By Jeffrey Page

The Boy Scout pledge requires its adherents to obey the Scout Law. The Scout Law dictates that they will be all of these: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

I tried, but one summer at Ten Mile River Scout Camp in Sullivan County I stood on the dock of Crystal Lake trying to work up the nerve to jump into water over my head. I couldn’t do it. I was a lousy swimmer and deep water terrified me. For this, I was unceremoniously booted out of a prestigious senior unit by staff and friends. It was one of the more humiliating moments of my boyhood. They said I was not brave.

I may have run afoul of the bravery law when I was 12 years old, but I did far better than the adults who control the scout show now. When it comes to the question of letting gay boys be Boy Scouts, they are not loyal, not helpful, not friendly, not kind, and, God knows, not brave. In fact, in continuing to refuse to allow gay boys to join and serve, and gay adults to lead, the Boy Scouts of America define gutlessness.

Not to mention a world view right out of the Dark Ages, one that rejects the idea that a gay kid could be interested in learning to tie a square knot, applying a bandage, going on a hike, earning a merit badge in environmental science or public speaking, and maybe becoming an Eagle Scout.

The Boy Scouts of America – chartered by the Congress that represents us all – have had 103 years to do something about their anti-gay bias but have spent the 20th century ignoring the matter. It is now the 21st century, and they can’t disregard it any longer.

Will the organization change? Or will it maintain its cruel justification for banning gay kids by referring critics to another part of the Scout Pledge, which requires a boy to swear he will be “morally straight.”

As if to suggest that sexual orientation is a moral issue, when it is no such thing.

And as if to suggest that regulations cannot be amended. Of course the scouts should maintain trustworthiness, cheerfulness and the other 10 laws, but should add such traits as generosity and fairness.

Recently, when word got out that the matter of gay members was under discussion at the executive levels of the organization, the Scouts punked out and announced that they need another three months to conclude discussions on their membership requirements. Three months more after 103 years. This is no demonstration of bravery or of friendliness. In fact it would be comical if the victims of the Scouts’ 10th century ignorance were not children.

Surely the Boy Scouts of America understand that no matter how they decide, they will be attacked. End the ban and they alienate people who believe it’s still 1953, that the earth is a happy straight world where Ike is president, where the sky is always blue, and where all is well except for those nasty Russians.

If they maintain the ban the Scouts continue to incur the enmity of people who understand that the Scout Law ought not be a means of exclusion.

Now’s the time for the Scouts to be brave.

They might even consider expanding the law so that scouts would be required to be open-minded, respectful, honest, thoughtful, compassionate, and fair in addition to trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc.

By Jeffrey Page

Does the war against children ever end? Here are some important recent stories you may have missed that illustrate the violence inflicted on kids as well as the seeming indifference some authorities display in prosecuting the abusers.

First, some numbers: In her Violence Against Children Act of 2011 (which died when it was referred back to committee), Senator Barbara Boxer noted that 248,000 crimes against children ages 12 to 17 were reported in 2007. That’s about 700 a day. Nearly 92,000 of the victims were under age 12. Boxer also noted that 65 percent of violent crimes against people ages 12 to 19 go unreported to the police.

* * *

I was struck dumb when Deborah Gomez, 43, of Chicago recently faced a judge in Kansas – where she had been charged with child endangerment – and then strolled out of court. Specifically, Gomez last June bound the hands and legs of her two youngest children, then blindfolded them and then left them in her car in a Walmart parking lot while she and her husband went to shop. The children were aged 7 and 5. The high temperature for the day was 87, pretty dangerous in a closed car.

Gomez pleaded no contest and the judge, clearly not as outraged as you and I might have been, sentenced her to one year on probation.

Gomez’s husband, Adolfo, was charged with misdemeanor counts of child endangerment and was to be sentenced later. A wire service report noted that Adolfo insisted the children be blindfolded and bound as a defense against demons.

The Gomezes’ three other children, ages 15, 13 and 12, also were locked in the car but were not restrained. They made no attempt to help the two youngest.

To be ordered to report to a probation officer every week for a year reminds me of the light sentences some judges have been known to hand down in some drunken driving cases. These are judges who justify such a degree of mercy with the idiotic chestnut “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

In the Gomez case, I think the Kansas Bar Association should order the judge to move in with the Gomezes, their children and their demons for a year while Mrs. Gomez reports to her probation officer.

