US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Shot, Six Die

[Louis VI the Fat]

Giffords' tea party-backed opponent, Jesse Kelly, held a fundraiser at a shooting range in which he invited supporters to "help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office" by shooting an M-16 rifle with him. Sarah Palin posted the map above during the midterm election, with crosshairs used to mark each congressional Democrat she wanted to defeat, along with a frequent use of shooting metaphors.

Can one flippantly talk about 'reloading' and putting people on your target list and not expect some unhinged nut to take you literally?

I accuse the Tea Party for its inflammatory rhetoric. And I accuse gun obsession. You reap what you sow.

Authorities are seeking a second person in connection with the shooting in Tucson Saturday that killed six people and wounded a dozen others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Police have one suspect in custody, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, whom they believe was the gunman. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said authorities believe another individual may have been involved.

"We're not convinced he acted alone," Dupnik said of the suspect in custody. "There's some reason to believe that he came to this location with another individual."
He declined to offer details.

Earlier in the day, the surgeon who operated on Giffords said he was "optimistic" she would recover. She was shot in the head at point-blank range, according to witness accounts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

[a completely inoffensive name]

"We’re on Sarah Palin’s ‘targeted’ list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize that there are consequences to that action." -U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, March 25, 2010

[Yoyoma1910]

Sad and disgusting.

[bobbin]

Having seen his youtube channel I don't really think he was influenced by the Palin/Teabagger rhetoric.
He doesn't make any sense and goes on about "new currency" and "grammar", it doesn''t look like someone with a specific hate for the Democrats, he say some vaguely anti government things but they seem to be about government in general.

[naut]

Having seen his youtube channel I don't really think he was influenced by the Palin/Teabagger rhetoric.
He doesn't make any sense and goes on about "new currency" and "grammar", it doesn''t look like someone with a specific hate for the Democrats, he say some vaguely anti government things but they seem to be about government in general.

Hmm. Seems he's a nutjob who attacked his local "government official". So to a degree I'd have to agree.

[Louis VI the Fat]

He doesn't make any sense and goes on about "new currency" and "grammar", it doesn''t look like someone with a specific hate for the Democrats, he say some vaguely anti government things but they seem to be about government in general.

'New Currency' drivel seems to be a thingy from the more obscure wings of the Tea Party movement.

Command Centre 'For God and Country': http://teapartyvets.ning.com/forum/topics/not-just-if-but-when-our



The shooter is not a Tea Party activist per se. No more than an Islamic terrorist is an Islamic theologist per se. It is about inspiration, about inflammatory rhetoric, about an extremist climate, about delusions of martydom and revenge. When you are repeatedly told in an agitated tone that some people are pigs/socialists responsible for the destruction of your way of life, that they ought to be stopped by violent means, then invariably some loser without a life will take it all literally and seek his revenge.

Also, what is it with young suicidal men? If you are a loser just do the honourable thing and jump in front of a train, alright? You are not any less of a loser by killing others as you go down.

[Beskar]

Wouldn't have happened if it weren't for those pesky guns!

[PanzerJaeger]

The shooter is not a Tea Party activist per se.

Really? That's not at all how your opening post spun it. You could have fooled me with that graphic of Sarah with an AR. It made it seem like, ya know, there was a direct connection between the two.

Is there any evidence, any at all, that suggests the shooter was motivated in any way by Sarah Palin's website?

High school classmates just expressed shock to the Star. One woman who said she went to high school with him, and was his friend and bandmate, Caitie Parker, recalled him as "left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy."

[Louis VI the Fat]

Really? That's not at all how your opening post spun it. You could have fooled me with that graphic of Sarah with an AR. It made it seem like, ya know, there was a direct connection between the two.

Is there any evidence, any at all, that suggests the shooter was motivated in any way by Sarah Palin's website?

The shooter was a liberal as a juvenile. As an adult he radicalised to become an anti-government extremist. Why don't you moderates speak out against this extremism instead?

