Updates on the Investigation into Jared Loughner

Tea Party Express Fundraises Off Giffords Shooting: 'Tea Party Won't Be Silenced'
In an apparent effort to distance themselves from the Mass Shootings in Arizona over the weekend, the Tea Party Express sent out an email to supporters proclaiming that they "won't be silenced" -- and asking for contributions. Earlier today, TPE leader Sal Russo went on Fox News and lamented how "revolting and disgusting the left is for trying to associate the tea party with violence like this." This latest email emphasizes how "horrified" the TPE was to hear about the shootings, which includ...

Jared Lee Loughner: Gaze Into The Face of Insanity
PHOENIX -- The nation got its first look on Monday at the 22-year-old loner accused of trying to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Jared Loughner, head shaved, a cut above the right temple and his hands cuffed, scanned a packed courtroom and sat down. His attorney, who defended Oklahoma City bomber Timothy Mcveigh and "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, whispered to him. The judge asked Loughner if he understood that he could get life in Prison -- or the death penalty -- for killing Federal Judge John...

Jared Loughner's behavior never reported to mental health authorities: official
Despite mounting concerns about his bizarre and disturbing behavior, local Mental Health authorities in Pima County, Ariz. said Monday that no one reported any concerns to them about Tucson mass shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner. Loughner is accused of shooting 20 people on Saturday, killing six and wounding 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D). "To the best of our knowledge, he was never and is currently not enrolled in our system," said Neal Cash, president of the Community Partnership...

Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Jared Loughner may have been influenced by occult
FBI investigators delving into the warped mind of Tucson massacre suspect Jared Loughner are exploring whether he was influenced by the occult and a Right-wing Conspiracy theorist....

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes: Ive Told All Our Guys, Shut Up, Tone It Down
Fox News CEO Roger Ailes says he put the word out at Fox to “tone it down” and make arguments “intellectually” with less heated Rhetoric. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.” But Ailes draws the line at any suggestion the passion of Fox News hosts had anything to do with the Shooting Spree in Arizona that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded: “That is just bullsh-,” he told Ru...

Alleged Giffords Shooter Jared Lee Loughner Appears In Phoenix Federal Court
Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged gunman behind the mass shooting on Saturday that killed six people (including a Federal Judge) and gravely injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), appeared in Federal Court on Monday with his head shaved and wearing an tan inmate's outfit. Loughner, who the Associated Press said had a cut on his head, was held without bail as a judge called him "danger to society." Loughner says little in the courtroom and just answered procedural questions, David Nakamura of th...

Arizona Shooting Coverage Is a Media Campaign to Criminalize Conservatism
Managing Editor's Note: Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement after a thorough, two-day review of how the media have covered the tragic shooting in Arizona. Implicating a conservative tie to this heinous act of violence or to Jared Lee Loughner, who is no conservative, is nothing short of a naked campaign to criminalize conservative thought. Sadly, those who point their finger are at the nexus of hypocrisy. Take the unidentified “Veteran Democratic...

Judy Clarke, Who Defended the 'Unabomber,' Will Represent Jared Lee Loughner
Judy Clarke, the attorney who represented "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski, will defend Jared Lee Loughner, the young man authorities say tried to fatally shoot Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner, 22, the College Dropout who went on a shooting rampage Saturday morning in Tuscon, Ariz., has been charged with five federal counts, including the attempted Assassination of a member of Congress. Additional charges are expected. The suspect has an experienced defender of high-profile criminals ...

Suspect in Arizona shootings appears in court
A troubled 22-year-old College Dropout made his first court appearance on Monday on five federal charges, including the attempted Assassination of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remained in critical condition. His hands manacled together, Jared Lee Loughner leaned toward a microphone and told a judge in Phoenix he understood the charges against him that stem from a Shooting Spree in Tucson on Saturday that left six people dead and 14 wounded. ...

Jared Loughner Mugshot Released
Authorities have released the mugshot of Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner, which is now being tweeted by the media, including Good Morning America and others. Presented without comment. via ​ ...

Did Jared Loughner's Family Barricade Their Arizona Home During His Court Appearance?
​Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged Arizona shooter, was in court this morning for a preliminary trial and is being described by CNN as "very polite." He wore a tan Prison jumpsuit and was chained at the feet and ankles. The judge engaged Loughner and asked him to confirm his identity and he responded, "Yes. I am Jared Lee Loughner." The preliminary hearing took about 15 minutes. When the judge talked about the Murder of John McCarthy Roll, the Federal Judge that was shot, Loughner took a c...

Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Jared Loughner 'believed he could fly'
A schoolfriend of Jared Loughner, the main suspect in the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, has spoken about his friend's obsessions with dreams, chaos and government....

Jared Loughner appears in court
Jared Loughner, the main suspect in the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, has appeared in court and has been remanded in custody....

