Ta-Nehisi Coates

I finally took some time to give a few serious spins to Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. Bad on me. Really bad on me. Good Kid is not simply one the best hip-hop albums I've ever heard, but one of the most moving pieces of art I've seen/heard in a long, long, long time. I sort of initially bristled at the notion of comparison to Illmatic--my personal favorite ever--but it is exactly the right comparison. Nas was able to do was conjure the chaos of inner city black America in the late '80s and '90s. Now Kendrick Lamar summons it nearly 20 years later (with more focus, by the way) and virtually nothing has changed.

Michael Nodianos hasn't been charged with a crime in connection to the alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl by two members of the Steubenville High School football team in August. The case ignited a firestorm of controversy and national attention after hackers affiliated with the group Anonymous began breaking into the websites and email accounts of several football players and locals. The hackers believed these people had gotten off too lightly.

As some initial gleeful Twitter responses from students to the alleged rape demonstrate, one reason rape continues is that communities not only don't hold perpetrators responsible, but close ranks to defend or even celebrate them. By stepping in and holding people accountable, Anonymous stands a very good chance of taking action that actually does something to stop rape. 

But: This type of online vigilante justice is potentially invading the privacy of or defaming innocent Steubenville residents, and even if everything published is true, there are very serious legal limits to the Anonymous strategy. Not all of the leaked allegations are attached to Twitter or YouTube accounts--many of the most serious cover-up claims, which we won't reprint here, are at this point only rumor. The allegations will infuriate you, but they don't rise to the level of real evidence that can be used to truly hold responsible those who participate in sex crimes.

One of the rather frequent responses I get when posting the stories of people like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, or Robert Smalls is that their story deserves to be a movie. A biopic is seen by a lot of us as the ultimate testimonial to a person's life. Moreover, movies have the unique power to reach and influence millions of people. Finally, movies offer the possibility of all the imagery and input we hold when thinking of, say, Harriet Tubman to be made manifest before the world. I think this impulse is basically correct. It is especially correct given that Hollywood doesn't just ignore slavery and the Civil War but turns out revisionist dreck like Gods and Generals.

At the same time I think it's important to not talk as though it were an entity separate from the politics, economics, and history of America. The person who would bankroll a Harriet Tubman biopic would likely be someone who was particularly touched by her story. Such a person would not have to be black, but I don't know how you separate the paucity of black people with the power to green-light from the paucity of good films concerning black people in American history.

Moreover, movie-making is risky and expensive. Any discussion of the lack of a Harriet Tubman biopic should begin with the shameful fact that median white wealth in this country stands at $110,000 and median black wealth stands at around $5,000. It would be nice to think that this gap reflected choices cultural and otherwise, instead of the fact that for most this country's history its governing policy was to produce failure in black communities, and most of its citizens supported such policies. It would be nice if Hollywood were more moral and forward-thinking than its consumer base. But I would not wait around for such a day.

What I would do is interrogate the basic premise that holds that black lives (or any heroic life) is not truly legend unless a financier decides it should be. Movies are an art form—one that I very much enjoy—but they are one of many. Those of us who are unhappy with Hollywood's presentation of black life should not restrict themselves to Hollywood. What was the last play we saw by a black writer? What was the last book by a black writer we read? What did we give for Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukkah? When was the last time we went to see an exhibit by a black artist?

Finally, this is a particular moment in Hollywood—one wherein glorious righteous violence and what Alyssa Rosenberg calls "transgressive badassery" reigns supreme. I do wish Hollywood would do other kinds of movies. But a constant view of slavery through lens of badassery somehow feels like more of the same.

So what we have is two more showdowns in which the parties disagree not just on the outcome but even on the parameters of an outcome. Obama thinks the debt ceiling needs to be raised, full stop, without becoming a bargaining chip in a fight that threatens the stability of the global economy. Republicans want to use that chip. Then there's the sequester, which Obama thinks should be replaced with spending cuts and tax revenue, and Republicans think should be replaced with spending cuts and more spending cuts. 

If Obama makes it through both these events without either accepting draconian social policy or triggering an economic meltdown, then today's compromise will be seen as a clever first step. That's not what I expect. I expect instead that his willingness to bargain away his strongest leverage, and the central theme of his reelection, will make the next rounds harder, and embolden Republicans further. I suspect he will wish he had ripped off the Band-Aid all at once, holding firm on tax cuts and daring House Republicans to defy public opinion.

