Governing in the Spirit of Revenge

Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post explains how Congressional Republicans have done their best to gridlock the country, interfere with allowing President Obama to even begin to enact his policies and appoint his nominees, which, because he was elected twice by the American people, are what the American people voted for.  Those policies and nominees have been thwarted and even nullified by a vengeful, nihilistic cult within the GOP:



"As we celebrate the Fourth of July, who can argue that our democracy is working the way the Founders intended? And who can deny that most of the blame for dysfunction must fall to the Republican Party? 

George Washington distrusted all political parties. He warned in his farewell address that, as they alternated power, parties would act in “the spirit of revenge” — rather than, presumably, in the best interests of the nation. The “disorders and miseries” that resulted, Washington feared, would inevitably threaten democracy. 

For most of U.S. history, the major parties, even while differing sharply on philosophy and policy, have acted in a spirit of shared enterprise. There are significant exceptions — notably the years leading up to the Civil War. There was no possible compromise on an issue so fundamental as slavery. 

Today, we face no question of such magnitude. Yet Republicans have decided not to collaborate with President Obama in fulfilling the most basic obligations of government, preferring to let “disorders and miseries” fester rather than address them. 

Perhaps the House Republicans who block Obama’s legislative proposals and the Senate Republicans who block his executive and judicial appointments are acting in narrow political self-interest. Perhaps, as much of the overheated GOP rhetoric suggests, they are acting with the vengeful animus that Washington feared.

Whatever the motivation, Republicans have paralyzed our government in a way that would have shocked and depressed the Founders. Compounding the outrage, Republicans have the temerity to criticize Obama for using his executive powers in the national interest. This is dangerously close to nihilism."


Read the rest here.

While the extremists in the GOP busy themselves this weekend celebrating Independence Day, our country is suffering from the bitterness and spite they have spread across this land because they refuse to work with or recognize the legitimacy of our duly elected president, a man the American people, their fellow citizens, elected and re-elected, Barack Hussein Obama.

Their idea of governing is to make the country suffer because its citizens elected a man they hate.

What we are experiencing is the GOP's "spirit of revenge."  And that is not what the Founding Fathers-- whom they venerate but mock with their hostility to and contempt for cooperative governing--that is not what those true patriots hoped for this country when they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in signing the Declaration of Independence.

The South Is Essentially A Solid, Grim Block Of Poverty

And the south is a solid bloc of conservative voting.  This is what southern conservative leaders have done for the citizens who vote against their best interests by keeping those conservatives in office.  And here is the result of their failed conservative policies.  Nothing but misery has "trickled down" to these southern states:

North Carolina and a handful of other Southern U.S. states saw the biggest increases in the number of people living in what are known as "poverty areas" between 2000 and 2010, according to a new Census Bureau report. Poverty areas are places where more than 20 percent of the people live below the federal poverty line, which varies by family size. For a family of four, the poverty line in most states is an annual income of $23,850. 

 Today, 25.7 percent of all Americans live in such areas, up from 18.1 percent in 2000, according to the report. Having a quarter of the nation living this way is a problem: Poverty areas are typically marked by "higher crime rates, poor housing conditions, and fewer job opportunities," the report points out.

GO HERE FOR MORE GRIM INFORMATION.

Happy Independence Day!

6.1%, the lowest since before the Bush Administration's financial armageddon.

Here in Beantown, we celebrated Independence Day on Thursday, July 3, because of the coming tropical storm/Hurricane Arthur due here in Boston on July 4th. (the actual day of the completed signing of the Declaration of Independence was July 2):



"Officially, the Continental Congress declared its freedom from Britain on July 2, 1776, when it approved a resolution and delegates from New York were given permission to make it a unanimous vote. John Adams thought July 2 would be marked as a national holiday for generations to come. 

 “The most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival… It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”--John Adams 

 After voting on independence on July 2, the Continental Congress needed to draft a document explaining the move to the public. It had been proposed in draft form by the Committee of Five (John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson) and it took two days for the Congress to agree on the edits. 