* * *

Sometimes kids are abused by other kids, as often is the case in instances of bullying. Last Friday night, with a wind-chill of about 13, Freddy Martin, 9, was playing on the roof of a five-story building in the Bronx. So was Casmine Aska, 17, almost a grownup. Around 8:30 p.m., the police say, Casmine threw Freddy off the roof.

It was an accident, Aska is reported to have told the cops. While holding Freddy off the ground, Casmine turned and slipped and somehow dropped the younger kid off the roof.

Did Casmine call 911? No.

Did he tell his mother what happened? No.

Did he run downstairs to see if Freddy was all right? No.

Freddy somehow survived and was able to tell the cops who had dropped him. The Times quoted a neighbor as saying Freddy was “unrecognizable” as a result of his fall.

* * *

In rural Alabama, Jimmy Lee Dykes once beat a dog to death with an iron pipe and had threatened some elementary school children – they’d stepped  onto his property – with a gun. Now he was days away from a court hearing on charges that he had threatened a neighbor with a gun.

That incident was in December. But now it was February, and Dykes and his police record boarded a school bus in Midland City. When Dykes tried to grab two kids to take with him, the bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, put himself between Dykes and his gun. Dykes killed him in cold blood.

But Sykes got one kid, an autistic boy named Ethan, and took him to his underground bunker.

It took authorities about a week to finally work out a plan for Ethan’s rescue. There was an explosion and gun shots, and Dykes was dead. Ethan was not injured.

I’d like to meet the people in charge of Dykes’s current case. With his history of violent behavior, how could his December threatening-case have been delayed two months as he walked about?

Maybe Jimmy Lee Dykes was just a crazy old coot, but he was dangerous enough to move his case as quickly as possible and be done with him. I understand that. So do you. But the prosecutors didn’t? I don’t believe that for a minute.

* * *

In Queens, a couple was charged with shaking their baby daughter to death; she was 70 days old. The man was convicted and faces 15 years to life in prison. His wife went free; the district attorney dropped the charges against her. Both had spent five years in prison awaiting trial.

This is how screwed up the system is. Everyone wants to avoid trial. So it just goes on, with those in charge often seeming to go easy on child abusers. To avoid trial, prosecutors often accept a guilty plea to a reduced charge. And children keep dying.

* * *

Did it take you about 5 minutes to read this story? According to Boxer, that means almost 3 children were beaten or clubbed or shot or stabbed or otherwise abused since you first saw the headline.

By Jeffrey Page

Saxby Chambliss, the senior senator from Georgia, has announced he will retire next year. In this, there is a modicum of justice, for it was the loathsome Chambliss who reached new depths in electoral sliming a decade ago when he defeated the incumbent, Max Cleland. Do you remember?

Chambliss’ late-campaign strategy was so offensive and so false in its message about Cleland – admittedly a rare breed in Georgia, a moderate Democrat – that even some of Chambliss’ fellow Republicans forced him to yank an ad that suggested Cleland was an incompetent soldier. Chambliss even questioned Cleland’s patriotism.

During his service in Vietnam, Max Cleland was awarded the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars for his actions on the battlefield. Both medals are awarded for valor.

For the record, this is part of the Silver Star citation about Cleland’s conduct in early 1968 during the bloody three-month siege of Khe Sanh, where 700 American and South Vietnamese troops were killed: “When the battalion command post came under a heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack, Capt. Cleland, disregarding his own safety, exposed himself to the rocket barrage as he left his covered position to administer first aid to his wounded comrades. He then assisted in moving the injured personnel to covered positions.”

A few days later, while exiting a helicopter, Cleland leaned down to retrieve a grenade he thought had fallen from his pistol belt. The explosion nearly killed him. He survived but lost both legs and an arm. Displaying incredible determination, Cleland underwent grueling physical therapy and later entered government service, and then politics. He headed the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter, and then served 14 years as the Georgia secretary of state. In 2002 he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Saxby Chambliss challenged him six years later. Chambliss’ advertising contained separate newsreel footage showing Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Max Cleland – hint, hint – and went on to suggest there was something thoroughly unpatriotic, un-American, about Cleland’s votes against some of George W. Bush’s homeland security proposals. In Chambliss’ world view, the fact that Max Cleland left three limbs in Vietnam counted for nothing.

