Is there a way to get a weather report from that location/time?

Within 24 hours, you can get the local METAR data from the FAA 24-cycle
files, on a FTP site.

Generally the weather, in the form of a METAR, is part of the FAA
preliminary accident report, but the one for the Cirrus crash lists the
weather as unknown.

After looking at the pic my thought was that there are too many
senseless crashes resulting in death. I suspect that in many it is
pilot error and I have no idea how you instill in pilots common sense
or a way to suppress "get home-itis."

All mistakes are "operator error" of some sort. That's the nature of
mistakes. The real question is how the error or errors could have been
averted. Is there something in the design of the equipment that is causing
the operator to make errors, etc.

I also wonder if the Cirrus parachute system gives some pilots a false
sense of security.

That's been the charge, and a suspiscion of pilots since the system was
announced. However, there still have been a number of accidents, including
this one, where the parachute was not deployed. It does not appear that
there are too many parachute incidents, whereas the 'chute was deployed when
normal piloting technique would have recovered from the problem.

So for the student pilots reading this...don't do stupid things.

Of course.