 Once the Congress approved the actual Declaration on Independence document on July 4, it ordered that it be sent to a printer named John Dunlap. About 200 copies of the Dunlap Broadside were printed, with John Hancock’s name printed at the bottom. Today, 26 copies remain." --Constitution Daily




The Declaration of Independence was read from the east balcony of Boston's Old State House on July 18, 1776, by Col. Thomas Crafts (one of the Sons of Liberty).  Every year since, the D.o.I. is read by a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.

5 MYTHS ABOUT THE HOBBY LOBBY CASE DEBUNKED

By Irin Carmon 

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which said for-profit businesses can get religious exemptions to insurance coverage of contraception, you’re probably hearing a lot of dubious assertions about contraceptive access. Here are some facts.

1. “What’s the big deal? Contraceptives are cheap.” Not many of the most effective ones, which save money over time but have high up-front costs. For example, the IUD, to which Hobby Lobby objects,can cost between $500 and $1,000, including the care surrounding its insertion. The monthly cost of the hormonal pill can be low, but doesn’t make sense for all kinds of women, including those who experience side effects. Under the regulations Hobby Lobby objects to, the out-of-pocket cost for any FDA-approved contraceptive should be zero.  

According to the brief from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Lack of insurance coverage deters many women from choosing a high-cost contraceptive, even if that method is best for her health and lifestyle, and may result in her resorting to a method that places her more at risk for medical complications or improper or inconsistent use.”

Women are already saving money under the contraceptive coverage requirement, which began going into effect in August 2012; an average of $269 per woman, according to a recent report by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, or $483 million total in 2013.

2. “But Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood only object to four forms of contraception.” That is true. (As the Guttmacher Institute’s Adam Sonfield points out, in their formal complaints, they also object to counseling for those forms for contraception. No one knows what that will mean in practice.) But there are dozens of other plaintiffs in cases pending before federal courts who object toall birth control. For example, the owners of Freshway Foods object to all forms of birth control coverage. They already got a preliminary injunction at the D.C. Circuit, where Judge Janice Rogers Brown described the coverage requirement as “the compelled subsidization of a woman’s procreative practices.”

Here’s a list of the 149 for-profit companies whose cases are already pending, including several that object to all forms of contraception. Now that the Supreme Court has sanctioned their standing to make those claims and classified the coverage requirement as a substantial burden, they only have to show the sincerity of their beliefs to win. 

3. “Anyway, those forms of contraception are actually abortifacient.” The baseline question here is whether potentially and intentionally preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg constitutes abortion. That’s not the medical definition of abortion, which is ending a pregnancy. But let’s say your sincerely held belief is that interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg is tantamount to abortion, as it is for the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood owners. There is very little evidence showing that the objected-to methods – two forms of intrauterine devices and two forms of emergency contraception – even work that way, with the exception of the copper IUD. 

There are two kinds of emergency contraception on the market: an over-the-counter one generally known as Plan B and a prescription-only one known as Ella. According to the amicus brief filed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and several other medical associations, “there is no scientific evidence that emergency contraceptives available in the United States and approved by the FDA affect an existing pregnancy.” Instead, they prevent ovulation, so there is no egg to fertilize. That includes the longer-acting Ella: “There is no evidence that [Ella] affects implantation.”

One form of the IUD, known on the market at the Mirena, includes hormones that prevent ovulation. The other, preferred by women who experience side effects from artificial hormones, doesn’t. “When used as emergency contraception” – i.e., after unprotected sexual activity – “the [non-hormonal IUD] could also act to prevent implantation,” according to the amicus.

If you’re keeping count, that’s one out of four that maybe does what the plaintiffs say it does, in the rare instances it’s inserted after unprotected sex – and that’s still not the medical definition of abortion.

