I would like (click here) to mention four of these Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the guardian of liberty, who labored tirelessly that "this nation, under God, [might] have a new birth of freedom". Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity....

I liked all of them. They were real. Not just in the physical sense, but, they understood life, it's value and it's tragedy.

They lived for the best outcomes of others. Each in their own way brought a message of tomorrow and promise. Regardless of their station in life they never saw themselves better off than anyone else in a way that would validate their egos. They were humble people.


Dorothy Day is the only woman in the group, but, she was incredible. She loved life, was honest to herself and commanded tomorrow to be better than yesterday. 

She always entertained worship. Even when she was estranged from the church  she still found solace in the pew of a Catholic church. 

Her father was anti-Catholic for awhile as a young man. Interestingly, the 'talk' about godlessness was open and easy in a social situation. It was not exclusively for meetings with friends or others that believed as one did. There was a clear understanding that being godless in a 'proper society' where politicians were anchored in open expressions of being faithful, was all part of it. Everyone was true to their ideas and why they believed what they discerned as the best path for them.

Pope Francis, in his speech to Congress, used the word dignity many times. Isn't all life suppose to have dignity? The dignity of life plagued those four Americans. They abhorred suffering and never saw justice in poverty. All the characteristics of greatness. 

Dorothy Day had a daughter and this was her obituary at the age of 82.

Tamar Teresa Batterham Hennessy, (click here) the only child of Catholic Worker co-foundress Dorothy Day, died subsequent to a stroke on Tuesday, 25 March 2008, in Lebanon, Hew Hampshire at the age of 82.

Born in Mahattan in 1926, she was baptized at Our Lady Help of Christians Roman Catholic Church in Tottenville later that same year. Tamar was witness to the inception of the Catholic Worker when she was eight years old and later conceded that this life can be difficult for any child"...

She was her mother's daughter. 

Dorothy Day's Eulogy on December 2, 1980 by Geoffrey B. Gneuhs, O.P. at Nativity Church, New York City. (click here)

In her book The Long Loneliness, Dorothy wrote, "All my life I have been haunted by God." And where did this haunting God lead her? To a life of simplicity and poverty with the poor, to solidarity with the outcasts—today in this city of New York there are more and more people homeless as mental hospitals close and social services are cut back, while at the same time this country spends $170 billion a year for armaments....

The Long Loneliness was published in 1952 and $170 billion a year for armaments. Does war for Americans ever get old? End Pre-emption.

Forster Batterham, the father of Dorothy Day's child.

November 15, 2010 Issue

Robert Ellsberg

 

Generally speaking,” Robert Ellsberg (click here) writes in the November 15 issue of America, “there is not much to say about the sex lives of saints.” So that is why Dorothy Day’s letters to her lover Forster Batterham are so surprising. They show the flesh-and-blood passion of a woman who many Catholics believe will someday be declared an exemplar of the faith....

 

 -Friday [March? 1928]

Dear Forster,--

I have been trying all week to write this letter and it is almost impossible for me to write it now. You make it much harder when you are kind to me. But we can’t go on in any but a friendly relation and I suppose you will say we can’t even have that... It is terribly hard to even mention my religious feelings to you because I am sure you do not think I am sincere. But it is not a sudden thing, but a thing which has been growing in me for years. I had impulses toward religion again and again and now when I try to order my life according to it in order to attain some sort of peace and happiness it is very hard but I must do it. Because even though it is hard, it gives me far more happiness to do it, even though it means my combating my physical feelings toward you....

Eugene O'Neill was involved in the New York social scene along with Dorothy Day.

I think it is important to understand the mood of the country in that there was a segment of descent. Dorothy Day was one of them along with Eugene O'Neill. Yet they follow different paths. Fierce friends, but, that touch of devotion to God delivered her differently in life.

America’s critics (click here) were obviously hard on Eugene O’Neill. His plays were innovative and successful, but they were godless. They depicted vivid acts of violence, murder, suicide, social evils and moments of dark despair. It was not until a 1946 review of O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” that a reviewer at least praised Eugene O’Neill for his fierce honesty, his almost quixotic intellectual integrity. Indeed, the Catholic world, while Eugene O’Neill was alive and productive, rejected O’Neill in much the same way that O’Neill had earlier rejected his Catholic faith.

