Newtown Shooting Victims: Their Photos, Their Lives

When his mother told him she loved him, Noah replied, "Not as much as I love you, Mom," said his uncle, according to the AP. In another classroom, his twin sister, whom he called his best friend, survived the shooting. Along with their older sister, 8-year-old Sophia, the siblings were inseparable. "He was just a really lively, smart kid," added his uncle. "He would have become a great man, I think. He would have grown up to be a great dad." Photo: Family photo/AP

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Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence

NEW YORK (AP) — While an official has said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut school shooting had Asperger's syndrome, experts say there is no connection between the disorder and violence.

Asperger's is a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness.

"There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior," said psychologist Elizabeth Laugeson, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Little is known about Adam Lanza, identified by police as the shooter in the Friday massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. He fatally shot his mother before going to the school and killing 20 young children, six adults and himself, authorities said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's.

High school classmates and others have described him as bright but painfully shy, anxious and a loner. Those kinds of symptoms are consistent with Asperger's, said psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's, but has no knowledge of Lanza's case.

Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population, he said.

"But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown," he said in an email.

"These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles," he added.

Autism is a developmental disorder that can range from mild to severe. Asperger's generally is thought of as a mild form. Both autism and Asperger's can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. Unlike classic autism, Asperger's does not typically involve delays in mental development or speech.

Experts say those with autism and related disorders are sometimes diagnosed with other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"I think it's far more likely that what happened may have more to do with some other kind of mental health condition like depression or anxiety rather than Asperger's," Laugeson said.

She said those with Asperger's tend to focus on rules and be very law-abiding.

"There's something more to this," she said. "We just don't know what that is yet."

After much debate, the term Asperger's is being dropped from the diagnostic manual used by the nation's psychiatrists. In changes approved earlier this month, Asperger's will be incorporated under the umbrella term "autism spectrum disorder" for all the ranges of autism.

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AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

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Online:

Asperger's information: http://1.usa.gov/3tGSp5

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Innovative housing for the homeless being built in downtown L.A.

The Skid Row Housing Trust has spent decades revitalizing abandoned buildings and hotels in downtown Los Angeles' most destitute neighborhood to serve as shelter for the city's chronically homeless.

But for its latest housing project, the trust abandoned its usual technique for a seemingly elementary construction concept. A 102-unit, $20.5-million complex is being built by stacking pre-outfitted apartments atop one another in a Lego-like fashion, limiting construction costs and fast-forwarding the project timeline. It is believed to be the first multi-tenant residential building in the nation to be constructed this way.

Like all of the Skid Row Housing Trust's 24 homes for the homeless, the sleek and distinctive Star Apartments are meticulously styled to look nothing like typical low-income housing.

The project, designed by award-winning architect Michael Maltzan, will include basketball courts, art centers, community gardens and hundreds of feet of green space. The stacking of apartment units began last week, and the bulk of the construction should be done by mid-January.

"What we're trying to create is something that feels like a microcosm of the city itself," said Maltzan, who has designed two other apartment complexes for the homeless in partnership with the trust.

Unlike dark, drafty and dreary low-income housing, where residents reside in monochromatic buildings, Maltzan's project, he said, infuses color and community with a layout and amenities that force residents to interact. That sense of community, housing trust officials believe, is paramount to rehabilitating the chronically homeless.

Because the pre-fabricated construction method is typically used for single-family homes, planners had to work with officials to clarify regulations and standards for shipping in the pre-constructed apartments, which the architect characterized as a tedious and at times frustrating process.

"The hope is that we've created a replicable pathway for similar projects," Maltzan said last week, as he watched a towering blue crane lift a pre-fabricated apartment unit onto a building platform. "When people look at this building, what they see is a vision of the future."

The Star Apartments will house up to 100 formerly homeless, with an emphasis on residents who are repeat patients at area emergency rooms or who have never received needed treatment for chronic medical conditions, said Mike Alvidrez, executive director of the Skid Row Housing Trust.

Residents will pay 30% of their monthly job or government assistance income as rent but are not required to seek on-site medical treatment, psychiatric counseling, drug or alcohol treatment or therapy as a condition of residency.

"The thought is, how do we help people make the choice that is best for them," said Alvidrez, who stressed the trust's Housing First model — a philosophy that has caught fire nationwide. Alvidrez said the first step to helping someone recover from a chronic drug or alcohol problem is to give them a home and sense of community.