4. “But the government can just pay.” This one comes right from the majority, which said the Obama administration had failed the test of finding the least restrictive means to accomplish its goal. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the majority opinion, suggested “the most straightforward way” of filling the gaps would be for “the government to assume the cost.” He doesn’t have to care that this is, under current political realities, laughable. Senate Democrats have said they’ll introduce a legislative fix to the gaps left by the Hobby Lobby decision, but no one seriously thinks such a bill would become law.

There is an existing family-planning funding program for low-income women, Title X, and nearly all House Republicans have already voted to gut it. In the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney promised he would kill the program altogether.

Title X funding has gone down more than two-thirds since 1980, after adjusting for inflation,” said the Guttmacher Institute’s Adam Sonfield. “It is far less funded than it needs to be to fully meet the needs of low-income, uninsured people in this county,” he added. “Adding all of these privately insured people would overload it even more and make it even more vulnerable to political attacks.”

Some commentators have argued that contraception is cheaply available at Planned Parenthood. That would be largely due to the same federal funding that’s under attack, or state administration of it. In numerous states, most notoriously Texas, access to contraception has been sharply curtailed by politicians looking to punish Planned Parenthood for separately provided abortion.

Alito also says the government can just add female employees of religious objectors to the same accommodation the objecting non-profits got, where coverage comes directly from the insurer. He is aware, of course, that 122 religiously-affiliated non-profits are already suing over that accommodation, with one of their attorneys calling the opt-out form a “permission slip for abortion.” Mark Rienzi, the same attorney (who also represented Eleanor McCullen in her successful challenge to Massachusetts’ buffer zone law), wrote yesterday that he believes the court’s reasoning in Hobby Lobby paves the way for the nonprofits to win the same full exemption churches got – in other words, the employee gets no insurance coverage at all.

Even if private employers do agree to the nonprofit accommodation, it’s based on an administrative regulation that can change when the occupant of the White House does.

5. “It’s just contraception. It’s not vital health care.” This also comes straight from the majority opinion, though more implicitly. Alito holds at arms’ length the government’s claims that “public health” and “gender equality” are compelling interests, because, he says, they’re too broad. Whether the law serves a “compelling government interest” is part of the test under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was the crucial law in the case. But it’s sufficiently unclear that Alito believes contraceptive access matters at all that Justice Anthony Kennedy felt the need to write separately to “confirm” it.

Believing women’s equality matters is a value – one that, clearly, not everyone holds. But contraceptives’ public health benefits are inarguable. Just ask the leading group for obstetricians and gynecologists, who wrote in their brief, “Pregnancies that are too frequent and too closely spaced, which are more likely when those pregnancies are unintended, put women at significantly greater risk for permanent physical health damage … The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified family planning as one of the greatest public health achievements of the twentieth century, finding that smaller families and longer birth intervals contribute to the better health of infants, children, and women, as well as improving the social and economic roles of women.” They added, “Contraception also helps to protect the health of those women for whom pregnancy can be hazardous, or even life-threatening,” which Justice Kennedy does note in his concurrence.

There are also benefits unrelated to pregnancy, the ACOG amicus points out: Hormonal birth control “helps address several menstrual disorders, helps prevent menstrual migraines, treats pelvic pain from endometriosis, and treats bleeding from uterine fibroids.”   

Is all of that “compelling”? Justice Alito declined to explicitly say. 

A Long Time Ago, When Republicans Were Sane...

And believed in All-American Values:

He could not be nominated for the presidency in today's bat-shit crazy GOP



DDE called the splinter group that has taken over the Republican Party "stupid."

And who would argue with his prescient observation?

The Anti-Islamists Christians on the Right...

are blind to what the fundamentalists in their own religious sect are hoping to accomplish as a result of the horrible Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision:



Via Right Wing Watch:


"Anti-gay activists are rejoicing at the Supreme Court's decision in Hobby Lobby today, in part because they are hopeful that the decision will pave the way for one of their own policy goals: to use the religious liberty argument to push for broad exemptions for corporations from nondiscrimination laws. 

Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber is hopeful that the decision bodes well for those trying to use religious freedom as a cloak to justify discrimination against LGBT people": 

Matt Barber @jmattbarber

Follow

#HobbyLobby may help protect businesses from those pushing counter-biblical #LGBT lifestyle & anti-Christian agenda http://po.st/VfGRid 

11:37 AM - 30 Jun 2014

Peter LaBarbera @PeterLaBarbera

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LGBT Left has been winning in the courts, but now we have hope that SCOTUS will honor small biz conscience exemptions on homosexuality #tcot

12:34 PM - 30 Jun 2014

There it is, people, sickeningly evident for all to see.   The party that is anti-gay, but denies it and pretends it doesn't hate the sinners, only the sin, can't wait to bring suit in courts to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people.  The party that never lets a day go by without warning America of the impending caliphate that Islam will bring to the USA, is fine with the SCOTUS imposing a narrow ruling that favors one religion's objections to family planning and that party now hopes the same win can be applied to treating the LGBT community as second-class citizens.


Right Wing Watch:


"There may be reason for them to be optimistic. As SCOTUSblog pointed out, the majority's opinion pointedly leaves open "the question of whether the Government has a similarly compelling interest in preventing discrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation." 

 With respect to implications for other kinds of religious-based discrimination, the Court writes that racial discrimination in hiring will not be permitted under RFRA because "The Government has a compelling interest in providing equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to acheive [sic] that critical goal." Note that this leave open the question of whether the Government has a similarly compelling interest in preventing discrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation.

This charlatan:

Bryan Fischer @BryanJFischer

Follow

What freedom means: if you want to hire homosexuals, you can. If you don't want to hire homosexuals, you don't have to.

9:39 PM - 30 Jun 2014

 He is positively giddy with anticipation on how the conservative SCOTUS may allow them to treat our fellow citizens with contempt and spite.  After all, isn't that exactly what their Jesus/God would do?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was correct:

"The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield."

**************************

On another note, great news about this creep:

Supremes Decide That A Woman's Boss Can Tell Her How to Manager Her Family Planning

UPDATE BELOW

In a narrow decision, the Supreme Court found for Hobby Lobby and another company in their claim that allowing women, who are NOT members of their religious community and women who are nonbelievers, access to insurance coverage for contraceptive medications and devices, violates their "sincerely" held religious beliefs on family planning.

The decision is mind-numbingly wrong, wrong, wrong in every possible way.  The men who made this blundering ruling were, no doubt, influenced by the Roman Catholic Church's and other fundamentalist Christian sects' prohibition against family planning, and by favoring a particular religion's doctrine, they've violated the intent of the founding fathers that government shall not do so.





Here is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's blistering dissent:


 "The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage" 

"Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community." 

"Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby's or Conestoga's plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman's autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults." 

"It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month's full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage." 

"Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today's decision." 

"Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be 'perceived as favoring one religion over another,' the very 'risk the [Constitution's] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude." 

"The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield." --h/t Daily Kos

And all are Roman Catholics

When John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency, American Protestants feared he would be unduly influenced by Papist Rome.  Kennedy delivered a famous speech that allayed those fears.  Fifty-four years later the SCOTUS did what Protestants in 1960 feared Kennedy would do:  They favored religious doctrine over freedom from having a corporation impose its tenets on employees who do not share those beliefs.

More here:  Religious Freedom Frauds

 8 Other Laws That Could Be Ignored Now That Christians Get To Pick And Choose



UPDATE:


HOBBY LOBBY, RELIGIOUS HYPOCRITES AND FRAUDS: 

 Hobby Lobby Invested In Numerous Abortion And Contraception Products While Claiming Religious Objection

Even a Stopped Clock...

More Stupid Gun Deaths

A responsible, gun owning Kentucky mom stepped outside, leaving her 5-year-old son alone with his new birthday present — a brand new, shiny loaded .22-cal. rifle — and his 2-year-old sister.