"How Did He Fall Through the Cracks?"
The weekend shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, which killed six bystanders, shows the consequences of an economy that focuses primarily on financial gain, and ignores the human cost. As About.com Guide to Conservatives Justin Quinn asks: The shooter was identified Saturday evening as Jared Lee Loughner, a man whose Internet ramblings (which were taken down after the shooting) further identify him as mentally ill. ...The real question for the people of Arizona should be how som...

Loughner: 'Social Outcast' With 'Indecipherable Beliefs'
What is this? As Jared Loughner's scheduled 4 p.m. ET court appearance draws near, here's some more of what's being reported about the 22-year-old community College Dropout who is accused of killing six people and wounding 14 others Saturday in a shooting rampage at a meet-and-greet in Tucson, Ariz., with Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords: Also, the magazine writes, Tierney "describes Loughner as being obsessed with 'lucid dreaming' — that is, the idea that conscious dreams are an al...

Alleged Arizona gunman appears in court
The alleged gunman behind a shooting that killed six and wounded 14 others in Tucson, Arizona appeared in court Monday, head shaven and saying little, an AFP reporter said. Jared Loughner, who was overpowered by heroic bystanders after allegedly trying to assassinate a US lawmaker on Saturday, said little beyond answering "yes" to questions from the judge in the state capital Phoenix. The Federal Judge agreed to the assignment of Judy Clarke, who represented the Unabomber and 9/11 conspirator ...

Jared Loghner: A Homegrown Terrorist?
The suspect behind a deadly shooting in Tuscon, Ariz., that killed six people and injured 19 others including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was represented in court, Monday, by prominent attorney Judy Clarke. Clarke specializes in federal death penalty cases, and is the same lawyer who defended "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy Mcveigh, and Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are looking into 22-year-old Jared Loughner's motives. ...

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 ...

Jared Loughner, Portrait of the Tuscon Safeway Shooter (ContributorNetwork)
The portrait of Jared Loughner, the accused Tucson Safeway Massacre shooter, is taking shape. Loughner, contrary to some pronouncements on and off the Internet, was not a right-wing, Tea Party acolyte of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. But interviews with former friends and acquaintances paint a portrait of a man with " ... nihilistic, almost indecipherable beliefs steeped in mistrust and paranoia," according to the AP. YouTube videos and his MySpace page contain rantings about the currency, poor ...

Jared Loughner Now, Timothy McVeigh Then
In 1995, the Internet was still trying to get its sea legs; it was nowhere near the force it has become today in getting information to the public. On April 19th of that year, 168 people were killed in Oklahoma City and a man named Timothy Mcveigh was largely responsible. Then president Bill Clinton resurrected his presidency by painting McVeigh as a Right Wing Extremist. Imagine if the Internet of today had been available then. Would Clinton have been able to pull off such a despicable smear ca...

American Renaissance, group rumored to share ties with Jared Loughner, to hold meeting in Charlotte
Fox News reported Sunday that based on information from the Department of Homeland Security, local authorities in Arizona were pursuing possible ties between Jared Loughner, the accused shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and the white supremacist group American Renaissance. That assertion was later amended by Fox, and, as a Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent Monday, the agency has yet to link American Renaissance to Loughner. American Renaissa...

If You See Somthing, Say Something
Jared Loughner's behavior recorded by college classmate in e-mails From the Washington Post: 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. Sorenson's e-mails to friends from la...

Terror in Arizona: Just another 'isolated incident'? Funny how that list keeps mounting
It's fundamental to their Psychology, as Digby often observes, for right-wingers to constantly portray themselves as Victims -- indeed, the American Right long ago mastered the art of flipping reality on its head and turning attempts to hold them accountable for their predilection for violence into a vicious and unfair attack on their honor -- of turning the perpetrators into Victims and the Victims into perpetrators. In 1870, it was the "bloody shirt". Today, in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffor...

DHS Denies Loughner/American Renaissance Connection
Yesterday, I posted about a report from Fox News that indicated they had learned through an internal DHS memo, that the  DHS was investigating a possible link between shooter Jared Loughner and a group called American Renaissance.  Read about that here. Today, the DHS has denied that claim according to this article by Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: For the last 24 hours, the Web has been alive with speculation that the Arizona shooter has some sort of ties to a right-wing group called ...

Democrats Scramble To Exploit the AZ Shooting With Anti-Gun And Anti-Speech Legislation
The nation is still reeling after the horrific Mass Shooting in Arizona this weekend, which left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life, multiple bystanders injured, and six dead, including a nine-year-old girl and a Federal Judge. People were clamoring for answers, and the left wasted no time blaming the tragedy on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Once the shooter was identified, it quickly became clear that Jared Lee Loughner was an anti-government, anti-religion nut with no discernible t...