We Have Impure Thoughts About Hate-Fucking Supreme Court Justices

Strict originalist, my ass.

I now have a mental image of Scalia bent over a desk. Thanks, Noje.

@rptrcub: Imagine him as Sully. Or does that make it worse?

If the Sue-preem KKKort rules against DOMA, then maybe the anti-gay, hate-crazed, neo-nutzies will git Yosemite Sam-mad enough to give Scalia & company JFK-scalp massages. That’ll show ’em!

There has been a shooting at a mall in Clackamas, Oregon, south of Portland.

@Dodgerblue: Just tuned in. The moment I saw a video credit for “KGW-TV”, I knew it was close to (ancestral) home.

ADD: Also, we have an Occasional Stinquer who I think now works at KGW or KATU.

Two dead in addition to the shooter, one seriously injured. Rush hour in PDX a complete clusterfuck.

@Dodgerblue: I will always associate the mall in Clackamas with Tanya Harding.

Is Fox News telling its aging and possibly impaired audience again how people, not guns and bullets, kill people? Maybe it’s a sign of my old age acting up but for whatever reason I can’t recall a single incident of a person committing a multiple homicide in a public place without using both a gun AND bullets.

Oddly enough, I also can’t recall a multiple homicide where the shooter used a single-shot pistol, musket or rifle like those available in the late 18’th century. Lucky for us our superhuman Founding Fathers could see so far into the future and know that in 2012 semiautomatic rifles were vital in every American home for defense against the English in Canada, the French in the midwest & Louisiana, the Spanish in Florida, not to mention all the hostile Native American tribes scattered throughout.

@Dave H: This might be colored by my age, but I don’t recall a mass shooting prior to the Austin clock tower. Which freaked the shit out of me when Linklater panned past it in Slacker.

But that reminds me…

Richard Speck. Sixties. Chicago nurse-killer. Knife and strangling.

He did have a gun, which is how he forced his way in. But he didn’t use it.

Call that the exception that proves the rule. Can’t think of any similar example.

Breaking Hard: Ravi Shankar died. Weirdly enough, Mr. SFL told me that as Steve Jobs/iTunes DJ had a Norah Jones song up next.

@nojo: I vaguely remember the Luby’s massacre and other killing sprees of the early- to mid-’90s, but the first one that really sunk in was the Paducah school shooting, partly because it took place in Kentucky, but mostly because it was almost unthinkable, pre-Columbine, that a kid would respond to bullying in that way.

@mellbell: My inevitable reference was Springfield, which was overshadowed by Columbine a year later. Springfield being Eugene’s working-class sister city, I always suspected Columbine got more attention because those were nice kids.

@mellbell: The Edmond, OK Post Office shooting is the first one that I recall. It was in a suburb of OKC, where I lived at the time. I think the term “going postal” has its roots in that incident.

Squid Vicious lives (not).

The first mass-murderer in the U.S. is considered to be Howard Unruh who killed 13 people in 1949. Next in line would be Charles Starkweather in 1958 when he killed 10.

@coolg: Not sure Starkweather counts for this list, since it was a series of murders, many in private homes or cars.

Unruh, though — yup. That’s the model.

Even Richard Speck — the Chicago nurse-murderer — was a home invasion. So after Unruh in 1949, we wait until Charles Whitman, who picked off victims from the Austin clock tower in 1966.

@Mistress Cynica: The earliest citation is 1983, and there are two others before Edmond. But Edmond may indeed have given rise to the term itself.

Also:

Researchers have found that the homicide rates per 100,000 workers at postal facilities were lower than at other workplaces. In major industries, the highest rate of 2.1 homicides per 100,000 workers was in retail.

Stay away from Walmart.