Sixty years ago, on Nov. 27, 1953, Eugene O’Neill died on the fourth floor of the Hotel Shelton in Boston. Boston University acquired the building in 1954, and it remains in use today as a dormitory for upperclassmen. In 1951 O’Neill had moved to the hotel with his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, from a cottage on the north shore of Massachusetts. O’Neill needed to be closer to his doctors. After nearly 10 years of suffering from a degenerative disease that resembled Parkinson’s, O’Neill died of pneumonia. He had stipulated that no one attend his funeral—certainly no man of God.

In their biography, Arthur and Barbara Gelb quote O’Neill telling his wife, “Get me quietly and simply buried…and don’t bring a priest. If there is a God and I meet Him, we’ll talk things over personally, man to man.” Carlotta succeeded in keeping the burial a secret. Only Carlotta, O’Neill’s nurse and his doctor attended the burial at a secluded plot in Forest Hills Cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Nothing was said or sung. After a wreath was laid on the coffin, Carlotta turned and left the grave without shedding a tear. She would be buried next to her husband in 1970.... 

...Indeed, O’Neill was fiercely honest in his writing, and there is one play that resonated deeply with critics at America for its depiction of an honest search for God. It is a play that is rarely mentioned in academic criticism of O’Neill and is rarely reprinted.

“Days Without End” is a fascinating snapshot of O’Neill’s struggle with faith in the years 1932-34. Perhaps it fails to have the impact of his other plays because the ending—the main character’s return to faith after a terrible, decades-long crisis of faith—was ultimately disingenuous. The ending troubled O’Neill, and he later dismissed the play. It portrays the anguish of a young man who rejected his faith after his parents died. He spends his life searching for truth, embracing atheism, socialism and anarchism. Finally, he falls in love but fears his wife’s mortality....
The last ten years of Eugene O'Neill's life ended tragically to have lost his children to suicide, heroine addiction and a marriage he disapproved of when his daughter to Charlie Chaplin. O'Neill would have three wives with two divorces. He did not die alone, his third wife would inherit his estate at his death.

 

Her Yin and Yang, the starting point of change, was extreme to say the least. But, it served her well all her life.

November 30, 2012
By Erin Overby 

“The only difference between saints and sinners,” (click here) Oscar Wilde wrote, “is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.” Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker, has an unusual past for a potential saint. As Virginia Cannon points out in her post on our News Desk blog, Day, who was born in Brooklyn, moved to Greenwich Village at age nineteen, hoping to begin a career as a writer. Taking an apartment above the Provincetown Playhouse, on Macdougal Street, Day befriended the writer Malcolm Cowley and his wife, Peggy, and soon got to know others writers in their circle, including John Dos Passos, Lewis Mumford, Hart Crane, and, most significantly, Eugene O’Neill.

In a two-part Profile, which ran in The New Yorker sixty years ago, Dwight MacDonald describes how Day became a central figure in the literary set that frequented a Village dive bar called the Golden Swan, which was nicknamed the Hell Hole by its regulars. The Hell Hole was a gathering place for gangsters, writers, and other disreputable characters. O’Neill, Day, and others in their circle would while away the evening hours drinking and regaling the patrons with recitations of poetry. Frequently, MacDonald writes, those assembled included members of the Hudson Dusters, a notorious local gang. In “Exile’s Return,” Malcolm Cowley’s portrait of the period’s Village habituées, he writes that “the gangsters admired [Day] because she could drink them under the table; but they felt more at home with [O’Neill], who listened to their troubles and never criticized.” The Hell Hole helped inspire Harry Hope’s saloon in O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” while Day was rumored to have been one of the inspirations, along with Christine Eli, for the character of Josie in “Moon for the Misbegotten.” Recalling her early days in the Village, Day told MacDonald how she and her companions used to pick up “interesting-looking strangers” in Washington Square and take them to dinner. “We made friends with the world,” she told him. It was during this period that Day began making her frequent stops at St. Joseph’s Church for early-morning Mass....

