Arizona's remarkably progressive involuntary treatment laws might have allowed Loughner's school to act. They permit involuntary evaluation and treatment of a person who desperately needs it.

It's comfortable living in a cocoon -- associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforce them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide.

Liberals have been doing this for a long time. In 1972 the movie critic Pauline Kael said...

Compulsorytreatment may prevent future massacres like the one at Virginia Tech.

Involuntary commitment is bound to raise some apprehensions and there are serious questions about how it should be implemented, but there are horrible costs to the policy our society has been following.

What responsibility does an institution have to the wider community when it has identified a deeply disturbed individual?

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Since the 1960s in the United States, hundreds of thousands of patients with severe psychiatric disorders were discharged from public mental hospitals. At the same time, activists forced changes in commitment laws that made it impossible to treat...

Public employee unions and tea party supporters have been gathering signatures to trigger recall elections of, respectively, Republican and Democratic state senators in what amounts to a referendum on Republican Governor Scott Walker's policies.

Fannie and Freddie have already become part of the government.