Put all that together and here's what the fiscal cliff accomplished then: It affirmed to Republicans that Obama will do pretty much anything he can to avoid a debt default, regardless of what he says. It affirmed the White House anxiety that the GOP might not blink before we default. To put it mildly, that's quite an asymmetry. I want to believe the president can get through the next stage in this endless budget stalemate without accepting some of the more dangerous spending cuts conservatives are demanding. But at this point I'm having a hard time seeing it.

A military order, whose constitutional legitimacy rested on the president's war powers, the proclamation often disappoints those who read it. It is dull and legalistic; it contains no soaring language enunciating the rights of man. Only at the last minute, at the urging of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, an abolitionist, did Lincoln add a conclusion declaring the proclamation an "act of justice." 

Nonetheless, the proclamation marked a dramatic transformation in the nature of the Civil War and in Lincoln's own approach to the problem of slavery. No longer did he seek the consent of slave holders. The proclamation was immediate, not gradual, contained no mention of compensation for owners, and made no reference to colonization. 

In it, Lincoln addressed blacks directly, not as property subject to the will of others but as men and women whose loyalty the Union must earn. For the first time, he welcomed black soldiers into the Union Army; over the next two years some 200,000 black men would serve in the Army and Navy, playing a critical role in achieving Union victory. And Lincoln urged freed slaves to go to work for "reasonable wages" -- in the United States. He never again mentioned colonization in public.

I have been forced to realize this as my world has been restricted due to chronic pain disability. I choose to push myself to work full-time, which means I have negligible time in which to read and enlighten myself. I work, I come home, I cook/eat/shower/clean and go to bed at ridiculously early hours - honestly I get most of my reading done during my work breaks. I am also an infovore and yearn for new knowledge, but I have a choice between loopy-because-of-pain or loopy-because-of-meds. 

My point is basically, this has all forced me to realize I simply can't be the learned, knowledgeable person I would so much like to be. I like to think I'm a pretty damned smart person. The people I work with are upset that I am "only" a secretary and not something higher-skilled, intellectual-leaning. I loved school, but cannot sustain that type of learning if I value my ability to perform basic self-care. So I move through life learning based on lived experience, of myself and others. And I have come to think it is just as valid a school as is traditional academia.

Great White Men have contributed very much to our society, but so have many others who aren't studied and taught in classrooms. As Ta-Nehisi points out, much of the base of his intellectual approach was formed by hip-hop and other (generally-regarded-by-outsiders-as) "unserious" arts. Those ideas are just as worthy of contention as those of St. Augustine. And yet no one would think it reasonable to point and laugh at the educated white kids who don't know Nas. (FWIW, I don't know Nas either.) But if the ideas of Nas have sense and create a meaningful theory, why don't those kids know Nas, and aren't they just as worthy of ridicule for not knowing his work? The answer is yes, they are, but that is exactly what demonstrates why no one should be ridiculed for not knowing a particular author, artist, or work, even the very Big and Important ones. 

Another thing my disability has taught me is that as long as it gets done, the way you got there doesn't matter (or rather, is just as right as the conventional way). Adaptation is very important for disabled people. And it is just as applicable here: TNC, and other Black thinkers, have arrived at a worldview that is fully-formed and worthy of study and debate. Does the result not count because the method was not conventional? Must outsiders conform to the inside path in order to have their outside-influenced views accepted? Maybe there's more to this world than we can all learn about in a lifetime. Maybe we are all limited beings. Maybe, if the world is so vast and so full of curious and layered experiences ripe for examination and enjoyment, none of us can expect every one of us to know every bit of it. Maybe we can appreciate the place the other person comes from without making sure they first display the correct status markers to be considered serious. Maybe a whole lot more people are "serious" than we have ever allowed for. And maybe our "serious" canon isn't as universal as we've always presented it.

And the fact is that I would actually rather die by shooting than live armed.

If you were confronted with an "active shooter," do you think, in that moment, you might wish you had a gun?

I think that last question gets to the heart of a difference. I actually wouldn't wish I had a gun. I've shot a rifle at camp once, but that's about it. If I had a gun, there is a good chance I would shoot myself, thus doing the active shooter's work for him (it's usually "him.") But the deeper question is, "If I were confronted with an active shooter, would I wish to have a gun and be trained in its use?" It's funny, but I still don't know that I would. I'm pretty clear that I am going to die one day. That moment will not be of my choosing, and it almost certainly will not be too my liking. But death happens. Life -- and living -- on the other hand are more under my control. And the fact is that I would actually rather die by shooting than live armed. 

