Controversial Times story sheds considerable new light on Benghazi attack

I haven’t read the entire article yet, but a 7,000-word piece published over the weekend that paints a far more nuanced picture of the 2012 Benghazi attack than what had emerged on Capitol Hill has already created quite a buzz.

Republican congressmen, including Mike Rogers of Michigan, who have access to intelligence reports have criticized The New York Times story. But it’s difficult to brush aside a piece that is based on numerous interviews with Libyan militia leaders in the Benghazi territory. That is the good-journalism approach taken by the Times’ David Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick found that the attack on the U.S. consulate which killed four Americans was not a well-planned military engagement led by al-Qaida; but it was also not a spontaneous attack by angry militants.

“The reality in Benghazi was different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests,” Kilpatrick wrote. “Benghazi was not infiltrated by al-Qaida, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs."

Essentially, the Times found that there is plenty of blame to go around when assigning culpability for the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. The reality is about much more than Susan Rice or talking points or an anti-Islam video or various military responses that were never employed.

CNN notes that, after reading the story, President Obama's former national security spokesman Tommy Vietor unleashed a series of angry tweets condemning Republicans who've spent more than a year lambasting the White House over the Benghazi incident. Here are a few:

* "If Rs spent 1/50th as much time as @ddknyt learning what really happened in #Benghazi, we could have avoided months of disgusting demagoguery."

* "Republicans inflated the role of al Qaeda in #Benghazi to attack Obama's CT record. They were wrong, and handed our enemy a propaganda win."

* "Credit to @ddknyt but also disconcerting that his #Benghazi article offered more insight into what happened than all Congressional hearings."

The Times' article’s most lasting contribution may be the revelation that the diverse and fractured opposition militias that brought down Muhammar Ghadafi, many of whom were assumed to be friendly with the U.S., most likely sparked the attack on the American compound in Benghazi.

Finally, a gun violence bill that may receive widespread support

As the year comes to an end and the 1-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary has passed, one bill addressing gun violence is moving forward under the radar in the do-nothing Congress and may receive bipartisan approval – perhaps even support from gun-rights advocates -- in 2014.

The legislation, pushed hard by Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, would provide several improvements to the nation’s substandard mental health system.

On Capitol Hill, it appears the legacy of Sandy Hook will not be expanded background checks to prevent criminals from buying guns but rather an attempt to increase access to mental health treatment so that those with delusional, violent tendencies receive help.

Loughner

The motivation for this move is the pattern of deeply disturbed shooters responsible for the recent massacres at a Tucson shopping center, an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, the Navy Yard in Washington and the elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The bill, passed by the Senate Finance Committee just before Christmas, was co-authored by Democrat Stabenow and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. Its reach is modest but it also helps greatly that the measure is attached to legislation which will increase Medicare funding for doctors – a “doc fix” that most lawmakers consider a must.

Overall, the mentally ill are more likely to become victims of a violent crime than to commit one. However, studies have shown that if someone does not receive treatment after experiencing their first psychotic episode they are 15 times more likely to commit acts of violence than if they receive help.

According to research, those who suffer from schizophrenia, paranoia or other severe emotional disorders are far more likely to become violent if they also suffer from substance abuse problems. Still, fewer than one-third of Americans with a diagnosed illness receive treatment.

With final passage in the Senate expected in February or March, the Stabenow bill would: put reimbursement for mental health services at parity with primary care at community health facilities; establish 10 state pilot programs that would practice higher standards and offer a broad range of mental health services such as 24-hour crisis psychiatric services; require more coordination between mental health and substance abuse treatment, and more collaboration between mental health care providers and other health care facilities, such as VA clinics.

The legislation, with a price tag of just $160 million a year, takes one small step toward the fulfillment of a bill signed by President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago in October 1963 that was designed to create 1,500 community mental health centers across the nation. That law was short-circuited following JFK’s death as only half the centers were built, and none of those were fully funded.

Holmes

 Yet, if the new Senate bill passes it must be followed by a second incarnation in which Congress and the nation come to grips with a more compelling gun issue – the balancing act between the Second Amendment rights of the mentally ill and the public’s right to safety.

In many states, the legal ambiguities tilt heavily in favor of those who suffer from serious mental disorders. In some communities, a mentally ill person who acts out in a violent, threatening manner while armed often receives their guns back from the police within days, just by filling out some paperwork. No questions asked.

The legal process in these communities states simply that a gun is private property and, if no criminal charges are filed, the firearms must be quickly returned. Even in cases where charges are brought after an episode of psychotic behavior involving a gun, often the mentally ill perpetrator receives his (these are mostly men) weapons back within months.

