It might be accidental, but there's no question that a student brought a gun to school, put it in his backpack, and now two students are in the hospital after being injured by gunshots.

Via KTLA-Los Angeles:

A Gardena High School student brought a gun to the campus in a backpack Tuesday, and the weapon discharged -- possibly accidentally -- injuring two students.

Despite earlier reports of three shooting victims, a Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman said only two students were shot.

"Our indication is that a student took a gun to school in a backpack, and that that student had dropped the backpack and consequently the gun discharged," LAUSD spokesman Robert Alaniz told KABC. "We're not quite sure how both the students were injured, but we do know we have two injured students transported to the hospital.''

Police said the weapon was recovered, and the student was arrested shortly before noon in a classroom that was filled with students and one teacher.

Evidently the student dropped the backpack and the gun went off, hitting two students, and the hits weren't just a grazing shot, either.

Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Jamie Moore told the Associated Press that two victims have been transported, one in serious and one in critical condition.

As the parent of a high school student and a human being, I cannot tell you how angry it makes me that any student would bring a gun to school and put my child in danger for what? For WHAT? What possible reason would ANY student have for putting a gun in his backpack before he left for school.

Enough. Guns serve one purpose: to kill. They have no business in our schools, our supermarkets, our malls, or anywhere else.

Matt Taibbi: The Crying Shame of John Boehner

American Leftist: The American way of torture

INSTAPUTZ: Johns Hopkins Medical School found to know about science than Jenny McCarthy

The Rude Pundit and Whiskey Fire have differing views on the purging of Huck Finn

The Big Picture: A victory for the rule of law, property rights

Issa Exposed: Holding the Oversight Chairman Accountable

The contemptible American Family Association is no more Christian than Satan himself. The latest remarks from their evil leader Bryan Fischer about how Jesus would have allowed the Cranick's home to burn are just plain evil. Indulge me, please, as I address my response directly to this sad excuse for a hollow human. I started this post intending to refute his screed point by point and soon realized I didn't really want to subject you all to a Biblical pissing contest.

John Amato touched on this yesterday in his post on "Feminized Christianity" identifying Fischer as the proponent of this nonsense. Fischer supposes that Christians have gone all soft on humanity and stuff, embracing their inner woman instead of the strong, authoritative man person lurking in all of this.

There's only one word for this kind of Christian: toxic. Toxic. Toxic, as in nuclear waste spread over the entire country in varying degrees of potency until the cancer takes over and subsumes the entire society in a wave of hate, fear and loathing. This isn't Christianity; it's a sick authoritarian hateful person masquerading like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yeah, the Bible has some things to say about impostors and pretenders in society and the church, too.

Fischer missed the point of the passage he relied upon to make his case entirely. The point of the parable he told is simply to say "don't be complacent." Don't assume you can proclaim faith without actually doing something with it. That's the point, and it's made in three different parables. What Fischer demonstrates is exactly what is being preached against, not "feminized Christianity".

And then there's his closer, which makes me gnaw my fists in frustration.

(Essentially what Mr. Cranick wants is “guaranteed issue” for fire protection. This is the same thing that is going to destroy the health care industry, as it is already starting to do under RomneyCare in Massachusetts. If you can wait til you get sick before applying for insurance, and the insurance company has to provide it, everybody will just wait til they get sick to get insurance and pretty soon nobody will have insurance or health care, either one.)

No, actually what Mr. Cranick wanted was grace -- the ability to pay whatever he needed to pay at that moment and in that time to get them to turn on the damned hoses. What he wanted was someone to say yes, we will accept your perfectly good money and turn the water on for you. What he wanted was forgiveness, which is above all else, the foundation of Christian values and principles. That's what Mr. Cranick wanted.

The guaranteed issue argument is just Fischer's way of playing politics with a spiritual issue, but that's nothing new for this detestable organization. This is the same Bryan Fischer who blamed the Sea World trainer for her own death because Sea World didn't kill the killer whale after it killed the first time, suggests that children of lesbians are somehow damaged, advocates for nullification and defends Taliban Dan Webster against Alan Grayson, calling Grayson a "miserable creature".

Whether one is a Christian or not, Fischer does a great disservice to those of us who embrace that form of Christianity he derides as "feminized." Those of us who believe we shouldn't judge our neighbors, should forgive those who do us wrong, and share what we have with others are being painted with Fischer's broad, ugly, stinky brush.

We don't know what Jesus would have done if he were in the vicinity of Gene Cranick. We don't generally send rabbis out to fight fires, after all. It's likely he probably would have called out to the crowd for someone to help the man put out the fire. But there is no example in the bible -- NONE -- where Jesus stood by and let someone suffer to teach them a lesson. Jesus suffered, but he did not bring suffering on others. He fed them. He taught them. He led them. But he did not hurt them.

Bryan Fischer's version of Christianity is not one I recognize. It feels far more like Old Testament cruelty, brought down on the poor and disenfranchised in order to consolidate power. It feels like evil.

OSHA under fire
Jordan Barab explains how Sen. Mike Enzi (R) intends to gut OSHA

Hat tip to Revere
--Lindsay Beyerstein from Majikthise

Digby goes over the case only the way he can.

David Corn writes:Why Bush Has To Fire Rove

Catch finds the White House website not hosting today's video. Big surprise there.

Man Who Set Self on Fire Was FBI Informant

Monday Night Football Flack!

There is a better version of this clip that we put on 11/18

A skit that aired before the Eagles/Cowboys game drew fire from angered viewers, resulting in numerous complaints to ABC about the segment.

The FCC is investigating whether ABC has violated it's indecency rules.

Video

Check out the spot and let us know what you think! Is it indecent or are we headed back to the fifties?

If you’re a United States Senator and your house burns down, you don’t have to sleep out on the street. You have money, a staff, and wealthy friends. In other words, you have options.

So it’s pretty telling that when Senator Brownback’s condo caught fire back in 2000, he moved in with the manic, apocalyptic preacher Lou Engle. We know this thanks to a new video unearthed by Bruce Wilson.

Watch Engle explain – as only he can – how his pairing with Brownback came about:

In case you’re not familiar with Engle, he leads the IHOP – the International House of Prayer – which works to hasten the End Times. He’s also the founder (and voice-over talent) of militant, right-wing prayer rallies like this anti-Prop 8 event:

Miraculously, Brownback didn’t come to hate Engle after living with him for 7 months. In fact, the former roomies appeared together last week at the Family Research Council’s “PrayerCast” against healthcare reform. Who knows…maybe having Engle around makes Brownback feel reasonable?

[Bonus footage: watch Engle talk about the “hot blood” of Latinos and claim that his spittle is holy water]

Daniel Drezner an excellent Republican blogger has endorsed Kerry!

I wish more republicans would read this, instead of listening to their spin masters.

I've made up my mind
So I'm voting for Kerry.

In my two threads on the subject (here and here), I've been amused to read suggestions by fellow Republicans that I'm overanalyzing things and should just trust my gut. If I had done that, I would have known I was voting for Kerry sometime this summer because of Iraq. To put it crudely, my anger at Bush for the number of Mongolian cluster-f**ks this administration was discovered to have made in the planning process in the run-up to Iraq was compounded by the even greater number of cluster-f**ks the administration made in the six months after the invasion, topped off by George W. Bush's decision not to fire the clusterf**ks in the civilian DoD leadershop that insisted over the past two years that not a lot of troops were needed in the Iraqi theater of operations. No, if I was voting based on gut instincts, I would have planned on voting for Kerry and punching a wall afterwards. read on