Dorothy Day was recognized by the Vatican as a "Servant of God."

What you did to the least person, you did to me.”

— Jesus, Gospel of Matthew, 25:40

...At their 2012 annual meeting,(click here) the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously recommended the canonization of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement. By then the Vatican had already given her the title “Servant of God,” the first step in formally recognizing Dorothy Day as a saint. On Ash Wednesday, 2013, preaching in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of Dorothy Day as a model of conversion.

While awareness of her remarkable life has been growing steadily, she is at present still not widely known. Who was Dorothy Day? Why do so many people regard her as a model of sanctity for the modern world?...

...More recently, (click here) in November 2012, the question of Day’s being an appropriate candidate for canonization was raised by the present Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, at the annual meeting of the United States Catholic Bishops.  In a voice vote, the bishops asked the Holy See to continue the canonization process that had been initiated by Cardinal O’Connor in 2000.  Unanimously, they upheld sainthood for Day, who related the Sermon on the Mount to everything she undertook and did.  Few of the faithful in the twentieth century were more committed than Dorothy Day to the church’s teachings, both its social encyclicals – on the distribution of wealth, the evils of the arms race – and its call to personal piety.  She was a daily communicant, and rose early to read the Bible and pray the rosary....

I suppose the wild side became tamed after a time.

She once stated, “Writing is an act of community. It is a letter, it is comforting, consoling, helping, advising on our part, as well as asking it on yours. It is a part of our human association with each other. It is an expression of our love and concern for each other.” 

Her work in the Catholic Worker Movement brought her recognition by the church.  

In 1955, at the age of 58, Dorothy Day became an Oblate of St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Illinois. (click here)

One of the roles of the Abbey today is as a vocation retreat. 

...Eugene O'Neill (click here) was a friend and possibly one of her lovers. Her autobiographies discuss night-long drinking episodes and friends dying of heroin overdoses; she lived in a common law marriage, had at least two pregnancies and one abortion, and somehow found God through the gift of giving birth to a daughter. She was, as the times dictated, a suffragette, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, steadfast pacifist throughout some of the century's most horrible wars, faithful servant of the Catholic Church, and always a voice for Christ-like love and acceptance. Dorothy Day is probably one of the few people in the world who would have been able to say that they had been prosecuted for pacifist activities in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Vietnam, and even the Cold War. (She was jailed in New York City in 1956 for refusing to take part in a Civil Defense Drill.) 

Although pacifism became her enduring legacy, it was her work for the poor, the displaced, and the socially unacceptable, which consumed almost her whole life. Whether in homes and meals for the dispossessed of our society or communal farms that might support the urban shelters, Dorothy's legacy continues today. There are Catholic Worker chapters in most major American cities (including Boise.) Dorothy never stopped protesting against war, she constantly fought a battle for just wages, including one with the Cardinal of New York City, she opposed with all her fervor racism and she knew from personal experience the inequities of our justice and political systems....

Dorothy Day is about community and making the community livable for everyone.

She did mean everyone, not those that were convenient to help.

The Marquette University Archives (click here) began to acquire the records of the Catholic Worker movement in 1962. The collection now comprises more than 200 cubic feet, including the personal papers of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and others involved in the movement; records of past and present Catholic Worker communities; photographs; audio and video recordings of interviews, talks, television programs, and peace demonstrations; and a wide variety of publications. Although access to materials of a confidential nature has been restricted at the donors' request, most records are open to research use....

Peter Maurin (1877-1949) Peter, who was the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement with Dorothy Day, believed that the problem with culture and society, and thus its politics, was that it became isolated from the gospel. The end result is that the higher calling of humanity is lost. Production and profits win out over personhood. Rather than being seen as co-creators with God,...

...Peter Maurin had, in many ways, a vision of realized eschatology. In other words, he would say, “The future will be different if we make the present different.” His famous book of writings, collectively called Easy Essays, are filled with real life wisdom:
“The world would become better off if people tried to become better. And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.”...
...To this day, the Catholic Worker movement has been “wind on the water” for the ongoing renewal of the social gospel and community life and action centered in Christ....

