While liberals on both sides of the aisle think that we can tax and spend ourselves out of this economic mess, analyses published by the Tax Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council show that states that tax less also spend less and have better economies than those states that tax more. The Wall Street Journal reported:

“States that allow taxpayers and employers to keep more of their earnings are reaping the benefits. States without an income tax have significantly better growth in private sector GDP (59% versus 42%) over the last 10 years. They increased the number of jobs by 4.9% while jobs in the rest of the states declined by 2.6%. States without an income tax gained population (+5.5%) from domestic migration (U.S. residents moving in and out of states) while all other states as a whole lost 1.3% of population between 2000 and 2009.”

The converse was also true that states that taxed more also spent more and had worse economies than the rest.

To conservatives, these analyses merely state the obvious. It really doesn’t take a genius to realize that as taxes increase, consumers will consume less and therefore contribute to a downsizing economy. They will consume less because they will have less money to spend. Of course, even in those circumstances, government officials and economists will try to encourage people to spend their money or go into debt in order to “save the economy.” But fiscal conservatives don’t live that way. If the money’s tight, and the economy is down, then it’s time to save as much as possible, not spend. Our personal and familial economy is far more important than the national economy.

The  following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS  Sunday  Morning  Commentary. My confession:   I don't like getting pushed around for being a  Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for  being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are  sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no  idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly  atheist country.  I can't find it in the Constitution and I  don't like it being shoved down my throat... Or maybe I  can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we  should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God  as we understand Him?  I guess that's a sign that I'm  getting old, too.  But there are a lot of us who are  wondering where these celebrities came from and where the  America we knew went to. In light of the many jokes we  send to one another for a laugh, this is a little  different:  This is not intended to be a joke; it's not  funny, it's intended to get you thinking.       In  light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings,  etc..  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she  was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she  didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then  someone said you better not read the Bible in school...   The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and  love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said  OK. Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our  children when they misbehave, because their little personalities  would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr.  Spock's son committed suicide).  We said an expert should  know what he's talking about..  And we said  okay.. Now we're asking ourselves why our children have  no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it  doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and  themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard  enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal  to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.' Funny how simple it is  for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to  hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but  question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send  'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when  you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think  twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and  obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public  discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.  Are you laughing yet? Funny how when you forward  this message, you will not send it to many on your address list  because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will  think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more  worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks  of us. Pass it on if you think it has merit.    If not, then just discard it... no one will know you  did.  But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit  back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.   My Best Regards,  Honestly and  respectfully, Ben  Stein

Armed Teachers In Israel! No School Shootings In Decades In Israel!

DEP SECURES CONSERVATION EASEMENT OVER SEVEN RUNS CREEK ~Final land acquisition from the $10 million secured under the MOEX consent decree~ TALLAHASSEE –The State of Florida has acquired conservation land over Seven Runs Creek in Okaloosa County as part of a recently announced $10 million settlement with MOEX, a company invested in the well involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  After acquiring Escribano Point on Dec. 7, the remaining portion of the $5 million land acquisition funds allocated under the MOEX settlement was used to purchase a conservation easement over Seven Runs Creek, which is a part of the Florida Forever project in Walton County. The closing was Friday. Governor Scott said, “This $5 million investment will benefit Florida’s groundwater resources in Okaloosa County and also support the region’s surface water quality and wildlife. These dollars will support our mission of protecting and restoring Florida’s natural resources, so that Florida families who depend on these treasures can enjoy them for generations to come.”   With the assistance of The Trust for Public Land, the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund received the conservation easement that comprises more than 2,336 acres of Seven Runs Creek, which is owned by the M.C. Davis Trust. The conservation easement will be managed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of State Lands. “We are pleased to announce another important land transaction as part of this settlement that helps protect Florida’s environment.” said DEP Secretary Herschel T. Vinyard Jr.  “A conservation easement on Seven Runs Creek fulfills our mission to buffer military installations and provides a host of environmental benefits to the Florida Panhandle.” The settlement includes not only $5 million in land acquisitions, but also $5 million in stormwater retrofit projects throughout Bay, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection will oversee the expenditure of that money. The acquisition of the property has many benefits to the state. Part of the project is considered to be a groundwater recharge area, since it has been mapped by the Northwest Florida Water Management District as a groundwater rich area. The project also includes a number of seepage streams that are considered pristine waterbodies that feed directly and indirectly into a Surface Water Improvement Management area and Outstanding Florida Waters of the Choctawhatchee River. Finally, this property will help to provide an environmentally protected connection, in perpetuity, between Eglin Air Force base and the Choctawhatchee River Water Management Area. “Conservation of this Seven Runs Creek property advances Florida's Gulf Coast restoration initiatives and permanently protects a beautiful natural area for the public to enjoy," said Chris Kay, Chief Operating Officer for The Trust for Public Land. "The Trust for Public Land is proud to continue its partnership with the State of Florida to be responsive to Florida's conservation, restoration and clean water priorities." MOEX Offshore was a 10-percent non-operating investor in the lease on the Macondo well at the time of the Deepwater Horizon spill and is the first entity to resolve civil penalty claims. This recovery does not affect any outstanding claims the State may have against any other responsible party, including BP. For information directly related to Florida’s response and restoration activities relating to the Deepwater Horizon spill visit http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/default.htm.

