How to stop school shootings and mass murder

Responsible gun owners recognize an AR-15 (the military version is the M-16) as a good rifle. It is very good at killing lots of people. Remington manufactures a 90-round drum magazine for the weapon's .223 ammunition (5.56 mm NATO), which costs about $120.  Standard magazines are 20 and 30 rounds.  There is no reason to produce a 90-round magazine.
I qualified with the M-16 during basic training in the Army.  It is a fine weapon, but it was designed to kill lots of people.  The M-16 was not made for hunters; it was made for soldiers to kill the enemy.
Adam Lanza killed 20 children with an AR-15.
The unspeakable tragedy on December 14 in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 6- and 7-year-olds and six teachers died could not have been prevented.  This was the fifth school shooting this year since an eighth grade student engaged police officers at Cummings Middle School on January 4 in Brownsville, Texas, and was killed.  No one else was killed or injured.
There have been at least 73 school shootings since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which 15 students and a teacher were killed; 23 wounded.  The gunmen killed themselves.
If we had a solution to this, I think we would have found it already.  It is sad commentary on our people and political leaders that we haven't.  We must try to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people.  But budgetary cutbacks on mental health services and institutions -- both at the state and federal level -- make it unlikely that someone who wants to kill lots of people will provide warning signs to a mental health professional before he strikes.
I'm afraid gun control won't work very well either, but reimposing the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, might help some.
Security doors for schools that require the person who wishes to enter the locked security door to push a buzzer or intercom and a camera trained on the entrance is certainly a low-cost approach.  These security doors are probably being installed in schools around the nation as I write this.  At least I hope so.
The only common-sense solution is to arm teachers and teach them how to use their weapons to protect themselves and their students.  Not all teachers, but at least the ones who volunteer to get the firearms training they will need.  And there definitely needs to be a semi-automatic pistol in the principal's office, which is usually found close to the entrance of schools.
It's either that, or post an armed guard at the front door.  Because how do you keep crazy people from getting guns and killing people?  As a nation, we don't have good options to resolve this.  Now the politicians will appoint "blue-ribbon commissions" and special committees of lawmakers to come up with suggestions to solve the problem, but new policies and laws and enforcement are not what we need.  We need to do something practical to protect our children in the short term, so this is what I think we should do:  Arm teachers.

Republican senators toss a bone to the DREAMers

Three influential U.S. senators have introduced a Republican version of the DREAM Act.
The bill would provide a pathway for young people who came to the United States without inspection at the border (i.e., unlawfully) and who complete military service or higher education and work in the United States for at least four years to become permanent residents.
But not citizenship.
Called the "Achieve Act", the bill would provide a permanent residence visa (often called a "green card") to people younger than 28 who were brought to the United States prior to reaching age 14. It would be made available to young people who do not have serious criminal records and who agree not to apply for federal government benefits, including federal student loans.
That's like saying, "Sure, kid, you can take my car, but I'm keeping the keys."
None of the armed services allows illegal aliens to enlist.  And these young people are the children of middle income parents, so prohibiting them from obtaining student loans is the same as locking them out of the classroom.
Two of the three Republican senators -- John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) -- are on their way out of the Senate.  It was McCain who worked closely with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) in years past to draft comprehensive immigration reform, which has gone nowhere in this do-nothing Congress.
In stark contrast, the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) would provide a path to citizenship for young people who have lived in the United States for at least five years prior to the date of enactment of the bill.  If they complete two years of military service or two years of higher education, they would obtain temporary legal residence for a six-year period.
During that six-year period, they may obtain permanent residence if they complete military service and obtain an honorable discharge or complete a higher education degree program.
The DREAM Act's chief sponsor in the Senate is Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Supporters of the DREAM Act say it would simply extend legal residence to good American kids who came to the United States without the capacity to commit a misdemeanor by crossing the border without inspection.  Critics call it "amnesty."
I don't call Congress's failure to pass the DREAM act "stupid", but I certainly don't think this failure is smart immigration policy.  Neither is Congress's failure to allocate more immigrant visas for highly skilled workers.