Peter Maurin accepted poverty as a destination for his work. He wanted more as a young many, but, every time he attempted to be middle class he was pulled back into poverty. As my mother says, "God works in strange ways." 

I think this is twice now we have seen men, the other being Mr. Merton, on a glide path into a life which honored Christ. There is a dear friend of my family who once wanted to be a priest. He went to seminary, but, he left. In a conversation at of all places a funeral he got into a brief discussion about his deaconship within the Catholic Church. He stated I once believed the priesthood was best for me, but, when I was in seminary I knew after a time I didn't belong there. When the other candidates spoke of what lead them to serve the church there was a common thread. He stated by experience was about what I wanted, but, their experience was about what God wanted. I thought that interesting.

by Jim Forest
This essay by Jim Forest on Peter Maurin was written for The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History to be published by the Liturgical Press. Jim Forest, once a managing editor of The Catholic Worker, is the author of Love is the Measure: a Biography of Dorothy Day; and Living With Wisdom: a Biography of Thomas Merton. Both are published by Orbis.

 Aristode Pierre Maurin, (click here) later known as Peter Maurin, was co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement and is chiefly responsible for the movement's visionary qualities.
He was born into a peasant family in Oultet, a village in the Languedoc region of southern France, on May 9, 1877. At sixteen he entered the Christian Brothers, a teaching order which stressed simplicity of life, piety, and service to the poor. In 1898-99, his community life was interrupted by obligatory military service, in the course of which Maurin perceived a tension between religious and political duties. In 1902, when the French government closed many religious schools, Maurin left the order and became active in Le Sillon, a Catholic lay movement which advocated Christian democracy and supported cooperatives and unions. In 1908, disenchanted with the movement's increasingly political character, Maurin resigned from Le Sellon....

As a professional writer it made sense she would ahve a strong influence in American Catholicism.

Dorothy Day (click here) has been called many things:  an activist, a journalist, a radical, a bohemian, a mother, a convert, a mystic, a prophet, a faithful daughter of the Church.  After her death in 1980, historian David O’Brien famously called her “the most important, interesting, and influential figure in the history of American Catholicism.”

 David O'Brien, Catholic historian and social analyst, retires. (click here)

Most of the photos of Dorothy Day shows her in her later years, but, there are few that capture her a younger woman.Pope Francis - "Giving primacy to god means having the courage to say no to evil, violence, oppression; to live a life of service to others..."

Grace Day. Mother of Dorothy Day,

Grace Satterlee Day

Mother of Donald S. Day and Dorothy Day 

1874		Birth of Grace
1895	May 15, 1895   Age 21	Birth of Donald S. Day    Brooklyn, NY, USA
1897	November 8, 1897    Age 23	Birth of Dorothy Day     Brooklyn, NY, USA
????		Marriage of Grace to John Day
????		Death of Grace

John Day, Dorothy's father. The information about the parents revolves around her and not their personal lives.

Birthdate:	1872
Death:	(Date and location unknown)
	Son of Sam Houston Day and Mary Day Immediate Family: Husband of Grace Day Father of Donald S. Day and Dorothy Day

I found John's father's name odd. Sam Houston is normally affiliated with Texas, but, get this?

Sam Houston was born on March 6, 1793 in Lexington, VA. His father was a farmer and a member of the Militia, which kept him away for long periods of time. He learned how to read and write at an early age and was a voracious reader. His love of it in fact led to many family fights between him and his eight other siblings. In 1806, his father purchased 420 acres of land in Blount County, Tenn. Before moving, however, Houston’s father died suddenly and, with nowhere else to go, the family moved to the Tennessee farm.

John Day's Timeline: 

1872		Birth of John
May at, 1895	Age 23	Birth of Donald S. Day Brooklyn, NY, USA
November 8, 1897 Age 25		Birth of Dorothy Day Brooklyn, NY, USA
????		Marriage of John to Grace Day
????		Death of John

Dorothy Day was a part of the media family in the USA.