Soledad O'Brien Bullies Gun Rights Activist; 'Your Position Completely Boggles Me' | Media Research Center

Soledad O'Brien Bullies Gun Rights Activist; 'Your Position Completely Boggles Me' | Media Research Center

ABC and CBS Skip News of Tim Scott’s Historic Senate Appointment | Media Research Center

ABC and CBS Skip News of Tim Scott’s Historic Senate Appointment | Media Research Center

Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown

By DAVID KOPEL

Has the rate of random mass shootings in the United States increased? Over the past 30 years, the answer is definitely yes. It is also true that the total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by over half since 1980, and the gun homicide rate has fallen along with it. Today, Americans are safer from violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s.

Mass shootings, defined as four or more fatalities, fluctuate from year to year, but over the past 30 years there has been no long-term increase or decrease. But "random" mass shootings, such as the horrific crimes last Friday in Newtown, Conn., have increased.

Alan Lankford of the University of Alabama analyzed data from a recent New York Police Department study of "active shooters"—criminals who attempted to murder people in a confined area, where there are lots of people, and who chose at least some victims randomly. Counting only the incidents with at least two casualties, there were 179 such crimes between 1966 and 2010. In the 1980s, there were 18. In the 1990s, there were 54. In the 2000s, there were 87.

If you count only such crimes in which five or more victims were killed, there were six in the 1980s and 19 in the 2000s.

Why the increase? It cannot be because gun-control laws have become more lax. Before the 1968 Gun Control Act, there were almost no federal gun-control laws. The exception was the National Firearms Act of 1934, which set up an extremely severe registration and tax system for automatic weapons and has remained in force for 78 years.

Nor are magazines holding more than 10 rounds something new. They were invented decades ago and have long been standard for many handguns. Police officers carry them for the same reason that civilians do: Especially if a person is attacked by multiple assailants, there is no guarantee that a 10-round magazine will end the assault.

The 1980s were much worse than today in terms of overall violent crime, including gun homicide, but they were much better than today in terms of mass random shootings. The difference wasn't that the 1980s had tougher controls on so-called "assault weapons." No assault weapons law existed in the U.S. until California passed a ban in 1989.

Connecticut followed in 1993. None of the guns that the Newtown murderer used was an assault weapon under Connecticut law. This illustrates the uselessness of bans on so-called assault weapons, since those bans concentrate on guns' cosmetics, such as whether the gun has a bayonet lug, rather than their function.

What some people call "assault weapons" function like every other normal firearm—they fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Unlike automatics (machine guns), they do not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held. They are "semi-automatic" because they eject the empty shell case and load the next round into the firing chamber.

Today in America, most handguns are semi-automatics, as are many long guns, including the best-selling rifle today, the AR-15, the model used in the Newtown shooting. Some of these guns look like machine guns, but they do not function like machine guns.

Back in the mid-1960s, in most states, an adult could walk into a store and buy an AR-15 rifle, no questions asked. Today, firearms are the most heavily regulated consumer product in the United States. If someone wants to purchase an AR-15 or any other firearm, the store must first get permission for the sale from the FBI or its state counterpart. Permission is denied if the buyer is in one of nine categories of "prohibited persons," including felons, domestic-violence misdemeanants, and persons who have been adjudicated mentally ill or alcoholic.

Since gun controls today are far stricter than at the time when "active shooters" were rare, what can account for the increase in these shootings? One plausible answer is the media. Cable TV in the 1990s, and the Internet today, greatly magnify the instant celebrity that a mass killer can achieve.

Loren Coleman's 2004 book "The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines" shows that the copycat effect is as old as the media itself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 classic "The Sorrows of Young Werther" triggered a spate of copycat suicides all over Europe. But today the velocity and pervasiveness of the media make the problem much worse.

A second explanation is the deinstitutionalization of the violently mentally ill. A 2000 New York Times study of 100 rampage murderers found that 47 were mentally ill. In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2008), Jason C. Matejkowski and his co-authors reported that 16% of state prisoners who had perpetrated murders were mentally ill.

In the mid-1960s, many of the killings would have been prevented because the severely mentally ill would have been confined and cared for in a state institution. But today, while government at most every level has bloated over the past half-century, mental-health treatment has been decimated. According to a study released in July by the Treatment Advocacy Center, the number of state hospital beds in America per capita has plummeted to 1850 levels, or 14.1 beds per 100,000 people.

Moreover, a 2011 paper by Steven P. Segal at the University of California, Berkeley, "Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates," found that a third of the state-to-state variation in homicide rates was attributable to the strength or weakness of involuntary civil-commitment laws.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that many of these attacks today unfortunately take place in pretend "gun-free zones," such as schools, movie theaters and shopping malls. According to Ron Borsch's study for the Force Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato, active shooters are different from the gangsters and other street toughs whom a police officer might engage in a gunfight. They are predominantly weaklings and cowards who crumble easily as soon as an armed person shows up.

The problem is that by the time the police arrive, lots of people are already dead. So when armed citizens are on the scene, many lives are saved. The media rarely mention the mass murders that were thwarted by armed citizens at the Shoney's Restaurant in Anniston, Ala. (1991), the high school in Pearl, Miss. (1997), the middle-school dance in Edinboro, Penn. (1998), and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2007), among others.

At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer's next shot was to kill himself.

Real gun-free zones are a wonderful idea, but they are only real if they are created by metal detectors backed up by armed guards. Pretend gun-free zones, where law-abiding adults (who pass a fingerprint-based background check and a safety training class) are still disarmed, are magnets for evildoers who know they will be able to murder at will with little threat of being fired upon.

People who are serious about preventing the next Newtown should embrace much greater funding for mental health, strong laws for civil commitment of the violently mentally ill—and stop kidding themselves that pretend gun-free zones will stop killers.

Mr. Kopel is research director of the Independence Institute and co-author of the law school textbook, "Firearms Law and the Second Amendment" (Aspen, 2012).

A version of this article appeared December 17, 2012, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown.