The week at a glance...United States

Gilbert, Ariz.

Neo-Nazi massacre: A former Marine who straddled the worlds of mainstream politics and neo-Nazi hate groups opened fire on his live-in family last week, killing four people, including a 15-month-old girl, said police. J.T. Ready then turned his weapon on himself, ending his life at age 39. Ready lived in this Phoenix suburb with his girlfriend, Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47; her daughter, Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; and the daughter’s boyfriend, all of whom died in the massacre. Amber’s daughter, Lily, died from her wounds later at a local hospital. A member of the National Socialist Movement, Ready also ran for local office several times, entering the Republican primary for a U.S. House seat in 2004. His mentor, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, had to distance himself from Ready when his extreme views became public. Ready founded the U.S. Border Guard, a volunteer group that patrols for illegal immigrants near the border. In a posting on its website, the group said, “God bless you, J.T. You will be fiercely missed.”

Kasson, Minn.

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Bullying suicide: They called her a “slut” and defaced her books with chewing gum, threatening violence in a vicious bullying campaign that went on for months, her parents said. And last week, seventh-grader Rachel Ehmke, 13, who had never kissed a boy, hung herself in her bedroom, leaving behind a note that read, “I wish I could tell you how I really feel.” School officials are cooperating with a police inquiry, which could see charges brought against the girls allegedly involved in the bullying. “We thought she was dealing with it and the school thought she was dealing with it,” said her father, Rick Ehmke, who said Rachel and a friend had been eating lunch in a locker room to get away from her bullies. Mark Matuska, superintendent of Kasson-Mantorville School District, conceded the seriousness of the attacks. An incident last week was disturbing enough “that we felt it necessary to contact law enforcement,” said Matuska.

Milwaukee

Barrett wins: Democratic voters this week opted for a rematch in the recall election for governor, choosing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to face Republican Gov. Scott Walker on June 5. The two men squared off in 2010, when the governor prevailed by 5 percentage points, as fellow Republicans swept the statehouse. The new campaign will be short and vicious, observers say, with Democrats facing an uphill battle in fund-raising. Since the start of 2011, Walker has raised more than $25 million—and more than $13 million over the past three months alone, dwarfing Barrett’s $831,000. “In the next 27 days, I need you like I’ve never needed you before,” Barrett said in his victory speech.

Indianapolis

Lugar defeated: Blasting his opponent’s “rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party,” centrist Republican Sen. Richard Lugar went down swinging in his Republican primary defeat this week. Trying for a seventh term, Lugar lost soundly to former state treasurer and Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock, who criticized the senator’s cooperation with Democrats on the auto bailout, foreign policy, and other matters. Mourdock campaigned as a more conservative alternative to Lugar, one of his party’s most respected voices on foreign affairs. The GOP nominee will face Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, a three-term congressman from the South Bend area. “This is a historic time,” Mourdock said, “and the most powerful people in both parties are so opposed to one another that one side simply has to win out over the other.”

Princeton, N.C.

Wild swine warfare: Facing the daily destruction of crops and wildlife habitats, and with the state’s $1.5 billion pork industry at risk, North Carolina last week endorsed radical new measures to halt the exploding population of feral pigs. Wildlife officials gave hunters approval to shoot the destructive scavengers after dark, without a license, according to news accounts. That’s on top of a $5,000-per-pig fine approved last year to stop the transporting of wild hogs. “They tear down even more than they eat, and they eat plenty,” said Johnston County farmer Frank Baumgartner, whose peanut, wheat, and corn fields are attacked at least once a week. Feral swine, which can spread diseases to domestic hogs, have spread from 17 states in 1982 to 37 today, said Joseph Corn of the University of Georgia, which estimated the total population at 5 million.

Raleigh, N.C.

Amendment blocks gay marriage: Voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman as “the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized.” The result made the state the 30th in the nation, and the last in the South, to place an explicit ban on gay marriage in its constitution. Six states—Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont—and the District of Columbia now allow gay marriage. The new law in North Carolina, which will host the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in September, could heighten the Democrats’ discomfort over gay marriage, which is generally rejected by the party’s African-American supporters and favored by the young. “There is a real threat to the institution of marriage,” said Rep. Paul Stam, House majority leader, who added that “domestic partnerships or civil unions, whether opposite-sex or same-sex, would not be valid or recognized here.”