Colorado shooting
Yesterday, some weird looking dude from South Carolina went to Colorado Springs, Colorado and killed three people, including Garrett Swasey, a 44-year-old local police officer and father of two. The murderer’s motives aren’t known at the time. but since his killing happened in a Planned Parenthood Clinic, we can guess. But, then again, he wasn’t wired too tightly, so who knows. He had a long record of sociopath behavior that included animal cruelty and being an eavesdropper and a peeper. He wasn’t convicted of any of those charges, according to Heavy, he was just guilty of a string of traffic violations.
If he was there to make a statement about the abortion aspect of Planned Parenthood’s business, murdering people was a bad way to do it. If the pro-Life movement is actually pro-Life, they also have to stand against murdering people, too. I don’t think yesterday’s shooter was that deep, though.
My own abhorrence of abortion has led me to become against the death penalty, because I don’t trust the government to decide who should live and who should die.
Unfortunately, the shooter yesterday didn’t make the decision to take his own life yesterday and save us the trouble of prosecuting him and, maybe putting him to death. I won’t mention his name because if he did it to become famous, he won’t get that here.
Officer Swasey, though joined the force four years ago after moving to Colorado to pursue his world-class figure skating career. He was well-known in his community and appreciated for his work at his church. I’m sure he’ll be missed by more than just his family.
Category: Crime
Your position is that of many Catholics and others who profess to be pro-life across the board, opposing abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty. It’s a position that doesn’t fit neatly into liberal (pro-choice, anti-death penalty) vs. conservative (anti-abortion, pro-death penalty) stereotypes. I find myself beginning to come around to your opinion on this, because even though our criminal justice system is generally very good, sometimes innocent people do get convicted, and are exonerated years later. Even for the worst of the worst, society is usually adequately protected by life without parole in a maximum-security facility (granting the possibility of escape can never be completely eliminated).
If I have to defend one stereotype or the other, though, I have a lot easier time defending sparing the innocent and allowing for the choice of killing the guilty, versus defending sparing the guilty, and allowing for the choice of killing the innocent.
Well said!
If you don’t trust the government enough to handle the death penalty, you really aren’t going to like the government with the power to coerce abortions.
Near the opening of the Roe v. Wade decision is a discussion of the consequences of granting our government the power to intervene in a decision. Once we give the government that power, there is no way to control how a decision will come out. A grant of power to our government to stop abortions is also a grant to coerce them.
In my opinion, that discussion probably explains the longevity of the decision, despite all of the political hoopla: it is enough to stop an attorney in his tracks, because it is a fundamental truth.
The upshot of Roe v. Wade is that it requires, for an abortion to happen, the consent of the one person with the most interest in having the child live, the mother, must be obtained.
I read that decision shortly after it issued, and I remember all the people saying “that could never happen!!!!!” A few years later, we found out that the Chinese did exactly that, with the result of many, many millions of aborted Chinese baby girls, a population imbalance between the sexes, and now underpopulation.
More recently, Sarah Palin was publicly castigated by the majority party in this country, for daring to let a baby with Down Syndrome live.
So, yes. Not only can it happen, there are people ready to try to make it happen here, now. Grant the government the power to stop abortions, and we will eventually see the slaughter of the innocents.
I am pro-choice, not because I think abortion is a good thing, but because I do not want the government making that decision.
The U.S.Government is beyond incompetent, they confiscated the “Mustang Ranch” in Nevade, a brothel and bar….they ended up losing money…..any MORON that can’t make a go of a whore house and a bar…can’t be trusted with a damned thing..now if obozo had confiscated a bathhouse, he might have made a goal with Rahm as a partner!
You post some of the craziest stuff on this board. The feds seized Mustang Ranch, but they didn’t run it, dumbass. They auctioned off and sold everything.
Rest in peace, brother.
Set all of the religious and political arguments aside for a moment. This guy murdered three people, one of them a police officer. Then the police chief announces the “perpetrator is in custody” not “the perpetrator was shot and killed resisting arrest”. When I was a kid growing up in New Yawk City, if you shot or worse killed a cop, they killed you, plain and simple. Had one case of a cop killer brought back from Chicago and was shot “trying to escape” when they took him off of the plane at LaGuardia. New York did not have many police shot or killed in those days.
If he was there to make a statement about the abortion aspect of Planned Parenthood’s business, murdering people was a bad way to do it.
I’d go along with that. But the reason I’m still (marginally) in favor of the death penalty is only because life without parole is too cush for some of the scum in our prison system.
If we were to, you know, actually PUNISH our criminals, I could totally see with doing away with the DP. Nothing says useless like a punishment you’re not willing to carry out, or even if you do, takes years, if not decades after the sentence has been imposed.
Planned Parenthood is a vile organization founded by a nazi and still run by her hand-picked successors. That said, the shooter is nonetheless a piece of shit murderer who deserves no fame, only a noose, and some quality time with Thor and Bubba before he gets it.
