Innocence Lost at Sandy Hook

The little children of Sandy Hook are angels, as you can see from the picture above. It was taken in May of 2011 at the Great Pootatuck Duck Race, just as thousands of yellow plastic rubber duckies were dumped into the Pootatuck River and began their journey along the waterway.

It is exactly the kind of event that is usually the hallmark of the idyllic village in the town of Newtown, Connecticut that has been home over the years to celebrities like athlete Bruce Jenner, actor Anthony Edwards, and "Hunger Games" author Suzanne Collins.

The thought that any of the cherubic faces above may have been attending kindergarten today inside of Sandy Hook Elementary School is heartbreaking. Today, the light inside twenty of these innocents was snuffed out when unthinkable horror and evil visited the school.

The son of a teacher at the school entered her classroom today and massacred the children she taught. 18 children in all died in their little classroom.

Two others survived initially, were rushed to a nearby hospital, but succumbed to their injuries there.

20 innocent little children who had nothing to do with the shooter, who posed him no threat, who had no knowledge of his existence before today were dead at his demented hands.

Wake Up the Echoes

On September 3rd, Mark May of "College Game Day", an alleged expert, predicted that the University of Notre Dame football team would be either 1-5 or 0-6 after their first half dozen games. 

Well, with the team at 4-1 and ranked in the top ten, this guy either needs a new profession, or a new crystal ball. 

The Fightin' Irish are back, going into today's much-anticipated tilt against the two-time defending national champion USC Trojans, who are currently ranked #1 in the nation and winners of 27 straight games. 

In this great rivalry, the Trojans are 4-0 when coming into the game ranked #1. However, the Irish lead the overall series 42-29-5, and the school has one of the most storied streak-ending histories in all of college sports. 

In 1957, it was the Irish who ended Oklahoma's 57-game winning streak, longest in college football history. 

In 1974, the Irish basketball squad stopped the most storied streak in all of college sports history, UCLA's 88-game winning streak. 

Supremes Loose Leviathan to Become Master of All

On Thursday the United States Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case of Susette Kelo (left) et al v. City of New London, 04-108 that stated in it’s simplest explanation “If the government wants your property, it can come and take it, no matter what you want. Period.”

In what is becoming typical of most of the court’s controversial rulings, the vote was by just a 5-4 margin.

Voting to allow local government’s increased powers to take your land, home and business were the four usual liberal suspects: Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer and Stevens. Siding with them, as he has done increasingly over years, was Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy.

The Great Communicator must be rolling over in his grave these days about that appointment. Caving in to the political pressures against outstanding dream nominee Robert Bork was one thing. But compromising with the increasingly nightmarish Kennedy has to be considered a whole other matter entirely. The liberals fretted all those years with Reagan, and ended up with one of their own on the top bench anyway.

But back to the matter at hand. The case that the court was deciding involved the small Connecticut town of New London. A few years back, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Corporation decided that it wanted to locate a facility in the town.

Good news for local business, right? Everyone in the community on board. The trouble started when the commission formed to evaluate the plans for the Pfizer development decided to get ambitious.

Plans began to expand in city officials’ minds for an entire waterfront business park initiative. They foresaw hotels, clubs, restaurants, even a new Coast Guard Museum, all attached to the Pfizer property and aimed at bringing tourists to the area.

Problem was, some folks, including Kelo (pictured) owned houses in the development area, and they didn’t want to sell.