Chambliss’ ad campaign against Cleland was so outrageous that among its strongest critics were two GOP senators, John McCain and Chuck Hegel. They had served in Vietnam and understood war as Chambliss never could. Responding to them, Chambliss pulled the ads but the damage was done. The voters bought his trashing and Cleland was finished.

Chambliss’ military record: Four student deferments, followed by ineligibility due to a bad knee.

How bad a knee? In 2005, Roll Call reported that one afternoon while the Senate was in closed session to discuss the intelligence that led to the Iraq War, Chambliss was playing a round of golf with Tiger Woods back home in Georgia.

You’d think people would learn something about common decency after witnessing what Saxby Chambliss did to Max Cleland. But some politicians never seem to understand that there are times when you keep your mouth shut.

In the recent election, Joe Walsh, a Republican freshman from Illinois was challenged by Tammy Duckworth, whose wounds were eerily similar to Cleland’s. Duckworth lost her legs and the use of one arm when her helicopter was hit by enemy fire in Iraq. In words he surely will remember for the rest of his life, Walsh said of Duckworth’s injuries: “My God, that’s all she talks about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about.”

Walsh’s military record: None.

Duckworth beat him in November.

Here’s to the voters who sent Walsh packing.

By Jeffrey Page

–I liked it. But even more, I liked the attitude. For this was no happy thank-you. This was no self-congratulation. And this was no wise-acre government-is-the-problem complaint. This was a call to work for a better America.

–I liked Obama’s use of 18th century imagery that Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, other Congressional yahoos, and the Second Amendment crowd could understand (if not appreciate): “The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.” The message I took from the business of “privileges of the few” is that no longer will the middle class be required to preserve, protect and defend the insanely low tax rates of the wealthy.

–Obama’s several uses of “we the people” amounted to a message to those who forget that “we the people” are the first three words of the Constitution, and are quickly followed by “in order to form a more perfect union.” I may be politically naïve – I lost $5 betting on McGovern in ’72 – but the use of “we the people” suggests that it’s him and us together on this train, and if the forces of darkness want to hop aboard for the ride to enlightenment, that’s OK. But they’ve got to wipe the manure from their shoes. If, however, they choose to stand on the tracks to stop the train, they’d do well to bring their last political wills and testaments up to date. We’re not stopping, Obama said.

–“For we the people,” Obama said, “understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” Maybe this time the right wing will understand that the poorest Americans are just that – Americans who are broke but not evil – and thus deserving of all the assistance the nation offers to the Chryslers, the Trumps, the Kochs, the Adelsons. Maybe the right will understand this, but I doubt it. I hope President Obama is aware of the coming struggles.

–The president said that we the people agree that every American “deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.” Which means to me, if not to the Tea Party, that when a hurricane ravishes a southern town, of course we rebuild and make repair. And if the storm wreaks havoc on the northeast we fix that as quickly as possible and do not play Tea Party budget games when people are made homeless. Sane human beings never would say: OK, here’s $1 for hurricane relief but you can have it only if you cut other spending by a like amount.

–Obama said children, “from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown,” must know that they are safe. I wish he had said something a little more substantive on the matter of guns.

–Doubtless, Obama recalled the GOP hand-wringing about saddling our children and grandchildren with current national debt when he chose the line: “We the people still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” There’s more than money to worry about.

–What I heard in Obama’s 2,126-word speech was a call to the opposition to get on board or get out of the way. Throughout his talk, I heard reminders to the Tea Party and its unhappy Republican backers that it was Barack Obama who won the election, not what’s-his-name. If they are to be taken seriously, Republicans should remember this.

–The GOP should also remember that when they let loose personal attacks on the president, they let loose on the majority of the American people that re-elected him. True to predictions, the turnout in Washington to bear witness to Obama’s second inauguration was lower than the first one four years ago. But let it be known on the right: He still drew 600,000 people to listen in bitter cold. The White House says it was more like 1 million. Pick a number and know that it was crowded in D.C.

–Clearly, the president will have tough going through 2017. For even as some Republican members of Congress were wishing him well in a second term, I heard a Tea Party woman from Texas express concern on National Public Radio that she still has yet to see Obama’s birth certificate. Again, Obama will have to deal with irrational nitwits who’ll say anything to make him look bad but who wind up looking foolish themselves. Recall, the genius Mitch McConnell saying in 2010 “the single most important [emphasis added] thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Recall the esteemed Sarah Palin warning us that part of Obama’s medical plan were “death panels.”

