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<p>ATLANTA (AP) — A student opened fire at his middle school Thursday afternoon, wounding a 14-year-old in the neck before an armed officer working at the school was able to get the gun away, police said.</p> <p>Multiple shots were fired in the courtyard of Price Middle School just south of downtown about 1:50 p.m. and the one boy was hit, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said. In the aftermath, a teacher received minor cuts, he said.</p>

If only American soldiers in Afghanistan were unemployed Democratic voters in Chicago, then they might be getting three square meals a day from the government.

Yet another student has been suspended for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun. This time, Daniel McClaine, Jr., a freshman at Poston Butte High School in Tan Valley, Arizona, made the mistake of setting a picture of a gun as the desktop background on his school-issued computer. The picture shows an AK-47 lying on a flag, reports KNXV-TV. The gun isn’t his, McClaine assured the ABC affiliate in Phoenix. He found it on the Internet and liked it, partly because he is interested in serving in the military after graduation. A teacher...

New London — Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said the military's ban on women in combat had become embarrassing, and the decision to lift it may one day affect the draft. "What we've really done is spun the paradigm on its head," Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in his first visit to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Thursday. The question isn't "should a woman serve" in a job specialty, Dempsey said, it's "why shouldn't a woman serve?" "Will this expand into the selective service? It might," he said. "But that's a decision of Congress. I can...

There is a fun little website up that is being run in conjunction with The Walking Dead television show -- which is, by the way, my favorite of all time.There is something SO FAMILIAR about the concept of an apocalypse that is caused by mindless, shuffling, constantly-hungry masses of people that care nothing about their own safety or well-being (or that of the people around them), but ONLY about gratifying their unholy and insatiable needs.There is something SO IN TUNE with the modern American landscape, and perhaps that is what draws me to the show.All of that nonwithstanding, I give...

Michigan: Detroit Closing 50 ParksDetroit will close nearly half of its parks and will reduce maintenance and services at dozens of others after the City Council passed on a deal that would have had the state operate the city’s Belle Isle park, Mayor Dave Bing said on Friday. Closing 50 of 107 parks will allow the city to keep running Belle Isle, a 985-acre park in the Detroit River, after the Council declined to vote on Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposal. Mr. Snyder’s offer called for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to run Belle Isle as a state park, but...

An armed guard successfully disarmed a 14-year-old shooter who had opened fire at an Atlanta middle school on Thursday. Thanks to the courageous off-duty school resource officer, only one student was shot and no one was killed. Yet CNN host Piers Morgan on Friday argued that the armed guard, an unidentified off-duty Atlanta police officer, “was NOT able to stop” the Atlanta school shooting, apparently because the teen shooter was able to shoot just one student before he was stopped. “REVEALED: Armed guard was NOT able to stop Atlanta school shooting,” Morgan posted via his official Twitter account. He then...

People have been warning us for years that drilling for oil in the Alaskan arctic would lead to big environmental trouble. It’s not that the technology hasn’t advanced to the point where it can be done safely, but those nasty people in charge of the projects just don’t care about the environment. These Mother Earth Hating Monsters would clearly let the whole thing go to H. E. double toothpicks and ruin the pristine beauty of the wilderness. Well, I guess they turned out to be right. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to plug at least one additional...

As of this writing, major news networks such as ABC, Fox News, CBS, and NBC have yet to report on the high court’s decision to review Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility to hold political office in the United States or any of its territories. The case is identified as Edward Noonan, et al., v. Deborah Bowen, California Secretary of State. On Feb. 15, all nine justices will gather in conference to review whether Obama used forged government documents and fake identification in order to get elected as commander-in-chief. Edward Noonan, et al., contend that if Obama had been ineligible to run...

Actually, the answer is no, and it wasn’t intended to do so either, as I write in a new column for The Fiscal Times. The Obama administration was under a court order to modify the mandate regulation after a legal representation to a federal court that HHS never intended to enforce the mandate in its then-current form. The court ruled that a binding commitment and ordered HHS to submit a new regulation for their review by March 31st. Yesterday’s release of the new regulation is intended to win the court’s approval in dismissing a lawsuit brought by Belmont Abbey College...

Barack Obama recently told the New Republic that he understands the concerns of gun owners, because “in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time.” As critics chortled over both the notion that skeet shooting is what concerns gun owners and the idea that Obama shoots clay pigeons “all the time,” the White House has finally released a photo to back up its claim … and only one photo, dated August 12, 2012: That led to a barrage of questions from journalists about whether the White House could offer proof that the president had gone shooting....