Officer Swasey (who was evidently a Christian, BTW, before certain nameless individuals start claiming “Christian terrorism”) lost his life in the honorable performance of his duty, running towards the sound of gunfire to protect others. May he rest in peace, his memory be cherished and honored, and may his courage and dedication be rewarded in Heaven.
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I supported Planned Parenthood for a long time, but the organization I knew when I was in school in Texas is very different from what I see, today.
The people I knew were a resource, particularly for young, stupid people, and their great goal was to convince girls and boys to start using effective birth control BEFORE they got pregnant. They were not selling abortions, so much as trying to prevent them.
So, I supported this organization for many years, particularly through United Way.
I was bothered by the disproportion of babies aborted in poor, urban, and black areas. Then I learned that this is exactly what Margaret Sanger wanted.
Then, they started to teach middle-schoolers about fisting, as if that were a desirable activity. I know this is not some right-wing conspiracy theory, because I’ve seen the pamphlets.
And now, there is strong evidence that they are engaged in a market for body parts, which is against public policy and illegal for human body parts of any age. Nobody else seems to have noticed, but it is plain to me that they may have also changed their procedures in various ways to the detriment of their patients, by by withholding appropriate anesthesia, provoking breach delivery, and delaying the abortion procedure (thereby increasing the risk and pain of the patient) in order to obtain later-stage parts.
This is not the Planned Parenthood of my youth.
I suppose it is obligatory for me to say that, assuming all the bad things about Planned Parenthood are absolutely true, and also assuming that the bad guy intended to target them, he is still a murderer who has no place in our society.
The proper fate for Planned Parenthood is exposure, followed by reform and/or bankruptcy, as appropriate.
While I understand what you are saying, you do realize PP was founded by Margret Sanger who was a Communist and racist, and whose desire it was to eradicate the black race through abortion?
As someone who has been involved in the peaceful and prayerful fight against abortion, this “procedure” was sold to kids and adults alike as a “right” to be exercised to prevent unwanted pregnancies so you were not inconvenienced. Never once did they take into consideration the inconvenience of the child.
The organization planned and sold the idea the child is not human or alive until born so it would be more palatable to the population and the pregnant woman. But where is PP when it comes to helping the women after the abortion with health problems and mental issues which are rampant? And yes, I know this because I deal with these women after the fact.
I have heard the argument for too many years about who takes care of the women and children who were not aborted. We try hard to get information out to the women that there are real alternatives to include support organizations, adoption and much more. There is a long line of people waiting desperately to adopt. There is support for the women but we are not allowed to properly advertise or promote such alternatives in any effective way.
PP will not go bankrupt because the government is always there for them as well as millions I private donations. However for the alternatives, there is very little and no government will offer any help.
Rick: Thank you for what you do, it is valuable and it is appreciated. You said, “We try hard to get information out to the women that there are real alternatives to include support organizations, adoption and much more. There is a long line of people waiting desperately to adopt.” That line of people waiting to adopt may be long but the line of kids is a LOT longer. My wife and I were foster parents from the mid-1980s. During that time, we adopted four kids and we are the legal guardian for a girl who can never live independently, that guardianship may pass to one of my kids when we pass. According to every state’s HHS organization the stated goal for every kid in care is to return home to a loving functional family. A significant percentage of them do but in MANY cases the parents are too screwed up, parental rights are terminated and those kids sit in the foster care system waiting to be permanently adopted. But it doesn’t happen and I bet you know why. 1. a lot of these kids are damaged by the process of meeting with their abusive or neglectful parents while they (parents and kids) go through counseling. Not all foster homes are ideal. In many cases there isn’t enough money or supervision. Repeated unsuccessful attempts to return kids to their parents. Most adoptive parents do not have the correct skills to handle these kids and there aren’t enough resources to work through the issues. 2. It is the stated goal of many state HHS agencies to place kids into a foster or adoptive home that is the same race as the child. Seems like a good idea but … there are a lot of black kids and few black adoptive parents. So the kids get stuck waiting for the “appropriate” adoptive parents to come along and they get more damaged by the wait. For what it’s worth some people don’t want to adopt black kids. I guess I get it but none of my adopted kids are the same race as… Read more »
Y’all need to get your stories straight – was she a Nazi or a commie?
I’ll stop supporting the death penalty when someone can show me another penalty which prevents recidivism as effectively. The current rate is 0%. That being said… the death penalty should never be applied in cases built on circumstantial evidence or single-eyewitness identification.
Gateway Pundit says the shooter self-identifies as a woman.
Maybe that killer (whose name will note come from me either) can be put in the same cell as Chelsea Manning so they can eat each other out.
Abortion is an incredibly complex and nuanced issue, but we only get two political options, expressed in a total of three words- you are pro choice or life.
For the record, I am anti death penalty and pro life but not anti abortion. I believe that human life begins at conception and that all lives are precious Even those of the unborn, criminals, and my enemy.
(This also governs my beliefs about just war, which includes justice before, during, and after war.)
