Looks like the NRA has lost the New York Post.

I don’t know whether this is accurate. If anything it doesn’t square with my read on what happened or President Obama’s negotiating style. But it makes for entertaining reading.

From the Journal … Read More

I’m still amazed, angry, shocked that Wayne LaPierre actually tossed a ‘have you no decency’ at like 80% of the country today.

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that a dentist was within his rights firing an assistant who he found attractive simply because he and his wife thought she was a threat to their marriage. That seems a bit iffy to me. But perhaps he could be held culpable simply for saying the following. And I don’t just mean for harassment — that seems kind of like a given in this case, just for being maybe the weirdest dentist ever, in addition to being a harasser. Read More

Instagram has switched back to its old ad policy post-outcry and even introduced a new filter so there’s no hard feelings.

A couple great, edifying reads as you get set for the weekend.

Who are the Preppers, the quasi-survivalist group storing baked beans and guns for the impending civilizational collapse? Nancy Lanza was apparently among them. Here’s our report.

And what about the gun, the Bushmaster AR-15? Here’s our piece on the history on the gun at the center of the Newtown story.

Heads up that I’ll be doing a live chat with TPM Prime members at 4 p.m. this afternoon.

Topics include the fiscal cliff, Plan B, the debt ceiling, and any of the myriad silly things Congress does. Get your questions in now.

Read Wayne LaPierre’s remarks as prepared for delivery.

NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre’s screed against everybody is on-going. In LaPierre’s mind the main victim of all this appears to be the NRA. But I want to set that aside for a moment and focus on one part of LaPierre’s statement — where he seems to be endorsing what amounts to ‘Prepper-ism’. We wrote about it today — the movement that Nancy Lanza was apparently a part of, that believes in storing supplies and guns for some inevitable collapse of civilization when it will be every man for himself. Read More

Don’t worry about the Mayan prediction flop. There’s still a ton of stuff to worry about, from the Aztlan/Reconquista Uprising to the new Persian Empire to just regular old avalanches. And there are people who worry about these things … a lot. Benjy Sarlin examines the “prepper” subculture.