I'm guessing you would. Out of a basic sense of patriotism, you would probably at minimum support some new security regulations and investments in enforcing those regulations, even if that meant paying slightly higher taxes. After all, you profess to love America, and that's the least we should do in the face of such a threat to our country, right?

Now ask yourself: Would your response to the original query change if you discovered that the threat at hand was not from a terrorist, but from unsafe workplaces -- and that because of that unaddressed problem, these casualties and costs have already become a fact of life in America? Come on, admit it -- your response probably would change. Yes, many who would reflexively support more regulations and enforcement in the face of a foreign terrorist threat would suddenly scoff at more regulations and enforcement in the face of unsafe workplaces. Why the double standard?

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The worst-hit city Wednesday was Granbury, where authorities say a deadly tornado tore through two neighborhoods about 8 p.m. Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds delivered the death toll at a midnight news conference.

"Some were found in houses. Some were found around houses," Deeds said. He also said the total could climb as crews pick through the rubble of shattered homes.

About 50 people were taken to a Granbury hospital, where 14 were admitted for treatment of injuries and two were transferred to a hospital in Fort Worth, about 35 miles to the northeast, Deeds said.

As many as 100 people were injured, said Matt Zavadsky, spokesman for MedStar Mobile Healthcare. His company sent three ambulances and a medical bus from its Fort Worth base to Granbury.

Deeds said officials were trying to account for 14 people, but it was not clear if they were missing or were away from the area for other reasons.

Hardest hit were two neighborhoods, Rancho Brazos Estates and DeCordova Ranch, in the southern end of the town of about 8,000 residents about 65 miles southwest of Dallas.

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Investigators have largely treated the West Fertilizer Co. blast that killed 14 people as an industrial accident, but the Texas Department of Public Safety said in statement that the agency has now instructed the Texas Rangers and the McLennan County Sheriff's Department to conduct a criminal probe.

"This disaster has severely impacted the community of West, and we want to ensure that no stone goes unturned and that all the facts related to this incident are uncovered," DPS Director Steven McCraw said.

The plant blew up on the night of April 17 after a fire erupted at the facility in the rural town.

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Stockman tweeted on Wednesday:

[embedtweet id="332261616391438336"]

[embedtweet id="332263711563718656"]

"Enter the drawing to win a FREE Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, almost impossible to find in stores and the number one firearm on the gun banners' wish list!" Stockman writes on his website. "Winner drawn July 4, 2013."

Stockman, who threatened to file for impeachment if President Obama used executive orders to implement gun control, has frequently used his Twitter feed as a platform for his staunchly conservative positions:

[embedtweet id="322525582216794113"]

h/t HuffPo.

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True the Vote, a Houston-based Tea Party group that bills itself as anti-voter fraud, will acquire voting records from the St. Lucie County supervisor of elections in Florida, including 2012 voting records from West's race, as well as voter registration records since 2009. In a press release, True the Vote said that it will conduct a "reconstruction and review" of the race to determine "exactly what happened before, during and after," which will be "unprecedented in that it will be led not by government entities or political parties, but by concerned citizens."

The Broward-Palm Beach New-Times reports:

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Johnson, one of the women interviewed for the project, described the harsh and humiliating circumstances she endured at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facility. Denied adequate medical care, refused meals for minor infractions such as talking in line, and forced to clean pipe chases “covered with fecal material” without gloves, Johnson summed up her experience as “cruel and unusual punishment.”

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OSHA and its state partners have a total of 2,200 inspectors charged with ensuring the safety of over more than 8 million workplaces employing 130 million workers. That comes to about one inspector for every 59,000 American workers.

There’s no way it can do its job with so few resources, but OSHA has been systematically hollowed out for the years under Republican administrations and congresses that have despised the agency since its inception.

In effect, much of our nation’s worker safety laws and rules have been quietly repealed because there aren’t enough inspectors to enforce them.

That’s been the Republican strategy in general: When they can’t directly repeal laws they don’t like, they repeal them indirectly by hollowing them out — denying funds to fully implement them, and reducing funds to enforce them.