After Newtown, state lawmakers across the country debated common-sense limits on gun rights for those with mental illness. But most of those measures were reportedly shot down amid resistance from the gun lobby and from mental health advocates concerned about unfairly stigmatizing those with mental health problems.

In this political quagmire, the states wait for Washington to act while the federal standards leave gaping loopholes.

Perhaps Congress should consider this: How can it be that the mentally ill can lose all their freedoms while locked up in a mental hospital, without committing a crime, but if they shun treatment they cannot be denied unfettered access to pistols, shotguns and high-powered weapons?

In Michigan, a permit to carry a gun is revoked if the permit-holder engages in domestic violence or repeated drunken driving or violates a Personal Protection Order. Yet, the mentally deranged person who acts out violently has his guns returned to his home after receiving a few days or weeks of emergency psychiatric care.

The New York Times last week published its findings after reviewing hundreds of cases that centered on the uncertain legal territory at the intersection of guns and mental illness.

In one case, police seized nine guns from a schizophrenic man in Indianapolis after responding to a 911 call that indicated he was “delusional and dangerous.” After a mental health evaluation, his firearms were returned.

Several months later, police received another call to the man’s home and when they arrived he was stalking his block with an SKS assault-style rifle and two handguns. The result? He fatally shot his mother and a police officer and wounded four other cops.

In another case, a Connecticut man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia who was off his medication threatened to kill his mother and later a nurse when police confiscated his 18 rifles and shotguns and seven high-capacity magazines. He was briefly hospitalized then allowed to return home.

The man told a Times reporter that he had received a message from God from a deflated basketball that he had stabbed. He also insisted that, among the paranormal activities he has experienced, a bird once flew out of his forehead.

Under Connecticut law, in the spring his 18 weapons and stash of ammo will be returned.

One frustrated police chief told the Times: “We don’t want to violate anybody’s rights. But if you’re in the apartment next door to this guy, what about your rights?”

Lanza

As for the many delusional teens who have engaged in school shootings, too often these cases originated with poor parenting.

How can it be that a parent faces child neglect charges if their kid has skin sores or untreated head lice, yet that same parent is not held accountable if their emotionally disturbed live-in teenager or young adult receives little or no mental health treatment? And, worse yet, what if the teen has easy access to firearms?

The clearest case of parental irresponsibility intertwining with a son’s violent behavior was the Dec. 14, 2012, Newtown massacre.

The killer, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, spent several hours per day locked in his bedroom, where he had covered the windows with black plastic sheets, playing violent video games in the darkness. Lanza, who was diagnosed with severe mental problems several years ago, had also compiled detailed information, including a flow chart, on the recent history of U.S. mass shootings.

One of Lanza’s former teachers told police that Lanza’s creative writing papers were so disturbing, with graphic references to violence and death, that he was not permitted to read them aloud in class.

A newly released stack of law enforcement documents shows that prior to the shootings his mother had not seen him for three months and communicated with him only by email.

Yet a Yale psychiatrist told investigators that, in his contacts with the killer, he observed nothing in Lanza’s behavior that predicted he would become a premeditated mass murderer.

The AR-15 assault-style rifle that Lanza used in Newtown

At one point, Lanza’s mother refused to give him prescribed antidepressant and antianxiety medication, citing paranoid perceptions of side effects. In the weeks leading up to the shootings, the mother knew her son was becoming increasingly despondent and agitated. Still, Nancy Lanza’s Christmas gift for her son was a check to purchase a semi-automatic pistol, which would have added to the family’s collection of unsecured firearms.

Nonetheless, some still hold the distorted view of the Second Amendment that says Adam Lanza’s rights were absolute. These zealots should consider that the Founding Fathers would likely consider it preposterous that anyone would argue that the Constitution prevents gun restrictions for the mentally ill, given that those with mental problems in 18th and 19th Century were cruelly ostracized, even demonized.

Given all the evidence and all the proposed laws that never made it onto the books, it seems clear that only those with the most perverted view of the Second Amendment can claim that the slaughter of those 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook could not have been prevented.

Map: Ethnicity reveals two Americas -- North vs. South

This map of U.S. counties represents three centuries of settlements and the subsequent small pockets and wide swaths of America dominated by one ethnic group.

The intricate map was compiled by the Census Bureau and it was expounded upon -- with population figures and brief histories of each U.S. ethnicity -- by one of the UK’s premier newspaper, The Daily Mail. The color-coding indicates the largest ancestral group associated with the population in each county.

