Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis killed 13 and wounded almost a dozen others in a morning rampage and House Republicans passed a bill to keep the government running while defunding Obamacare.
On the international stage, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church must find a new balance on gay rights issues, abortion and contraception.
Here’s a recap of the week that was from The Washington Times.
• Aaron Alexis: Navy Yard gunman treated for paranoia and hearing voices in his head
Aaron Alexis, the gunman in the Washington Navy Yard shooting rampage, didn’t just live with contradictions — he embodied them.
U.S. law enforcement officials are telling The Associated Press that the Navy contractor identified as the gunman in the mass shootings at the Washington Navy Yard had been suffering a host of serious mental issues, including paranoia and a sleep disorder. He also had been hearing voices in his head, the officials said.
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• U.S. pilot scares off Iranians with ‘Top Gun’-worthy stunt
The U.S. Air Force has a message for Iran: Don’t mess with our drones.
In what only can be described as a scene out of Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun,” Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Air Force chief of staff, describes how F-22 stealth jets scared off Iranian jets from a U.S. drone flying in international airspace.
• California’s great gun grab: State’s sweeping gun control bills target firearms, ammo — and hunting
Breaking new ground in the state-level battle over firearms, the Democratic-dominated California state legislature has taken gun control into uncharted territory with a flurry of new bills that target not just firearms and ammunition, but also recreational hunting.
Among the dozen gun-control bills sitting on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk are measures that would outlaw lead ammunition for hunting as well as common types of hunting rifles under the umbrella of an assault-weapons ban. Taken together, the measures go far beyond the efforts that have inspired a sharp backlash and political battles in states such as Connecticut and Colorado.
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• Russian official mocks Navy Yard shooting
A Russian official blasted “American exceptionalism” in a tweet Monday morning, saying the deadly shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard confirms the worst about the U.S.
“A new shootout at Navy headquarters in Washington — a lone gunman and 7 corpses. Nobody’s even surprised anymore,” tweeted Alexey Pushkov, a member of the Russian parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
“A clear confirmation of American exceptionalism,” he added, according to multiple translations of the original Russian tweet.
• IRS officials thought Obama wanted crackdown on tea party groups, worried about negative press
IRS employees were “acutely” aware in 2010 that President Obama wanted to crack down on conservative organizations and were egged into targeting tea party groups by press reports mocking the emerging movement, according to an interim report being circulated Tuesday by House investigators.
The report, by staffers for Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, quoted two Internal Revenue Service officials saying the tea party applications were singled out in the targeting program that has the agency under investigation because “they were likely to attract media attention.”
• Okla. police find 6 submerged bodies that could have been missing for decades
Investigators in Custer County, Okla., recovered two submerged cars from a lake Tuesday morning, discovering six dead bodies that could prove to be people who have been missing for decades.
The Custer County Sheriff’s Department told a local Fox affiliate that they pulled a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro and a 1950’s model Chevy from Foss Lake. The medical examiner is still working to identify the victims, the report said.
• Pope Francis: Catholic Church must find new balance on gays, abortion, contraception
VATICAN CITY — PopeFrancis is warning that the Catholic Church’s moral edifice might “fall like a house of cards” if it doesn’t balance its divisive rules about abortion, gays and contraception with the greater need to make the church a merciful, more welcoming place for all.
Six months into his papacy, Francis set out his vision for the church and his priorities as pope in a remarkably candid and lengthy interview with La Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit magazine. It was published simultaneously Thursday in other Jesuit journals, including America magazine in the United States.
• MILLER: New York Times gets it wrong, media obsessed with linking AR-15 with Navy Yard shooter
The liberal media is so obsessed with linking the Navy Yard shooter with the AR-15 rifle that it is making up false tales of Aaron Alexis trying to obtain one.
The New York Times attempts to give the impression that a so-called assault-weapon law stopped Alexis from buying a rifle in Virginia, but that is not true.
• Boehner bashes Obama in mocking video; says Obama will deal with Putin, not GOP
Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner tweeted out a video Thursday morning wondering why President Obama is not willing to negotiate with Republicans in Congress on a debt-ceiling deal but was eager to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to find a political resolution to conflict in Syria.
“POTUS is happy to negotiate w/Vladimir Putin … but won’t work w/Congress on needed deficit reduction,” the Ohio Republican tweeted from @SpeakerBoehner.
Nidhi Barak, 20, and Dharmender Barak, 23, both students, were killed in Gharnavati village in the Indian state of Haryana as onlookers watched, the Daily Mail reported.
The couple had eloped earlier in the week because their families didn’t approve of the relationship. The girl’s parents then allegedly duped the two into believing a wedding ceremony was waiting for them when they returned home.
Police said the couple were tortured for several hours at Mrs. Barak’s home before she was beaten to death in full public view, the Daily Mail reported.
• Benghazi investigators gave Hillary Clinton heads-up on findings
The leaders of the State Department’s Benghazi probe defended their inquiry into the 2012 attack, but they acknowledged to Congress on Thursday that their mission was limited in scope and faced questions over why they gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton an advance look at their findings.
Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, vice chairman of the accountability review board, also acknowledged that he had warned Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff not to send a particular official to Congress because he thought “she would be a weak witness” who might have hurt the State Department’s stance.
Republicans said those moves called into question the motives of the review, which was supposed to be an independent look at what went wrong in the attack and how to prevent others.
“If this is so independent, why are you giving the State Department a heads-up about a witness coming in front of this committee?” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican. He said the warning came just days after Adm. Mullen had been appointed to the review board.
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