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Cutting through a park, they came across six men drinking beer. The men had recently finished a gang initiation ceremony and decided to celebrate by having “fun,” as one of them would later put it. But after raping and beating the girls for about an hour, the men started to worry that the girls might recognize them. So they strangled the girls to death. They used a belt. Then the belt broke, so they used shoelaces. Then they started stomping on the girls’ necks, to make sure.

All of the men were arrested several days later. The three who were older than 18 at the time would eventually be executed. But one of them, Jose Medellin, challenged the sentence all the way to the Supreme Court. The issue was that he was a Mexican national, having only moved to the United States when he was three, and none of the Houston police had bothered to notify the Mexican Consulate when he was arrested.

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He continued that Mitt Romney in particular was one of those bad candidates. “Mitt Romney appeared like a kid who showed up for his science project and the teacher said, ‘Explain it,’ and Mitt couldn’t do it,” Sessions said. “His ‘dad,’ Paul Ryan, explained it to him, but Mitt didn’t get it. … That’s why we lost the last election.”

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A call that there had been a "discharge of firearms" came into police at 1:35 p.m., John Cannon, the spokesman said. The shots were fired near the ticket counter in Terminal B at Bush Intercontinental Airport, he said. One person has been taken to an area hospital with life threatening injuries.

Dale Howard, of Tomball, was at the baggage handling area of the airport waiting for his sister to arrive on an incoming flight when he heard two shots fired from the floor above. A few seconds later, he said he heard three more shots.

"People were screaming. I knew exactly what it was - gunfire," Howard said.

Police from an adjacent station rushed in, and Howard said he directed them to the floor above.

Parts of the terminal remained blocked off as police investigated the shooting. The airport announced on its Twitter feed that the terminal had been closed and passengers would be redirected to other terminals.

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The non-binding opinion was in response to a request by state Sen. Dan Patrick, a Republican, who objected to the Pflugerville school district's decision to offer domestic partnership benefits.

From the Dallas Voice:

Pflugerville’s decision also prompted a Republican state lawmaker to introduce a bill that would cut funding for school districts that offer DP benefits. The bill — HB 1568 by Drew Springer of Muenster — is awaiting a vote in the House.

While Pflugerville was the first school district to offer DP benefits, several other local government entities do so, including the cities of Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth and San Antonio; as well as Dallas County and Parkland hospital. Most offer DP benefits to both same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners.

In his opinion, Abbott writes that domestic partnerships "have various characteristics in common with the criteria for marriage," enough that "a court is likely to conclude that the domestic partnership legal status about which [Patrick inquires] is 'similar to marriage' and therefore barred by article I, section 32 of the Texas Constitution."

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Cruz had popped by a FreedomWorks meeting in Texas on Friday, and was speaking about a letter he wrote with Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, announcing their plan to filibuster gun control legislation. The letter, Cruz said, "generated more heat" from other Republicans.“We’ve had probably five or six lunches with a bunch of Republican senators standing up and looking at Rand and Mike and me and yelling at the top of their lungs. I mean really upset,” Cruz said.

"They said, ‘Listen, before you did this, the politics of it were great. The Dems were the bad guys, the Republicans were the good guys. Now we all look like a bunch of squishes.’" Cruz continued. "Well, there is an alternative. You could just not be a bunch of squishes.”

Watch:

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Reuters reports:

The case before the justices was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white suburban Houston student who asserted she was wrongly rejected by the University of Texas at Austin while minority students with similar grades and test scores were admitted.

The ruling is the only one the court has yet to issue following oral arguments in cases heard in October and November, the opening months of the court's annual term which lasts until the early summer. A decision might come as early as Monday, before the start of a two-week recess.

The Court could also decide to hold off on ruling, since it will be taking up another affirmative action case, this one brought by the state of Michigan challenging a lower court decision that a ban on the policy is unconstitutional.

As Bloomberg reported in March, when the Supreme Court elected to hear the Michigan case:

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Traditionally, political scientists have taught their students that there are two schools of thought about how a legislator should get the job done. One is to vote yay or nay on a bill by following the will of his or her constituency, doing what they say they want. The other is to represent them as that legislator sees fit, acting in the best interest of the voters — whether they like it or not.