–If Obama was polite, at times almost obsequious, in his dealings with the GOP for the last four years, he sounded this week like a man who knows he’s been slapped and otherwise disrespected a few too many times. Will he give as good as he gets? Will he tell the next birther with a big mouth to get stuffed? I hope so.

–Obama reminded us of Martin Luther King’s definition of freedom; either we are all free or none of us is free. Those are words that should be recited by Americans every morning before breakfast. He said gay men and women ought to be treated “like anyone else under the law.” That’s a worthy morning prayer as well.

–Great speech. I wish him and us the best.

By Jeffrey Page

As the urgency in the discussion of the need for stricter gun laws increases, allow me to tell you about the moment when my ambivalence about guns turned to something else.

It was during basic training at Fort Dix in the brutally hot summer of 1964. We, in Tango Company – “Tough Tango! All the way and a little bit more!” we were ordered to shout several times a day – had undergone any number of training classes at the rifle ranges. Our weapon was the M-14, a particularly nasty instrument that the army issued as standard equipment from 1959 to 1970. Set on automatic, the M-14 could fire at the rate of 750 rounds per minute. Our ammunition clips held 20 rounds. This was not a weapon for sport.

With initial rifle training over, we knew how to fire the M-14. Now we marched to a new range for combat training. Here we would work in teams of two. My buddy, a guy named Vince from Newburgh, and I faced downrange. He was about 15 yards to my right. The idea was that he would make a dash forward, firing at an imaginary enemy, while I covered him. Then I would move forward and he would cover me.

The ammunition was live. As a result, Al Minicus, our normally laconic platoon sergeant, informed us – many, many times – that we must be facing straight ahead before firing our weapons. Any deviation from this rule could result in extra duty at best, a court martial at worst.

As Vince started forward, I rose to one knee and fired into a thicket of bushes about 50 yards straight ahead of me. Then, as Vince dropped to the ground, I stood and ran past him while maintaining the 15-yard space between us. He now was firing to cover me.

Just then, I heard the training officer blow his whistle, which meant, in descending order of immediacy: cease firing at once; get your finger off the trigger; freeze; bring your weapon diagonally across your chest to port arms; stand at attention.

The officer, a young lieutenant, approached me, called Vince over, and asked if I knew why he had whistled. I did not, but wondered if this somehow was going to turn into an extra tour on KP or guard duty. But I was innocent.

The lieutenant said that Vince had fired his weapon several times at a 45-degree angle to his left – meaning right at me. “At your head,” the officer said. Vince started apologizing and the lieutenant told him to shut up.

I felt a surge of nausea. I felt my knees weaken. I had a vision of my head in pieces. I found myself leaning on my rifle like a crutch, something you’re never supposed to do. The officer then asked me if I wanted to have a few moments alone with Vince behind the latrine so I could “deck this sorry son of a bitch.” I did not.

At that moment, I threw up an ocean of breakfast onto the rifle range, and this seemed to annoy the lieutenant as much as Vince’s misdirected firing had. Then, using standard army logic, Sgt. Minicus came over and said that Vince was lucky because he hadn’t hurt me and would be punished only with an extra KP duty. He never mentioned how lucky I was that Vince had missed.

I finished basic training and later returned to my National Guard unit in New York where, in the next 5½ years of my enlistment, I never had to carry a weapon with live ammunition. Which was fine with me, almost as fine as being alive.

Vince wasn’t evil, just careless. Adam Lanza and all the others who have contaminated our society with their unhappiness weren’t careless, just evil.

And armed.

By Jeffrey Page

Correction to this column: When the Warwick Town Board meets on Jan. 24, it is expected to consider the language of an outright ban, or restrictions, on hydrofracking for natural gas in the town. The board’s formal vote on the matter likely will be on Feb. 14.

* * *

Late in 1964 The New York Times ran a story with this insanely dispassionate lede paragraph:

“The idea of using hydrogen bombs to clear a site for a jetport in northern New Jersey was rejected by a private consulting concern today.”

It sounds like a bad joke, but some geniuses at the Port Authority had to be informed by an expert that nuking parts of Sussex, Passaic, and Morris Counties to make way for a fourth metropolitan area airport was not such a great idea.

