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Last week Americans were shocked and saddened by another mass killing, this one near a college campus in California. We all feel deep sympathy for the families of the victims. As usual, many people responded to this shooting by calling for new federal gun control laws, including the mental health screening of anyone attempting to purchase a firearm. There are a number of problems with this proposal. Federally-mandated mental health screenings would require storing mental health records in a government database. This obviously raises concerns about patient privacy and doctor-patient confidentiality, as well as the threat of identity theft....

Originally blue-eyed with blonde hair, he became interested in having plastic surgery after spending some time as an exchange student in Korea. He was inspired by how common plastic surgery is here. Xiahn, who asked not to be named to protect his family from Internet scrutiny, underwent 10 surgical procedures on his eyes, along with other less-invasive procedures, which cost him around $3,100. He also began wearing contact lenses to change his eye color.

A young man wrote a manifesto and went on a killing spree. This murderer, Elliot Rodger, ended up taking the lives of six people, seven if you include his own death. (I’ll wait for the coroner’s report to see whether it was self-inflicted or the result of return fire.) The massacres took place on May 23, in Isla Vista, California. Immediately pundits went into overdrive, and social media was filled with mostly ideology-based opinion. Most of the opinion seems, well, a bit off. The big word is “orthogonal” … to the facts. I offer, instead of my settled opinion, a...

You all know who he is. But I'm not going to repeat the name of the 22-year-old crazy person who stabbed or shot six young people to death near the UC Santa Barbara campus last week. I'm not going to quote from his insane 137-page "manifesto," either. It just spews his pathetic reasons for why he planned his murderous retribution against all the girls who had paid him no attention during his short and awful lifetime. You know about his pampered but mentally troubled and lonely life - growing up amid the movie glamour of planet Hollywood, seeing a therapist...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is launching a $26 million program to help military personnel with psychiatric disorders using electronic devices implanted in the brain. The goal of the five-year program is to develop new ways of treating problems including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which are common among service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan."We've seen far too many times where military personnel have neuropsychiatric disorders and there's very few options," says Justin Sanchez, a program manager at DARPA.DARPA is known for taking on big technological challenges, from missile defense to creating...

Feinstein questioned why Elliot Rodger was allowed to own guns, and ripped the NRA’s “stranglehold” on Congress. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)Elliot Rodger’s shooting spree had Sen. Dianne Feinstein lamenting the “stranglehold” the NRA has over gun laws. “The deadly shooting in Isla Vista is heartbreaking,” the California Democrat said Sunday in a statement. “Schools should be places of safety, not where students fear for their lives.” Feinstein questioned why Elliot Rodger was able to legally obtain and keep his guns. “We must ask ourselves if an individual whose family called police with concerns about mental health, who is...

Only when cops entered Rodger’s nearby apartment did they find his first victims: three multiply-stabbed men whose names were withheld Saturday night, pending family notification. It remained unclear Saturday night if any of the three were Rodger’s two roommates. He had written in the manifesto that he would “have to kill” them so he could turn the place into “my personal torture and killing chamber.” “I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good...

On May 7th CNN's John King played a video of Hillary Clinton saying, "We have to rein in what has become [an] almost article of faith, that anybody can have a gun anywhere, [at] any time." King quickly added, "She's talking in the context of mental health," but then he expressed obvious concern that this soundbite is going to make a great anti-Hillary commercial in southern Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and North Carolina, among other places. As Breitbart News reported earlier on May 7th, Hillary was not talking about mental health issues at this point but about "fully licensed" and "fully...

Two Dallas police officers have been indicted in the last two weeks for shooting and wounding residents in incidents where the initial police accounts were later contradicted by video. Cardan Spencer and Amy Wilburn were both charged with aggravated assault by a public servant. Spencer was indicted last week after shooting a 52-year-old man standing several feet away from him. A police report filed in the case initially claimed the man, Bobby Bennett, lunged at Spencer with a knife. A neighbor’s surveillance video camera captured video that showed Bennett was several feet from the officers and didn’t appear to move...

One of the most important jobs of the media is to be the so-called “fourth estate” — an unofficial fourth branch of government that holds the three official branches accountable. Ideally, this would take place when reporters provide a look at reality when politicians lie, despite pressure from the same politicians to not report the truth. However, there is another way to hold a politician accountable: Stop taking the politician seriously by not reporting what he or she said. I propose that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has long passed the point of “unseriousness” to “harmful to society,” and...