The 'Don'ts' of how to win presidential elections for Republicans

Here's what Republicans need to stop doing to win presidential elections:

1.  Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is wrong about many things, but he is right about this:  The GOP does not have enough "angry white men" to win presidential elections.  In order for the Republican Party to win the White House, it must attract new voters who are non-white, i.e., African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans.  Changing demographics is a fact of life in America, and Republicans' "fact-denial" and "science-denial" are retro.  Telling Hispanics who are here without benefit of "papers" that they must "self-deport" is not helpful.  Saying that 47 percent of the American people are shiftless and lazy and just looking for a handout is not helpful.  Forty percent of white voters voted for Obama, folks.  Think forward.
2.  Pick a winner.  The Republican presidential primary is a well-known joke.  Contestants run so far to the right to win the party faithful that they wind up looking like Attila the Hun in business suits.  Late-night comedians are the only beneficiaries of this process.  Republicans, independent voters, and know-nothings suffer in silence.  Find someone with street cred and compassion for the little guy, and you might pick a winner.  Might.
3.  Stop bringing up settled issues.  Abortion rights and contraception for women and equal pay for equal work are issues that were settled 38 or more years ago.  Some Republicans who carry fundamental religious beliefs into the public square are driving the party into the sewer, insisting that life begins at conception.  Now part of the Republican Party platform, this fundamentally flawed principle will keep the party's presidential candidate out of the White House forever.  The political lesson, my Republican friends, is this:  Pick fights with women and you lose.
4.  Stop the "no tax increase" mantra.  Sure, the American people are taxed enough, but the tax rates are lower now than they were 20 years ago.  No one wants their taxes to increase, but with deficits so huge that the nation can't even afford the interest payments, we better be looking for revenue sources.  If Republicans can't recognize this, there's no trip to the White House for them.  Tax cuts for the wealthy don't give voters with middle class incomes a warm, fuzzy feeling.  But they do brand a party as favoring the rich.
5.  Quit giving the Pentagon and Wall Street free passes.  The defense budget is so bloated that you couldn't even draw something fat enough to represent it in a cartoon.  The Cold War was over 23 years ago, but the Republicans are in "fact-denial", with Mitt Romney famously calling Russia our "enemy".  Do we need more nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and B-2 bombers and next-generation fighter aircraft (that cost $40 million a copy) and nuclear missiles to fight the Cold War when we're fighting Taliban with AK-47s dug in to a hillside?  Republicans have to acknowledge that 911 and the invasion of Iraq happened on their watch.  Talk about failures of intelligence.  Those fiascos -- the former costing almost 3,000 American dead and the latter costing 5,000 American dead and more than 20,000 wounded -- make the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, look like a baby's playpen.  Wall Street will find lots of ways to screw the customers without Republicans' help.  I don't know when that became the way to do business in America but it's a fact of life today.  No White House for you.
Will Republicans stop doing any of this?  Of course not.

Why the Republicans lost the White House again

The time for Republicans to examine their party's direction and composition is upon them.  This presidential election was razor close, sure, but history repeats itself.  Study federal elections in the 1880s.
I think Republicans have forgotten their conservative roots, which I boil down to four, the source being former GOP presidential candidate and Arizona senator Barry Goldwater.
The first is maximum liberty.  If your government can't protect your freedom and liberties, it's not much of a government.  Goldwater was pro-life, but he was not anti-abortion.  His wife was head of Planned Parenthood for his home state of Arizona.  He consistently voted to uphold abortion rights and opposed efforts to pass a constitutional amendment reversing Roe v. Wade.
The second is limited government.  True conservatives don't believe in "no government", but they don't want the government they know they must have to be intrusive and control people's lives and fortunes (see maximum liberty above).  Safety and security are jobs one and two.  After that, real conservatives take a hard look at the role the federal government should play in, e.g., education.  What does the United States Constitution say about the federal government's role in education?
Third is a balanced budget.  The last time the federal government reported a budget surplus, according to the Congressional Budget Office, were the years 1998 to 2000, the last three years of the Clinton administration.  It's been downhill from there, and both major parties have contributed to the slide into red ink as far as the eye can see.
Finally, there is the matter of war and military power.  True coservatives are not isolationists or hawks, but they do believe in not waging wars of opportunity or adventure.  We need to call these "wars" (Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan) what they really are:  Occupations.  It's easy to start a war, but the United States is proving that it is darn difficult to end one.
Do I think Republican leaders can get together and, after some serious soul-searching, return to conservative roots?  The short answer is no.  The party and its platform have strayed so far from its bedrock conservative principles that it ran out of breadcrumbs and can't find its way back.

