Justifying Murder as "Going to War"

Tragedy struck tiny Kirkwood, Missouri yet again this last week:

Some left flowers, balloons and memorials on the steps of City Hall. Others gathered at a prayer vigil where a bell tolled six times as mourners clutched white candles. Residents of this St. Louis suburb struggled to heal as they tried to make sense of a shooting spree at a City Council meeting that left five people dead and the mayor fighting for his life.

"This is such an incredible shock to all of us. It's a tragedy of untold magnitude," Deputy Mayor Tim Griffin said at a news conference Friday. "The business of the city will continue and we will recover, but we will never be the same."

Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton had a long history of fighting with city officials over a litany of code violations, fines and citations. Police searched his house Thursday night after the rampage and removed placards containing protest slogans that Thornton often carried to City Hall, his brother said.

St. Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus said authorities were still trying to piece together the details of the attack.

Over the years, Thornton racked up thousands of dollars in parking tickets and citations. The asphalt company owner raged at council meetings that he was being persecuted, mocking city officials as "jackasses" and accusing them of having a racist "plantation mentality."

His outbursts got him arrested twice on disorderly conduct charges, and he filed a free speech lawsuit against Kirkwood, but lost the case last month.

On Thursday night, he left his home and headed to one more City Council meeting, carrying a loaded gun. On his bed back home, his younger brother Arthur said he found a note that read: "The truth will come out in the end."

Before he was shot to death by police, Thornton, 52, killed two policemen, Tom Ballman and William Biggs; council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr; and Director of Public Works Kenneth Yost.

Mayor Mike Swoboda was hospitalized in critical condition with gunshot wounds, and a newspaper reporter covering the meeting, Todd Smith of Suburban Journals, was in satisfactory condition.

Thornton's dispute with City Hall had been escalating since the late 1990s, when he "was promised" a large amount of construction work on a development near his home, said Arthur Thornton, 42. The vast majority of work went to other contractors, he said.

"They just gave him what I'd call the scraps," Arthur Thornton said.

Standing in front of City Hall, another brother, Gerald Thornton added: "They denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue."

Thornton's first shooting victim was Biggs, who was on duty outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers carrying one of the slain officer's pistols to continue the rampage.

After the Pledge of Allegiance was recited at the start of the meeting, Thornton then squeezed off shot after shot. At one point, he yelled "Shoot the mayor!" before he was shot to death by police.

"We crawled under the chairs and just laid there," reporter Janet McNichols, who was covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said in a video interview on the newspaper's Web site. "We heard Cookie shooting, and then we heard some shouting, and the police, the Kirkwood police, had heard what was going on, and they ran in, and they shot him."

The shooting brought a violent end to a feud that had gone back years.

Thornton had developed an especially tense relationship with Yost, Arthur Thornton said. Yost would often complain that Thornton was parking his commercial vehicles in residential neighborhoods. Some were parked in Thornton's driveway, some in a lot across the street.

Charles Thornton received roughly 150 tickets over the years, and would often complain about the treatment at City Council meetings. He called the fines against him a "slave tax," according to accounts of the meetings in the town's paper, The Webster-Kirkwood Times.

He was cuffed and dragged from council chambers, and the council considered banning him permanently after that meeting. Ultimately, the group decided that while his behavior was disruptive, he had a right to be there.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests for disorderly conduct during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.

But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the lawsuit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

I am sure the murderer felt abused by the system. I am sure he was angry. But none of it justifies killing people. Period.

We live in a society in which any words or actions that seem to contradict our image of our self-worth provoke violent or even deadly reactions. We must find our ethical center again. We could start by decrying immoral actions done in our name.

And by the way, the murderer's brother Gerald Thornton himself has killed someone in a fit of anger and served time in prison.

Tragedy in Austin

A seven-year-old boy at an Austin charter school was injured last Wednesday, and has now died.

A 7-year-old boy who was found unconscious hanging by his shirt on a dressing room coat hook died Friday, as police investigated whether he was the victim of abuse or an accident.

The boy was found Wednesday by a teacher at the Not Your Ordinary School charter campus for children in pre-kindergarten through third grade.

