Yes, this is really that bad. So much for judicial minimalism.
I urge people to read the actual opinion linked above. For a variety of reasons (the most obvious being the validity of Roe v. Wade), this could be the most important case in the last 30 years. A case that marks a serious jurisprudential shift in the Court.
Amanda has a good post on the VA tech story. The fact is that from what we know now there is very little that can be gleaned from this story. With all due respect to my coblogger Eli, spree killers are an aberration. As Amanda notes they tend to be angry loners and they tend to be male. Other than that it just seems that a certain (teeny tiny) percentage of people go on killing sprees. Some are mentally ill. Some are sociopaths.
The Columbine story was a good example of one that got completely out of control. When something with no meaning happens everyone grasps at straws that probably say more about the culture than the spree killer did. In Columbine the first storyline that these were crazed goth kids bent on revenge for bullying was a great story with good staying power. Unfortunately it was just a story that turned out to be completely untrue. We will not know the whole story of this killing for some time, and I suspect that we will never really know or understand why.
