NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Louisiana investigators are combing through evidence in the shooting death earlier this week of a 6-year-old autistic boy after authorities charged two law enforcement officers in the shooting.

Col. Mike Edmonson, in a late night press conference Friday, said the two officers were being booked on charges of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in the Tuesday shooting death of Jeremy Mardis and the wounding of his father, Chris Few, in the central Louisiana town of Marksville.
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Speaking of the body camera footage that was recovered from the officers, he said: "It is the most disturbing thing I've seen, and I will leave it at that."
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The GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge

In the realm of practical epistemology, the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance but anti-knowledge. This seldom recognized fact is one of the prime forces behind the decay of political and civic culture in America.

Some common-sense philosophers have observed this point over the years. "Genuine ignorance is . . . profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas," observed psychologist John Dewey.

Or, as humorist Josh Billings put it, "The trouble with people is not that they don't know, but that they know so much that ain't so."
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At present, however, a person can be blissfully ignorant of how to locate Kenya on a map, but know to a metaphysical certitude that Barack Obama was born there, because he learned it from Fox News. Likewise, he can be unable to differentiate a species from a phylum but be confident from viewing the 700 Club that evolution is "politically correct" hooey and that the earth is 6,000 years old.

And he may never have read the Constitution and have no clue about the Commerce Clause, but believe with an angry righteousness that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
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The other thing that bothers me is that when you use the word "scholarship" you are using it in the context of the cost of your education; it means the education comes with a price tag.  You tell someone they're getting a scholarship so they know it isn't going to cost them anything.  Since this isn't how it works in the world of the service academies - no one pays (at least not in dollars - one pays in service), I find it hard to believe that anyone who went through West Point, would even frame the discussion in those terms.

Why didn't Carson just write that he was encouraged to apply?  That based on his stellar ROTC record, he had a good chance of getting an appointment?

What was wrong with the truth?  

I guess that's the question I'd like him to answer.  Why, when there's no question he was a gifted neurosurgeon who saved countless lives, did he feel the need to gild the lily?

It's the contrast: if you're going to be redeemed, you have to have something to be redeemed from, don't you?  Is that why he decided to paint himself as someone on the wrong track, so redemption was more believable?

And why was that so important to him - and what does it mean now?

I think these guys have a couple more months in the limelight, and then they're going to fall off a political cliff.  Then, the real terror begins: the dangerously smooth Ted Cruz is going to rise to the top of this heap, and then it's going to get serious.

In his autobiography, which was the basis of a movie about Carson's life, Carson wrote that the dinner with Westmoreland took place after he "marched at the head of the Memorial Day parade."

"I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind," said Carson, who was a top ROTC cadet at Detroit's former Southwestern High School.

Westmoreland's Memorial Day schedule on May 30, 1969, indicates he was in Washington. The schedule says Westmoreland had a morning meeting with national security adviser Henry Kissinger, laid a wreath at an 11 a.m. memorial service in Arlington National Cemetery and had a 5 p.m. "boat ride on the Potomac."

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told ABC News that more U.S. troops "absolutely" could be sent to Syria if additional capable local forces are found.

"If we find additional groups that are willing to fight ISIL and are capable and motivated, we'll do more," Carter told ABC, using the administration's preferred acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). "The president has indicated a willingness to do more, I certainly am prepared to recommend he do more, but you need to have capable local forces; that's the key to sustainable victory."link

 A skit about reporting of advisers to "president Trump," in the Oval Office, about everything on all fronts being terrific and America great again, save for the new restiveness of the American people because there was nothing left to do, was barely watchable. The trio skit with two Trump impersonators was hardly a knee-slapper, but it demonstrated that Trump knows show business and can take a joke.

When Trump critically  tweets about SNL actors engaged in a skit will never be accused of being terrific. Larry David did call Trump a "racist" in response to a dare and the promise of $5000. All the calls to block Trump from his hosting of the show were unnecessary. Trump stood (or fell) on his own.  But, he should have fired the SNL writers, or built a wall around them.

The only really humorous skit was the opening parody of the MSNBC forum in S.C. They had Rachael Maddow down pat; not so much Martin O'Malley, a little better for Hillary, and, again, a great send up of Bernie by Larry David.

Some of the lack of interest, I believe, is due to racism and elitism. It seems as if the ones who will be impacted first will be those we consider to be "non-white", and the most impoverished people.

As our droning programs, as well as our choices for wars and bombings have shown, and our references to the daily deaths of civilians we consider to be non-white as "collateral", we have little regard for the lives of people who are of darker skin colors than our vision of people whose lives we value.

As a people, we have become numbed. We no longer even take notice of the bombings of hospitals. The story has legs for about a week, a limp apology, and is then forgotten.

But the simple fact is that we, as a race, the human race, stand to go down the drain. Doomed to be forgotten well before our sun burns out.

Greed. Racism. Elitism.
All combined to give us an uncertain future. Or no future.

We can't even find time, or so it seems, to imagine what life might be like for our descendants.

I think we may have passed the tipping point.