But our current Congress — as cranky and inert as an obnoxious old uncle who refuses to move from his easy chair — never went to either of those schools. Its members rarely have the voter in mind at all, unless, of course, that voter’s a cash-laden heavy hitter with the clout to keep an incumbent on the leash and comfortably in office.

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The Appleby Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, is among this country’s scattered, independent fundamentalist churches still openly promoting the idea that the Biblical Noah pronounced a curse on descendants of his son, Ham. Ham had sexually molested Noah as he slept in a drunken stupor, and Noah realized it, the story goes. The curse ultimately fell on Canaan, Noah’s grandson, whose descendants were black and fated to be an underclass of slaves, according to this version of the Bible, which has been widely discredited by mainstream religious scholars.

But the canard is trumpeted loud and clear in an online statement of conviction by Appleby leaders. The East Texas church, 90 miles from Shreveport, La., is “a bit of a throwback, but these people are still out there,” Rachel Tabachnick, a fellow at the think tank Political Research Associates, told Hatewatch. She researches the impact of the religious right on politics and society.

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"I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm going to anyway," he said. "Your mother showed me some of your landscapes and animal paintings and I thought they were great. Really great. And I seriously considered calling you and asking you to do a portrait of me until I saw the results of your sister's hacked e-mails. Those bathroom sketches were wonderful, but at my age I think I should keep my suit."

Watch:

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In a post on the right-wing site RenewAmerica, Klayman argues that President Obama is responsible for the attacks in Boston because of political correctness, "orchestrated and furthered by Obama and his minions," because "Terrorists like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to avoid even the appearance of prejudice against Muslims, are even given scholarships to prestigious schools and entrees into other venues of American society, which they can use as cover for their plots."

He continued: "Nor was there hardly any mention on any station or other press entity of even the possibility that Muslim terror was involved in the huge explosion that occurred in West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up Wednesday, just days after the Boston Marathon bombing."

From the post:

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What a week.

As events unfolded in Boston, and then in Texas, and as they continue to unfold at this very moment in both places, CNN has been there for our audience in every possible way – on television, online and on our mobile platforms. As Wolf would say, that was true for our audiences here in the United States and around the world. For journalists like each of us, these are the times that define what we do and why we do it. All of you, across every division of CNN Worldwide, have done exceptional work. And when we made a mistake, we moved quickly to acknowledge it and correct it. It was important to see CNN, CNN.com, HLN and CNNI all shine this week, often with different stories and different approaches that make each of their roles clear. It is a week that began with a whole new genre of programming for CNN, with the successful premiere of Parts Unknown. Now, as the week comes to a close, I wanted to express my deep gratitude and admiration. You have worked tirelessly, around the clock, to share these stories. And our audiences have responded, making it clear that they rely on us in ever increasing ways. In front of the cameras and behind the scenes, you have shown the world what makes us CNN.

With my thanks and appreciation,

JEFF

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Amid the chaos came an emotional Senate gun control vote that inflamed American divisions and evoked memories of the Newtown massacre. And through it all, torrential rain pushed the Mississippi River toward flood levels.

"All in all it's been a tough week," President Barack Obama said Friday night. "But we've seen the character of our country once more."

America was rocked this week, in rare and frightening ways. We are only beginning to make sense of a series of events that moved so fast, so furiously as to almost defy attempts to figure them out. But beneath the pain, as the weekend arrived, horror was counteracted by hope.

"We inhabit a mysterious world," Rev. Roberto Miranda said at a prayer service for the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three people, inflicted life-changing injuries on scores more and shook the sense of security that has slowly returned to America since 9/11.

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"Let me ask you, if you're sitting in your home and you know there are only two possibilities for people coming to your door," Gohmert said, "one is law enforcement and the other is somebody who has already killed Americans and continues to do so, how many rounds do you want to be limited to in your magazine as you sit in your chair and wait?"

Watch, via Right Wing Watch:

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