Now, 48 years later there’s another joke that’s not funny. The set-up is that New York might allow industry to use a process called hydrofracking to find and extract natural gas from underground rock formations. This at a time when fracking’s safety is questionable. As a result, several towns and counties have been adopting antifracking ordinances to ban the practice within their borders.

The Warwick Town Board is scheduled to vote on such a ban later this month. Read on, and if you wish to inform the board of your support of the proposed fracking ban you’ll find a link to a petition that was assembled by the community-based Sustainable Warwick organization.

Proponents say fracking is safe even though it requires tremendous amounts of fresh water that might otherwise be used in farming and for human consumption. Additionally, there does not seem to be any coherent answer when you ask what happens to all that water, which becomes polluted when used in the fracking process. Where does it go? No sensible industry response to this.

And oh yes, fracking also employs various carcinogenic chemicals.

The natural gas industry informs anyone who’ll listen that fracking is about as safe as cookies and milk.

That rosy determination smacks against one by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which declared: “Significant adverse impacts to habitats, wildlife, and biodiversity from site disturbance associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the area underlain by the Marcellus Shale in New York will be unavoidable.”

–Fact: An indisputable circumstance of nature, physiology, and the human condition is that we can survive without gas. But we can’t survive without water and air. Simple as that.

–Fact: Substances that cause cancer do us no good.

–Fact: The Warwick Town Board convenes Jan. 24 to vote on the proposed fracking ban.

For more information about fracking, take a look at Sustainable Warwick’s web site.

If you’d like to inform the Town Board about your concerns and/or worries regarding fracturing in this bucolic municipality and that you want the proposed ban enacted into local law, you can do so by signing Sustainable Warwick’s petition. (Note that you should sign the petition only if you’re a resident, business owner or taxpayer of the Town of Warwick or of the villages of Warwick, Florida or Greenwood Lake, and if you are age 18 or older.)

By Jeffrey Page

He spoke 2,100 words and took no questions as he educated the nation about how best to prevent gun violence in the schools. Arm the schools, said Wayne LaPierre with a straight face. He is the chief spokesman of the National Rifle Association

And to prove the NRA’s deep and abiding concern about mass shootings, LaPierre informed a news conference that the organization remained silent in the wake of the Newtown Massacre out of respect to the parents but now was forced – forced! – to weigh in. Why? Mostly because of “all the noise and anger” being directed at the NRA itself in the days after the murders of 26 children and staff at the Sandy Hook School.

LaPierre wants a cop in every school. And if there aren’t enough police, he said, there are “millions” of retired police, “security professionals,” firefighters and others ready to take protective action. I get nervous when an expert tries to prove his point by citing nothing more specific than “millions.”

But back to the NRA’s proposal to turn our schools into armories. LaPierre wants changes, and he wants those changes right now, which sounds like a courageous, square-chin position until you consider some facts. LaPierre chose not to deal with the facts.

There are 132,270 public and private elementary and secondary school buildings from one coast to the other, according to the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, based in Washington. In those buildings on a typical school day are 55 million students, plus 4.7 million teachers and other staff. LaPierre may want action right now, but he made no reference to how he would proceed to fill those schools and protect those kids and teachers.

Here are some points I would ask LaPierre to consider:

–Let’s end NRA grandstanding and get down to protecting children from armed angry lunatics. Specifically let’s take automatic weapons off the civilian market. The NRA should stop its Second Amendment handwringing and concede once and for all that the nation’s founders had no concept of automatic weapons, assault rifles and large-capacity magazines when they came up with the oddly worded right-to-bear-arms business in the Bill of Rights.

–In his news conference LaPierre never discussed how easy automatic weapons and large magazines make the work of mass killers. No loading one round at a time, just shove the magazine in and you’re set for action. As a result, LaPierre never acknowledged one of the findings in an informative story in Mother Jones Magazine on the history of gun violence in America over the last three decades. Mother Jones documented 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012. In those sprees, gunmen proved assault weapons and semi-automatic handguns to be the weapon of choice for mass killings: 103 people were shot to death by men with assault rifles and semi-automatics, while 39 died at the hands of killers with slower loading revolvers and shotguns.

–Let’s finally get real and acknowledge that the only use for automatics and assault weapons is to kill people.

–We need to make it much more difficult to get guns. In those 62 incidents, 49 of the murder weapons had been obtained legally by the killers. Only 12 were illegally obtained.