Austin police refused to immediately release the boy's name out of respect for his family's wishes, police spokeswoman Helena Putnam said.

"The Austin Police Department offers its heartfelt sympathy to the family, students teachers and school administrators during this tragic time," a police statement said.

School officials did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages Friday.

The boy had been excused from an assembly to go to the bathroom. When he didn't return, staff went looking for him. They found him caught on the hook by his shirt. The shirt collar had cut off oxygen.

Police opened a criminal investigation on Thursday, citing "suspicious" circumstances on how the boy was found. Investigators interviewed students and staff.

By late afternoon, police also acknowleged that it could have been an accident. The hook was low enough for the boy to have placed himself there, although police did not rule out the possibility that he might have been assaulted.

The boy's pants were down to his ankles when he was found, but investigators said Thursday they had no evidence of sexual abuse and described no external injuries.

A statement posted on the school Web site on Wednesday said, "The safety of our students is our first priority. As information regarding this incident comes to light, we will determine what, if any, campus safety issues need to be addressed."

The school earned an exemplary rating, the highest possible, from the state for the 2006-2007 school year.

How very sad. Hopefully, if anyone knows any information, they will come forward.

In memory of those at Virginia Tech

Well, another crazed freak exercized his Second Amendment rights yesterday, and 32 people are now extinguished. Plus the gunman is dead. You know, "gunman" is an interesting word.

Let us all remember the victims and their families in our prayers.

A Poem for the Victims of Katrina

At the round earth's imagin'd corners
John Donne

At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scattered bodies goe,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe.
But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space,
For, if above all these, my sinnes abound,
'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,
When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

Answers about New Orleans

Well, I post a thought, and a few minutes later I find out that I'm not crazy paranoid. Here follows a gem from my personal goddess of reason, Molly Ivins at Working for Change:

New Orleans: It's about us
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

09.01.05 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.

To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the NRA would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.

One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's great delta.

But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies -- ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.

Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

Does this mean we should blame Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Class 3 or Class 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).

Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325.

Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

The commander of the Corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and cancelled the annual Corps picnic.

Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.

In fact, there is now a government-wide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans -- it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.

The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)

This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.

The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

(c) 2005 Creators Syndicate

Hurricane victims

Nothing teaches kids that anarchy is not some harmless, intriguing theory like pictures of the devastation and lawlessness coming out of the tragic situation on the Gulf Coast. I never thought I would be explaining the difference between survival looting and truly criminal looting, but I do believe there is a difference.

I understand people with no access to cash or stores taking water or baby formula or food, all of which would be thrown out anyway, so long as they only take what they need and they offer payment for any goods taken after this horrifying mess is over.

But, as we discussed in class, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. When someone stated that the looters weren't really doing any harm because insurance would pay for the stores for their losses, I had to remind them that there is no such thing as a free lunch or indirect taxes (we were talking about the Stamp Act controversy during the Revolutionary period). Want to raise taxes on corporations? Fine, but expect those higher taxes to be passed on to us as higher prices for whatever it is that corporation makes. Want insurance to cover the cost of these payouts? Okay, but expect premiums to go up, because even if the insurance company posts record profits they will make the case that necessity forces them to do it.

We also had a good laugh about this one: Who would have thought a year ago that we would actually be GRATEFUL for gas to cost $2.70 instead of $3.00 a gallon? And by this time tomorrow, gas will probably be far more expensive than that. But, on a serious note, gas prices are small potatoes compared to losing everything you own or your loved ones to this storm or its aftermath.

We are already getting students from the disaster area enrolling in our schools. Our school is also planning collections for the victims. I am thinking about having my students challenge the students of one of my colleagues to see who can donate the most-- kids love competition.

In another class, we were talking about the genesis of the tradition of the separation between church and state, and one kid brought up the old saw about "There will be prayer in schools as long as there are tests." One kid said that he wished we could pray for the hurricane victims. I responded that I was finished with my discussion and we were now going to have some silence in which they could work or think. I walked back to my desk, and watched the heads bow and eyes close for a few minutes.

So sue me.