"We're not going to build our way out of homelessness," Alvidrez said. While the housing trust's buildings are now home to more than 1,500 formerly homeless people, some estimates say as many as 51,000 people remain homeless in L.A. County.

The goal of the apartments is to fully rehabilitate residents through on-site social services, community space and professional development. While many eventually leave the housing trust's buildings and move into other homes, if they keep paying rent they're free to stay as long as they'd like. Lawrence Horn, 62, said he spent years on the streets of Los Angeles, afraid that his adult daughter might run into a destitute, shabby and drugged-out version of him while she was out on the town with her friends.

But a confident and polished Horn, in a crisp black shirt and suit, stood behind a lectern in front of about 50 people in the Last Bookstore on Tuesday and captivated them with a frank, 20-minute narrative of his life before and after moving into permanent housing offered by the trust.

Two years ago Horn moved off the streets and into the Carver Hotel, a circular structure designed by Maltzan next to the 10 Freeway. For the last year, he has been learning to become a spokesman for the trust through its resident ambassador program.

"I felt inferior, I felt less than," Horn said of his time living on the street. But now, he said, "my story is no longer a doom-and-gloom story."

wesley.lowrey@latimes.com

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Voters in Egypt Cast Ballots on Draft Constitution

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

A polling site in Cairo on Saturday. Lines were long as a referendum on an Islamist-backed charter got off to an orderly start. More Photos »

CAIRO — Egyptians voted peacefully and in large numbers on Saturday in a referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, hoping that the results would end three weeks of violence, division and distrust between the Islamists and their opponents over the ground rules of Egypt’s promised democracy.

Not long after polls closed at 11 p.m., the main Islamist group aligned with President Mohamed Morsi predicted a big win for ratification with a higher than expected turnout. The group, the Muslim Brotherhood, said that after counts from about 86 percent of the stations that voted Saturday, the first of two days of voting, ballots were running 59 percent in favor of the proposed constitution.

The opposition strongholds of Cairo and Alexandria, however, were still being counted.

A spokesman for the main coalition opposing the charter charged systematic violation of voting rules, but its leaders put off a final statement.

Regardless of the results, the unexpectedly heavy turnout and orderly balloting was yet another turning point for Egypt’s nearly two-year-old revolution. After three weeks of violence and threats of a boycott, voters appeared for the moment to pull back from the brink of civil discord and reaffirm their trust in the ballot box, spending hours in long lines to vote in the sixth national election since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak 22 months ago.

It remained to be seen if the losing side would accept the results, or how long the peace might last. Many who voted yes said they were doing so to end the chaos of the transition rather than to endorse the text of the charter. But the crowded polling places suggested a turn toward stability, if not necessarily the liberal outcome some revolutionaries had hoped for. Despite opposition warnings of chaos, the streets of the capital were free of major protests for the first time in weeks.

And if the constitution is approved by the margins his supporters predict, the smooth vote could fortify Mr. Morsi’s power and legitimacy.

Military officers guarded polling places, and there were few reports of violence. Egyptian state media reported nine injuries in clashes around the Nile Delta town of Dakahleya, and that unknown assailants threw Molotov cocktails near the headquarters of a liberal party that had been part of the opposition under Mr. Mubarak.

As they waited in line to vote, neighbors continued to spar over the contentious process that produced the charter. Some said that it had been unfairly steamrolled by Egypt’s new Islamist leaders over the objections of other parties and the Coptic Christian Church, and that as a result the new charter failed to protect fundamental rights.

Others blamed the Islamists’ opponents for refusing to negotiate, in an effort to undermine democracy because they could not win at the ballot box. Many expressed discontent with political leaders on both sides.

“Neither group can accept its opposition,” said Ahmed Ibrahim, 40, a government clerk waiting to vote in a middle-class neighborhood in the Nasr City area of Cairo. Whatever the outcome, he said, “one group in their hearts will feel wronged, and the other group will gloat over their victory, and so the wounds will remain.”

The referendum once promised to be a day when Egyptians realized the visions of democracy, pluralism and national unity that defined the 18-day revolt against Mr. Mubarak. But then came nearly two years of chaotic political transition in which Islamists, liberals, leftists, the military and the courts all jockeyed for power over an ever-shifting timetable.

The document that Egyptians voted on was a rushed revision of the old Mubarak charter, pushed through an Islamist-dominated assembly in an all-night session, after Christian and secular representatives quit in protest. Many international experts faulted the charter as a missed opportunity, stuffed with broad statements about Egyptian identity but riddled with loopholes regarding the protection of rights.

