Tucson, Arizona: It Could Happen Here, and Anywhere

Arizona shootings prompt call for ban on high-capacity clips
For many in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' southeastern Arizona district, guns are a way of life for hunting and protection while they're working on their ranches in a part of the country that has become Ground Zero for Smuggling. But, to some East Coast lawmakers, that gun culture led to Saturday's shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., which killed six and wounded the congresswoman and 13 others. Now two lawmakers have said they'll push for tougher gun controls, including stricter limits on high-capacit...

Was the Arizona Shooting Sheriff Dupnik's Fault?
By RightKlik It's pretty clear at this point that Jared Loughner was the Lone Wolf shooter solely responsible for the carnage in Tuscon, Arizona on Saturday. But without a shred of evidence, liberals in this country want to blame the "usual suspects," including Sarah Palin, the tea partiers and conservative Talk Radio. Let's cast the net wider. On Saturday, we began asking pointed questions about Tuscon Sheriff Clarence Dupnik: A congresswoman got shot point-blank in the head in Pima County, A...

Redstate: Outspoken Sheriff Accused Of Dismissing Loughner Death Threats
Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local Bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff's Office was informed, his deputies assured the Victims that he was being well managed by the Mental Health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Th...

Arizona gunman in court as Obama leads mourning
The man accused of trying to assassinate a congresswoman in an Arizona Shooting Spree that left six dead appeared in court but said nothing to shed light on his motive. President Barack Obama led the American nation in a somber minute of silence to honor the 20 people gunned down in Tucson -- where he will attend a memorial service on Wednesday, the White House announced. Flags were at half-staff at the Capitol in Washington, where hundreds of aides and lawmakers crammed the storied steps of Con...

Infidel Bloggers Alliance
Philly.com: Dallas Green's grief: 'My princess is gone' By JAN RANSOM & PAUL HAGEN Philadelphia Daily News "I can't believe my princess is gone." That's what former Phillies manager Dallas Green told the team's general manager, Ruben Amaro Jr., over the phone yesterday while en route to Arizona, reacting to the Murder of his 9-year-old granddaughter. Christina Green was killed in the hail of bullets in the Assassination attempt on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday as she waited i...

On the Tucson shooting
This is going to come out like a disjointed rant. I don't care - that is what it is. OK, I've had enough. This did it for me.AT THE DIRECTION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE United States, THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES SHALL BE FLOWN AT HALF-STAFF UPON RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE, UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, IN HONOR OR THE Shooting VictimS IN Tucson, Arizona. FURTHER GUIDANCE WILL BE PASSED UPON RECEIPT AS TO THE DURATION OF THIS HALF-STAFFING OBSERVANCE. THE FLAG SHALL BE FLOWN AT HALF-STAFF ON ALL DEPARTMENT ...

Pima County GOP Chair Opposes Anti-Westboro Law
TUCSON, AZ -- The leader of the county Republican party here says he's inclined to oppose the State Legislature's efforts to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from capitalizing on Saturday's shootings at a constituent event for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) by staging Protests outside the Funeral of the shootings youngest Victim, nine year-old Christine Green. But that doesn't mean he's prepared to let the Protests go unhindered. Brian Miller, chair of the Pima County GOP, says the nascent ...

Tragedy in Arizona
Gabrielle Giffords was doing what members of Congress do every week: She was home in Tucson to meet with her constituents. Today, Giffords lies in critical condition in a Tucson Hospital after one of those constituents opened fire with a semiautomatic Handgun. Six people died in the attack; 14 were injured. The madness at the Tucson shopping center Saturday morning raises old and troubling questions about gun violence in America and threatens a treasured American tradition: the right of the pe...

Republicans Delay Repeal Vote On ObamaCare
The weekend shooting in Arizona at a Congressional event with constituents has led House Republicans to delay a Repeal vote against President Obama's Health Care bill. Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head and remains in critical condition and a Congressional aide was killed along with five other people in an attack which has ignited a debate about the tone of political Partisanship in the nation. The motive of the young gunman remains unclear although liberal and conservative com...

Pima County Sheriff Dupnik Jeopardizes Justice and Must Resign Now
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has blathered in radio, television, and newspaper interviews non-stop since Saturday’s massacre in his county.  He cannot possibly be doing his job to properly and thoroughly investigate the tragic loss of life on his watch in Pima County, Arizona. Monday , Dupnik even went so far as to blame Talk Show host Rush Limbaugh PERSONALLY for the Murders in Tucson.  See report here on Real Clear Politics.  On Sunday, Dupnik admitted in his interv...

Methinks The Sheriff Doth Protest Too Much
One of the first voices out of Tucson after the shooting was Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who wasted no time in talking about how the toxic political climate was to blame for the atrocity. When pressed, he couldn't cite specific proof of the causal relationship, but he was certain. Well, we now just might know why he was so eager to point fingers -- he seems to have a hell of a good incentive to make certain those fingers point in places other than at him. The early reports about the sh...

Obama Will Be in Arizona for Memorial
(NewsCore) - President Barack Obama will head to Arizona Wednesday for a memorial service being held in honor of the Victims of a shooting rampage that killed six and wounded more than a dozen Saturday, including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Fox News Channel reported. Obama earlier Monday thanked Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for his department’s efforts in the aftermath of the shooting. The president also rang two heroes from the scene of the shooting, Patricia Maisch and Ro...