Dorothy (click here) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 8 November 1897 to Grace Satterlee Day, a New Yorker, and John Day, a Tennessean. Dorothy had two older brothers, Donald and Sam Houston. A sister, Della, and another brother, John, later joined the family. 

When Dorothy was six years old, her father, a sports writer, took a job in California and moved the family to Oakland. He lost his job when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed the newspaper plant. Dorothy's memories of the quake and of her mother and the neighbors helping the homeless remained stamped in her mind. The family then moved to Chicago where they lived for the next twelve years. Dorothy grew up in a conventional middle-class home in the period before World War I. The Days valued reading, education, and writing. Her parents seemed to create a caring home. Nominally Protestant, the Days seldom attended church. Dorothy remembered being interested in religion and recalled reading the Bible, encountering neighbors praying, and at age eight being "disgustingly, proudly pious" (Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day, p. 20)....

Dorothy Day was a writer. She wrote books about the Catholic faith and it's application. This is a book edited and an Introduction by Robert Ellsberg.

Robert Ellsberg is the son of Carol Cummings, the daughter of a Marine Corps Brigadier General, and the American military analyst and whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. In 1975, at age 19, Robert dropped out of college, intending to spend a few months with the Catholic Worker Movement.

It's Sunday Night

"Difference" By Shawn Desman (click here for only webpage of artist on Facebook

What is it that we have to do to change this world?
What can I do? What can you do?

Sitting at home all alone just watching my t.v
The news comes on the world’s gone wrong
That’s how it seems to me
See people dying , people crying, got no food to eat
It ain’t my life so tell me why it means so much to me?
Let’s try to open our hearts
It’s not too late to make a brand new start

Here and now, I believe
There are solutions to the problems we see
We should all take a chance
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand
This world could be so beautiful,
If we just worked together to make a difference today.
Lalalalala la…(oh)

Oh yeah yeah 

I took a walk down by the school yard where I used to play
Now there’s no children only people spending wasted days
The same old lady holds her hand out by the corner store
I always give her what I can you know she still needs more

Here and now, I believe
There are solutions to the problems we see
We should all take a chance
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand
This world could be so beautiful,
If we just worked together to make a difference today.

Just gotta make a difference
Yay yeah
 

Open up your eyes

Don't you realize they need you

Let's not run away

Listen when I say that I believe

If we just open our hearts

It’s not too late to make a brand new start

Here and now, I believe
There are solutions to the problems we see (problems we see)
We should all take a chance
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand
This world could be so beautiful,
If we just worked together to make
 

Here and now, I believe
There are solutions to the problems we see (problems we see)
We should all take a chance (take a chance)
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand (a helping hand)
This world could be so beautiful,
If we just worked together to make …

Here and now, (here and now), I believe
There are solutions to the problems we see (problems we see)
We should all take a chance (just take a chance)
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand (a helping hand)
This world could be so beautiful, (so beautiful baby)
If we just worked together to make,
A difference today … hey…

OMG!

Let me first say, President Obama has the right focus of any threat to the people of the USA.

Marco Rubio gave a speech on FOX News to rebut President Obama. Marco Rubio wants a war on Americans. He wants the NSA back with more power to monitor and find terrorists. I wondered if that is even pregnant ones.

We are not going back to the days of September 12th. It is insane. Did you get that? It is insane to think every American is the enemy. That is not the case and if Marco Rubio has his way he will cripple the country.

The couple that carried out the attacks in San Bernardino were stressed beyond imagination. They had secluded themselves in a way of thinking that was very bad for them and the community. They were self-radicalized because they were adjusting to being a couple and having a baby and their concerns for the baby was way out of balance.

She had freedoms in the USA she never experienced before and brought all her prejudices into a country that frowns on prejudice. She was used to thinking that Sunnis followed the real god and no one else did. She also had access to weapons unlike ever before.

Let's just say her prejudices were emboldened. I think that is obvious.

We had a situation we never imagined existed and we have lost some wonderful people.

Military style weapons are nothing anyone needs in this country. We have even witnessed an instructor being accidently shot by a nine year old girl. Obviously, there is danger with even the most experienced marksmen. They are weapons, not competition guns or hunting rifles. The military style weapons can be changed to a form of weapon that can gun down a street of people in 60 seconds. That puts us back into the days of Al Capone.