Worse still, for many, was the polarizing endgame the charter provoked. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood said more than 35 of its offices, including its Cairo headquarters, had been attacked and vandalized over the last three weeks. A night of street fighting between his Islamist supporters and their opponents killed at least 10 people.

Many voters waiting in line on Saturday said they rejected the exploitation of religion by both sides: the Islamists who sought to frame the debate as an argument over Islamic law, and opponents who accused Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies of laying the groundwork for a theocracy.

Mayy El Sheikh and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Samsung Smart TVs: The next frontier for data theft and hacking [video]

Smart TVs, particularly Samsung’s (005930) last few generations of flat screens, can be hacked to give attackers remote access according to a security startup called ReVuln. The company says it discovered a “zero-day exploit” that hackers could potentially use to perform malicious activities that range from stealing accounts linked through apps to using built-in webcams and microphones to spy on unsuspecting couch potatoes. Don’t panic just yet, though. In order for the exploit to be activated, a hacker needs to plug a USB drive loaded with malicious software into the actual TV to bypass the Linux-based OS/firmware on Samsung’s Smart TVs. But, if a hacker were to pull that off, every piece of data stored on a Smart TV could theoretically be retrieved.

[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]

[More from BGR: Dell confirms it will exit smartphone business, drop Android]

As if the possibility of someone stealing your information and spying on you isn’t scary enough, according to ComputerWorld, “it is also possible to copy the configuration of a TV’s remote control, which would allow a hacker to copy the remote control’s settings, and remotely change the channel.”

ReVuln told The Register it hasn’t informed Samsung of the vulnerability and plans to sell the details of in hopes of “speeding up” development of a fix. A video of the exploit as proof from ReVuln follows below.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Donald Faison Marries Cacee Cobb

By Lesley Messer

12/15/2012 at 08:25 PM EST

Cacee Cobb and Donald Faison

Dr. Billy Ingram/WireImage

It's official!

After six years together, Donald Faison and Cacee Cobb were married Saturday night at the Los Angeles home of his Scrubs costar Zach Braff.

Cobb's friend Jessica Simpson was a bridesmaid. Sister Ashlee Simpson also attended.

"What a happy day," Tweeted groomsman Joshua Radin, a singer, who posted a photo of himself with Faison and Braff in their tuxedos.

The couple got engaged in August 2011. At the time, Faison Tweeted, "If you like it then you better put a Ring on it," and Cobb replied, "If she likes it then she better say YES!!"

Since then, the couple had been hard at work planning their wedding. On Nov. 12, Faison, who currently stars on The Exes, Tweeted that they were tasting cocktails to be served on the big day.

"Alcohol tasting for the wedding!" he wrote, adding a photo of the drinks. "The [sic] Ain't Say It Was Going To Be Like This!!!"

This is the first marriage for Cobb. Faison was previously married to Lisa Askey, with whom he has three children. (He also has a son from a previous relationship.)

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

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Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Decision on gay conversion ban depends on other rulings

The fate of a new California law that would prohibit doctors and therapists from trying to change a minor's sexual orientation depends in part on rulings in other cases in which the government tried to restrict physicians' communications with their patients.

Will the law be viewed as similar to a federal policy that prevented doctors from recommending marijuana to their patients? If so, the law perishes. Or is California's ban on so-called conversion therapy akin to a regulation upheld by the Supreme Court that required doctors to tell patients about the possibly detrimental effects of abortion?

The dispute is before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to decide within the next several days whether to put the law on hold before it takes effect Jan. 1. A ruling could take months.

The ban on trying to change a minor's sexual orientation, the first of its kind in the nation, has divided the lower courts. A federal judge in Sacramento appointed by President Obama found that the law did not violate free speech rights; her colleague, appointed by the first President Bush, concluded that it did.

Legal scholars also have conflicting assessments of whether the law will be overturned on 1st Amendment grounds.

UC Berkeley constitutional law scholar Jesse Choper said the law faces "a steep uphill battle" on free speech grounds.

"It is very hard to silence speech generally," Choper said.

But UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said the law was constitutional because it banned an ineffective and harmful therapy.

Communications between professionals and their clients generally have less 1st Amendment protection than other forms of speech. A lawyer or doctor who negligently gives bad advice may be found liable for malpractice, and licensing requirements for professionals may be restrictive.

"The fact that it is speech doesn't immunize it from liability or punishment," Chemerinsky said.

California's law subjects doctors and therapists to discipline by their licensing boards for practicing the therapy known as "sexual orientation change efforts," or conversion therapy.

Treatments include psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy and religious and spiritual counseling. In the past, some licensed therapists have practiced aversion therapy, using nausea-inducing drugs to combat sexual impulses, and hormone treatments.

Therapists seeking to change a patient's orientation also have encouraged men to spend more time with heterosexuals, participate in sports and avoid members of the opposite sex, except for romantic contact.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit now before the 9th Circuit is a 15-year-old boy who has been undergoing the therapy for 15 months.

Mathew Staver, the lead lawyer in that lawsuit, said the boy is receiving standard cognitive behavioral therapy. Shock treatment and aversion techniques are no longer used, he said.

"According to what I know, he has stopped experiencing same-sex attraction," said Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit group that advocates for conservative Christian views.

Psychological efforts to change sexual orientation were once grounded in a 1952 classification of homosexuality as a mental disease in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But that classification was removed in 1973, and most psychological associations now recommend against the therapy, calling it ineffective and potentially harmful. A task force report by the American Psychological Assn. in 2009 said conversion therapy could trigger depression, suicide and substance abuse.

"Same-sex sexual attractions, behavior, and orientations per se are normal and positive variants of human sexuality — in other words, they do not indicate either mental or developmental disorders," the report said.

It said that there was no study demonstrating that therapy affected sexual orientation of children and teenagers, and that the prospect of effecting an enduring change in a person's sexual orientation was "unlikely."

But the report also said research on the therapy was too sketchy to draw conclusions about safety and efficacy and noted that some people said they had benefited from the counseling.

Initially, the bill that created the law was opposed by the California Psychological Assn., California Assn. for Licensed Professional Clinic Counselors, California Psychiatric Assn. and California Assn. of Marriage and Family Therapists. After the bill was amended, the associations of psychologists and family therapists supported the bill and the others withdrew their opposition. Organizations with religious viewpoints continued to oppose it.

In one of two lawsuits filed to block the law, a group of therapists, minors and parents said the ban prevented even the mention of possible therapy to change an undesired sexual orientation. The state countered that the law banned only a therapy, not the discussion of ways to change sexual orientation or the ability to refer patients to out-of-state therapists who practice the methods.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, ruling for the state, said the law prohibits a form of conduct — therapy that uses pain or discomfort to combat sexual arousal and efforts to alter thought patterns, including hypnosis.

"Plaintiffs in this case do not have a fundamental right to receive a therapy that California has deemed harmful and ineffective," Mueller wrote.

But in a similar lawsuit brought by two therapists and a man who underwent conversion therapy, U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb blocked the state from enforcing the law on the three plaintiffs.

"Protecting an individual's First Amendment rights outweighs the public's interest in rushing to enforce an unprecedented law," Shubb wrote.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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Obama Walks a Fine Line With Egyptian President

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians opposed to President Mohamed Morsi prayed in Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday. More Photos »

CAIRO — Tanks and barbed wire had surrounded Egypt’s presidential palace and crowds of protesters were swarming around last week when President Obama placed a call to President Mohamed Morsi.

Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood stood accused of  a sudden turn toward authoritarianism, as they fulminated about conspiracies, steamrollered over opponents, and sent their supporters into a confrontation with protesters the night before that call; the clash left seven people dead. But Mr. Obama did not reprimand Mr. Morsi, advisers to both leaders said.

Instead, a senior Obama administration official said, the American president sought to build on a growing rapport with his Egyptian counterpart, arguing to Mr. Morsi that it was in his own interest to offer his opposition compromises, in order to build trust in his government.

“These last two weeks have been concerning, of course, but we are still waiting to see,” said another senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid aggravating relations with Egypt. “One thing we can say for Morsi is he was elected, so he has some legitimacy.” He noted that Mr. Morsi was elected with 51 percent of the vote.

As Egyptians vote Saturday on the draft constitution, the results may also render a verdict on Mr. Morsi’s ability to stabilize the country and the Obama administration’s bet that it can build a workable partnership with a government guided by the Brotherhood — a group the United States shunned for decades as a threat to Western values and interests.

White House officials say that as Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mr. Morsi has a unique chance to build a credible democratic process with broad participation, which is the surest source of stability.

But critics of the Brotherhood have cited Mr. Morsi’s strong-arm push for the Islamist-backed charter as vindication of their argument that Islamist politics are fundamentally incompatible with tolerance, pluralism and the open debate essential to democracy. They say that his turn to authoritarianism has discredited the Obama administration’s two-year courtship of Egypt’s new Islamist leaders.

