"empirical evidence should matter more than raw emotions:" That happens so rarely when dealing with Dems as to be an unrealistic expectation. You have only to look at the fiscal cliff matter. Everyone knows that spending, and specifically entitlements, are the cause of the problem. Does Obama bring his proposals for serious spending cuts to the table? Nope. Typical. Dems live in a different world than the rest of us.

That F&F program was how they strategized to get control of guns in the US. They were going to use that to justify riding roughshod over gun shows, gun sales, ammo sales, etc. It blew up in their faces so now this silly creature Lanza gives him his Crisis that shouldn't be wasted.

The Question of the Ages: How involved is Obama in anything except crushing Republicans and golf? Repeated reports during the last 4 years described the Prez as "bored" "indifferent" "depressed at the rat race of governing" "detached" "unavailable" etc. Policy seems to make his eyes glaze over.

That's right on the whole. No nation on earth deals with a more diverse population. Where you have a diverse population, you have violence on a daily basis. Where you have cultural hegemony, you have more peace and tranquility, born of common cultural attitudes.

I have a better idea. Why don't we lock up the mentally ill like we used to before the ACLU started messing around with those laws? Why do you think disarming the law-abiding will solve the issue of mass murders? I can tell you: it won't. But once the guns are taken away, there will be no going back. There will be just more mass murders by people who have guns illegally. The simplistic drivel is all on the gun-control side.

Mmm. Think you are leaving out the entire history of the American west. Kashby, say hellow to Gen. Custer . . . .

The trouble with "having a conversation about guns" is that the ignorant drown out the the knowledgeable and hysteria drives the legislation. Hysteria guarantees that 1) the solution will not fit the problem; 2) the routine answer - disarm law abiding citizens - doesn't keep guns out of the hands of people intent on violence as our European friends know but choose not to admit; 3) the laws passed in such a frenzy to demostrate "caring" will have unintended consequences far more troubling than a few thousand dead annually at the hands of nutters whom the system chose to ignore until too late.

This old white recovering liberal wants no part of Obamacare. "they didn’t vote for anything and just let tax cuts expire that somehow they won’t have to own the resulting tax increases" Watch the polls. With each passing day, they show that the Dems will get away with blaming everything on Republicans. Republicans are powerless to stop either the bad effects of Obama or taking the blame for the results.

Democrats=prototyrants. Obama will breed more of them and they will move into the mainstream.

Surely O's is the only game in town because the media behave like it is. No matter how many times Republicans point to their plans passed in the House for dealing with spending cuts, the media repeat the Obama talking points that Republicans have produced nothing to negotiate.

The good states should not secede. They need to find out how to push the grasshopper states out of Real America. It would interesting to see an East Coast-West Coast state with Real America in the vast middle, kind o' like Pakistan and East Pakistan were with India smack in the middle. Watch 'em make something of themselves without the heart and soul of the nation.