How can I be pro life but anti abortion? My conviction is that abortion should be rare, accessible, safe, and decided by the woman, her doctor, and her god. The government (and by extension me), should have no part in that decision. I think that most Americans feel the same, but our political system won’t allow for a nuanced view.
What do I think of this crime? It’s murder, of course, and in my mind an act of terrorism. The trial will be an ordeal, because this man is either a monster or mentally ill. We will get some sort of insight into his mind, and it won’t be pleasant. Pundits on both sides will use this as part of their platform, and America will do its best to wiggle away from the real truths.
In the end, we will all walk away down one of two paths, Pro Life or Pro Choice.
“…and pro life but not anti abortion.” (2nd paragraph)
That made my head hurt.
As it did with gay marriage recently, the Supreme Court abandoned its assumed role as the arbiter of a given law’s constitutionality in order to set national policy when it decided Roe v. Wade. Just as five lawyers on the present court discovered a fundamental right to marriage, discarding, as they did, the nature and traditional formation of a fundamental constitutional right, the majority of lawyers on the 1973 court discovered a fundamental right to abortion, grounded in a previously discovered right to privacy. What right to privacy? My copy of the US Constitution doesn’t mention it. Nor does my copy declare abortion or gay marriage to be a right, let alone a fundamental one. What most abortion proponents bleat repeatedly when the topic is raised is not traceable to good law or sound legal reasoning—or even the decision itself—but, instead, is merely the monotonous propagandizing of the abortion industry. Why is it that most everyone here, if not everyone, agrees that, by and large, lawyers suck, but when it comes to the ones sitting (sometimes drooling) on the Supreme Court, perspective changes?
(For the one guy I can count on to read-in my position on abortion and who, thankfully, has not yet sullied this one with an appearance, note that I have not stated it. That you can correctly guess it is not, um, RELEVANT.)
“Right to privacy”. Isn’t that the one Stevens found out back in a shadow or penumbra or something?
Hey, I tend to agree that such a right exists. But that argument creating it was IMO abuse of the plain language of the Constitution on par with the abuse of the Commerce Clause in Katzenbach v. McClung.
Regarding the right to privacy, I agree that such a right exists but it’s just that it does not arise from the Constitution, which is your point. When one or another court discovers a new right w/o 150 years or so of other courts’ not seeing it, there is no limiting the court, absent congressional action (fat chance) or amendment. Obamacare (tax!) and gay marriage alone prove this. The judiciary, topped by the Supreme Court, is the most dangerous and, to me, frightening branch of government. Life terms and absolutely no one to answer to. They not only can do what they damn well please, they actually do what they damn well please. And the few who are actually true to the Constitution are the ones who are frequently vilified and ridiculed.
When’s the last time a doctor told you he would not perform a procedure on you because you did not meet your biological quota according to his criteria? I have. In my case, it had to do with sterilization. His criteria was that I had not had a child. When you have a doctor tell you he will not provide a service to you because you are not doing with your body what he feels is correct, I guarantee that you will feel differently about the question of abortion rights.
Of course Obama does his thing.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-enough-enough-latest-us-shooting-141938057.html
If you Google the news about shootings like I do everyday, you can find more horrific waste of life in urban communities daily. For example there was the Bunny Friend Park shooting on Sunday where 17 people were shot. Hear much about it?
The only reason this Colorado shooting gets the attention that it does is because it happened at an abortion clinic and it’s somehow proof of right-wing terrorism.
In this article,
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/11/bunny_friend_park_shooting_wha.html
it says, “Witnesses saw a man with a silver-colored machine gun flee toward Louisa Street.”
“Machine gun” that outta get the mainstream media all sizzling with interest.
But this happened in NOLA in the 9th Ward. You may recall, that was the neighborhood that suffered a lot of damage and flooding during Katrina. This is not the nicest or highest-income part of NOLA.
In this case, everyone lived (maybe pistol bullets or just crappy marksmanship) so maybe that is another difference.
NOPD now has a shooter name and picture. He isn’t a white right wing nut job so maybe that decreases the mainstream media interest.
But 17 citizens got shot up. I used to live in that city (in a different neighborhood) and I worked there for three years and I had friends there so I care about this.
Jonn, I think you are right. The Springs shooting may have more legs because the police photo makes the guy look like he needs counseling. And The Springs is very conservative. And the venue was Planned Parenthood. And a cop was killed. I think that it is interesting that our feckless leader called for more gun control after this shooting but not after the Bunny Friend Park event.
Anti-abortion? Anti Death Penalty?
Kelly: Sergeant, this bank’s not gonna fall into the hands of the American army. It’s gonna fall in our hands. You see, we’re just a private enterprise operation.
German tank commander: You… the American army!
Oddball: No, baby, we ain’t.
“The University of Colorado-Colorado Springs Police Officer killed in the shooting, 44-year-old Garrett Swasey, responded to the scene after calls for help from other officers.”
With ultimate respect, Rest in Peace.
He ran to the sound of the guns. Nothing more need be said.