Some say they suspect the White House may envision the trade-off it offered to the ousted president, Hosni Mubarak: turning a blind eye to heavy-handed tactics so long as he continues to uphold the stability of American-backed regional order.

And by muting its criticism, the Obama administration shares some of the blame, said Michael Hanna, a researcher at the Century Foundation in New York and an Egyptian-American in Cairo for the vote. “Silence is acquiescence,” he said, adding about Mr. Morsi: “At some point if you are so heedless of the common good that you are ready to take the country to the brink and overlook bodies in the street, that is just not O.K.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers, though, say that in Egypt the dual goals of stability and democracy are aligned, because in the math of the revolution Egyptians will no longer accept the old autocracy.

As for Mr. Morsi, administration officials and other outside analysts argue that so far his missteps appear to be matters of tactics, not ideology, with only an indirect connection to his Islamist politics. “The problem with Morsi isn’t whether he is Islamist or not, it is whether he is authoritarian,” said a Western diplomat in Cairo, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocol.

What is more, the leading opposition alternatives appeared no less authoritarian: Ahmed Shafik, who lost the presidential runoff, was a former Mubarak prime minister campaigning as a new strongman, and Hamdeen Sabahi, who narrowly missed the runoff, is a Nasserite who has talked of intervention by the military to unseat Mr. Morsi despite his election as president.

“The problem with ‘I told you so’ is the assumption that if things had turned out differently the outcome would be better, and I don’t see that,” the diplomat said, noting that the opposition to the draft constitution had hardly shown more respect than Mr. Morsi has for the norms of democracy or the rule of law. “There are no black hats and white hats here, there are no heroes and villains. Both sides are using underhanded tactics and both sides are using violence.”

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Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Was Loved By Kids: Friend

By Julia Haskins

12/14/2012 at 07:30 PM EST

Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal killed in Friday's mass shooting, will be remembered as a committed educator who was loved by her students.

The principal of the Newtown, Conn., school died trying to protect the students she cared for every day. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, started his rampage in the school's main office, where Hochsprung had reportedly come out of a meeting.

Hochsprung was killed in the shooting, the sound of which was reportedly broadcast over the school's PA system.

"She was really nice and very fun, but she was also very much a tough lady in the right sort of sense," Tom Prunty, a friend whose niece goes to Sandy Hook and was uninjured Friday, told CNN. "She was the kind of person you'd want to be educating your kids. And the kids loved her."

In all, the death toll in the tragedy has been put at 28 total: 20 children, six adults – including Hochsprung – the gunman and the gunman's mother, who was a kindergarten teacher, at a secondary location.

Safety In Mind

Hochsprung was committed to school safety, having recently installed a visual monitoring system on the campus. Visitors had to wait to be let in after the school doors locked at 9:30 a.m., and then sign in at the main office. In a letter to parents about the security system, Hochsprung said the lengthy process of the new system would take some getting used to, but that it was for the greater good of the school. And Hochsprung would have done anything to make Sandy Hook Elementary School a great place to be.

"I don't think you could find a more positive place to bring students to every day," she told the Newtown Bee when she was first hired.

Vito Kala, the owner and manager of The Villa, an Italian restaurant down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary School that was frequented by Hochsprung and other staff members, tells PEOPLE he had no doubt about Hochsprung's courage.

"It doesn't surprise me at all to hear the principal was a hero," he said. "That's [in line] with what I know. That is what she would have done, no question."

Danbury Deputy superintendent William Glass would agree. "She had a tremendous intellect and a wonderful way with children," Glass said of the always-smiling principal. "She was an amazing educator. She was everything you would want."

And a dad of triplets who attend the school says of Hochsprung: "Every year she'd do a sock-hop at the school, and she'd dress up in hoop skirts and bobby socks. She really got into it. She was so great with the kids. They loved her. It does not surprise me at all she'd do something heroic."

Hochsprung maintained an active Twitter account, where she updated followers with news about the school. Her last Tweet expressed her excitement about a school event. "Setting up for the Sandy Hook nonfiction book preview for staff... Common Core, here we come!"

Hochsprung, of Waterbury, Conn., came to Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2010 with 12 years of administrative experience. She received a bachelor's degree in special education from Central Connecticut State University in 1993, a master's in special education from Southern Connecticut State University in 1997, and a sixth-year degree in educational leadership from Southern in 1998, according to NewsTimes.

She had two daughters and three stepdaughters, according to CNN.

– With reporting from Sara Hammel

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