LaPierre ignored all that during his news conference and called for the nice-and-easy (read: simplistic) way to deal with gun violence in the schools. That is, to increase the number of guns in the schools so that the cop on duty can fight back when a killer shows up at the front door. LaPierre didn’t touch the question of a group of killers confronting the one cop on duty.

Nor did LaPierre address the fact that innocent people have been killed in places other than schools. A man walked into a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, Calif., in 1984 and shot 22 people to death and wounded 19 others. Should we station cops next to the griddles in the 12,000 McDonald’s restaurants? What about Burger King?

There are about 7,000 movie houses in the United States including the one in Aurora, Col. where 12 people were killed and 58 injured last summer. Armed police at the popcorn machine won’t help if a killer starts his work in the men’s room.

We need to have a serious discussion about revising the Second Amendment to limit the availability of weaponry by placing automatics and assault weapons where they belong: In the hands of the military and the police.

By Jeffrey Page

The hand wringing over the Second Amendment continues in the days and weeks after the Newtown Horror. In op-ed columns and letters to editors some people who support the gun lobby have expressed concern that any attempt by the government to regulate gun traffic somehow betrays the spirit of the Bill of Rights.

The framers didn’t limit the people’s basic rights 221 years ago so why should we allow limitations now, the question goes. This is specious in two important respects. For one thing, taken to its no-limitation conclusion, we may soon hear an argument by the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates suggesting that to prevent someone from possession of flame throwers, nerve gas and nuclear weapons somehow deprives us of our right to bear arms. It sounds absurd, but deep down you know that someone, sometime is going to test this position.

Then there’s the generally overlooked fact that we have always placed limitations on the rights handed to the people in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

–The limits on free speech – including the cry of “Fire!” in a theater, calls to violence, conspiracy, slandering, and libeling – have been detailed almost to the point of cliché. But platitudes or not, they remain limits on what are generally believed to be – but are not – absolute freedoms in the First Amendment.

–The First Amendment also prevents the government from establishing an official religion, but violations of this occur almost every year around this time. Invariably, some local bodies somewhere in America allow the placement of a Christmas tree, a crèche or a menorah on municipal property, thus violating the spirit of the First Amendment.

–The Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments,” which might come as a surprise to the two-thirds of the states with capital punishment statutes on their books.

–And then of course there is the explicit limitation in the 27 words of the Second Amendment itself: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It’s confusing in its brevity, and this puzzlement is what keeps the fight over the amendment alive. The right of the people to keep arms shall not be infringed, yet the militia – comprised of the people – will be not just regulated, but well regulated.

What does “well-regulated” mean? I suggest that my interpretation of those two words is as valid as the NRA’s, maybe more. Here’s what I mean:

No, you may not possess a hand grenade, an Abrams battle tank or an assault rifle, all of which are designed to kill large numbers and not a white tailed deer or a couple of ducks. Those weapons are for the military.

And yes, background checks on the criminal and mental health histories of prospective gun buyers will be conducted with fervor and honesty. If this results in an extended long waiting period, so be it.

What America needs are politicians with the courage to inform the National Rifle Association that the working definition of “well-regulated” will not be written by NRA flacks.

By Jeffrey Page

Not since Jerry Falwell looked into a TV camera 12 days after 9/11 and blamed the attack on lesbians, the ACLU and People for the American Way (among others) has an American politician uttered the vicious outrages Mike Huckabee has spewed in the days after the mass killings in Newtown, Conn.

Soon after the bloodshed, Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who has expressed presidential ambitions, was asked by Fox News how God could have allowed the massacre of 20 little children and six adults. His response defines the word “cruel” and displays a breathless lack of humanity.

It was all our faults.

At a time when the people of Newtown and another 300 million people of the United States needed comfort and a kind word, Huckabee decided to browbeat us by declaring that the shootings were the result of a lack of prayer in the public schools.

We have to be responsible for where our arguments lead us. I follow Huckabee’s reasoning like this: Whose fault is it that there is no compulsory prayer in the schools? I could compose a list of names, but the shorthand answer is the Supreme Court. And who sits there? Nine men and women appointed by a president. And who picks the president?

That would be us.

And among “us” are residents of Newtown, a place where it is unlikely that townspeople never marched on a school board meeting to demand a restoration of school prayer.

I don’t think God works this way; making little girls and boys pay for the inaction of the older people in town.

“It’s an interesting thing,” Huckabee said on Fox News. “We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools.”

