 |  | 
December 21, 2012 | | NRA GAMES IBreaking the organization’s silence after Newtown, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre held a press conference on Friday in which he advocated posting an armed guard at every school in America. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said. As protesters from Code Pink crashed the event, LaPierre also placed blame for the tragedy on a violent culture and videogames like Mortal Kombat. The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky calls LaPierre “preposterous”—and besides, who’s gonna pay for all those guards? Plus, 16 folks on Twitter who didn’t think the press conference was so bad. FISCAL CLIFF Without the world ending, it must be time to take back up that fiscal-cliff compromise. House Speaker John Boehner said Friday that the failure of the so-called Plan B fiscal-cliff deal was “the will of the House.” The “real issue,” Boehner said in a press conference, was that many GOP members did not want to be perceived as having to raise taxes. “It’s God’s will,” Boehner said. As for his future as the most powerful man on the Hill, Boehner said he is not worried. “If you do the right things every day for the right reasons, the right things will happen,” Boehner said. A deal must be reached by Jan. 1 to avoid the fiscal cliff, the name given for when a series of draconian spending cuts will automatically go into place and the Bush tax cuts will expire. ANOTHER ONE Just as NRA chief Wayne LaPierre was giving a press conference in which he said "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," three people were killed and three more State Troopers injured in a Pennsylvania shooting. The alleged gunman also died. One State Trooper was shot, while the other two were injured in a car wreck with the suspect. Emergency officials say the gunmen went “up and down” the rural road in Pennsyvania's Blair County shooting victims.
LONG SHOT Phenomena far more astonishing, let alone preposterous, have occurred in American politics. There was, for instance, that Austrian body builder who mutated into a box-office titan and, despite a comically thick accent, leveraged his celebrity into two terms as governor of the nation’s most populous state. Take Back Chuck Hagel is a changed man. That’s the message the former senator is sending to gay activists who were protesting his consideration for the next defense secretary. In 1998, Hagel expressed concerns over the nomination of James Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg because Hormel was “openly aggressively gay.” Now, Hagel is retracting that statement. “My comments 14 years ago in 1998 were insensitive,” he says. “They do not reflect my views or the totality of my public record, and I apologize to Ambassador Hormel and any LGBT Americans who may question my commitment to their civil rights.” | | 
GET The Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of news and must-reads from across the Web. You'll love the featured original stories on politics, entertainment, and more from The Daily Beast's diverse group of contributors.  GET Culture Beast Weekly cultural recommendations from The Daily Beast.
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment