Republican vitriol may have led to Arizona deaths

Rightbloggers Comfort the Real Victims of the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting: Themselves
After Saturday's shootings in Arizona -- which left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords badly wounded and six people dead -- rightbloggers were swift to condemn... any possible criticism of themselves. You can understand their defensiveness. Back during the 2010 campaign, Sarah Palin had endorsed Tea Party challengers to Giffords and others with little gun-sight images and the cry, "Don't Retreat -- Reload!" Giffords had noticed ("When people do that, they've got to realize there are c...

Inside the Beltway
THE FAULTY PRESS News coverage of the Arizona shooting showcased a wide spray of partisan attacks in the 48 hours that followed the tragedy, with Collateral Damage and much talk of political Rhetoric and biased media coverage. A charged environment, intense public interest and minimal facts led to extrapolation, error, blame and instant agenda. "This is a horrendous act of violence. But does it surprise you, in the context of the bitterness of Arizona politics at the moment?" asked ABC News co...

Agonizing aftermath
WASHINGTON — Anguished debate began yesterday about the caustic tone of American political Rhetoric after the Arizona shooting spree Saturday that killed six and left Representative Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition. The question argued by politicians and pundits: Did vitriol and violent metaphors in Political Speech tip an unstable person to pick up a gun? With the answer still unknown, calls to lower the temperature of American discourse came from all parts of the political spect...

Arizona shooting: 'Does she have any enemies?' 'Yeah. The whole Tea Party'
Source: The Guardian Shock turns to anger as mourners blame vitriolic rightwing Rhetoric for creating climate of violence in US politics Chris McGreal in Tucson | Sunday January 09 2011 20.56 GMT Paul Wellman laid his handwritten sign among the collection of candles, flowers and messages keeping vigil outside congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords's office. Then he stepped back and surveyed the scene. To the right, another sign said: "Hate Speech = Murder". But Wellman went further with his angry dec...

Atrocity in Arizona
Posted by Arnold Ahlert on Jan 10th, 2011 and filed under Daily Mailer, FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. A town hall-style meeting held outside a Supermarket in Tuscon, Arizona was the scene of a deadly rampage on Saturday. 19 people were shot.  Five were killed at the scene and one died in the Hospital. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who hosted the event, was shot in ...

Gabrielle Giffords: Tragic Prophet
WASHINGTON — There is one commentator whose words should enlighten us on the meaning of Saturday’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the savage murders that took the lives of, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The person is Giffords herself. In an interview last March, the Arizona Democrat anticipated almost everything being said now and explained why what happened on Saturday is a violation of our national self-image as “a beacon.” Our pride, sh...

Adding Insult to Tragedy
Posted by Rich Trzupek on Jan 10th, 2011 and filed under Daily Mailer, FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. The Shooting Spree that left six dead and fourteen wounded in Arizona on Saturday was a horrible tragedy involving a very unstable young man. It’s clear that twenty-two year old Jared Loughner, who was allegedly attempting to assassinate Arizona representative Gabriel...

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik Exploits Shooting of Friends To Incite Hatred
There is only thing worse than the mainstream media trying to exploit the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for their own partisan progressive agenda. That is when the Sheriff investigating the case uses the shooting to promote his own progressive agenda. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Tucson, Arizona, has become the spokesman for blaming right-wing "vitriol" for the shooting by deranged gunman Jared Lee Loughner. This isn't the first time Dupnik made partisan headlines. Last April not ...

Breaking: Sarah Palin responsible for mass bird kills, genocide in the Sudan, and AT&T;'s loss of exclusive rights to the iPhone
Because there's just as much of a tie between Palin, those events and the tragic shootings in Tucson. Of course, to listen to many Democrats and those in Legacy Media, you'd think Sarah Palin had home-schooled Jared Lee Loughner. The unmoored Rhetoric of fools like Paul Krugman and Markos Moulitsas is not only divisive, it's destructive....

Tone Versus Substance
Jared Lee Loughner’s Killing Spree has rekindled a long-running debate about political discourse in the United States. Voices like Andrew Sullivan insist that violent, inflammatory Rhetoric poisons our country, and runs the risk of empowering the deranged. Jack Shafer takes an almost opposite position. “Our spirited political discourse, complete with name-calling, vilification—and, yes, violent imagery—is a good thing,” he writes. “Better that angry people unload th...

Mark Goulston, M.D.: Jared Loughner: Understanding the Arizona Shooter from the Inside Out
Over the next few days to weeks, we will try to piece together what could have caused Jared Lee Loughner to attempt to assassinate Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, kill six and wound fourteen others. We will learn of a long trail of "red flags," and questions as to why there was not some earlier intervention will arise. We will hopefully nail down whether this was the act of a lone individual or part of some Conspiracy. Forensic and other Psychiatrists will weigh in on this being the act of a...

Glenn Reynolds denies Tea Party's history of intimidation (Giffords shooting, Loughner)
Glenn Reynolds takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to offer "The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel" (link) in which he tries to run away from the toxic political environment that the tea parties movement - of which he is a leader - has created: With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the Tea Party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, ...