Arizona rampage renews questions about gun screenings
By Steve Gorman Los Angeles | Mon Jan 10, 2011 2:57pm EST Los Angeles (Reuters) - The deadly Shooting Spree in Tucson, Arizona, has renewed questions about a 13-year-old U.S. system that relies on personal Background Checks at the time of gun sales to keep Firearms out of the hands of mentally ill people. Despite ample evidence that the suspect in Saturday's rampage, Jared Lee Loughner, was engaged in bizarre, disruptive behavior well before the shooting, this did not stop him from legally bu...

Public Enemy?
Conservatives find bogeyman of the Tucson massacre: Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. ...

Judges Purpose in Seeing Giffords Could Be Legally Significant
Was U.S. District Court Judge John M. Roll just being sociable when he dropped by an appearance by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in Tucson on Saturday, or was he planning to discuss official business? Does it even matter, given the horror of that morning? Yes, it could matter, legally speaking. At first glance, Roll’s state of mind might appear irrelevant, given the tragedy that unfolded on Saturday morning, when Roll was shot dead and Giffords gravely wounded in a rampage that killed ...

Daniel Hernandez: The face of what's right in America
LatinaLista.net -- A lot is being made about the fact that the young intern credited with saving Congresswoman Giffords' life, Daniel Hernandez, is gay and Latino. As the sub headline of a Salon article stated: "Daniel Hernandez helped save the congresswoman's life -- and yes, his Sexuality and Ethnicity matter." Though he didn't ask for all this adulation, 20-year-old Hernandez has illustrated grace, eloquence and maturity that underscore the very reasons why it is such an injustice to vilify...

After attack, a leadership test for Obama, Boehner
(01-10) 19:30 PST WASHINGTON, CA (AP) -- On opposite sides of the political spectrum, President Barack Obama and new House Speaker John Boehner suddenly face the same challenge: rise above the anger, suspicion and hostility of their liberal and conservative bases to help a rattled nation deal with the deadly outburst of violence in Arizona. But what comes after the easy moment of silence? For now, both men are stepping past the question of what role, if any, the vitriol of the past election ca...

Heroic Giffords Intern Could Be Asked For Papers Under Arizona Immigration Law
WASHINGTON -- When a gunman attacked Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and others on Saturday, 20-year-old intern Daniel Hernandez ran toward the shots to try to save those who were injured. He stopped to check pulses on several Victims before finding Giffords, who had been shot in the head. Hernandez applied pressure to the wound, holding his boss of five days until his clothes were soaked with her blood. Hernandez, trained as a nursing assistant, lifted her head so that she wouldn't choke on...

Reverse Migration
There's an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal referencing some new data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey about the reverse migration of black folks to Dixie. Metropolitan Atlanta, for instance, added an astonishing 500,000 black people from 2000 to 2009; my home metro area of New York, meanwhile, lost 55,000 black residents. Part of this story falls under the category of "black folks do the same stuff that other folks do, and often for the same reasons": the movem...

Pols' security getting closer look in wake of Ariz. shootings
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush said Monday he would move his district office to a safer neighborhood, and Sen. Mark Kirk planned to attend a town hall meeting with extra protection in the wake of the weekend shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But some other members of Illinois' congressional delegation did not anticipate security changes. "In terms of curtailing my activities or having protection, that wouldn't work," Rep. Mike Quigley said. Quigley, a Democrat from the North Si...

Pima County Dem Chair: Time Will Prove Loughner To Be A Right-Winger
Source: Talking Points Memo TUCSON, AZ -- Conservatives gloating about the biography of the suspected shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) will eat their words in the end, according to the chair of the Pima County Democratic Party. "Here's what I think you're going to find," Jeff Rogers told me in an interview today. "I think you're going to find that he was (a conservative)." "I think we'll find a treasure trove of stuff from his computer," he told me. "How much of that we're going to get...

Beck and co-host called Giffords a 'moron' for Patreaus question in 2010 (Video)
Today Glenn Beck defended his coverage of Democrats and liberals in the aftermath of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).  Beck claimed that his Rhetoric has never been over-the-top, and strongly rejected any suggestion that he promoted violence.  Beck's critics tend to disagree, pointing to some comments Beck has made about Progressives as a "Cancer" and on fantasy Beck had about strangling Michael Moore.  In his own defense, Beck said that he had only had pos...

Joe Peyronnin: Free Speech
On the day when America collectively observed a moment of silence for Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other Victims of Saturday's shootings in Tucson, a war of words broke out over the role "vitriol" played in the incident, even though there probably is no link. And the argument reflected the deep division that has roiled this country over the past few years. Most interesting was the apparent admission by Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, in an interview with GlobalGrind.com founder Rus...

Obama Headed to Tucson for Wednesday Memorial
Hmm, Obama is attending this memorial Wednesday in Tucson, but when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona in December, it was enough just to send Secretary Janet Napolitano to the memorial. kold.com Two senior administration officials say President Obama will travel to Tucson on Wednesday to attend a memorial service for the Victims of last weekend's shooting rampage . Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is in critical condition after being shot in the head Saturday. Si...

[Headline] - NOW HE BLAMES RUSH LIMBAUGH?
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik once again blames conservative Rhetoric for being responsible for the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords (AZ). "The kind of Rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment, he's irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information. Attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior, in my opinion, is without consequences and I think he's irresponsible," Sheriff Dupnik ...