“At no time [during which a 12 year old student brandished a loaded gun at school] were students or staff in danger,” Christine Stephens, a Redlands Unified School District spokeswoman, wrote in a news release that detailed how employees handled the situation.

Carl Baker, a Redlands police spokesman, wrote in a text message: “The gun was loaded and capable of being fired.”

Stephens, asked by a Southern California News Group reporter to clarify her comment, wrote in an email: “When we stated that ‘At no time were students or staff in danger,’ we were referring to the fact that the situation was quickly identified, contained, and managed by school administrators, District Safety, and law enforcement.”

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Oh. OK.

Note changes on the right hand column over there: I now start with commentary about University Diaries, then comes Archives, then Categories, and that’s that. UD thanks Carolyn, her blogmistress.

However. Reflecting on sexism and sexual abuse on the left, in the wake of the Chavez revelations, this op/ed writer notes that the behavior knows no ideological boundaries.

Or religious – this blog has published a zillion stories about clerical sexual abuse.

‘Hospice care is specifically for care in a person’s last weeks or months of life, sometimes six months or less. A tip off to investigators was finding patients who were enrolled in hospice care for multiple years, according to a DOJ spokesperson. The defendants allegedly transferred several patients between the three companies after six months to continually bill for services.’

Scathing Online Schoolmarm hastens to correct between, which should be among, since the writer is describing an action involving more than two people or things. But having done that, she will proceed to delectate the ghost hospice fraud story.

Spiritual Touch, ghost hospice — the language here is fantastic, as is the desperate problem of where to stash the pretend-dying to maintain payouts.

It’s like they’ve created a new mysterious Blue Zone, where, for reasons unknown, a group of 120 year olds keep on keepin on. Sardinia, Okinawa, Monterey Park Los Angeles County.

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It brings to mind Donne’s magnificent sonnet:

Death, Be Not Allowed

BY JOHN DONNE

Death, be not allowed, though some have called thee 

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; 

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow 

Die not, poor Death, long as they can pay me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, 

Much pleasure; yet from thee no bucks do flow, 

And so our almost-dead with thee don’t go.

Transfer their old bones; then, check’s delivery. 

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, 

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, 

And bogus death, O Death, doth pay us well 

With dollars better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? 

One fake hospice transfer past, we’re paid eternally 

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Which is an abstraction. What’s it like on the ground?

It’s teenagers with big guns shooting at each other in the middle of busy streets in the middle of the day. Bullets fly everywhere – at houses, into cars, into people.

‘Several residents said a lot of the violence is being done by teenagers.’ Really young gunnies are really scary, and they have many years of shooting ahead of them.

Lots of suicide in the US – and lots of guns, and zillions of places to perform the act.

Above all, America features huge numbers of friendly neighborhood gun ranges.

There’s really nothing the ranges can do about it. They’ve conceived the absolutely perfect place to blow your head off.

He sat in his house (three doors down from UD) writing and mailing “at least 40 letters and two post cards to 25 Jewish institutions nationwide.” He threatened them with violence.

UD gave editorial advice to a Garrett Park neighbor involved in writing a letter asking the judge for clemency. UD is a Jew and is disgusted by this man. But it seemed the right thing to do.

When other Florida cities decide they’re deathed-out by it all – when they finally close their doors to the bloodiest, trashiest, weekenders in America – the few scummy holdouts, like Daytona Beach, get everyone. Guns go off all over the place, and lots of people get shot up. It’s a death-business model, and it really seems to be working.

A Collierville Middle School girl’s basketball coach was arrested on gun and drug charges… [The Memphis Tenn. coach is accused of] being a convicted felon in possession of a handgun; possession of cocaine with intent to manufacture, sell, or deliver; possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture, deliver, or sell; and possession of a firearm during a dangerous felony… Now, many are asking if the district did a background check before he started coaching in Collierville.

No shit.

… that rushes around the brown basin.

As a couple, they have always been too stupid to understand the vulnerability of the institution that supports them, and they began wrecking it from the inside as soon as they met…

With some people, money and sex are the only truths. It’s the ultimate delinquency to believe that gratification itself is power. Bringing down the royal family may be the least terrible consequence of everything Andrew has done. When a lazy aristocrat from a dying dynasty uses a helicopter to travel seventeen miles, the edifice shakes. But when that same man rapes a 17-year-old and calls her a liar, it is the end of days. The gift of Andy and Fergie, which comes at too high a price, has been to bring the antiseptic of daylight to the culture of royal privilege…

Psychoeducation! Is there any hilarious piece of shit term the feds won’t accept?

… has died.

My Habermas posts.

… the arrival of the Walter Johnson high school football team (I’m class of ‘71). The guys will, as they do every year (it’s a fundraiser), spread mulch.

[W]hen playing a drinking game that involved taping bottles of alcohol to both hands, the student alleged Egolf “offered to assist him with removing his pants to use the restroom.” 

A Georgetown physics professor is living his best life.