Not every Islamic suicide bomber needs to have steeped out of a mosque five minutes earlier, or even be a pious man. Nor does every extreme anti-governement nutter need to be a paying member of some Tea Party club or Rocky Mountain militia.

In the 1960s/70s the west was plagued by leftist terrorism. This existed in an atmosphere of Communist agitation, of constant questioning of the validity of the capitalist sytem. In the past fifteen years, in America, terrorism has been inspired by the extreme right and by anti-government agitation.


Giffords has been under serious threat ever since the Teas Party started its campaign of extremist anti-government agitation. As have been many other politicians. If one takes half of what is shouted by the Tea Party seriously, then it would be the duty of every American to rise up in arms against his government. Fortunately, most people do not take it seriously. But it only is a matter of time before some unhinged nutter does think it is all for real.

The shocking shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has Washington and the nation reeling, but the threat of violence is nothing new to the rising young star of the Arizona delegation. The Arizona representative was among several members of Congress whose vote in favor of Obama's health care legislation sparked vandalism and threats by opponents of the bill.

Just a few hours after legislators - including Giffords - voted to approve Obama's controversial health care bill in March 2009, the front door of Giffords' office in Tuscon was smashed in by vandals.
Last August, Giffords aides called the police after a man dropped a gun at a similar town hall style event at a Safeway.

She was among at least 10 congressional Democrats who expressed concern about their personal security in the face of anonymous threats after voting in support of the health bill.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Can one flippantly talk about 'reloading' and putting people on your target list and not expect some unhinged nut to take you literally?

I accuse the Tea Party for its inflammatory rhetoric. And I accuse gun obsession. You reap what you sow.

What a crock. Inflammatory rhetoric? Tell me where they called for harming democrats.

For too long politicians have tried to silence people speaking against them by accusing them of encouraging violence through their speech. And now you seem to say small government supporters ought to just shut up because otherwise they're supporting violence.

This suspect seems crazy in the literal sense of the word. I feel I should remind you of what John Stewart has said about this, as it's relevant;

“Guns are not the problem … crazy is the problem” to thunderous applause from Oprah’s audience. You may watch the relevant excerpts in the attached video, but he goes on to make a truly profound statement; “We cannot legislate our society to the craziest amongst us.”

What you, sir, are trying to do is politicize the tragic acts of a madman to push back against a political group.

After the inspiring words of Charlton Heston explaining why we should not allow tragedies to drive us into abandoning the fundamental freedoms that define us as a nation and which bind us together as a people, Stewart admitted to having been one of those who called for the convention to be cancelled and then he did an astonishing thing. He apologized.

He said the apology was for “connecting irresponsibly the actions of two psychotics to an entire group of reasonable people expressing their Constitutional rights... the point is, I was wrong and Heston was right.”

In the past fifteen years, in America, terrorism has been inspired by the extreme right and by anti-government agitation.

Not a big fan of news or history, hmm?

CR

[Louis VI the Fat]

For too long politicians have tried to silence people speaking against them by accusing them of encouraging violence through their speech.


This suspect seems crazy in the literal sense of the word.

a madman

Surely the principle of incitement to violence itself is not in dispute? If an Imam calls for the destruction of the Great Satan, and then some of his listeners take the message literally and fly a plane intoa bulding, then surely we recognise that there has been an instigation of violence through speech?


As for the killer being 'a madman', 'crazy in the literal sense of the word' - he legally obtained the firearms he used. Something is amiss there, somewhere. Either we are not protected from complete loons aquiring legal firearms, or the guy is not a complete loon, but capable of some understanding of what he is doing and why for.

Here is what Sarah Palin said on the Facebook page where she depicted Gabrielle Giffords in the cross hairs of a rifle scope: "Don't retreat! Instead - RELOAD!" Well, the guy who shot Giffords yesterday managed to keep firing until he killed six, including a child, and wounded 13 .