Fort Hood shooter was taking "prescription drugs for depression and anxiety". SSRIs? "Lopez was undergoing a variety of treatments for conditions including depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances, McHugh said. He was prescribed drugs that included Ambien, a sleep aid. Lopez was fully examined last month by a psychiatrist. There was no record of any sign he was likely to commit violence against himself or others, according to McHugh. "So the plan (going) forward was just to continue to monitor and treat him as deemed appropriate," he said." They say that he was "prescribed drugs" but only named one, Ambien, which...

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — An Iraq War veteran being treated for mental illness was the gunman who opened fire at Fort Hood, killing three people and wounding 16 others before committing suicide, in an attack on the same Texas military base where more than a dozen people were slain in 2009, authorities said. Within hours of the Wednesday attack, investigators started looking into whether the man’s combat experience had caused lingering psychological trauma. Fort Hood’s senior officer, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, said the gunman had sought help for depression, anxiety and other problems.

Students of one California high school teacher will have to adjust to a lot more than just their school schedule after the upcoming spring break concludes. Veteran teacher Gary Sconce is reportedly completing his gender reassignment surgery during the hiatus and will return as Karen Adell Scot. According to local media, the science teacher, 56, began his transformation almost a year ago after reportedly feeling like he was supposed to be female since he was a child. He is apparently so anxious to complete his journey that he cannot wait until the end of the school year.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that President Obama is the least partisan president she has worked with during her extensive time in Washington, and said the problem lies with the GOP. “This is as non-partisan a president as I’ve ever served with,” the California Democrat said at her weekly press briefing. She was asked whether she believes Mr. Obama would be able to work with Republicans if they were able to take control of the Senate and hold the House this November. She said when Democrats held both chambers under President George W. Bush in 2007-2008 she and...

A transgender woman claims her violent male side is responsible for her murdering three prostitutes in Washington in 1990. Donna Perry, who used to be Douglas Perry, told police she intentionally underwent gender reassignment surgery in Thailand in 2000 "as a permanent way to control violence," ABC News reported. Perry, 62, explained to police in 2012 that "there's a great downturn in violence" whenever a person goes from being a man to a woman.

A murder mystery revolving around a severed head discovered by a dog near the Hollywood sign in Hollywood's Griffith Park in January 2012 may have finally been solved. Police arrested Gabriel Campos-Martinez, 38, in San Antonio and charged him with killing his former boyfriend, 66-year-old Hervey Medellin...

A whopping 41% of people who are transgender or gender-nonconforming have attempted suicide sometime in their lives, nearly nine times the national average, according to a sweeping survey released three years ago. In a new study released Tuesday, researchers dug deeper into that number, analyzing the results of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey to examine what puts transgender people at such "exceptionally high" risk. Researchers from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that the risk of attempting suicide was especially severe for transgender or gender nonconforming people who had suffered...

These are the new images I've got, to go with the second of my youtubes, which is posted at http://youtu.be/usFBn99pJMc In the first youtube we looked at what could be seen above the water in the video. In this new video I show footage of some more that is above water but also some that is underwater. The images on my blog are clearer than what shows on youtube, so even if you see the youtube (which I recommend, because it explains what you're seeing and gives other links as well) you might want to look at the stills to...

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. soldiers had a common mental illness, such as depression, panic disorder or ADHD, before enlisting in the Army, according to a new study that raises questions about the military's assessment and screening of recruits. More than 8% of soldiers had thought about killing themselves and 1.1% had a past suicide attempt, researchers found from confidential surveys and interviews with 5,428 soldiers at Army installations across the country. The findings, published online Monday in two papers in JAMA Psychiatry, point to a weakness in the recruiting process, experts said. Applicants are asked about their psychiatric histories,...

I received this morning a heart–rending request for prayers to Saint Dymphna on behalf of a woman who has been suffering from mental illness for many years. Although I cannot reveal the details of the request, I would ask my dear readers, of their charity, to say the following prayer to Saint Dymphna for this suffering handmaid of God.O glorious Saint Dymphna, virgin martyr and chaste bride of Christ, child of Ireland, bereft of thy mother, object of thy grief-stricken father’s unlawful desires, pure dove who, to preserve thy purity, didst fly to foreign shores, dauntless follower of the immolated...