Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is The cattle caliphate:
• Are gun manufacturers too afraid of the NRA to support White House policies? In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, Smith & Wesson, founded in 1852, cooperated with the Clinton administration in 2000 to install locking devices on firearms, develop “smart guns” that can only be fired by their owners, design weapons that block magazines holding more than 10 bullets and support background checks of all buyers. The company saw this as good PR and protection, perhaps, against lawsuits.
But National Rifle Association didn’t see it that way and led a backlash by its members. The gun lobby accused S&W of an “an act of craven self-interest” in becoming “the first gunmaker to run up the white flag of surrender.” The NRA effort halved S&W’s sales and the company nearly went bankrupt.
• Creep who harassed Sandy Hook victim’s family fired from university job:
James Tracy, the Sandy Hook truther who allegedly harassed the family of one of the students killed in the 2012 mass shooting, has been fired from his position at Florida Atlantic University, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Tracy came under fire after Lenny and Veronique Pozner, the parents of a boy who died in the massacre, published an op-ed in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel alleging Tracy harassed them for proof that their son ever existed.
• Salt miners in New York freed from stuck elevator.
• Paris police kill knife-wielding man wearing fake explosive vest:
Officials said the man shot to death Thursday wore a fake explosive vest and threatened officers at the entrance of a police station minutes after French president Francois Hollande, speaking in a different location, paid respects to officers fallen in the line of duty.
Pierre-Henry Brandet, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said the man at the police station is believed to have cried out "Allahu akbar," Arabic for "God is great." He has not been identified, and Brandet told The Associated Press that police do not believe anyone else was involved.
• A brief history of the Wilmingon coup d’etat and a few other anti-gov’t revolts:
In November of 1898, a group of angry white supremacist Democrats marched on the city hall of Wilmington, North Carolina and seized control of the government, deposing the mixed-race Republican government. And here's the thing: It actually pretty much worked.
The coup took place on November 10, two days after a vote restored the Democrats to power across the state. Before the vote, gangs of Democratic-affiliated "Red Shirt" thugs went around and terrorized black voters until they stayed away from the polls. The white supremacist leader, Col. Alfred Moore Waddell, publicly said that he would use black bodies to "choke the current of the Cape Fear River" before the election.
• 7 kinds of gov’t subsidies those angry anti-gov’t ranchers get that you don’t.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin rounds up the day’s new v2.0 releases: Roy Moore, birtherism & Lochner. TX open carry fans discover law-in’ is hard. Rosalyn MacGregor updates the Flint water crisis. Armando discusses the Sanders financial regulation reform plan.
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