… involved a six-year-old obviously disturbed kid who almost killed but only badly wounded his teacher (she’s suing the school board for forty million dollars, but details of the virtually criminal neglect on the part of administrators suggest she should sue for sixty million) … Wounded, she still managed to save all the children in the room from the shooter.

Do you remember this case? I know all them massacres in Nashville and Louisville are crowding out your memory of this one and hundreds of others. But you probably remember this one because six-year-old gun-bearing would-be murderers are – even in this country, where the blood comes sweepin’ down the plain – pretty fucking amazing.

So, the latest is that, following in the footsteps of the bone-chilling Crumbleys, the woman who birthed this severely mentally ill little boy and left her gun lying around for him to take to school, has been indicted by a Newport News grand jury.

That’s very good news; but in both cases – and the tons of others on their way – we must send these people, once found guilty, to prison.

****************************

From the wonderful family that brought you Alex Murdaugh on down, oodles of American assholes are currently leaving loaded guns all over the place. When their one year olds find them and kill their two year olds it barely makes the news, cuz it happens all the time. The babes need to shoot up a school to get our attention.

But they still don’t have our attention. Not sose you’d notice.

From prison, the Crumbleys and Deja Taylor need to be incentivized to star in a joint public service announcement, in which, sadder but wiser, they encourage other Americans to lock their guns and put them away.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm doffs her Watkins Glen souvenir sun hat to Halliea Milner, famous author of famous Kenneth Kenne Joseph Pluhar, Jr’s obit.

Most of the many comments on Pluhar’s Legacy page are from people – from around the world! – who never knew him (one of the comments is this post’s headline) but were so stirred by Milner’s obit that they had to say something.

And if you click that link up there you’ll see why. The substance of almost anyone’s life, rendered with lucid accuracy, would occasion some species of laughter (‘Anyone with brains understands that he is destined to lead a stupid life because there is no other kind,’ says a character in Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater. ‘I’m fairly positive that I’ll regret my stupidity the most in my final moment of awareness,’ said Alec Guinness to James Grissom in an interview.), but his daughter’s rendering of redneck Kenne’s sojourn is so piercingly brilliant you’ll be peeing yourself. People adore this obit because there’s something exuberantly liberating about encountering not evasion and platitude and Hello Jesus but head-on honesty about the actual life an actual person lived.

Ol’ Kenne, an irredeemable rascal, finds himself rendered an irredeemable rascal by the truth-teller he raised.

SOS doubts he’s shocked/offended. Wherever his gin-soaked, weed-smoked spirit wafts, it’s laughing too.

… Catoctin Wildlife Preserve. Camp David is down the street.

… embraces her cousin while waiting to chomp down on mazurek.

Photo Joanna Soltan.

I guess that time is now.

Though of course this body is left far more intact than the AR-15 must have left the real ones in Nashville.

***************

UD thanks Al.

I told you it’s hard to keep up.

Even if, like UD, you really try.

Asked for a reaction, one Wharton insider said: “We clearly need to search our soul. But we haven’t got a soul.”

… better late, etc.

But in announcing the launch of his new organization – Gunning for Granny – Kirk went on to say that there’s something we can all do right away to stem the tide of school massacres.

“With the support of the NRA, we are today rolling out Gunning for Granny, a grassroots movement aimed at redirecting shooters’ rage from elementary school settings to assisted living communities. We all mourn the senseless shattering of little ones just beginning their life journey, whereas the massacre of the elderly – just as easily accomplished within the confined and concentrated setting of dementia care facilities – is a far more tolerable, rational, and achievable event. If we can make the case – via PSAs, viral memes, and interviews with thought leaders – that the effect of assault weapons on an eighty year old body can be every bit as satisfying as their effect on an eight year old body, we can, to quote Shakespeare’s play about the senile, “show the heavens more just.” Gunning for Granny will use humor and humanity to target the most burdensome among us, while at the same time rescuing that most precious gift of all: our children.”

… have gotten those schools into plenty of trouble. Hired to think and act in terms of social justice, some of these people turn out to be bullies who like to lead Children’s Crusades against perceived enemies.

For Oberlin’s demagogue, the enemy was a bakery. Her vicious crusade against its blameless owners ended up costing that school $36 million.

Stanford’s person led a group of law students in shouting down and forcing out of the room a visiting judge.

Stanford’s dean is not only appalled by this inane and ignorant behavior; she has put the demagogue on leave and apologized to the judge. She has also condemned, in a lengthy letter, the idiots who followed the fool’s lead, and she has mandated, for all current law students, a seminar in free speech.

Meanwhile, some conservative judges are planning to boycott all Stanford law grads if they apply for internships in their offices. Some of those applicants from Stanford will of course be conservatives, which is just too damn bad for them.

So … we can expect smart conservative law school applicants to decide not to apply to Stanford.

Professor Rafael Luque: A model for us all.

The result shouldn’t surprise anyone. Just ask most Americans, and they’ll tell you.

How quickly will he again be released on probation, so he and his “9mm pistol, loaded with 12 rounds of ammunition in a 13 round magazine” can once more visit Funz Trampoline Park?

Trump, Berlusconi, Murdoch: An era is closing. Ave atque vale.

Freud.

… already in early April. In UD‘s garden.