The Arizona Assassin: Seriously Disturbed History
In early June, Lynda Sorenson, 52, had gone back to community college in Tucson in hopes of getting back on the Job Market. One of her classes was a basic algebra class--and one of her classmates was Jared Loughner, now identified by authorities as the man who killed six people and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in a shooting rampage Saturday. You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attemp...

US charges sole gunman in lawmaker shooting
US prosecutors charged a lone young gunman over the attempted Assassination of a congresswoman as doctors voiced guarded hope she would recover from the attack that killed six others. President Barack Obama called on Americans to observe a moment of silence on Monday for Victims of the attack in Arizona as some officials asked if the nation's often divisive politics had spiraled out of control. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, 40, was in an induced coma as doctors treated bullet wounds to her ...

The Weekend That Was
A troubled 22-year-old College Student, Jared Lee Loughner, has been charged with trying to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, during a shootout that left 20 people (Read more...) ...

Monday Open Thread
A hero from the Terrorist shooting in Arizona. Daniel Hernandez had been U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ intern for five days when she was shot Saturday outside Tucson. The junior at the University of Arizona was helping check people in at the “Congress on Your Corner” event when he heard gunfire. He was about 30 feet from the congresswoman. When the shots began, he ran toward them. “I don’t even know if the gunfire had stopped,” he said Saturday night as he kep...

No More Mister Nice Blog
PICK YOUR FALLACY: EITHER PALIN IS TO BLAME OR EVERYONE IS TO BLAME Look, it's not as if I'll shed a tear if Sarah Palin continues to take heat for including Gabrielle Giffords on her crosshair map -- she's gotten away with so much poisonous Rhetoric for so long, Rhetoric that's actually harming the country, that a wave of genuinely bad press coverage that she can't dodge or explain away would be karmically appropriate. And yet I continue to suspect that she had nothing to do with the Tucson s...

US charges gunman in lawmaker shooting
US prosecutors charged a lone young gunman over the attempted Assassination of a congresswoman as doctors voiced guarded hope she would recover from the attack that killed six others. President Barack Obama called on Americans to observe a moment of silence on Monday for Victims of the attack in Arizona as some officials asked if the nation's often divisive politics had spiraled out of control. The gunman, who was detained by bystanders at the scene of the shooting, is due to appear in a federal...

US charges gunman in lawmaker shooting
US prosecutors charged a lone young gunman over the attempted Assassination of a congresswoman as doctors voiced guarded hope she would recover from the attack that killed six others. President Barack Obama called on Americans to observe a moment of silence on Monday for Victims of the attack in Arizona as some officials asked if the nation's often divisive politics had spiraled out of control. The gunman, who was detained by bystanders at the scene of the shooting, is due to appear in a feder...

Tombstone Politics
Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West. Tags: Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, guns, tucson If it turns out that a poisonous variant of free Speech is partially to blame for the shootings in Tucson, we will most certainly be struck by the fact that Gabrielle Giffords was seen last week in Congress, reading part of the Constitution that allows an American Citizen to say just about anything. But as Rep. Giffords herself also pointed out, in March when...

Flashback of the Day
"I mean, this is a situation where -- I mean, people don't -- they really need to realize that the Rhetoric and firing people up and, you know, even things, for example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they've gotta realize there's consequences to that action." -- Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), in a MSNBC interview earlier this year. ...

Targeting the Targeters
Yes, [the Republican] party has worked to achieve certain goals like Repeal of the president’s Health Care reform law, and at times we have employed Rhetoric like “massive government takeover” and “Death Panels.” Yet, while some have called this “troubling” and “irrational,” it certainly could not have influenced the shooter, for he was clearly troubled and irrational. - Chris Ryan at Political Relief, making fun of how the Republicans ...

'This isn't the wild west anymore'
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - The Rusty Spur Saloon, a wild west throwback in this swank Phoenix suburb, isn’t the type of place where patrons embrace the Democrat politics of Gabrielle Giffords. They are not immune, however, to the grief, shock and outrage that has settled in across the state in the aftermath of the senseless Shooting Spree in Tucson that has left six dead and Giffords in critical condition. “Politics is politics but this isn’t the wild west anymore,” Bill McKinno...

Palin's Other Arizona "Targets"
Like Gabrielle Giffords, Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick were under siege during the health-care debate. They tell Shushanna Walshe about death threats—and the need to cancel town-hall events....

Holloway leads Xavier over Rhode Island, 72-45
Tu Holloway scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half and Jamel McLean had 19 points and 12 rebounds, leading Xavier to a 72-45 win over Rhode Island on Sunday. Kenny Frease had nine points and Mark Lyons scored eight as Xavier (9-5, 1-0 Atlantic-10) won on the road for the first time this season with strong defense. The Musketeers held Rhode Island (9-6, 0-1 ) to 24.6 percent shooting, including 3 for 27 from 3-point range, and had a 38-10 edge in rebounding. Xavier, meanwhile, shot 53.2 pe...