Two weeks in a row and the title of this weekly post hits a little too close to home. Sure hope this isn’t a tradition we’re starting.

The identification of the victims in the Lafayette shooting as Jillian Johnson and Mayci Breaux allowed us to get a glimpse of what was lost at the Grand Theater last night after a psychotic nut named John Russell Houser of Phenix City, Alabama showed up and starting blasting away at the crowd.

Both were beautiful women and an asset to that community. It’s disgusting to see their lives cut short.

We need to do something about these situations. But not the something the gun-grabbing ghouls keep demanding we do. Say whatever you want about whether Houser should have been able to get a gun – word is he tried to get one in 2006 and was denied a permit in Alabama, and yet he ended up with one last night anyway. We’ve been trying to ban drugs in this country for 100 years and you can get high any time you want; there is no reason whatsoever to think you can effectively keep criminals and nuts from getting guns, which the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to have anyway.

No, what we need to do is get serious about getting the dangerously insane off the streets. We need to start institutionalizing the mentally ill so these kinds of things happen less often.

Sure, it would be good to keep the Housers from getting guns. But if you’re effective in doing that, they’ll just make bombs or stick people with knives instead. Dangerously insane people will be dangerous, and they need to be taken off the streets where possible. Especially when, as in Houser’s case, they’ve demonstrated that they’re dangerous. It sounds as if this guy was a firebug; he’d already had a conviction for arson, and he’d been in and out of trouble with the law for years.

I don’t imagine it matters much, but Phenix City is the same town that Brian Downing, the moron Alabama fan who teabagged a passed-out LSU supporter at the KrystalBurger outlet on Bourbon Street, came from. Downing was actually from Smiths Station, but that’s a suburb of Phenix City.

What is it about that place? Let’s have fewer people from there showing up in Louisiana in the future. Our experiences with them aren’t satisfactory.

 

 One piece of news that the Lafayette shooting has completely buried is a resolution passed by the Louisiana Public Service Commission which would be a relatively big deal politically otherwise – namely, that commissioner Foster Campbell found a way to ram through an expansion of what looks an awful lot like the Obamaphone program for broadband internet…

The Connect-Home program is meant to give broadband internet access to low-income Americans, namely those living in HUD housing units.

While some argue the internet is an in-home necessity, others are frustrated that they will be picking up the bill.

Nearly every phone and internet bill already includes this type of fee.

It goes to the Universal Service Fund which is managed by the FCC and meant to promote universal communication.

That is another reason Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell believes this is worth the investment.

“It’s not adding any new money so I don’t see that it’s going to be out of anybody’s pocket. I think it’s a good investment to educate young people,” Campbell said.

HUD says the Connect-Home program will not commit any new federal funding and they will pull only from existing resources as well as in-kind corporate donations.

For example, CenturyLink will make broadband service available to HUD households in the program for $9.95 per month for the first year.

CenturyLink Senior Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations John Jones said the following in a statement:

“CenturyLink thanks President Obama for recognizing our internet basics program and for his commitment to increasing broadband adoption among low-income families. As one of America’s leading internet service providers, we’re proud to offer internet basics to low-income households across our service areas… our Internet Basics program is consistent with CenturyLink’s vision, which features a focus on improving lives and connecting communities. Through this program, CenturyLink is helping low-income consumers gain access to the social, educational and economic resources available on the internet.”

Foster Campbell thinks Monroe is just as deserving to participate as anywhere else in the nation.

“It’s a good program and we’re going to try to put it some places that it’s desperately needed across America, and if we can get it in Monroe I would say Hallelujah.”

Campbell managed to get three votes on the PSC for a resolution asking to expand the Connect-Home program to not just Monroe but the surrounding area. Here’s the resolution…

WHEREAS – Expanding opportunity for low-income Americans through improved access to high-speed Internet service is a great idea for America, and
AND WHEREAS – President Obama has announced the “ConnectHome” initiative to foster delivery of high-speed Internet service to families living in public housing across the United States, and
AND WHEREAS – The ConnectHome program unites communities, private businesses and the federal government in cooperation to expand broadband access, and
AND WHEREAS – The White House has selected 27 cities to participate in a ConnectHome pilot program, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Louisiana, and
AND WHEREAS – The Louisiana Public Service Commission supports public and private efforts to expand access to high-speed Internet service, agreeing with the President that it is not a luxury but a necessity in today’s world, and
AND WHEREAS – The LPSC recognizes the need for residents of Baton Rouge and New Orleans to receive this important federal assistance, but that poverty levels are actually higher in Monroe and surrounding Louisiana Delta parishes than in southeast Louisiana; and
AND WHEREAS – Residents, community leaders and business owners in Monroe have demonstrated a keen interest in broadband expansion in the past, and can be
counted on to supply the necessary resources and enthusiasm to ensure that a ConnectHome Monroe project will fulfill the President’s intentions.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Louisiana Public Service Commission, meeting in regular session in Baton Rouge this Wednesday, July 22, 2015, expresses its full support for the ConnectHome program and encourages the President to add Monroe to the list of cities chosen to participate.