Palin would no doubt say that she was only speaking in metaphor, that she only meant her followers should work to unseat Giffords and 19 other Democrats who had roused her ire by voting for health care. But anyone with any sense at all knows that violent language can incite actual violence, that metaphor can incite murder. At the very least, Palin added to a climate of violence.

Palin should have taken it as a warning of what might happen when a Tea Party hothead dropped a gun while heckling Giffords at an earlier Congress On Your Corner event, more than a year ago. That did not stop Palin from declaring Giffords a "target." Giffords' district office was subsequently vandalized, and the congresswoman noted that Palin had put "the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district."

"When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action," Giffords said.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...#ixzz1AXCJHoNX

[Fragony]

Really sinister, reminds me of Fortuyn, the call to remove him from society was worded pretty much the same, doubt he had that in mind though. RIP I hope she didn't suffer all to much but I heard it took a while. Nasty this, very. If you have to use violence you never had a point

edit, how the hell did forgot to mention the other victims, terrible tragedy

[Louis VI the Fat]

Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11.
http://www.amazon.com/Faces-Hope-Bab.../dp/0757300979


Faces of Hope is a photobook of American children who were born on 9-11, 2001. The nine year old girl who was killed in the shooting was one of them.

A sad, cruel and ironic twist. The hope, the innocence this girl represented, shot to pieces in the America she grew up in. Some loon who could buy all the arms he needed to fight his government, ended up killing a girl born on 9-11 in a brutal homegrown terrorist attack.

As they say, life is more absurd than literature. It feels like something out of Garcia Marquez, twists as one encounters them in Latin American surrealist literature.

[Fragony]

That's a bit tasteless Louis, this isn't about gun laws, I can get you an AK47 for 300

update: this is the killer's youtube input https://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=7...embedded#at=40

[PanzerJaeger]

Not every Islamic suicide bomber needs to have steeped out of a mosque five minutes earlier, or even be a pious man. Nor does every extreme anti-governement nutter need to be a paying member of some Tea Party club or Rocky Mountain militia.

Actually most (all) Islamic terrorists make their faith a large part of their identity, which leads us back to the my original question. Is there any evidence that Sarah Palin had anything to do with the motivation behind this shooting? It has been over 24 hours now and the shooter was active on the internet; certainly something would have emerged.

And if you think about it, such a motive makes little sense. The election has already been held, the Republicans won big, and the congresswoman was rebuked. If the shooter was a Tea Partier, he is very late to the party.

What is really disgusting about this incident (apart from the actual shooting) has been how quickly the Left has jumped to use it in an attempt to validate their rhetoric about the Tea Party. As in this thread, feigned sympathy for the victims masking cheap political point scoring.

[Hosakawa Tito]

From what little has been written about the suspect so far, he appears to be suffering from schizophrenia. Arizona Suspect's Recent Acts Offer Hints of Alienation.

“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. “I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive.”

Here's an article in the Wall Street Journal about the suspect. I copy and pasted the text as y'all might have to register to read it from a link.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

.
Text By CHARLES FORELLE, ANN ZIMMERMAN And ALEXANDRA BERZON
TUCSON, Ariz.—In high school, Jared Lee Loughner was a scrawny kid with a bushy mop of curly hair under the hood of a gray sweatshirt, a saxophone player at football games who jammed with a friend's garage band.

More recently, in a series of videos he posted on YouTube, Mr. Loughner, now 22 years old, rages against the government and the constitution and refers to himself as a "terrorist."

Jared Lee Loughner, the man suspected of a shooting spree that killed a Federal Judge and critically wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had left a trail of online videos in which he railed against the government. WSJ's Neil Hickey reports.
.Then, a few minutes after 10 a.m. Saturday morning, authorities say Mr. Loughner, armed with a semiautomatic pistol fitted with an extended magazine, shot 19 people, killing six, in the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket a few miles from his parents' home just north of this desert city.