This is somewhat surprising given all the signals Brown had been sending over the last few weeks. But his reasoning appears sound. From Boston Herald: ________________________ Scott Brown will not run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John Kerry, the former senator told the Herald first today. "U r the first to know I am not running," Brown texted the Herald. Brown's decision follows yesterday's announcement by fellow Republican Charlie Baker that he won't run for the seat either. Baker did urge former Gov. William Weld, who just moved back to Massachusetts, to run if Brown doesn't. [...] Brown...

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez. Credit: Patrick Novecosky/Legatus. Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 1, 2013 / 05:22 pm (CNA).- Archbishop José Gomez's decision to relieve Cardinal Roger Mahony and Bishop Thomas Curry of their duties in the L.A. archdiocese is being welcomed as “the best possible thing he could have done.” “The archbishop has in one stroke, opened up the doors and let in the sunlight,” historian and author Charles Coulombe told CNA Feb. 1. “It is an enormously difficult task he has taken on...it would have been the case no matter what he did.” “However, he handled it brilliantly, wisely,...

Despite a thousand years of history, the nation-states of Europe contain within them ethnic groups and nationalities who yearn for their own country. In some cases, the national and ethnic character of these minorities have been deliberately stifled. There has also been organized movements that have sprung up to fight for the national aspirations of the minorities. Next year, votes for independence will occur in Scotland and Spain's rich Catalonia region. Some analysts believe that success in either case may lead to other minorities to seek their own path to independence. From Reuters: __________________________ Some suspect the two campaigns will...

University of Texas offensive coordinator Major Applewhite and the school's athletic director released a joint statement on Friday night acknowledging that Applewhite had an "inappropriate" relationship with a student during the team's trip to the 2009 Fiesta Bowl. Beyond the cheating on his wife while she was apparently nine months pregnant*, the timing of this announcement raises a lot of questions for the University of Texas and how it handled the affair.

Boston.com politics editor Glen Johnson is resigning to take a post as a senior State Department adviser, working for John F. Kerry. Johnson, 50, a 27-year journalism veteran who has covered five presidential elections, said his focus would be on strategic communications. “This is an unexpected opportunity. All I’ve ever wanted to do ¬since junior high school – and have done professionally – is be a news reporter. But this chance to serve the country and Secretary Kerry at such a tumultuous time, as well as work in foreign affairs and travel the world, was too compelling an opportunity to...

On the morning of the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling, I felt a chill, and it wasn't the bitter cold. After Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, some 500 or so New Yorkers walked through the streets of Midtown Manhattan, in front of God, man and Grand Central Station, praying for life, love and mercy. Our prayers were not in judgment of others but that humanity may do better: that women and men may see better options than abortion and that God may forgive us for letting anyone think that she is alone and has no...

General Carl von Clausewitz defined the center of gravity as the objective whose achievement results in the enemy's total defeat. We must therefore identify this single objective or, in a political controversy, a single issue, and concentrate our resources accordingly. In the case of the "assault weapon" debate, this is the basic and natural human right of self-defense. If we present the argument correctly, the other side has absolutely no defense whatsoever. The Target Audience: Swing Voters and the Opposing Rank and File Colonel Paul Linebarger's Psychological Warfare states clearly that any communication whose purpose is to influence attitudes, beliefs,...

A Fall Creek resident filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government and an IRS agent that he alledges pressured him into sex by threatening a tax penalty. The law firm representing Vincent Burroughs filed the suit with the U.S. District Court in Eugene on Jan. 25 "as a result to coersive conduct by Defendant (Dora) Abrahamson", an Internal Revenue Service agent from Cottage Grove. Burroughs claims that in August of 2011 Abrahamson called him and said he would be audited by the IRS. Burroughs says he didn't know her. Burroughs says that he had not met Abrahamson before those calls,...

His Eminence and Hizzoner, by John Cardinal O'Connor and Mayor Edward I. KochJune 1989 New York City, N.Y., Feb 1, 2013 / 07:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Cardinal Edward Egan responded to the death of New York City Mayor Ed Koch with praise for the Jewish official's collaboration and friendship with Catholics. “He will have special place in my prayers, and in those of the Catholic community he loved and worked closely with, this weekend,” said Cardinal Dolan, who has been Archbishop of New York since 2009. Cardinal Dolan said that as a young priest in...