The sergeant-at-arms of the Canadian Parliament’s name is Kevin Vickers. He is 58 years old, and here’s how the lethal madness at the Canadian capitol ended yesterday. “By all accounts, the white-haired grandfather, a decorated veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, kept cool amid the chaos as dozens of bullets flew in the corridors, went to his office, retrieved his weapon and with a firm hand and a steely eye shot a killer before he could kill again. Vickers, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall, then walked away, gun-in hand, having ‘taken care of business,’ as one news outlet put it.” Via The Washington Post.
What do ideological Supreme Court justices care about the right to vote? The New Yorker: “This moment, of threatened voting rights and judicial obscurity, presents a paradox: the strongest tool that citizens possess is being made impotent by the government officials who are most immune to the power of the vote. The magazine quotes James Garder, a constitutional-law professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School: “The Court has been moving in this direction for a while. They can’t find campaign-finance restrictions that they like. They want a completely unregulated political market. And they seem not to be too concerned when people get turned away from the polls.”
Vox on forced labor in the United States. It’s a story as old as sailboats. “Here’s how it happens: a person in Mexico or the Philippines, for example, finds out about an opportunity in the United States through a friend or relative. An employer is offering a nursing job that comes with a green card — so long as the immigrant pays many thousands of dollars in fees and puts her family in debt.”
Greg Sargent on a significant campaign trail development: Democrats are defending Obamacare. “Yes, Republicans are running a lot of attack ads about the law, and yes, those are probably hurting Democrats. But at the same time, Republicans are retreating from, and dissembling madly about, their repeal stance. And Democrats are not playing to type…”
Ebola-style overseas-travel-ban Republican lawmaker panic. We have been here before. Amanda Terkel at Huffington Post via HuffPost Hill: “[F]or two decades, the United States did try to stop the spread of a deadly disease by banning everyone afflicted from entering the country. Those efforts failed, leading to discrimination, panic, a deterioration in the country’s reputation, researchers barred from entering the U.S. to help find a cure, and individuals separated from friends and family for years. More than 600,000 people with an AIDS diagnosis in the United States died despite the ban…The HIV/AIDS ban went into effect in 1987, thanks to President Ronald Reagan. It was strengthened through legislation in 1993 by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who wanted a ‘quarantine of those infected’ with the virus. Foreigners already living in the United States who were infected with HIV also had to leave the country. Even at the time, public health experts were saying a ban was a bad idea.”
Also from HuffPo: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hasn’t given up on the close race in Kentucky targeting Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. The DSCC is going back up on the air with $650,000 in ads supporting long-shot candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Gosh……I thought everyone knew that you don’t mess with the Mounties. You clowns should not forget that grandpa might be packing heat.