Among the severely wounded was his apparent target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a 40-year-old Tucson Democrat in her third term.

Interviews with Mr. Loughner's friends and former classmates, as well as a review of his copious and bizarre online activity, describe a young man who fell into disturbing and erratic behavior.

In his freshman and sophomore years at Mountain View High School, Mr. Loughner flew under the radar. "All he did was play video games and play music," says Tommy Marriotti, a friend from those days.

Mr. Marriotti says much of his free time was devoted to the school band. He was not especially political, Mr. Marriotti said, though he expressed frustration with the Bush Administration.

Christina Lunderberg, 21, a bandmate of Mr Loughner's in high school, said he was a proficient saxophone player. "He was really good and talented and arrogant," Ms. Lunderberg said.

"No one really noticed him," other than his shock of bushy hair, said Josh Hatten, a classmate from elementary, middle school and high school.

By junior year, Mr. Loughner had changed. He used drugs, Mr. Marriotti said, and his grades slumped to the point that he talked about withdrawing from school. He didn't make it back for his senior year.

In 2007, the year he would have graduated high school, Mr. Loughner was arrested in Pima County and charged with drug possession and paraphernalia, according to court records. His case was "dismissed with prejudice."

He turned up at Pima Community College, where he took occasional classes. Once, Mr. Marriotti got an instant message from Mr. Loughner in which he said he was exercising and thinking of joining the military. He asked if Mr. Marriotti wanted to go for a jog. Mr. Marriotti said Mr. Lougher worked at an Eddie Bauer store in a Tucson mall and drove a late-60s Chevy Nova.

At Pima Mr. Loughner had five contacts with college police for library and classroom disruptions at two separate campuses, Pima Community College said in a statement. The college police also found a film made on campus and posted online saying the college was "illegal." In one video on YouTube, Mr. Loughner hints that he was a student at Pima and was ushered off the campus for protesting by the campus police.

At a news conference Saturday, the Pima County sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, minced few words: "There is reason to believe this individual may have a mental issue," he said.

The college confirmed that Mr. Loughner was a student there from 2005 through last October, when he was suspended "for violating the Student Code of Conduct," Rachelle Howell, a spokeswoman for the school, wrote in an email message. The college said Mr. Loughner voluntarily withdrew from the college in October.

By 8:30 p.m., Saturday, police and federal agents had cordoned off the road leading to a house on Soledad Ave. where neighbors said Mr. Loughner lived with his parents. Under floodlights, officials set up a table in the street to collect evidence and called a locksmith to open a safe in the house.

But much evidence of Mr. Loughner's behavior is online, in his videos. The short clips are well made but hard to comprehend. He doesn't appear in any of them and never cites any specific grievances.

In one video, Mr. Loughner says he is an Army recruit at Military Entrance Processing Center in Phoenix. The U.S. Army confirmed that Mr. Loughner tried to join the Army, but was rejected.

"He attempted to enlist in the Army but was rejected for service," an Army spokesman said. The spokesman said that in accordance with the Privacy Act he couldn't discuss why Mr. Loughner was rejected.

In recent months, he appeared to get more active with his video posts, a month ago uploading a video entitled "This Student At Pima Community College; An Unconstitutional Crime," in which he claims he is a victim of fraud for paying for an education he did not receive. In another video, he burns a flag and writes: "If there's no flag in the constitution then the flag in the film is unknown." He exhorts viewers to: "Burn your flag!"

In yet another video, he writes: "Current government officials are in power for their currency, but I'm informing you for your new currency!" He adds that his hope is for viewers to be "literate! The majority of people, who reside in District-8, are illiterate—hilarious. I don't control your English grammar structure, but you control your English grammar structure."

In a video called "How to: Mind Controller," he proclaims: "I'm able to control every belief and religion by being the mind controller!"

In the last video, uploaded to the Website on Dec. 15 and titled "Final Thoughts," Mr. Loughner calls himself a terrorist—"a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon." The video's rambling prose appears on the screen, while music plays in the background. He doesn't appear in any of them.

"You don't have to accept the Federalist laws," one passage reads. "Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."

The video concludes: "The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar."

—John Emshwiller and Peter Sanders contributed to this article.

[Fragony]

So much for that as it seems right now, but clumsy rethoric, yes. Stupid people do stupid things, mind your words it's dangerous as idiots will actually see it as a cause. That target map in OP, what the hell were they thinking, so very very dumb

[Beskar]

Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11.
http://www.amazon.com/Faces-Hope-Bab.../dp/0757300979


Faces of Hope is a photobook of American children who were born on 9-11, 2001. The nine year old girl who was killed in the shooting was one of them.

A sad, cruel and ironic twist. The hope, the innocence this girl represented, shot to pieces in the America she grew up in. Some loon who could buy all the arms he needed to fight his government, ended up killing a girl born on 9-11 in a brutal homegrown terrorist attack.

As they say, life is more absurd than literature. It feels like something out of Garcia Marquez, twists as one encounters them in Latin American surrealist literature.

I love this post. Great rhetoric.

[Rhyfelwyr]

What is all the stuff about "grammar" supposed to mean?

I think it couldn't be clearer the guy was mental and I don't see any signs of inspiration from Palin or the Tea Party in what I've read of him.

All we know of his political views is that he was once a leftist. And that he came to be anti-government.

Anti-government leftists? Sounds like some people on this forum!

Now we can all tarnish them through guilt by association...

[Fragony]

I love this point. Great rhetoric.

I don't, it's cheap to look for any significance in what is a pretty cruel end to her life. She never had to do anything with everything, why use her for it, she's not an argument she just was born on 9/11, so don't use her like one. It isn't clever it isn't ironic, she's just dead

[Furunculus]

even zee germans are saying its daft for the left to blame palin for this (tho it comes across as tactical advice for the yank left):
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...738627,00.html

plus the telegraph post again, as it says everything that needs saying:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The unseemly rush to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Republicans for murder in Arizona

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, by all accounts an outstanding public servant and person, is battling for her life in hospital after being shot by a 22-year-old man at close range at a “Congress On Your Corner” event in her home district. Six people are dead, including a judge and a girl of nine, and a dozen others are being treated for their wounds.

It is, as President Barack Obama said, an “unspeakable tragedy”. It is also, as he added, “a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society”. That much we know and the President wisely did not seek to make political capital out of the carnage or jump to conclusions about the motivations of the gunman, named as Jared Loughner.

That, of course, hasn’t stopped some on the Left clamouring to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party or Republicans in general for what happened.

Paul Krugman of the “New York Times” suggests darkly that Giffords was shot because she was “a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona” and “violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate” (those reponsible for such a climate being, of course, Republicans).

TBogg of FireDogLake wades straight in and blames Sarah Palin for the shooting because of a graphic of crosshairs placed on the districts of moderate Democrats who voted for healthcare reform. Was the Palin graphic clever? No. But martial imagery is standard political fare and, as Matt Lewis points out, there’s no shortage of Democrats who’ve engaged in it (VerumSerum has found a Democratic Leadership Committee target map).

Jane Fonda pins it on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party.

Even the local sheriff (a Democrat) has been getting in on the act. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik (a Democrat) said:

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

Well, we’ll see. Personally, I’d be more reassured by a sheriff who concentrated on facts rather than over-heated, sweeping generalisations.

So what are the facts we know so far? From what we know about Loughner, he was a deeply disturbed young man who railed about literacy rates, spoke of flag burning and creating a new currency.

Former classmates talk of “nonsensical outbursts” and a person “on his own planet”. His favourite reading apparently included “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto”. My colleague Jon Swaine has a summary here of the raving of a person who most people would judge to be a complete nutcase even if he hadn’t gone out and shot people.