This is not mere cant. It is not enough to have a gun, anymore than it's enough to have a baby. It's a responsibility. I would have to orient myself to that fact. I'd have to be trained and I would have to, with some regularity, keep up my shooting skills. I would have to think about the weight I carried on my hip and think about how people might respond to me should they happen to notice. I would have to think about the cops and how I would interact with them, should we come into contact. I'd have to think about my own anger issues and remember that I can never be an position where I have a rage black-out. What I am saying is, if I were gun-owner, I would feel it to be really important that I be a responsible gun-owner, just like, when our kids were born, we both felt the need to be responsible parents. The difference is I like "living" as a parent. I accept the responsibility and rewards of parenting. I don't really want the responsibilities and rewards of gun-ownership. I guess I'd rather work on my swimming. And I think, given the concentration of guns in a smaller and smaller number of hands, there's some evidence that society agrees. 

 Which is not to say those of us who don't own guns don't want to live. We do. But it's not clear that this particular way of living will even be effective. I think about the shooter down at the Empire State Building a few months back. The police showed up to protect the public and ended in a shoot-out with a guy. Nine bystanders were wounded -- all at the hands of the police. It's just not clear to me that this sort of situation wouldn't repeat itself, but with citizens doing the wounding. With that kind of risk, perhaps it's better to handle "gun safety" before we get to the moment of an "active shooter."

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My label-mate Jeffrey Goldberg was kind enough to take some time to talk with me about his most recent story in the magazine -- "The Case for More Guns (and More Gun Control)". Both Fallows and I have some disagreements with Jeff on this. Here, Jeff and I try to talk it out. We do not agree. But we also avoided challenging each other to a duel.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Do you own a gun? Are you a gun person, at all?

Jeffrey Goldberg: It doesn't make much sense to tell people that you are unarmed. Many businesses and institutions around the country advertise themselves as "gun-free zones." This is a ridiculous policy -- not to be gun-free, but to tell people you are. It's akin to posting a sign on your front door stating, "No burglar alarm here." Our colleague Jonathan Rauch, who, as you know, inspired the "Pink Pistols" movement of gays and lesbians who arm themselves against bullying and assault, told me last week he thinks that universities should post signs on their campuses that state, "Be warned: Many of our students and faculty members are armed."

The theory, obviously, is that violent criminals, or the dangerously mentally ill, are not generally stopped by signage declaring their target to be a gun-free zone, and indeed they could be encouraged by such signs. All that said, I will remind you that I live in Washington, D.C., and Washington has very tough gun laws, and as you know, I'm a very law-abiding person.

To your second question, am I gun person? -- the answer is no. I respect guns and I know how to fire guns (and indeed, target practice is quite fun in the same way that darts are fun, though I haven't done it very much), but I'm not very interested in them and I don't quite understand the desire of some people to collect them. I'm certainly no hunter -- I know we're all supposed to pay fealty to hunters -- at least, presidential candidates are expected to extol them -- but I never understood the impulse to gun down defenseless herbivores, especially if you're not going to eat them afterward.

TNC: Here's something I've been thinking about: In African-American history, guns have a particular meaning. After the Civil War, the first thing the Klan, the White Liners, the Red Shirts and other terrorists did was attempt to strip black people (many of them Civil War veterans) of their guns. One of my commenters was pointing to a historian who argues that the rate of lynchings was affected by the return of black veterans who were trained in the use of firearms. The most popular image of Malcolm X features him peering out of a window with a rifle. My own father came out of Vietnam and joined the Black Panther Party. Self-defense was religion in my house, and it was very much tied to our history.

I feel like whenever I'm writing about race and/or violence, that history is in the back of my head -- it was there even when I was disagreeing with your posts. You raised the point of the "Pink Pistols," whose logic sounds very familiar to me. Does your history, and your identity, affect how you approach the question of self-defense? To be clear, the question isn't "Did you write this article because you are Jewish?" But, in my own experience, those of us who've lived outside of the state's protections against mob violence tend to be more open to individual solutions.

