Jim Brady, Reagan aide wounded in assassination attempt, dies at 73; was gun-control advocate
WASHINGTON — A major trait that endeared Jim Brady to the Washington press corps was his sense of humor, especially when he made fun of his own boss.
When Ronald Reagan was campaigning for president in 1980, Reagan drew scorn from environmentalists for saying that trees were a greater source of pollution than cars. Aboard the campaign plane, Brady pointed at a forest fire in the distance and yelled, “Killer trees! Killer trees!” to the great amusement of reporters.
After the election, Reagan’s advisers appeared hesitant to appoint Brady press secretary. Nancy Reagan was said to feel the job required someone younger and better-looking than the 40-year-old, moon-faced, balding Brady.
“I come before you today not as just another pretty face but out of sheer talent,” Brady told reporters. A week later, he got the job.
Brady, who died Monday at 73, would need humor and much more after March 30, 1981. On that day John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel just two months into the new president’s term. Reagan nearly died from a chest wound. Three others, including Brady, were struck by bullets from Hinckley’s handgun.
Despite drug shortage, 2 states carry on with executions using potent sedative pentobarbital
ST. LOUIS — Despite a shortage of lethal-injection drugs, two of the nation’s most active death penalty states have quietly carried on with executions by turning to pentobarbital, a powerful sedative that generally puts inmates to death swiftly and without complications.
Missouri and Texas have avoided the prolonged executions seen in other states where authorities are struggling to find a reliable chemical combination. The drug’s apparent effectiveness raises questions about why it has not been more widely adopted.
“There is a better drug, and that better drug is pentobarbital,” said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
Lethal injection is in the spotlight after executions went awry in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona, which all use midazolam, a drug that is more commonly given to help patients relax before surgery. In executions, it is part of a two- or three-drug lethal injection.
Texas and Missouri instead administer a single large dose of pentobarbital, which is often used to treat convulsions and seizures and to euthanize animals.
Scrabble players rejoice: 5,000 new words large and small are on the way in dictionary update
NEW YORK — To Scrabble fanatics, big gifts sometimes come in small packages.
The word “te” as a variant of “ti,” the seventh tone on the musical scale, is a hardworking little gem among 5,000 words added to “The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,” out Aug. 11 from Merriam-Webster.
The dictionary’s last freshening up was a decade ago. Entries in the forthcoming book include texter, vlog, bromance, hashtag, dubstep and selfie were mere twinkles on the racks of recreational players.
But it’s the addition of te and three other two-letter words — da, gi and po — that has Robin Pollock Daniel excited. Daniel, a clinical psychologist in Toronto, is a champion of the North American Scrabble Players Association, which has a committee that helps Merriam-Webster track down new, playable words of two to eight letters.
“Being able to hook an ‘e’ underneath ‘t’ means that I can play far more words,” explained Daniel, who practices Scrabble two to four hours a day. “Sometimes you play parallel to a word and you’re making two-letter words along the way. I call those the amino acids of Scrabble. The more two-letter words we have, the more possibilities a word will fit.”
By wire sources