I could not believe there were videos on the internet on how to weaponized your rifle. Better scopes for see that eight point deer or shooting a bird from the sky or trap shooting for practice. But, to have those style guns in the USA is asking for trouble.

Some say the guns in California were bought legally. When they say that it sounds as though there is nothing to be done.

Those assault rifles were not legal guns. I don't care if they were bought legally. Someone modified the rifles and turned them in to weapons to cut down innocent people and police if they had the chance. Those guns were illegal in California. They were not suppose to exist. There is a reason for that and the recent deaths are proof of it.

No one bothered to understand there were parts shipped to an address with guns for modification? Why not? Why are part sellers reporting their shipments when it is obvious those parts can be used to weaponized an assault rifle. They are illegal, yet no one bothers to demand to know where parts for modification of an assault rifle were sent.

Amazing.

I would think police would be the first to demand laws that made modification illegal and notification by a parts distributer to local authorities when a sale is made. A notification like that would begin surveillance and reporting of a crime to the FBI and ATF. A report from a distributor or manufacturer or anyone engaged in modifying assault rifles to be a weapon would be cause for a search warrant. There would be no doubt about it, yet, the US Congress won't even provide the authority for background checks.

Marco Rubio has got the wrong path forward. We are not putting a military back in the middle east nor are we going to surveil Americans to know what toilet paper they use. Get over it.

One other thing, FOX was stating she and he received training and were enemies of the country and no one did anything about it. It is a strong allegation. If they were to Syria for training there would have been a record of it and I doubt if the FBI would dismiss it as nothing. 

There are other reports stating the background on her was incorrect. It seems to me the American media are chronically testing the waters to find out where the best fear factor is to draw in patrons. When I hear these oscillating facts, it only tells me a network news is in a hurry to grab attention of the viewers or readers without sincere quality of information. 

President Obama deserves respect. I'll be starting postings tonight an hour later due to the President's speech.

Who bought the parts?

December 4, 2015
By Richard Winton

The husband and wife (click here) responsible for killing 14 people in a shooting in San Bernardino this week tried to illegally modify a semi-automatic rifle to turn it into a machine gun, federal authorities said Friday.
A Smith & Wesson M&P15 found with the couple after a gun battle with police Wednesday was altered in an attempt to enable the weapon to be fired automatically, said Meredith Davis, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives....

How is it components to change a semi-automatic into an automatic weapon? I have yet to hear from the gun lobby how to end the irresponsible deaths in the USA. Their rhetoric doesn't work for all Americans. 

Oh, get for real already. The average American has hand guns, not this mess.

This is from Mother Jones (click here).

"...See, it is a fast as an M16...this cost me about $1000, stock, rifle, everything..."

Who follows the rules in the USA. It's looks as a gun owner doesn't follow the rules. If gun owners in the USA can't follow rules, it is time to change the thinking about gun owners.

5.56x45 Ammo (AR-15) is $8.50 for 20 rounds. (click here)

There are probably discount stores to purchase large numbers of bullets, but, they will never be free. At $8.50 per box of 20 bullets, one round of 900 bullets per minute will cost $382.50. I don't know anyone that has that kind of money to throw away. Christmas is coming and the kids need their toys and company will be at the house. Get for real. 

These guns aren't part of the American Landscape in a real way. Almost $400.00 for 60 seconds of excitement after the gun is purchased. These guns don't exist in the USA because of enjoyment. They are weapons and if someone it going to pay $400 for enough ammunition for 60 second then they are in 1 percent and can afford a bodyguard.

These weapons are political dogma and not short of it. 

We are not going back to surveiling meta data.

The attack in San Bernardino wasn't under anyone's radar. The NSA admitted they use keywords to find potential violence within the USA or other countries, like Germany.

The keywords don't work. Does anyone believe a Master's Degree educated woman from Pakistan could not figure out how to circumvent the NSA's surveillance?

