A 15-year-old student who held about two dozen students and a teacher hostage for several hours in a classroom at a Wisconsin high school died Tuesday at a hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

Sophomore Samuel Hengel shot himself after police stormed a classroom at Marinette High School on Monday night, said police chief Jeff Skorik. Hengel had been holding most of the students and their social studies teacher hostage for several hours. No one else was wounded.

Authorities also said they did not know what might have motivated the boy who made no demands or requests during the standoff.

The shooter entered the classroom, where he was a student, at around 1:30 p.m., Skorik said.

Marinette Schools Superintendent Tim Baneck said the student started class without any weapons. He then asked to use the restroom, and he returned carrying the duffel bag containing the two guns and ammunition, Baneck said.

It wasn’t until more than two hours later that the principal learned that neither the teacher nor any of the students from the class had been seen, Skorik said. He went to investigate and was threatened by the shooter to “get out of here,” Skorik said. The principal said he left and was able to take one of the students with him.

He wasn’t interested in talking with the teacher and told her to be quiet, Campbell said. But the gunman chatted with his fellow students, who tried to keep him talking about how he hunted and about fishing. Students even got the gunman to laugh, Campbell said.

The gunman refused to communicate with officials during the standoff, Skorik said, but allowed the teacher, Valerie Burd, to speak with them by phone.

After several hours, the boy let Campbell and four other students out to use the bathroom. Police outside the classroom whisked them to safety.

About 20 minutes later, Skorik said, officers heard three shots and broke down the door. The gunman, who was standing at the front of the classroom, shot himself as officers approached, the chief said. The other students and Burd emerged unharmed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Senate passed legislation Tuesday to make food safer in the wake of deadly E. coli and salmonella outbreaks, potentially giving the government broad new powers to increase inspections of food processing facilities and force companies to recall tainted food.

The $1.4 billion bill, which would also place stricter standards on imported foods, passed the Senate 73-25. Supporters say passage is critical after widespread outbreaks in peanuts, eggs, and produce.

Those outbreaks have exposed a lack of resources and authority at the Food and Drug Administration as the agency struggled to contain and trace the contaminated products. The agency rarely inspects many food facilities and farms, visiting some every decade or so and others not at all.

The bill would emphasize prevention so the agency could try to stop outbreaks before they begin. Farmers and food processors would have to tell the FDA how they are working to keep their food safe at different stages of production.

President Barack Obama praised passage of the bill and urged the House to act quickly on the legislation.

Despite wide bipartisan support and unprecedented backing from many major food companies, the legislation stalled in the Senate as it came under fire from advocates of buying locally produced food and operators of small farms, who said it would could bankrupt some small businesses.

Senators eventually agreed to an amendment by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., to exempt some of those operations from costly food safety plans required of bigger companies, rankling food safety advocates and larger growers but gaining support from farm-state senators.

No such exemption exists in the House version, which passed in July 2009. Senate sponsors tweaked the bill—eliminating the fees and reducing the amount of money spent on inspectors—to gain votes in their own chamber and to make the bill more palatable in the House, where many members of both parties voiced concern about the legislation’s impact on small farms and businesses when the bill passed last year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A Pentagon study on homosexuals in the military has determined that overturning the law known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may cause disruption at first but would not create any widespread or long-lasting problems.

The study was expected to provide ammunition to congressional Democrats who want to overturn the law, but it remains unclear whether the findings would be enough to sway Republicans who oppose repealing the policy, led by Sen. John McCain.

With just a few weeks left in this year’s postelection congressional session, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said Congress should act quickly because of a recent effort by a federal judge to overturn the law. A sudden, court-issued mandate, he said, would increase the risk of disruption significantly.

Gates also told Pentagon reporters Tuesday a majority of concerns associated with repealing the provision could be addressed through increased training and education.

He added that existing policies such as housing and spousal benefits for military service members “can and should be applied equally to homosexuals as well as heterosexuals.” Gates said he does not expect the Pentagon would have to rethink those policies to accommodate homosexuals if they are allowed to serve openly in the military.

The findings reveal 70 percent of troops believed repealing the law would have mixed, positive, or no effect, while 30 percent predicted negative consequences. Opposition was strongest among combat troops at 40 percent, climbing to 58 percent among Marines.

The study draws a correlation between troops who have worked with homosexual service members and those who support repeal. Ninety-two percent of troops who have served with someone they believed to be gay thought their unit’s ability to work together was either very good, good, or neither good nor poor.

The survey consists of the responses of 115,000 troops and 44,200 military spouses to more than a half million questionnaires distributed last summer by an independent polling firm.

The House has already voted to overturn the law as part of a broader defense policy bill. But Senate Republicans have blocked the measure. They say not enough time has been allowed for debate on unrelated provisions in the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised a vote on the matter by the end of the year, after hearings can be held this week on the Pentagon study.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Senate Tuesday rejected a GOP bid to ban the practice of larding spending bills with earmarks—pet projects that lawmakers send to their home states.

Most Democrats and a handful of Republicans combined to defeat the effort, which would have effectively forbidden the Senate from considering legislation containing earmarks like road and bridge projects, community development funding, grants to local police departments, and special-interest tax breaks.

