Mass Murders Disconnected From the Larger World, Senate Plays Chicken on Tax Vote, Teen Thrives With Home-Grown Trachea: P.M. Links
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Mass murders like the Aurora shooting seem disconnected to the homicide rate, which has dropped by half over the past twenty years, and unaffected by law-enforcement strategies. In fact, such incidents seem to have no connection to anything but each other, with some killers emulating their predecessors.
- Mitt Romney, who headed the 2002 Winter Olympics effort in Salt Lake City, raised British hackles by suggesting that preparation efforts in London were, maybe, not up to snuff. Bye, bye, dubiously sourced claim to Anglo-Saxon advantage.
- Fewer Americans than forecast filed for unemployment benefits last week, contributing to a mixed picture as the job market sputters through a slow recovery while economies in Europe and China just sputter.
- The U.S. Senate voted to exclude high-income Americans from a tax cut extension and to dramatically raise the estate tax — moves likely to be rejected by the House.
- Opponents of the right to self-defense hope to force presidential candidates Obama and Romney to discuss firearms restrictions at the firest debate, scheduled for Denver on October 3.
- Chicago Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno explains that he won't allow Chick-fil-A to open a store in his ward because of the owners' anti-gay-marriage views, thus symbolically supporting civil rights by actually violating civil rights. No, he doesn't get it.
- A now-13-year-old boy who received a transplanted trachea grown from his own stem cells is breathing normally and no longer needs medication to suppress rejection. He was born with an abnormally small trachea that didn't grow with the rest of his body.
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