“It’s like OPEC. We’re not producing all the maple syrup in the world. But by producing 70 to 78 percent, we have the ability to adjust the quantity that is in the marketplace.” —Simon Trépanier, acting general manager of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. [NYT]

Our guest columnist is NRO contributor Charlotte Allen.

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

Newtown Answers [NRO]

Our guest columnist is in deep shit.

The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.

Read more »

Our guest columnist manages to go 681 words without mentioning “well-regulated”.

It is easy, and in moments of despair such as Friday quite understandable, to scream “more” to gun control, “more” to the morass of airport-style security that is spreading its way across our institutions, “more” to the diagnosis and institutionalization of the mentally ill. But it is much harder to write the laws that would have guaranteed Adam Lanza could never find a gun, or enter a school by force, or go without what diagnosis, treatment, and supervision he might have needed. And hardest of all to write them in such a way that the republic we’d be left with would still look like America in the ways we value most.

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Title: “Underwater Dogs”

Author: Seth Casteel

Rank: 48

Blurb: “From the water’s surface, it’s a simple exercise: a dog’s leap, a splash, and then a wet head surfacing with a ball, triumphant. But beneath the water is a chaotic ballet of bared teeth and bubbles, paddling paws, fur and ears billowing in the currents.”

Review: “The dogs were all wonderful and enjoyed turning each page of the book.”

Customers Also Bought: “Extraordinary Chickens 2013 Wall Calendar”

Footnote: We all could use a break.

Underwater Dogs [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

“Why did Adam, after killing his mother, travel to the school where she worked? Shouldn’t some suspicion fall on the mother? She looks like a victim, but could she and her son have been operating together?” [Althouse]

[CNET]