Jeff: So just to be clear, the question isn't, "Did you write this article because you're Jewish"? But I'll answer it anyway. First, though, on your point about African-Americans and guns. It's an amazing history: Ronald Reagan was pro-gun control because he feared the Black Panthers. The Ku Klux Klan was founded in order to seize guns from free blacks. I don't generally buy the narrative of Second Amendment absolutists, that individually-owned guns are the best defense against the imposition of tyrannical rule in America (I think we're pretty safe from tyrannical rule.) But if you were an African-American in 1870s, or 1950s, you might have felt a lot safer with a gun. Martin Luther King, Jr., (unsuccessfully) applied for a concealed-carry permit in 1956 because he was so afraid of violent attack. Anyway, a fascinating history, and you're right: marginalized groups have found comfort, and safety, in arms.

But to your question: No, not really. I've thought through this issue, of course, and it is true that guns, at different points in Jewish history, would have been quite useful to my ancestors (and obviously Israel was founded because Jews gave up trusting non-Jews to defend them; and, obviously, I've been personally interested in this angle for some time, knowing now, as I didn't know in my 20s, about the downside of armed militancy), but in the American context especially I don't look at this issue through a particularly Jewish lens.

I came to this issue in part because, as I wrote in the article, I had a revelation about armed self-defense after the LIRR massacre 20 years ago, and also because I'm always attracted to polarizing issues. I'm dispositionally centrist, in that I believe, as a pretty steadfast rule, that most issues are ambiguous and contradictory, and that no one ideology provides all the answers. Hence, my belief that people (qualified people) have the right to armed self-defense, and that the government has the right (and responsibility) to regulate the sale and carrying of guns. This issue divides red America from blue America like no other, and, since I'm a uniter, not a divider, I'm trying to figure out if there's common ground here. One more note, so we're clear: I have a blue-stater's belief that government should be engaged in public safety questions like this one, and I have a red-stater's belief that individuals should not rely on the government overly much to provide them with security, both because the government cannot, in fact, protect some people; and because it feels undignified to sub-contract out your personal defense, if you're at all capable of taking care of yourself.

TNC: So I want to pick up on that last point, because I think it's the one that's attracting a good deal of the push-back -- particularly this idea of government as a personal defense sub-contractor. I actually like that phrasing quite bit, and will gladly plead to my willingness to hoping my tax-dollars go to the sub-contracting of my defense. Here's the reason why: it is not clear to me that human beings, with all of their foibles, always understand where defense ends and aggression begins. George Zimmerman, by his own telling, was defending himself. And given the marks on this head, in some sense he was. But I wonder, if he had been unarmed, whether he would have ever gotten out his car. Michael Dunn, who sprayed a teenager's SUV, claims he was defending himself. But I wonder if he ever would have said anything to those kids if he had not been armed. This has particular meaning in the realm of race, where the mere fact of being black means that an uncomfortably large portion of American society is more likely to perceive your everyday actions as aggressive, and thus justify "defense." There seems to be no sense that the very presence of a gun -- like all forms of power -- alters its bearer, that the possession of a tool of lethal violence might change how we interact with the world.

I just realized I didn't ask a question. So yeah...

Jeff: All good points. First, I'm happy to have the police protect me. I also know that they don't -- and that, when the chips are down, they usually can't. The police did not protect those children in Connecticut. They didn't protect the moviegoers in Colorado, and so on. I'm not blaming them; there are only so many cops to go around. This is one of my problems with politicians who have armed guards but who assert that other people shouldn't have the right to armed self-defense. When I interviewed D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, who opposes licensed concealed-carry, about his own armed bodyguards, he said, "(W)e have 3,800 police officers to protect people. They may not be at someone's side at every moment, but they're around."

One of the dangers with concealed-carry -- which I point out in the article -- is that some states (Florida, George Zimmerman's state, comes to mind) issue concealed-carry permits too easily, without sufficient vetting or training requirements. The regulations should be much more stringent in those states with loose standards. On your larger points, I've been thinking this issue through for months, and let me give you a very general answer to start: It's a miracle, in a country with 300 million guns, that we don't have chaos in the streets constantly. But it's explicable:

There are tens of millions of legal gun owners (and 9 million concealed-carry permit holders) in this country who secure their weapons properly and use them properly. Most people -- the vast majority of people -- with legally owned guns aren't George Zimmerman. The problem in this country, generally speaking, is not legal guns. It's illegal guns. The 400+ homicides in Chicago this year are mainly the byproduct of the illegal gun problem. (And yes, as I stated in the piece, Canada seems like an attractively gun-free place, but the whole point of the article is to acknowledge that we can't create Canada-like conditions in the U.S. It's just too late. Even if all gun sales were banned tomorrow, there would still be 300 million guns in circulation.) I could go on, but let me ask you a question: If you were confronted with an "active shooter," do you think, in that moment, you might wish you had a gun?

