Independent voices from the TWT Communities
States with the most gun control laws have the fewest gun-related deaths, according to a study that suggests sheer quantity of measures might make a difference.
Hillary Rodham Clinton got an early valentine from President Obama, leaving Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to celebrate Groundhog Day alone. Perhaps the veep sees a shadow already (you can't blame him for looking over his shoulder), and he'll burrow underground.
The directives on gun violence President Obama signed Wednesday were meant to seem harmless. A closer look at the president's first memorandum reveals it to be a sneaky assault on congressional authority in order to fund gun-control propaganda.
Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.
Pollster John Zogby grades the president's week and how its events affect him and his agenda.
Richard Nelson Current, a prolific and award-winning Abraham Lincoln scholar who for decades was a leader in his field and helped shape a more realistic view of the iconic president, has died. He was 100.
In a story Aug. 11 about gun violence as a public health problem, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore said gun ownership sometimes goes up after a shooting in an area. Webster said gun-carrying sometimes increases, not gun ownership.
Two hundred years ago, the United States was mobilizing for conflict. The country had formally declared war for the first time in its history, against Great Britain. Hostilities would last for three years and claim around 20,000 lives on both sides.
After the House voted this month to defund a major part of the U.S. Census Bureau, the agency is taking the threat very seriously, with its supporters in both business and government rallying to preserve the annual questionnaire.
!["We need to ask ourselves whether [the American Community Survey] is worth $2.4 billion," said Rep. Daniel Webster, Florida Republican, who offered the amendment to eliminate it. (Associated Press)](http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2012/05/11/20120510-215745-pic-43318807_mugshot_four_by_three_s101x76.jpg?38f271e3d49cdfd5d0ef8cac5cad23b117d14f23)
House Republicans voted this week to kill a major part of the census and to rein in the Obama administration's lawsuits against states over immigration laws, voter-identification laws and gay-marriage statutes - but gave a thumbs-up to Mr. Obama's battle with states that have medical marijuana laws.
Noting that "all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon," an opinion released Wednesday by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that only the Kentucky-made Maker's Mark bourbon can carry the distinctive red dripping wax seal bottle topper.
Brace for impact. Ann Coulter has written her eighth book, "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America."
Ours may be remembered as the era of the Big Sleep. Barack Obama and the Democrats lie comatose at the switch as the federal government continues to swell up like a dead mule in the heat of late July. Air-traffic controllers doze off with airliners circling airports, frantically trying to get landing instructions.
The chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is emerging as one of the top prizes of the new Congress, and a collection of powerful House GOP members already are angling for the post.
Rep. Alan Grayson is hailed by liberals as an uncompromising breath of fresh air and reviled by conservatives as a crass ideological bully.
The strongest kind of research would require comparisons between states that have dissimilar gun laws but otherwise are nearly identical, "but there isn't a super nice twin for New Jersey," for example, a state with strict gun laws, Webster noted.
Previous research on the effectiveness of gun laws has had mixed results, and it's a "very challenging" area to study, said Dr. Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center For Gun Policy.
!["We need to ask ourselves whether [the American Community Survey] is worth $2.4 billion," said Rep. Daniel Webster, Florida Republican, who offered the amendment to eliminate it. (Associated Press)](http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2012/05/11/20120510-215745-pic-43318807_mugshot_four_by_three_s267x200.jpg?ec8f261d4936ae3433a61cef779c1dbc8a3728fb)