For a larger, clearer version of the map, click here.

The map shows the surprising dominance of German-Americans in hundreds of counties over a vast area of the Upper Midwest and, in fact, stretching from the eastern edge of Pennsylvania to the California coast.

The large population of Italians and Poles in Macomb County and across southeast Michigan may be stunned to learn these two realities: The only counties* in the nation where Italians are the most prominent ethnic group are in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut; and, if you read the fine print, the only county in America with a Polish population at No. 1 is located in Pennsylvania.

As for Michigan, the map shows four Dutch-dominated counties, while the entire U.S. has only seven. And it appears that Michigan’s U.P. is the only area of the nation that has a significant Finnish population.

Certainly the strangest aspect of this map is the extensive area of the South where the populace refers to themselves as “Americans.” According to The Daily Mail, many of these people are making a political statement by shunning an ethnic label, while others simply do not know anything about their ancestry.

Notice that nearly all of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia fall into this category.

In addition, a massive expanse of the old South, the land of Dixie, is dominated by African-Americans, the descendants of slaves. 

Overall, the area below the Mason-Dixon line is a very different place from the rest of America, with the obvious exception of Florida, which appears to be America’s biggest melting pot.

* It appears that there is one county in south Florida, just north of Miami-Dade (is that Broward?), that is presented on the map as Italian. Anyone know what the story is behind that?

Map: Religion starkly divides America

This map of the U.S. shows the majority religious denomination in each county. The ties between geography and religion are rather stunning, particularly in the Old South.

(If you want a larger, clearer version, click here.)

I realize this snapshot of the nation relies strictly on the majority in each county, with no ambiguities or proportions, but the sharp divides are startling.

The line that separates Baptist north Texas from Catholic south Texas is stark, no doubt an indication of where many Hispanic immigrants – legal or otherwise – settled. And the way that the Baptist counties stop right at state boundaries (Oklahoma, Missouri and Kentucky) is rather bizarre – or is it the unending throwback to the divisions between North and South that extend to the old "border" states?

I was also quite surprised at how common Catholicism is in the west, including nearly all of California.

One more thing: Anyone know what religion would be dominant in the three Michigan counties that are labeled “Other?”

The map was created by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious bodies and it was posted online at patheos.com.

Pentagon again ready to shoot down National Guard's A-10 aircraft

A little more than a year after Macomb County and regional leaders beat back an attempt to substantially cut the number of A-10 aircraft stationed at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, the Air Force is again gunning for the odd-looking planes known as “Warthogs” – this time pushing to eliminate the entire U.S. fleet.
The Air Force hopes to retire all 326 A-10 Thunderbolts, including the 18 planes stationed at the Harrison Township base.
The $523 billion defense budget bill that passed the Senate last Friday and heads to the president for his signature freezes the A-10 Thunderbolt II deployments in place for fiscal year 2014. But the Air Force chief of staff has made it clear he believes the planes, which provide low-altitude firepower to support Army ground troops, are obsolete.

With the Pentagon facing increasing pressures to reduce their budget, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh has said ther aircraft such as the F-16 jet fighter and the long-awaited F-35 aircraft could provide all support for ground troops and also perform other missions. The A-10 is considered a one-dimensional weapon. 

 
“We’ve delayed this until they have a plan in place that’s credible, and they haven’t done that yet,” said Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and is co-author of the defense authorization legislation.
The 107th Fighter Squadron at Selfridge consists of 455 Guardsmen who are A-10 pilots or engage in maintenance and operations. The unit is also comprised of 180 full time employees -- 21 serve on active-duty status and the remainder are uniformed civilian technicians.
The squadron’s latest deployment overseas was in fall and winter of 2011 when the unit spent four months stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
“I can’t speculate on the future of the mission,” said Penny Carroll, a Selfridge spokeswoman. “We are following closely the (2014) defense bill, hoping it stays intact.”
In addition to the Air National Guard squadron, Selfridge is also home to other national security agencies, such as the Coast Guard and a high-tech Department of Homeland Security facility that works with local law enforcement agencies.

But Levin conceded that the loss of aircraft would be a “big hit” for the sprawling base – the largest military installation in Michigan.
An effort would be made to find “substitute” aircraft if the A-10s are retired, Levin added, “but we’re trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The attempt to eliminate the nation’s A-10 fleet at a savings of $3.7 billion annually has already drawn a sharp response from more than 30 U.S. senators and representatives who sent Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel a detailed letter objecting to the preliminary plans.