TNC: I think that last question gets to the heart of a difference. I actually wouldn't wish I had a gun. I've shot a rifle at camp once, but that's about it. If I had a gun, there is a good chance I would shoot myself, thus doing the active shooter's work for him (it's usually "him.") But the deeper question is, "If I were confronted with an active shooter, would I wish to have a gun and be trained in its use?" It's funny, but I still don't know that I would. I'm pretty clear that I am going to die one day. That moment will not be of my choosing, and it almost certainly will not be too my liking. But death happens. Life -- and living -- on the other hand are more under my control. And the fact is that I would actually rather die by shooting than live armed.

This is not mere cant. It is not enough to have a gun, anymore than it's enough to have a baby. It's a responsibility. I would have to orient myself to that fact. I'd have to be trained and I would have to, with some regularity, keep up my shooting skills. I would have to think about the weight I carried on my hip and think about how people might respond to me should they happen to notice. I would have to think about the cops and how I would interact with them, should we come into contact. I'd have to think about my own anger issues and remember that I can never be an position where I have a rage black-out. What I am saying is, if I were gun-owner, I would feel it to be really important that I be a responsible gun-owner, just like, when our kids were born, we both felt the need to be responsible parents. The difference is I like "living" as a parent. I accept the responsibility and rewards of parenting. I don't really want the responsibilities and rewards of gun-ownership. I guess I'd rather work on my swimming. And I think, given the concentration of guns in a smaller and smaller number of hands, there's some evidence that society agrees.

Which is not to say those of us who don't own guns don't want to live. We do. But it's not clear that this particular way of living will even be effective. I think about the shooter down at the Empire State Building a few months back. The police showed up to protect the public and ended in a shoot-out with a guy. Nine bystanders were wounded -- all at the hands of the police. It's just not clear to me that this sort of situation wouldn't repeat itself, but with citizens doing the wounding. With that kind of risk, perhaps it's better to handle "gun safety" before we get to the moment of an "active shooter."

One question, though. Do you think that we can so easily separate the questions of legal and illegal gun ownership? What is the general history for an illegal gun? Do they first start off as legal? How do they usually make their way into unregistered hands? And is this not a fairly natural result when you have a country that allows for hundred of millions (legal?) guns in circulation? This sounds more prosecutorial then it is. I actually don't know how this works. So a lot of what you're getting are my assumptions. Your job is to immediately explain why my unlettered assumptions are incontrovertibly true. Then we can be done with so-silly dialogue business.

Jeff: I know you. I know you well, in fact. You're a father. I have a hard time believing you when you say you would "rather die by shooting than live armed." Carrying a licensed handgun is worse than death? Really?

My problem here is that you are one of the most sincere people I know, and so I know you didn't write what you wrote just to score a debating point. So the question I'm asking myself is, Why would Ta-Nehisi be so uninterested in defending himself?

But instead of asking you a version of that question again, let me ask the Augustinian question: Let's say you're in the mall with me, or another friend, and a psychopathic shooter is approaching us, AR-15 in hand. In this situation, my life is at stake, as well as yours. I'll ask the question again: Would you want a gun in hand to help keep us alive, and to keep the strangers around you -- each one a human being created in the image of God (I know you lean atheist, but you get my point) -- alive as well?

We'll get to the other questions later, but this is important: In the situation I just described above, would you rather have a gun, or rather not?

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Still, I'm not ready to join the naysayers who mock Kwanzaa as a pseudo holiday, created to annoy white people and kept alive to peddle cards and kente cloth. "No one is quite sure just what Kwanzaa is," Jonathan Safran Foer deadpans in a New York Times op-ed this morning. Debra Dickerson called the holiday a "cop out" in a Times op-ed from 2003 because it sidesteps the traditions hard-built by African-Americans over the last centuries. "Insofar as Kwanzaa negates the quintessential Americanness of the slave-descended, it is an affront to the heroism and enunciated goals of our oppressed ancestors," she wrote. 

But what's more American than tweaking an institution to suit your needs? Some folks who don't go to church pine for more than the dancing black Santa from Wal-Mart. Plus, Kwanzaa and Christmas are not mutually exclusive--'tis the season of peaceful co-existence. A rule of Kwanzaa states that one "should not mix the Kwanzaa holiday or its symbols, values and practice with any other culture." But Kwanzaa starts the day after Christmas, so until Dec. 26, you can drink eggnog out of a gourd shell.