Unfortunately, mom was outside just long enough for her son to fatally shoot his sister, Caroline Sparks, with his new present. Kentucky State Police Trooper Billy Gregory says that the shooting has been ruled an accident. “It’s just one of those nightmares,” he said, “a quick thing that happens when you turn your back.” He added that in the area it is not uncommon for parents to give their young children weapons. “In this part of the country, it’s not uncommon for a 5-year-old to have a gun or for a parent to pass one down to their kid,” he said.

The rifle that killed Caroline Sparks is a Crickett single-shot, and has a child safety, according to Cumberland County Coroner Gary White. The company’s web site features three .22-caliber rifle models for children and the slogan, “My first rifle.”

****************

The death of a 2-year old girl by her gun-toting 5-year old brother was no "accident."  The parents should be charged with negligent homicide for allowing a 5-year old to own and operate a deadly weapon.  

I read a lot of whining and bitching on conservative blogs about spoiled children of indulgent parents and how this is ruining our country, but I never hear any of those same bloggers talk about the absolute insanity and mind-numbing stupidity of parents who give 5-year olds guns--the stupidity of imbecilic parents who believe a 5-year-old would have the judgement and maturity to understand the dangers in operating a deadly weapon.

No parent who allows a 5-year-old child to play with and use a loaded weapon can ever be labeled "responsible." 

Child endangerment and abuse is what that is.

Republican Logic

Army Clears Bergdahl of Any Misconduct During Captivity

Remember how the conservative bloggers, pundits, and FAUX NOOZ exploded with accusations, invective, and lies before the military even began an investigation?  And remember how the ninnyhammers on those blogs maligned Bergdahl and his family?

Yeah. Ninnyhammers: That's a really good description of those who rushed to judgment before knowing any facts.

Will they apologize for their vile and hateful accusations?



From The Wire:

As the Army continues to investigate whether Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is guilty of deserting his unit, this afternoon they said there is no reason to believe that Bergdahl engaged in any misconduct during his five years in captivity.

In fact, that's all that the Army said:

" We have no reason to believe that he engaged in any misconduct."



We will wait for the results of the army's investigation on the various other charges that were brought against Bergdahl.

Risky Business and the Politics of Cruelty

Risky Business:








The Politics of Cruelty:


Charlie Pierce on Cruelty (h/t Ducky's Here):



We cheer for cruelty and say that we are asking for personal responsibility among those people who are not us, because the people who are not us do not deserve the same benefits of the political commonwealth that we have. In our politics, we have become masters of camouflage. We practice fiscal cruelty and call it an economy. We practice legal cruelty and call it justice. We practice environmental cruelty and call it opportunity. We practice vicarious cruelty and call it entertainment. We practice rhetorical cruelty and call it debate. 

We set the best instincts of ourselves in conflict with each other until they tear each other to ribbons, and until they are no longer our best instincts but something dark and bitter and corroborate with itself. And then it fights all the institutions that our best instincts once supported, all the elements of the political commonwealth that we once thought permanent, all the arguments that we once thought settled -- until there is a terrible kind of moral self-destruction that touches those institutions and leaves them soft and fragile and, eventually, evanescent. 

We do all these things, cruelty running through them like hot blood, and we call it our politics. Because of that, the daily gunplay no longer surprises us. The rising rates of poverty no longer surprise us. The chaos of our lunatic public discourse no longer surprises us. 

We make war based on lies and deceit because cruelty is seen to be enough, seen to be the immutable law of the modern world. We make policy based on being as tough as we can on the weakest among us, because cruelty is seen to be enough, seen to be the fundamental morality behind what ultimately is merely the law of the jungle. We do all these things, cruelty running through them like a cold river, and we call it our politics. It does not have to be this way. After the greatest exercise of systematized cruelty in the country's history, Abraham Lincoln gave the greatest speech ever given by an American president, and in its greatest passage, he called hold, enough. 

 "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

On one of the cruelest nights of 1968—which was a very cruel year; indeed, a year the cruelty of which eventually would claim his own life—Robert Kennedy stood in the dark in Indianapolis and offered a similar gathering hymn. 