Why Scott Angelle, who is running for governor as a conservative, would put his name on expanding a program which essentially redistributes your cable bill payment to people on the government dole, is beyond me, but he did.

It could be Angelle didn’t know what he was voting on. Eric Skrmetta and Clyde Holloway abstained from the vote, largely because Campbell wouldn’t allow any study of the resolution or let it stew until next month’s meeting. Both of them refused to vote one way or the other until they had some idea of what adding Monroe and its environs would mean.

One of two things is going on here. Either Campbell is trying to ingratiate himself with poor folks in his PSC district for whatever reason (surely our readers can conjure up a few, some of which might even be honest) and buffaloed CenturyLink into joining him in backing this plan to subsidize broadband coverage for the government-dependent, or the folks at CenturyLink who have been extorted into giving him scads of campaign cash decided it was time to monetize that by getting their coverage area included in a program which allows them to charge existing customers more to pay for the addition of new customers.

Either way it’s a classic case of (1) leftist redistribution married with (2) crony capitalism. It’s why regular folks are leery as hell of the PSC.

It’s disappointing that Angelle was a bad vote on this thing.

 

Remember that donnybrook in McKinney, Texas about the “pool party” that ended up in a big racial incident? There was a woman living in that community in McKinney who decided to use the common ground in the community to run a for-profit party, advertised it as a “pool party” even though there was no pool access, and when the hundreds of people who showed up at the pool expecting to be let in were not it turned into a gigantic racial controversy and a mess, particularly when the cops came and were mean to some of the people.

Well, the organizer of that disaster just got evicted from the community in question. Shockingly, she was a renter rather than a homeowner, and shockingly she was behind on the rent. As George Thorogood would say, and out the door she went.

And there’s a lawyer, and there are recriminations. Of course.

 

  On the national scene, it looks like there will be a DOJ investigation into those Planned Parenthood videos. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced it yesterday.

Except it won’t be the investigation you’d expect…

JUSTICE TO PROBE CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS — While congressional committees investigate Planned Parenthood’s practices, the Justice Department agreed to look into whether the group that released the sting videos obtained the footage legally. In response to a request by House Democrats, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday afternoon that Justice would “review all of the information and determine what the appropriate steps moving forward would be.” Planned Parenthood has staunchly defended its practices and claims that the Center for Medical Progress illegally obtained its footage, then excessively edited it to misrepresent what the organization does.

Here’s the thing – that DOJ investigation probably doesn’t really go anywhere. It might, as what the Center for Medical Progress apparently did was to set up a fake biotech company called BioMax which was purportedly in the business of using fetal body parts for medical research and then leveraged that into an amazing amount of access into Planned Parenthood that could well have resulted in a treasure trove of video even worse than what’s already been released.

Planned Parenthood appears terrified, because they’ve been going back through what the BioMax people might have seen and assessing the possible damage, and stroking out over it.

What the DOJ investigation might do more than result in anybody getting criminal charges is force CMP’s hand and break up the James O’Keefe-ACORN business model they’re using to release videos and keep the story in the news. The way you force the media to continue covering things like this is to drop your videos in installments, drip-drip-drip style, thus building anticipation and making your victim look stupid as they issue denial after denial that each new video refutes. When O’Keefe did it to ACORN it essentially finished that organization. Planned Parenthood is obviously much bigger game and has much more political protection, and DOJ’s investigation is going to be aimed at forcing CMP to dump everything they have on the internet in one shot.

Doing that will have two effects. First, there will be so much stuff that the public won’t see all of it, and so the full effect on public opinion of CMP’s material won’t be felt. And second, it’ll be a big story for a short time and then it’ll be forgotten far faster than it would be if fresh revelations kept surfacing for weeks and months.

Don’t be shocked if CMP decides, if they have to, to take the whole operation offshore and continue releasing videos on their own schedule. This is a ratcheting-up of the stakes which puts the CMP people to the question: is it worth potential jail time to you to kill off Planned Parenthood?