Let's Talk About Mental Illness!

I found it interesting, in listening to a psychiatrist for the criminally insane, to learn that Arizona has a law in which the state can be petitioned to order an exam for anyone who is deemed to be of questionable mental stability. It seems Virginia has a similar law. In neither the case of the Tucson shootings nor the Virginia Tech shootings, when people in authority knew of the questionable mental health of the shooters, no one took advantage of those laws.

 Every newspaper in the country should be examining their state laws and informing the public whether or not they too have them and if so how to go about it.

Mental illness is the issue and and it comes in all shapes and sizes. When does it become a danger to the public?

Take for instance our old acquaintances, the Westboro Baptist Church crowd. The ones who protest at military funerals. I might add they made their rounds locally not long ago over a play being preformed about Matthew Shepard, the student in Wyoming who was beaten to death allegedly because he was gay.

They just don't quit. They protested at Elizabeth Edwards funeral. Now, disappointed that Congresswoman Giffords has not succumbed to her wounds, they have decided to protest at the funerals of those who did including nine year old Christina Green. A press release from the group says she "was killed for your rebellion when God sent the shooter to deal with idolatrous America." A nine year old girl.

As for the Congresswoman, a spokeswoman described her as an "arrogant pinhead who surrounds herself with fags and baby killers."

She went on about the killer, "God sent the shooter - that guy's bat-shit crazy - but God sent him."

You cannot tell me this group has one sane member in it. Sane people neither behave nor believe this way. Yet what they do is protected as free speech.

Now let's look at real incitement to violence. Yes, there are groups that go where they go to blunt their effect. It happened here. Yet someday, somewhere, someone is going to be hurting so badly from his or her loss they're going to lose it and go after the protesters. Who then will be judged mentally unstable?

To me the political rhetoric that has become a flash point in this case pales by comparison.

The reason why the judge is dead is "He doesn't care about free speech." Not now he doesn't.

"Once the child enters hell, it's over for her."

It is over for the child. Hell, however, is reserved for the rest of us having to listen to this under the guise of free speech. Is that sick or what?