SOBERING FACTS - AT 11:22 A.M. ET:  Reader John F. Dowd reports the following:

An interesting letter in the Australian Shooter Magazine this week, which I quote: "If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the past 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington , DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period. That means you are about 25 per cent more likely to be shot and killed in the US capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the US , than you are in Iraq .

Conclusion: The US should pull out of Washington.

COMMENT:  One (other) thing I find outrageous about the Obama White House is its silence on the horrible murder rate in America's cities, especially the president's home city of Chicago.  There are weekends when parts of Chicago become a shooting gallery.  And yet, the president became obsessed by an apparently appropriate arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Mr. Obama is out of touch, in many ways.

August 2, 2009