Oh, and another former classmate said he was “left wing, quite liberal”. Naturally, this doesn’t stop Jacob Heilbrunn, pontificating that the shootings are evidence of that the “radical right is becoming even more radicalised and violent”.

Ben Smith sums up the current picture of Loughner pretty well:

The obsession with the gold standard and the hostility to the federal government resonate with the far right, the burned American flag with the left, but the discussion of mind control and grammar sound more like mental illness than politics.

This is highly inconvenient for certain people on the Left so they ignore it. They would much prefer the shooter to have been a white male in his 50s, the description the sheriff gave of a second person of interest (we’ll see if such a person materialises) but they’ll still try to make hay with a weirdo like Loughner.

Giffords herself doesn’t quite fit the likely victim of an enraged Right-winger. She is a Blue Dog Democrat, a deficit hawk and voted to lift the ban on guns in DC and voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. On Thursday, she took part in the reading of the Constitution in the House, reading aloud the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, speech and peaceful assembly.

She’s certainly not the “progressive” that Hanoi Jane tweeted about and provoked as much anger on the Left as on the Right for her political stances. Just the other day, a blogger at DailyKos said that Giffords was “dead to me” for failing to back Pelosi.

Plenty more will emerge in the coming days about Loughner’s motivations and those of any accomplice. It seems certain that the attempted assassination was politically motivated but in exactly what way is, at this stage, very murky.

This is a time for sombre reflection and a calming (rather than an escalation) of rhetoric. Sadly, however, some see it as another opportunity to score political points and vilify those they hate.

[Louis VI the Fat]

What is really disgusting about this incident (apart from the actual shooting) has been how quickly the Left has jumped to use it in an attempt to validate their rhetoric about the Tea Party. As in this thread, feigned sympathy for the victims masked cheap political point scoring.

Genuine outrage, PJ.

The Backroom lacks a search function. I would like to link here to the 'Obama' thread(?), where Banquo and I repeatedly and to some lenght shared our sentiment that we thought that a great many things openly said in US politics are tantamount to treason and sedition.


Political climate is important. It can kill people.

Which begs the question: 'If that is so, silly Louis, then how come all those millions of armed and apparantly easily excitable Tea Party'ers do not kill, save for one (two?) lunatic?'
Well, that is because the link is not that causal. One is not turned from a sane, law-abiding citizen into a murderer by a few Palin bumper stickers. The killer did not decide on his act after careful political delibiration. I think that this man could just as easily have gone on a shooting rampage on his college. It is not the political climate that made him mental, it is what made him chose a political target. And perhaps, just maybe, gave him that final bit of assurance he needed to self-justify his act.

Why are gays and blacks beaten up in the Moscow underground, but not in the Paris and London ones? Is it owing to individual tastes? Or should one look at broader sociological context, regard it in the context of homophobia and racism, a culture of hate? Why do desperate lonely man commit suicide in Japan, but go on a killing spree in the West? And why do women never do sthis stuff? It is all not a matter of individuals, but of sociological phenomena.

[Lemur]

The Congresswoman sounds like a very sane, very levelheaded person. A loss to our country.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I've been saying Ave's for those killed and maimed by this. It is a horrible thing and something of which we should be ashamed.


So far, the dead include the above-mentioned innocent little girl -- my daughter turns 9 today, so I am not far removed from that sense of pain -- along with a 63-year old Federal Judge, a 30-something Giffords staffer who recently got engaged, and three grandmom-types in their 70s.

The Congresswoman is given a fair chance to survive, though nobody is willing to estimate the amount of brain damage. The bullet entered her left temple area and exited from the top left portion of her forehead. Nobody knows what other damage from internal friction and hydrosshock effect may have (or will soon) occur. She responded to the presence of her husband in the hospital, but cannot speak.