Yesterday I was on Chris Hayes' show discussing gun violence. In the clip above, I talked about the importance of self-defense in my life being the son of Black Panther, a devoted Malcolmite and progeny of the Crack Era.

Professor Harold Pollack, who (among other things) co-directs the University of Chicago's Crime Lab was kind of enough to send along the following note:

I enjoyed your conversation on Up with Chris Hayes. You mentioned the risk of home invasion, and the realistic fear that the cops just wouldn't get there in time. That's obviously a primeval motive to have a gun by the bedside or whatever.

But the fear is also easily out of proportion to the threat. I had the Chicago police run the number on homicides. In 2011, precisely one homicide listed "burglary" as the motive. Nationwide, there are about 100 burglary-homicides every year. When you compare that to more than 18,000 gun suicides, the conclusions seem pretty obvious.

Pollack wrote about this for the Nation. In the article Harold points out a few other cases that might be homicides from someone who gained entry, from the home. But all in all, the risk is vanishing small:

Home protection provides a common, all-too-understandable motive to buy a gun. Few things are scarier than the possibility that some violent intruder will break in when you and your loved-ones are home. This risk happens to be especially vivid for me. My gentle disabled cousin was beaten to death by two teenage burglars in his New York apartment thirty years ago.

Yet having guns around bring risks, too. Practically speaking, it's not the incredibly rare risk of mass homicide, but the everyday risks of injury, accident, domestic altercations, and suicide. The relative risks matter. And the fact is: lethal home invasions and burglaries are incredibly rare. You might not think so, since dramatic cases stick in your mind and tend to receive disproportionate press coverage. These cases are rare nonetheless.

Let me straight about this -- from a public health perspective, does the evidence here argue for a total ban on handguns? I don't know if Harold would argue for that, but New York City effectively has such a policy in place.

I've spent this week arguing for gun control and more regulation, but for some reason I can't get myself to endorse the idea of banning handguns. Maybe I'll feel different in the week. It's just so contrary to everything I've felt all my life. Part of this is being black and having in your actual family history--and in the history of your immediate community--several instances of people (white, black, whatever) invading the home.

Is looking at homicide too small? Should we include assault? Burglary is, in of itself, an intensely traumatic experience. Is the mere fact of invading someone's home an act of aggression that justifies lethal force? I don't know.

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The investigation into the attack on the diplomatic mission and the C.I.A. annex in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards for the mission and for failing to make sufficient safety upgrades. 

The panel also said American intelligence officials had relied too much on specific warnings of imminent attacks, which they did not have in the case of Benghazi, rather than basing assessments more broadly on a deteriorating security environment. By this spring, Benghazi, a hotbed of militant activity in eastern Libya, had experienced a string of assassinations, an attack on a British envoy's motorcade and the explosion of a bomb outside the American Mission. 

Finally, the report blamed two major State Department bureaus -- Diplomatic Security and Near Eastern Affairs -- for failing to coordinate and plan adequate security. The panel also determined that a number of officials had shown poor leadership, but they were not identified in the unclassified version of the report that was released.

Ambassador Stevens had e-mailed his superiors in Washington in August alerting them to "a security vacuum" in the city. But the report found that in planning his trip there in September, he did not foresee that the compound could come under such a sustained attack, which included mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, despite the worsening security situation. 

"His status as the leading U.S. government advocate on Libya policy, and his expertise on Benghazi in particular, caused Washington to give unusual deference to his judgments," it said. 

Mr. Stevens was making his first visit to Benghazi in 10 months. But his plans for taking only two American security agents "were not shared thoroughly with the embassy's country team, who were not fully aware of the planned movements off the compound," the report determined.

Less than two months ago, Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher sent a foreboding text message to a secret girlfriend, expressing turmoil and frustration with his longtime girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins. In the message, Belcher said he "would shoot" Perkins "if she didn't leave him alone," according to police reports obtained by The Star. 

At the time, the secret girlfriend thought Belcher was joking.

Police found a bullet hole in the bathroom floor under Perkins' body that went through to the basement, possibly indicating she was on the floor when Belcher fired that round. Shepherd said she heard a "thump" before the gunshots. Police found eight spent shell casings and three bullet fragments in the bathroom and one spent bullet in the basement. Police observed 10 apparent gunshot wounds on the front of Perkins body, including to her neck, shoulder and chest, and five wounds on her backside. The medical examiner said four bullets remained in her body.