When you're at the end of the road, food stamps are the only thing left. Most people don't qualify for welfare, the unemployment extensions for 99ers are gone, and there are no jobs to be had. Many people will read this and shake their heads at what this desperate mother did. I look at it and think of all the politicians who didn't lift a finger to help people like this:

(Reuters) - A woman in the border city of Laredo, Texas who was angry because she had been denied food stamps killed herself and shot and critically wounded her two children late on Monday, authorities said on Tuesday.

The 38-year-old woman entered the Texas Health and Human Services Commission office in downtown Laredo on Monday afternoon and demanded to speak to a supervisor, said investigator Joe Baeza of the Laredo Police Department.

The woman, whom he declined to identify, pulled out a handgun and started walking through the office, threatening several employees, he said.

"She had issues and felt that she had been let down by social services in general," Baeza told Reuters on Tuesday. "She was making all sorts of outlandish claims."

She took an office supervisor hostage in a room in the office, he said, and a SWAT team managed to evacuate the other three dozen people in the office and clear the area.

After two hours of negotiations, the woman allowed the male supervisor to go free, but she remained in the office with her two children, a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl.

"About 11:45 last night, she hung up the phone with negotiators, and a little bit later, negotiators heard three shots," Baeza said on Tuesday. "What had happened was that she had shot each of her children once and herself once."

The children were airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio in extremely critical condition, he said. The mother was dead at the scene, he said.

Baeza said the woman, who was from Ohio, arrived in Laredo about eight months ago and had lived with her children in several locations around the border city of 236,000.

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, confirmed that the woman applied for food stamps in July and was denied. Goodman said the woman's application was incomplete and that she was not sure whether the woman qualified for assistance.

Via Raw Story, the news that BP has hired private security to keep media away from the tainted beaches.

If they had hired Blackwater, the firm would have had a particularly appropriate sounding name for the job: guarding tar-stained beaches.

In their latest eyebrow-raising PR move, multinational oil giant BP has enlisted private security contractors to keep onlookers away from oil cleanup sites. While the firm they hired apparently isn't Blackwater (the private security firm Blackwater changed their name to Xe Services after a spate of killings in Baghdad, and has now put itself up for sale), they certainly seem to have 'black water' in their sights.

Wired's "Danger Room" blog dubbed BP's decision to hire private mercenaries in the Gulf "one of the bestest public relations moves ever."

The blog notes that BP's move recalls bungled decisionmaking in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the US Department of Homeland Security -- and some very wealthy homeowners -- turned to private security contractors to protect their property in the wake of the disaster.

[...] According to reports, the firm hired is named Talon Security.

In a video clip obtained by ThinkProgress over the weekend, a local news team from WDSU in New Orleans was told by a private security guard that they were not allowed to talk to cleanup workers on a public beach or come within 100 yards of cleanup operations.

"Who’s saying that?" reporter Scott Walker asked the guard. "Because no one can tell me that, unless you’re the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, you’re the Coast Guard, or you’re the military, can you tell me where to go on this public beach."

"I can tell you where to go because I’m employed to keep this beach safe," the guard replied, adding, "You are not allowed to interview any workers."