Monday, January 14, 2013
Valerie Davis crafts drawings in memory of students killed in Connecticut school shooting.
- THE NEIGHBORHOOD FILES
- Tom Coombe
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Monday, January 14
After the deadly school shootings, Easton Area Middle School art teacher Valerie Davis said everything was like a blur. "I didn't know how to mourn," she said. Then came another blur: 12 days of non-stop drawing, as Davis created 26 portraits of each of the victims. "I would start drawing at 5 a.m.," she said. "That's all I did...my whole entire holiday." Davis displayed the results of her work Friday afternoon at the Easton Boys & Girls Club, but she wanted club members to do more than look. She asked the children to look at the pictures, and to write letters that will go to the families of the victims. Davis plans to deliver the letters to Connecticut herself. Before the kids got to work, they walked the room, examining the portraits. …
Thursday, January 3, 2013
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has change of heart, backs ban, as does Representative-Elect Cartwright.
- GOVERNMENT
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Thursday, January 3
On the hot-button issue of banning semi-automatic assault weapons, one area congressman-elect has come out swinging and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania has had a change of heart. Casey, who just won a second term, told the Philadelphia Inquirer recently that he was haunted by images from the massacre at Newtown where Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother before murdering 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Previously, he had opposed an assault weapons ban, but since Newtown he had decided he would support one as well as a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines. “The power of the weapon, the number of bullets that hit each child, that was so, to me, just so chilling, it haunts me,” Casey said. A Patch …
Thursday, December 27, 2012
We begin a Year in Review segment highlighting the top news of 2012.
It was quite a year on the national news front. In late November, everyone raced for tickets as the Powerball lottery hit its highest figure ever -- $550 million. That came after another national lottery earlier in November: the presidential election. President Barack Obama won a second term, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But there might have been little chance of seeing Obama start his next four years when talk turned to the Mayan calendar calling for the end of the world on Dec. 21. Well, we're still hearing and writing about it. NASA even offered an explanation as to why the world didn't end. Unfortunately, though, we weren't able to avoid catastrophe. The first came in the wake of a storm as Hurricane Sandy pounded the …
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The NRA on Friday called for every school in the country to have armed guards. Is that a solution?
Earlier this week -- in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting -- we asked if Easton should restore security guards to its elementary schools. On Friday, the National Rifle Association said that needs to happen in every school in the nation. And not just guards, but guards with guns. "Can't we afford to put a police officer in every single school?" asked NRA president Wayne LaPierre. That's a question school officials will be asking in the next few weeks. (Easton Area High School in Palmer Township and Easton Area Middle School in Forks Township already have armed police officers, the Express-Times noted Friday.) Is LaPierre's suggestion something all schools need to adopt? Take our poll, and tell us in the comments.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Mayors for Tatamy, Stockertown and Bath -- as well as more than 750 U.S. mayors -- sent a letter to President Obama urging him to "make it harder for dangerous people to possess guns, and easier for police and prosecutors to crack down on them."
- GOVERNMENT
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Editor's note: The following is a letter sent Wednesday to the White House from the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Among the mayors signing were Sherman Metzgar of Stockertown, Luke Duignam of Tatamy and Donald L. Wunderler of Bath. This letter is in response to a different gun crime: the school shooting last week in Newtown, Conn. Dear President Obama, On Friday, Dec. 14, the entire nation watched as parents stood outside the Sandy Hook Elementary School and waited, desperately hoping to be reunited with their children. That moment will never end for the families of the 20 children and six adults who were murdered that day at the school. As mayors, we are charged with keeping our communities safe. But too many of us have sat with …
Thursday, December 20, 2012
All rights – including the Second Amendment – come with caveats.
In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, the gun control advocates are calling for restrictions on firearms and some on the pro-gun side are citing the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. So here’s the thing: Let’s go with the constitutional framers original intent and allow every American to own a musket. But first, let’s stop pretending that the Bill of Rights grants rights – including gun ownership -- that are absolute. We have free speech, but you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. We have freedom of assembly but you’re not allowed to riot. So when gun advocates say they have the right to bear arms, all but the most extreme will acknowledge that like all freedoms in the Bill of Rights, it comes with caveats. For a fascinating look…
Rich Cranium
9:13 am on Monday, March 25, 2013
Wow John was right, pigeon playing chess. more ›