A story posted by the Times reveals that women in a very remote area of Papua New Guinea claim they kill their sons at birth to reduce the number of men available to battle:

In a chilling echo of Herod’s massacre of the innocents, Rona Luke and Kipiyona Belas said the women smothered their sons at birth to force an end to the tribal conflicts.

“All the women folk agreed to have all male babies born killed because they have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them,” they said.

It should be noted that the remoteness of the area in question is apparently one of the reasons for the extreme measures, and perhaps also why they are considered to be effective by the women. Otherwise one would assume that men would be drafted or drift in from neighboring regions.

While some argue for more guns among civilians as a deterrent, the Associated Press points out a troubling number of untreated disorders among young adults in America:

Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind.

The disorders include problems such as obsessive or compulsive tendencies and anti-social behavior that can sometimes lead to violence. The study also found that fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment.

A weapon in the hands of a rational agent makes sense from many angles yet there is a troubling reality that many people struggle with substance abuse and outbursts of uncontrolled violence. This study helps bring the importance of good parenting, health care, and a broader picture of personal security into perspective.

Ignored warnings may become the hallmark of the Bush administration. The AP now explains that the US eased lending rules as economists warned of failure and called for regulation:

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

[…]

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

So many disasters in so little time. The security fallout of an anti-regulatory President and Vice President is hard not to notice.