But the 39-65 tally was a better showing for earmark opponents, who lost a 29-68 vote earlier this year. Any votes next year should be closer because a band of anti-earmark Republicans is joining the Senate.

Earlier this month, Republicans listened to Tea Party activists and passed a party resolution declaring GOP senators would give up earmarks. House Republicans have also given up the practice, but most Democrats say earmarks are a legitimate way to direct taxpayer money to their constituents.

Critics say that peppering most spending bills with hundreds or even thousands of earmark projects creates a go-along-get-along mindset that ensures that Washington spending goes unchecked.

President Obama supports a ban as well, but hasn’t fought them in the past two years.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Tuesday that Democrats had made reformed the earmarking process by requiring lawmakers to document every projects they seek and receive.

Seven Democrats voted with all but eight Republicans to ban the practice.

Senate Democrats are the only faction of Congress in a position to try to save the practice of earmarking. But their position doesn’t seem very strong, since it’s difficult to see how House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would allow any earmark-laden bills to pass.

Estimates vary, but earmarks went from more than 1,300 projects worth nearly $8 billion in 1994 to a peak of nearly 14,000 projects worth more than $27 billion in 2005, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that opposes the practice.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama is calling his meeting with congressional Republicans “a good start” on efforts to work more closely to resolve differences over taxes, budget, and national security.

Republicans set the tone for the session early, declaring steadfast opposition to any tax increases when the current Bush era tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Obama has said he would oppose a permanent extension of the tax cuts for taxpayers earning more than $200,000 as individuals and $250,000 as couples.

At the same time a couple of Republican senators signaled possible movement on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce nuclear weapons arsenals in the United States and Russia. Obama has made approval of the treaty this year a top national security goal.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, House GOP Whip Eric Cantor, who will be House majority leader when the new Congress convenes in January, said the GOP remains steadfastly opposed to any tax increases, arguing that uncertainty about tax policy is stifling efforts to create jobs in the private sector.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., delivered a stinging critique of Democratic suggestions to only increase taxes on taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million.

“It turns out this figure has no economic justification whatsoever,” McConnell said. “Nowhere will you find a study or survey which indicates that raising taxes on small businesses with over $1 million in income will create jobs or help spur the economy.”

Tuesday’s meeting, scheduled for one hour, was the first formal sit-down among the president and the bipartisan leadership since the GOP recaptured control of the House and narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate in the Nov. 2 elections.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

We hear of children who labor by candlelight in filthy, noisy, hot and humid basements; women enslaved by unsafe machines mixing toxic chemicals without adequate protective gear; men who would stay dehydrated for the duration of their long shifts to minimize the necessity of bathroom breaks. How can we go to church on Sunday wearing clothes and shoes manufactured by them? The truth is that buying “sweatshop” products at our local superstore does more to alleviate world poverty than all Bono concerts, U.S. government aid to third-world countries, or your generous donations to any of the UN charitable programs.

What exactly do we achieve with our gut-level reaction to boycott companies that profit from the sweat of Third World children? Do you release them from their sweatshop prisons to go back to sunny schools and kindergartens? Do their moms and dads get promoted to higher paying jobs in air-conditioned offices when you refuse to buy from Walmart? Alas, this is one more example of nice people acting with good intentions only to increase the misery. Boycotting sweatshops, insisting on regulations meant to improve work conditions, or legislation to raise wages “across the board” leaves millions of people the choice of crime, prostitution, or starvation. The only short-term beneficiaries of such consumer activism and legal barriers are certain declining unionized American industries and their lobbyists in Washington, D.C.

One reason why Africa is lagging behind other underdeveloped parts of the world is the inability of local governments to create an environment conducive to opening enough sweatshops. Both parents and children in those countries are happy when free trade allows a new factory to open up new opportunities for them, enabling them to move away from much more dangerous and less rewarding alternative occupations in their agricultural or informal urban sectors.

When you refuse to buy their jeans and sneakers on economically unsound, ideologically skewed, pseudo-religious principles, you close the best opportunity they currently have to make a living, accumulate skills and capital to start their own business, and provide better choices for the next generation. So next time a group of Ivy League college activists try to recruit you to boycott the sweatshops, you may want to tell their bleeding hearts to wake up their slothful brains and go talk to the people that they want to “help.” And they may hear in reply: “Give us more sweatshops!”

China knows less about and has less influence over its close ally North Korea than is usually presumed and is likely to eventually accept a reunified peninsula under South Korean rule, according to U.S. diplomatic files leaked to the WikiLeaks website.

The memos paint a picture of three countries struggling to understand an isolated, hard-line regime in the face of a dearth of information and indicate American and South Korean diplomats’ reliance on China’s analysis and interpretation.

China sometimes seems unaware of or uncertain about issues ranging from who will succeed North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to the regime’s uranium enrichment plans and its nuclear testing, suggesting that the North is cautious even with its most important ally.

China’s actions have often served to insulate North Korea from foreign pressure: It has typically opposed harsh economic sanctions and responded to the latest crises by repeating calls for a return to long-stalled, six-nation denuclearization talks that the North has rejected.

But China would appear to have little ability to stop a collapse and less influence over the authorities in Pyongyang than is widely believed, South Korea’s then-Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-woo is quoted telling American Ambassador Kathleen Stephens in February.

China lacks the will to push Pyongyang to change its behavior, according to Chun, but Beijing will not necessarily oppose the United States and South Korea in the case of a North Korean collapse.

China “would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the U.S. in a ‘benign alliance’ as long as Korea was not hostile towards China,” Chun said.

Chinese officials are also quoted using mocking language in reference to North Korea, pointing to tensions between the two neighbors in contrast to official statements underscoring strong historical ties.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“I wanted the music to play on forever.
Have I stayed too long at the fair?” —Barbra Streisand lyric

The finding by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee that Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is guilty of financial misconduct and the conviction of former Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay by a jury in Austin, Texas, on charges of political money laundering brings a question: Are we getting the Congress we’re paying for?

I’m with Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, who told Human Events last week, “Make them part time; give them term limits. Don’t let them become lobbyists. When they have to live under the same rules and laws they pass for the rest of us, maybe you’d see some more common sense coming out of Washington.” Jindal, a former congressman, said once elected, too many lawmakers become entrenched in Washington and are transformed into the very people they campaigned against.

I’ve seen no polling on this question, but I would bet most Americans are not clamoring for Congress to pass more laws. Several states have part-time legislatures that meet every two years to consider a budget and other truly important matters. At other times, the part-time legislature is on-call should anything momentous occur. Should Congress follow suit? Maybe if it did we would be better off. A part-time Congress might reduce the temptations exemplified by Rangel and DeLay.

Serving in Congress should be seen as just that: service, which is distinct from self-service. It ought to be considered a privilege, not a profession.

The Founders were keenly aware of the danger of a Congress divorced from the realities of the rest of the country. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Roger Sherman of Connecticut wrote, “Representatives ought to return home and mix with the people. By remaining at the seat of government, they would acquire the habits of the place, which might differ from those of their constituents.”

Returning home shouldn’t mean flying home for long weekends and then coming back to Washington. It should mean returning to a real job where the member can’t raise his own pay, receive top medical care at reduced or no cost, print and spend other people’s money, or count on others to pay into his retirement fund. If he owned a business, he would have to meet a payroll and balance the budget. The member would also have to rely on Social Security, like other Americans.

Some states are getting as bad as Congress in their cost and ineffectiveness. The Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives writes of Pennsylvania’s legislature: “With a price tag that’s grown to $300 million, Pennsylvania’s 253-member General Assembly is the most expensive (and second largest) state legislature in the country. It’s also among the four ‘most professionalized’ in the nation with staff totaling nearly 3,000. For perspective, the legislatures of Illinois and Ohio—the states closest in population to Pennsylvania—have 1,023 and 465 staff, respectively.”

Only 16 percent of Pennsylvania voters think the state legislature is doing a “good” job. Congressional job approval is also pathetically low.

Would congressional term limits work? They seem to in states that have tried them, opening opportunities to people, including women, who might not otherwise have been able to challenge entrenched and well-funded incumbents. Opinion is clearly on the side of abbreviated terms. In September, a Fox News poll found that 78 percent of voters favored term limits for Congress.

Former Missouri Republican Sen. John Danforth has said, “I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country . . . we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. . . . We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected.” (Click here to read more.)

That’s because too many have stayed too long at the fair. Limiting their terms would be good for them, good for the rest of us, and the best thing to do for America.

© 2010 Tribune Media Services Inc.

Once a year, at Thanksgiving, we have a worship service like the one described in 1 Corinthians 14:

“When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what it said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets” (verses 26-32).

It’s funny. Whenever I used to read this in the past, in my head I heard the first verse in a scolding tone: “When you come together (you obstreperous people!), each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.” But there is no good reason why I should have thought that; Paul is simply describing what actually goes on in the worship service. And now he is going to give instructions on how to do that very normal thing in an orderly manner.

Far from censuring the practices he is about to instruct on, Paul commends their observance: “Let all things be done for building up” (v.26b). That is to say, do not forbid any of these faith-building practices—individual brothers choosing hymns, sharing lessons or revelations, speaking of tongues, provided there is a person at the meeting who has the gift of interpreting tongues. (Paul had talked about that earlier in his letter, in 1 Corinthians 12:10.)

So here in the 21st century, once a year, our church has a worship service like this that departs from the usual Sunday practice. And everybody who goes is blessed and says they can’t wait until next Thanksgiving when we have a service like that again.

I have a question for you, readers: Since this kind of worship service—the kind that makes room for Spirit-led congregational suggestions of hymns, sharing of testimonies, and sharing of revelations (I have also been in a church service in Texas that allowed tongues.)—is so helpful and uplifting once a year, and since it is the worship described in the Bible, and our more typical modern American worship service is not described in the Bible, then why can’t we do this a little more often? Like, say, twice a year? Or 52 times a year? I would like to know how you all see the Scripture on this point.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Good morning!

Random question of the day: What type of person angers you the most?

My answer to yesterday’s question: Crocheting always tests my patience.

Remember: This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.