The meta data collection issue is over, the American government has to go through the private telecom industry. It should require a court order. There is a dedicated judge in the USA simply waiting to hear the case for the need for a search warrant. There is no need for anything else.

Meta data has proven to be a failure. When an attack occurs it is too late to look for information to prevent it.

I guarantee if someone was to go through any meta data the NSA or any other agency has there would be information regarding the attacks in France and in San Bernardino. Guaranteed. But, the ability of sincerely dedicated bad guys and bad girls will circumvent any detection.

The question is not that there is data that could have prevented it. That is not the issue. The issue is could it have been prevented through meta data, but, no one is finding it. What good is a surveillance program if it doesn't work?

There are killings everyday in the USA, why aren't they prevented? Don't measure success of meta data by one event; measure it by the fact there are premature dead people by violence in the USA daily.

It is not worth the money dedicated to a meta data surveillance program. Make an investment of something that works like additional FBI agents, or better yet SBI agents or grants to local police forces to develop their own surveillance or more ATF. There are better methods that can be funded if the American people weren't throwing their money away with a program that is anti-American?

The killers in California got military style weapons from a neighbor. No one asked what they were going to be used for? The couple just liked shooting guns for sport? Those guns should not have even been in California. There is a lot more to be done to prevent those guns from being in the USA, including an international small arms agreement. How did those guns get into the borders of California? There is a lot here that meta data won't solve.

Osama bin Laden lived near a military academy in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He lived there and conducted his work, OFFLINE. Why? Then ask. Why invest in a program with proven failure.

Boston. One of the terror brothers weren't stopped even after Russia told the USA FBI there was reasons to be concerned about the eldest brother. We know through experience CLOSE family members are aware and involved in the event that kills Americans. But, even with all that information it didn't stop the Boston bombing. What would have stopped it is a strong surveillance program locally. Police on the street/in cruisers will have REAL data on a daily basis, heck, on a shift to shift basis. If a Boston City Investigation unit (BCI) or MBI (Massachusetts Bureau of Investigation) had reasons to 'watch' a couple of brothers as potentially carrying out mass killings there would have been information enough to end it. And surveillance is more than simply watching, it is investigating background and who the contacts of those most dangerous have.

Trip wires that would elevate concern is the willingness of an employer to share records that indicate a person was receiving notifications about their performance at work. Voluntary. Any employer that did not follow that path had increased their liability to ridiculously high levels. If an employer didn't consent to a path that would better insure a safe work place is guaranteed to be sued in large amounts by the cost of the settlement; as in the California case; 30 plus people involved, some dead, some injured, some permanently maimed. Would employees want such personal warnings provided to a police investigative unit? No, but, ask San Bernardino if such an intervention would have been prevented if there was an investigator asking questions. 

A better way to deal with it is to require employers to send people to an independent and standardized program for counseling. Most employers already have this in their benefit program. BUT, these recommendations are not reported to an investigative unit. Let the police make a house call.

There are programs proving to be very successful in addiction cases where police have responded and saved the lives of people. The survivor of an overdose then, when they feel like it, make visits to the police department. The people involved find it very helpful to change their addiction behavior and the police find it rewarding to have saved lives. The police become a friend and not someone to avoid.

Could have the killers in California found a connection out of their isolation that bred violence if the police had an open and friendly relationship with them? It doesn't have to be punitive. An investigator's first contact could be covert and might be at the Mosque as a traveler to the area. There are many ways of engaging troubled Americans and the police force needs to be part of it with enough information to make a difference.

We have to do this differently. There are measures in this country that have a proven track record to work and they are interactive and have communication with members of our society most troubled.

Talking to police can change a person's value system and choices if they are valued as a human being worth talking to.

Killing, including suicide, rarely happens without pre-determined thought. We are intervening too late.

Large cities such as New York and Boston have law enforcement that does what the federal agencies do not. Let those cities hold seminars with the federal government providing the funding. Those seminars can be in person or online or through the telephone. There is every reason to participate. The FBI should have a person within that conference as well. CLOSE THE LOOP. 

What works and what doesn't for the BEST VALUE our tax dollars can buy is what we are looking for.