 "And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people." 

The time for camouflage is over. Cruelty is cruelty. It should be recognized as a fundamental heresy against the political commonwealth and wrung out of all its institutions. That is the only way out.

Science Sunday on Monday

Do you know exactly what happens in your part of the planet during the summer and winter solstices? During the spring and autumnal equinoxes?

I was at the beach to watch this weekend's summer solstice sunset; and while sipping some effete liberal chardonnay, I realized I didn't know the exact details of these yearly phenomena.

This website explains it beautifully for those of you who delight in such things.

Here is a photo of the gorgeous sunset at the beach from Saturday, June 21, 2014.

"Astronomy has been important to people for thousands of years. The ancient construction known as Stonehenge in England may have been designed, among other purposes, to pay special honor to the solstices and equinoxes. These are the times and locations during Earth's journey around the Sun that we humans have long used to mark our seasons.

But what is the solstice exactly?"

More here from the Old Farmer's Almanac.

Most Face-Palm Inducing Headline of the Week

Republicans: Obama must defend Christian values


WASHINGTON (AP) — Leading Republicans on Thursday insisted that America's leaders must do more to defend Christian values at home and abroad, blaming President Barack Obama for attacks on religious freedom as they courted social conservatives expected to play a critical role in the next presidential contest.

"Those of us inspired by Judeo-Christian values...have an obligation to our country and to our fellow man to use our positions of influence to highlight those values," Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio said at a conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group led by long-time Christian political activist Ralph Reed"      


(Yes, THAT Ralph Reed of the infamous Jack Abramoff scandal!)

So the party that hates any government intrusion in our lives, that despises government overreach, (especially when it advises healthy eating habits for our children and offers affordable health care to our citizens) yeah, that T-GOP now says it is appropriate for our government to promote one religion over all others by promoting its "values."

What the T-GOP means by "values" is a bit confusing, since it is: 

Those Christian values protectors who voted over 50 times to take away affordable health care coverage for millions of poor people; 

Those Christian values protectors who withheld Medicaid for the poorest of poor in those states where T-GOPer are governors; 

Those Christian values protectors who voted against minimum wage increases for the bottom earners--the poor--in this country;

Those Christian values protectors who cut food stamps for the poor by $8 billion;  

And those Christian values protectors who continuously blame and denigrate poor American citizens who receive government subsidies as "moochers" and "takers," while saying absolutely NOTHING about the billions of dollars that go to subsidize corporations.


Those are the Christian Values folks who called for President Obama to promote Christian Values, while at the same time they've done all they could to undermine those very values and ignored the fact that President Obama has worked to promote them.

via Infidel753, "Having it both ways."  

2nd Amendment Rights Without Responsibilities, Part the Infinity

Words fail me:

2nd Amendment Rights Without Responsibilities:


A musician, teacher and new father is dead after a stray bullet pierced the wall of his Florida home on Tuesday and struck him in the back of the head.

The Panama City News Herald reported that 33-year-old Justin Ayers and his wife were welcoming their 3-day-old baby home from the hospital with relatives when Justin was killed.

The bullet came from the house next door, where 62-year-old Charles Edward Shisler picked up a .9 mm pistol by the trigger, causing it to discharge. When sheriff’s deputies arrived, they found Shisler standing on his porch, although he initially was “belligerent” and uncooperative.

 “The damn gun doesn’t usually shoot,” said Shisler, according to his arrest report. “You have to squeeze the hell out of the trigger to shoot it.”

 A blood test taken more than four hours after the shooting found that Shisler had a blood alcohol level of .079.

The legal limit for driving in Florida is .08. Shisler told deputies he had tried to pick up the gun by its trigger. After the gunshot, he said, he hastily tried to hide the weapon under his mattress.



MORE IRRESPONSIBLE GUN OWNER DEATH:


PA man accidentally shot, killed by guest of honor at surprise birthday party