U.S. immigration policy upside-down and here's why

I like facts.  They are so much better than demagoguery, ranting and raving you hear about U.S. immigration policy (or lack thereof).

So it may come as a surprise to you to hear from me that U.S. immigration policy is upside-down.  Here's the best example.  During the first full year after the 2001 Canadian Citizenship & Immigration Act went into effect (2002), here are how many immigrant visas Canada issued in the family and employment (Canada calls this cateory "economic") categories:

Family 46,319 (38.2%)
Economic 58,221 (48%)

By 2011, here were the numbers:

Family 45,449 (34.5%)
Economic 64,356 (49%)

Do you see the direction Canada is going in with its immigration policy?  It is trying to keep highly skilled workers and their foreign-born college and university graduates to build and improve its economy while maintaining a humanitarian level of family immigrant visa issuance.  It is trying to keep the brains and highly educated young people in Canada.  Smart.

In contrast, the United States issues 226,000 family immigrant visas and only 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas each fiscal year.  The State Department has backlogs for employment-based immigrant visas that force natives of some countries to wait more than six years for an immigrant visa in the highly skilled worker categories -- young people our colleges and universities educated!  Dumb immigration policy.

This is upside down, folks.  Write and call your federal representatives and tell them to fix this problem now.

Romney surrogate calls U.S. response in Libya 'limp-wristed'

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and surrogate for presidential hopeful former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) John Bolton harshly criticized the Obama administration’s response to the violence in Benghazi, Libya earlier this month, calling the U.S. response “limp-wristed."

The Bush appointee was speaking to Fox News on Friday when he used the homophobic insult, which, as Think Progress noted, is “usually used as a slur against or allusion to gay men” and to connote weakness.

“The US is viewed under Obama as weak, as Sen. McCain said, as declining in influence dramatically in the Middle East, pulling out of Iraq, intending to pull out of Afghanistan,” Bolton alleged, “having a limp wristed reaction to the assassination of four American diplomats.” - From RawStory, rawstory.com

John Bolton is disgusting.  He never saw combat in Vietnam -- although he supported the war -- because he joined the Maryland Army National Guard.  His former boss, George W. Bush, did the same thing by joining the Texas Air National Guard.

In fact, the Navy deployed ships off the Libyan coast on Sept. 12, the day after the attack, and deployed a group of Marines called a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team to Libya to secure U.S. facilities.  This team is specially trained to guard, defend, or retake diplomatic installations.

John Bolton is a bellicose loud-mouth neocon bomb-thrower who has always been part of the problem, not part of the solution.

IRS makes it harder for people to get ITINs

An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) is issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) only to an applicant who is not eligible for a social security number.
Last June, the IRS announced that -- at least for awhile -- it will make it harder for non-citizens to get an ITIN.  Formerly, the IRS would allow ITIN applicants to provide copies of identity documents that were notarized, or allow such documents to be submitted through certifying acceptance agents (approved, ironically, by the IRS).
ITIN applicants who submit Form W-7, Application for IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, generally want to be able to file IRS Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, with the IRS.  This is a good thing.
But during this interim period, people who need an ITIN to get their tax returns processed must do so by submitting -- by mail -- their original identity documentation or certified copies of their documentation. Documentation will be accepted at IRS walk-in sites but will be forwarded to the ITIN centralized site for processing.
The IRS says the new procedures are designed to strengthen and protect the integrity of the ITIN process while minimizing the impact on taxpayers.
"The IRS will look to make long-term improvements to the program while minimizing barriers to individuals reporting their income and filing their tax returns," an IRS news release said.  Really?  It's an improvement to make it harder to get an ITIN?
Government used to be for the people.