 
“We oppose any effort that would divest the A-10, creating a CAS (close air support) capability gap that would reduce Air Force combat power and unnecessarily endanger our service members in future conflicts,” the members of Congress wrote.

The Warthog, a “tank buster” aircraft, is designed to fly low and slow over an open battlefield. For decades, the Air Force has attempted to scrap the A-10 while the Army has praised its ability to protect troops with bombs and rotary machine guns.
According to Agence France-Presse, Welsh said last month “if we have platforms that can do multiple missions well and maybe not do one as well as another airplane, the airplane that is limited to a specific type of mission area becomes the one most at risk. You only gain major savings if you cut an entire fleet.”
Welsh’s counterpart in the Army, Gen. Ray Odierno, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in November and said: “The A-10 is the best close air support platform we have today. It’s performed incredibly well in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
When the military brass in 2012 attempted to put the 107th Fighter Squadron at Selfridge and their 24 A-10s on the chopping block, the proposal united Macomb County’s elected officials and business community to oppose the plan. The Selfridge Base Community Council coordinated a lobbying campaign and Gov. Rick Snyder, Oakland County Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing joined the cause.
Because the proposed cuts in A-10 aircraft carried such a widespread national impact, 49 governors and every state’s National Guard adjutant general united in opposition to the move.

The result was a Pentagon retreat, with military officials agreeing to a small realignment of the nation’s A-10 fleet that reduced the 107th from 24 planes to 19. The A-10 contingent at Selfridge now consists of 18 planes.
Critics say Air Force crews assigned to other multi-purpose planes spend only a portion of their time training for close air support missions, while the A-10 squadrons have a singular focus. Relying upon the Warthog’s maneuverability and the extensive armor that protects the aircraft, the A-10 can bombard enemy ground forces from as close as 50 meters.
As the A-10s manned by Air National Guard forces have demonstrated far more cost-efficiency than squadrons flown and maintained by Air Force active-duty personnel, the bipartisan group of lawmakers took a few shots in their correspondence to Hagel.
“It would be difficult for DoD (the Department of Defense) to justify the divestment of the A-10 while the Air Force continues to expend millions of dollars on conferences, air shows, and bloated headquarters staffs, while also struggling to meet statutory audit deadlines,” they wrote.
Congressional advocates say recent funding increases to modernize the A-10s would be undermined and essentially wasted by idling the entire fleet. They also charged that the Air Force’s apparent acceleration of an A-10 divestment is “short-sighted and primarily budget-driven,” without regard to the impact on future battlefields.

“Many soldiers and Marines are alive today because of the unique capabilities of the A-10, as well as the focused close air support training and dedicated close air support culture of A-10 pilots,” the letter said.
U.S. Rep Candice Miller, a Harrison Township Republican, co-signed the letter but Levin and his brother, Rep. Sander Levin, did not. On Wednesday, Sander Levin said: “We understand what’s at stake for Selfridge. We think it’s a vital resource.”

Former Rep. Brian Palmer pleads no contest in Ponzi scheme

Former state Rep. Brian Palmer, a Romeo Republican, pleaded no contest Friday to neglect of duty by a public official, the Michigan Attorney General’s office announced.
Palmer, 64, of Romeo, entered the plea in connection with his role (while serving in the Legislature) in assisting two other men operate a $9 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than 150 persons between 2006 and 2012, the attorney general said.

A no-contest plea means the accused neither admits nor denies wrongdoing. The plea is treated as a guilty plea for purposes of sentencing. Palmer was sentenced Friday on the misdemeanor charge to one year probation and ordered to perform 320 hours of community service. He also was ordered to pay fines, fees and court costs totaling $405. 

“Public officials are sworn to uphold the law,” said Attorney General Bill Schuette. “Those who break the public trust should face the consequences.”

Palmer, who served in the House from 2002-08, participated in a scam in which he used his position as an elected official to assist operators Jeffrey Ripley, 61, of Sparta, and Danny VanLiere, 62, of Grand Rapids, in operating as API Worldwide, Inc. The firm promised huge returns on investments but never delivered. 

Prior to his involvement with API, Palmer had invested $400,000 with Ripley on an unregistered security, authorities said. Ripley lost Palmer’s $400,000 but he assured the former Bruce Township board member that he would get his money back if Palmer helped him with API.
Palmer met with potential investors on behalf of Ripley and API. With the knowledge that Ripley was attempting to circumvent the Securities Act, Palmer did not report the conduct to proper authorities.