“Interesting?”

Huckabee doesn’t get it. Making school violence an “interesting” subject reduces the Connecticut tragedy – parents facing the incomprehensible truth of life without their children – to about the level of urgency and importance as trying to do the crossword puzzle in the Sunday Times. A new movie is “interesting.” The murder of babies is not “interesting.”

And “systematically removing” God from classrooms?

In fact we have done no such thing.

Some students pray in school whenever they wish, maybe before an algebra exam, maybe to thank God for another day, or for a dad’s recovery from illness, or for a date for the prom. But these are personal entreaties made by individuals, maybe in a whisper, maybe in silence. The First Amendment may rule against organized prayer in public institutions but prevent praying in schools? Kick God out? Never happened. Never could.

Most ministers understand that no one is powerful enough or, for that matter, stupid enough, to try to remove God from the schools. It can’t be done because, the clergy will tell you, God is with everyone all the time – even in school. Does Huckabee think that a mere schoolhouse door is going to keep the lord out?

Huckabee, continuing with the grace and mercy of a stampeding buffalo as Newtown parents arranged for the funerals of their babies, said, “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Of course we should be so surprised, and maybe a little astonished that someone with a public persona could be so insensitive to the misery and pain that has overcome Newtown.

By Jeffrey Page

I went out to buy some toys for Christmas and Hanukkah, determined to spend my money on gifts manufactured here in the United States. What better show of patriotism, of concern for the economy, of wishing to support up-against-it American workers during these wretched times?

I visited toy stores in New Paltz, Middletown and Warwick, plus a gift shop in Warwick with a large toy section. Conclusion: If you want to buy American be prepared to spend time searching for domestic toys and to pay a little more.

Here’s what you’re up against. Take a careful look at the fine print on the labels fastened to almost every toy you pick up and you find the inevitable “Made in China” or to lesser degrees “Made in Thailand,” “Made in Vietnam,” and made in scores of other places. It seems that the toys we give our children are manufactured just about everywhere except where they live. There are exceptions of course, but China for the most part seems to rule the American toy trade.

I came across a Disneyfied stuffed Winnie the Pooh doll; made in China. A Fisher Price musical gym; made in China. I found something called the “original” Rubber Duck. It was made in Spain. There was an erector set manufactured in China for a French firm. A line of toys connected with Thomas the talking locomotive, some Crayola products, and Legos are all made in China. So is an American flag. I came across Warwick t-shirts made in Honduras and Haiti.

I saw a Monopoly set that was made here but with dice and player tokens manufactured overseas, and I found a jigsaw puzzle map of the United States and Canada that was made in Germany.

Of course, not everything is imported. Here’s a selection of some American-made toys I came across in short visits to the toy stores and gift shop.

Newhard’s in Warwick, Enchanted Toys in New Paltz, and the Toy Chest in Warwick carry the Green Toys line, which is based in Mill Valley, Calif. This is a collection of fire trucks, dump trucks, flatbed trucks and tugboats, all big and colorful, and made of recycled materials (mostly used milk jugs). Not only are these trucks eco-friendly, but a sales person told me they’re virtually indestructible.

The Toy Chest carries basic musical instruments (triangle, ocarina, drums, rhythm sticks, etc.) made by an outfit called First Note of Kirkland, Wash.

Newhard’s sells several items made in this country. These include several solid wooden pull toys manufactured by Mapleland in Middlebury, Vt., plus attractively packaged sets of blocks made by Uncle Goose of Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Toys R Us store in Middletown was awash in foreign made toys and games thought it also had a large selection of jigsaw puzzles made in the United States.

Sales people in the three smaller stores agreed that price is the major factor in their stocking mostly foreign-made toys, which generally are cheaper than domestic products. For example, an amusing solid maple giraffe on wheels made in the United States was available for $35, a stiff price for what is essentially a pull toy.

But in fact, American-made toys are not always more expensive. For example, for $27.95 you can buy Dado Cubes (a colorful building block set that seems to defy gravity) made here in the U.S.A., or for $32.95 you can buy Arx, (a colorful building block set that seems to defy gravity) made in China.

Additionally, the sales people at the three smaller stores said the reason you don’t encounter many American made toys is because they’re difficult to find. However, a number of internet sites focus on such products. Two such sources are madeinusaforever.com and fatbraintoys.com.

What has been your experience in shopping for holiday toys and games?