State legislator wants to arm Minnesota teachers

As loony as that idea might seem to some, Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, "will introduce legislation to arm [Minnesota] teachers after [the Newtown] school shootings."

"It's something that we have to face that all of the laws in the world sometimes aren't just going to work," Cornish said, according to an MPR report. "The cop can't be everywhere so the best person to defend yourself is yourself."

Last session, Cornish authored the Defense of Dwelling and Person Act that was approved by the MNGOP-controlled legislature but ultimately vetoed by Gov. Dayton. But while he's known as a staunch advocate of gun rights, his decision to push a bill arming teachers is still a bit surprising.

During an interview with Chad Hartman last month, Cornish was asked whether he'd reintroduce to the Defense of Dwelling Act in 2013. He said there was "zero" chance.

"It's dead on arrival," Cornish said, alluding to the gun-unfriendly DFL majorities in both chambers. "I'm not going to spin my wheels when I know something isn't going to come to fruition."

You would think the same logic would apply with regard to Cornish's Armed Defense of Classrooms idea, as earlier in the day yesterday Dayton said arming teachers "defies common sense."

"You just increase the danger," Dayton said, according to a Star Tribune report.

But even though he'd likely veto a guns-in-the-classroom bill, Dayton made clear he believes Minnesotans have the right to bear arms.

"My reading of the constitution is that it provides a complete permission for any law abiding citizen to possess firearms, whichever ones he or she chooses, and the ammunition to go with that," Dayton said. "There's a limit on what society can do to protect people from their own follies."

Mike Huckabee: Newtown Shooting No Surprise, We've 'Systematically Removed God' From Schools

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/mike-huckabee-school-shooting_n_2303792.html
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) weighed in on the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. on Friday, saying the crime was no surprise because we have "systematically removed God" from public schools.

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

This line of reasoning isn't new for Huckabee.

Speaking about a mass shooting in Aurora, Colo. over the summer, the former GOP presidential candidate claimed that such violent episodes were a function of a nation suffering from the removal of religion from the public sphere.

"We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem," Huckabee said on Fox News. "And since we've ordered God out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised ... when all hell breaks loose."

Adam Lanza, 20, is the suspect in a school shooting that left 27 dead Friday, including 20 children. Lanza is reportedly the son of a teacher at the school where the shootings occurred.

A gun control halftime show: Should Bob Costas have spoken out on Belcher suicide?

CNN
There are a few things you can usually expect out of an NFL halftime show. A debate about gun control isn't one of them.

But Sunday wasn't a normal day in the NFL. It was two days after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins, his girlfriend and the mother of his child, before killing himself outside the front door of the Chiefs' practice facility.

It was shocking. And it was expected that this tragedy would seep through into Sunday's football coverage.

But many people were not expecting Bob Costas to make a plea for gun control.

During halftime of NBC's "Sunday Night Football," Costas blamed the nation's gun culture for what happened between Belcher and his girlfriend, remarks that set off a heated debate about whether the sportscaster should have launched into what some called a "rant" on gun control.

Here's a transcript of Costas' comments:

"Well, you know that it was coming. In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: Something like this really puts it all in perspective.

Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective.

You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from a Kansas City based-writer, Jason Whitlock, with whom I do not always agree but who today said it so well today that we may as well as quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.

‘Our current gun culture,' Whitlock wrote, '... ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenaged boys bloody and dead. ...

'Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.'

In the coming days, Jovan Belcher's actions and their possible connections to football will be analyzed. Who knows? But here, wrote Jason Whitlock is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

Costas' remarks seemed to send the Internet into an immediate feeding frenzy. Was it appropriate for him to talk about a political issue during a sports show? What is the right forum for this kind of discussion? Was he only saying what everyone else was already thinking?

Mankato coach finally cleared of child pornography charges

STAR TRIBUNE by Richard Maryhew
MANKATO - Finally, Todd Hoffner had a Saturday to celebrate.

For the first time in more than three months, the head football coach at Minnesota State University, Mankato woke up clear of the felony child pornography charges that had turned his life upside down.

Hours later, his undefeated Mavericks kept their national championship dreams alive by defeating Missouri Western 17-10 to advance to the NCAA Division II semifinals. But Hoffner wasn't there to see it.

Even though a judge on Friday dismissed criminal charges stemming from two videos Hoffner recorded in June of his three young children dancing naked and touching themselves, an ongoing university investigation kept him off the university campus -- as it has all season. So instead, Hoffner spent the day at home in nearby Eagle Lake, watching his team's victory on a computer.

Although Hoffner was absent from the Blakeslee Stadium sidelines Saturday, he was on the minds of many. As scores of Maverick fans draped in the purple and gold school colors braced against the December chill and readied for the noon kickoff, many expressed sympathy and support for their 46-year-old coach, who hasn't set foot in the stadium or talked with his assistants since he was escorted from the practice field by university officials in August and told he was being put on investigative leave.

The videos, found when Hoffner turned in his malfunctioning, campus-issued cellphone to the school's IT department, were the only evidence presented at the time of his arrest. Subsequent searches of his home computers and video equipment, interviews with his children, and investigations into cell and computer records at other colleges where he had coached turned up nothing to support the charges.

"They screwed up," said John Swenson, a Mavericks fan from Elysian. "I have pictures of my boy when he was young and in the bathtub. Who doesn't have those? It's so inappropriate what they did to the coach."

In her strongly worded ruling, District Judge Krista Jass said the videos of the children performing a skit showed nothing lewd, sexual or pornographic, but merely children "dancing and acting playful after a bath."

Becky Vosburg, a North Mankato resident and 1982 MSU graduate, wondered if prosecutors were influenced by the child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State University that cost head coach Joe Paterno his job and sent former assistant Jerry Sandusky to prison. "If we wouldn't have had the Sandusky thing a year ago, I don't think they would have been as quick to judge him and prosecute him," she said.

Hoffner said Friday that he wants to return to his job. But that can't happen until the university reinstates him. Given Jass' ruling Friday, some fans wondered why that hasn't already happened.