places in the US bucking the system, and one in Europe getting the fluoride out of their water – all just since the beginning of 2014: 1. Amherst County, Virginia – The citizens of Amherst can enjoy fluoride-free water now since several members of the Service Authority Board felt that there were no ‘optimum’ levels of fluoridation for water, and that it was an expensive and unnecessary additive to continue putting in municipal water. Read more
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