Jennifer Huettner was Adam Lanza's teacher for the 9th and 10th and 11th grades. He left without graduating to take college classes. He got his GED from the college.

She says he was home-schooled for the 7th and 8th grades. In the 9th grade, he returned to school and was in a portable classroom by himself. He had Asperger's.

“He didn’t want to be around people,” Jennifer explains. “Our goal was to get him back in the building.”

Adam’s mother Nancy would drop him off, then sit in the next room while Jennifer worked with him.“He was very OCD. He’d clean the desk with Purell,” Jennifer remembers.

He displayed no signs of violence. He never had a tantrum. He was not bullied. In the 10th grade he was in the main building. [More...]

President Obama has announced that John Kerry will be his next Secretary of State.

He is expected to take office in January. Hillary is recovering from a concussion and the flu.

The NRA held a press conference today calling for armed guards in schools.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

The NRA says our existing gun laws are sufficient.

Mr. LaPierre said Friday that thousands of gun laws already are on the books. He suggested, though, that the prescription was not more legislation, but more security in schools.

Former Congressman (and DEA Director) Asa Hutchinson will lead their effort to get Congress to adopt their ideas. [More...]

Nancy Lanza's family in New Hampshire held a private funeral service for her today,at the home of her brother, police officer James Champion. About 25 family members attended. (She was cremated.) Here is a picture of the house, posted on James' Facebook page. It was built in 1740 by his mother's ancestor Israel Huse, Sr. He says it is where he grew up and he bought it from his mother in 1995. Nancy and her ex-husband Peter Lanza used to live next door with their sons Ryan and Adam Lanza, until 1998 when they moved to CT. (Some details of the NH family here and here.)

Gun sales are soaring in New Hampshire since the Newtown killings.

Bernard Madoff's brother Peter was sentenced today to ten years in prison. [More....]

Zero Dark Thirty - Because Kathryn Bigelow makes films like they're bombs about to detonate in her lap. Haunting, unflinching, never less than absorbing, with aspirations toward not just art but the "truth," even as the film never stops questioning the very notion of such a thing. - Zach Baron

It's funny because it is inadvertently true -- in Zero Dark Thirty there is no such a thing as "truth."

Also too, in college football tonight, 5 units on San Diego State (+3) over the LDSers in the Poinsetta Bowl in San Diego.

Open Thread.

NYTImes:

In an unusual Congressional critique of Hollywood moviemaking, three United States senators on Wednesday lambasted “Zero Dark Thirty,” the new fictionalized film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, calling it “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location” of the terrorist leader. In a letter to Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the senators — Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California; Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan; and John McCain, Republican of Arizona — weighed in on a public debate over how the film portrays the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of brutal interrogations against Qaeda suspects.

[... A] highly critical 6,000-page study of the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program [..]showed that information derived from waterboarding and other brutal techniques did not play a significant role in locating Bin Laden, who was killed in a raid by Navy SEALs in May 2011.

[...]The senators [...]say the movie is “factually inaccurate” and “has the potential to shape American public opinion in a disturbing and misleading manner.” Their letter asks Sony Pictures to “consider correcting the impression that the C.I.A.’s use of coercive interrogation techniques led to the operation” against Bin Laden[.]

President Obama has named Joe Biden to lead a new task force on gun violence.

Obama said Wednesday that he supports the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms, and highlighted the nation’s strong tradition of gun ownership. Yet, he said, the country’s leaders need to find ways to keep “weapons of war” out of the hands of the irresponsible few.

“There is a big chunk of space between what the Second Amendment means and having no rules at all, and that space is what Joe’s going to be working on to try to identify where we’ll find some common ground,” Obama said.

[More...]

Who will win The Voice? I hope it's Terry McDermott. I voted several times.

More people who once upon a time knew Adam Lanza are speaking out. They don't seem to know anything more than anyone else. I'm always sorry after I click on one of these articles, only to realize it's pure speculation. And most of them have annoying automatically playing videos you have to search for to shut off.

The Washington Post documents the media errors. I have a similar post I wrote over the weekend and haven't gotten around to publishing yet. And another one on Nancy Lanza and her family. And another on the lack of any connection between Asperger's, Autism and violence. (The New York Times on that here and here.) I will finish them soon, they are just very detailed and need a lot of proofreading.

Gun control is still the talk of the nation.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Supreme Court ruled warrantless GPS monitoring of Antoin Jones violated his Fourth Amendment rights and could not be used at his trial. (Opinion here, background here.) Basically,

The case concerned Antoine Jones, who was the owner of a Washington nightclub when the police came to suspect him of being part of a cocaine-selling operation. They placed a tracking device on his Jeep Grand Cherokee without a valid warrant, tracked his travels for a month and used the evidence they gathered to convict him of conspiring to sell cocaine. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The Government then sought to introduce cell site locator data obtained by a court order (but not a search warrant establishing probable cause.) The judge has now ruled the cell site data can come in at trial. She said she didn't have to rule on the issue of whether a search warrant is required because the good faith exception to the warrant requirement saves the search. Wired's report is here.

The opinion is here. EFF filed this amicus brief. The Government's argument is here.(In non-legalese, here.) [More...]

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a serious blow to the civil lawsuit of the falsely accused Duke La Crosse players. The players had sued various governmental entities and two police detectives, Officers Mark Gottlieb and Benjamin Himan.

The three-judge panel rejected their claims for damages filed under federal law against the City of Durham and its police department.

The panel allowed the former players to continue with their claims under North Carolina law that Durham officials violated their state constitutional rights. The panel also allowed the three wrongfully accused players to proceed with their state claims that two police investigators – Mark Gottlieb and Benjamin Himan – engaged in malicious prosecution.

The opinion is here.

The players previously settled a lawsuit against Duke University for an undisclosed sum. Where is Crystal Gail Mangum? In jail, awaiting trial on a murder charge. In October, she received permission to represent herself at trial.

Open thread.

This is how the Voice opened tonight. Very moving, and nicely done. Click on the full screen option.