Tom Blumer at Newsbusters has fun with numbers:

Below are 10 listings for US cities and years. Your mission to accomplish (so to speak), is to guess whether each particular city's murder rate in the year identified was higher or lower than the "violent death rate" in Iraq (which is, from all appearances, all-inclusive). Let's use the Iraqi government's higher number of 16,273 just for the heck of it, even though the Associated Press will "surely" be bothered that I'm exaggerating the level of violence compared to what their records show (somehow, I think they'll get over it). Using the government's figure means that Iraq's violent death rate in 2006 was 56.49 per 100,000 residents (16,273 deaths, and a population per Wiki of 28,807,000).

New Orleans, LA - 2006; 67.5 (154 murders; population 228,000

Maybe the Democrats should be talking about cutting and running from Southern Louisiana…

Courtesy of the News Tribune:

A student was shot and killed at Foss High School in Tacoma on Wednesday morning, and police were searching for the shooter.The shooting occurred just before the first bell – about 7:30 a.m. – in a school hallway.

Teachers and administrators hustled students into the gymnasium and other secure areas and locked down the school as police streamed to the scene….

… 

Valerie Marshall, whose son attends Foss, said the violence wasn’t a surprise. Gang activity has been on the upswing at the school, Marshall said.

“You know what’s sad: My son’s 15 and he wants to save up for a bulletproof vest,” she said.

I admit to being very uneasy about my younger son attending a Jr. High in the Bethel SD next fall that has a similar reputation for gangs and drugs.  If I can find a decent private school, where he wouldnt have to spend a hour on a bus each way, I may opt for that.