Pictures of the shopping area are chilling in their normality. This shopping center could have been picked up and dropped in virtually any suburb or urban area in the USA without anyone noticing. We have all driven by or shopped at hundreds more or less exactly like it.



Politics is a dangerous business in a country that allows all a voice and allows all weapons. From those who signed our Declaration to the present day, our leaders have always paid a price for those freedoms we hold dear.

Five signers of the Declaration were hanged as traitors (roughly 1 in 11).

Four Presidents have been assassinated while in office: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy (1 in 11).

Attempted assassinations were made on: Reagan, Carter, Ford, Truman, and FDR; other plots/attempts were headed off by good protection efforts: Nixon, LBJ, others? Several leading candidates for the Presidency have been shot, notably Roosevelt, RFK, and Wallace.

Over our history, 3 Congresspersons have been assassinated (including RFK above) while in office, 2 have been murdered (one by his son, one in Guyana), 1 died in a hunting accident, and 3 more died as the result of a duel.

Dueling also ended the life of Alexander Hamilton.


Politics in the USA has always beeng fractious -- and at times highly so. Violence has always been a component of our society. Political freedom as we enact it has never been obtained for free. The price continues to conform to that acknowledged in the closing of our Declaration. While we would prefer to see the tree watered only with the blood of tyrants, Jefferson was correct in noting the real price of that tree's flourishing.

[Husar]

And what about the 6 people who died? Collateral damage? Not important?

Why does it always seem like the single congresswoman was/is more valuable as a human being than the six people who died?
Or is that just my impression?

I know she's a politician but the news coverage reminds me of this: http://www.theonion.com/video/beyonc...sly-hit,14162/

[Ronin]

Genuine outrage, PJ.

The Backroom lacks a search function. I would like to link here to the 'Obama' thread(?), where Banquo and I repeatedly and to some lenght shared our sentiment that we thought that a great many things openly said in US politics are tantamount to treason and sedition.


Political climate is important. It can kill people.

Which begs the question: 'If that is so, silly Louis, then how come all those millions of armed and apparantly easily excitable Tea Party'ers do not kill, save for one (two?) lunatic?'
Well, that is because the link is not that causal. One is not turned from a sane, law-abiding citizen into a murderer by a few Palin bumper stickers. The killer did not decide on his act after careful political delibiration. I think that this man could just as easily have gone on a shooting rampage on his college. It is not the political climate that made him mental, it is what made him chose a political target. And perhaps, just maybe, gave him that final bit of assurance he needed to self-justify his act.

Why are gays and blacks beaten up in the Moscow underground, but not in the Paris and London ones? Is it owing to individual tastes? Or should one look at broader sociological context, regard it in the context of homophobia and racism, a culture of hate? Why do desperate lonely man commit suicide in Japan, but go on a killing spree in the West? And why do women never do sthis stuff? It is all not a matter of individuals, but of sociological phenomena.

QFT.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

And what about the 6 people who died? Collateral damage? Not important?

Why does it always seem like the single congresswoman was/is more valuable as a human being than the six people who died?
Or is that just my impression?

I live in a country where the 30 minutes of national new broadcast follows then 30 minutes of local news broadcast and both are followed by an hour's worth of celebrity "news" broadcasting. Of COURSE its the Congressperson who is getting the headlines. That's been human nature for years. We have a painting of Marat dead in his tub, but nobody bothered to paint a final portrait of anybody else murdered in that city that year -- human nature at work here Husar. You lament our mis-ordered priorities (and they are) but you're tilting at windmills.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Surely the principle of incitement to violence itself is not in dispute? If an Imam calls for the destruction of the Great Satan, and then some of his listeners take the message literally and fly a plane intoa bulding, then surely we recognise that there has been an instigation of violence through speech?

It certainly is in dispute. Show me where Sarah Palin or some other politician incited people to violence. A clumsy graphic design is not incitement to violence. If you're going to compare this to Imams calling for the destruction of the great satan, though show an equivalent example.

Instead what you are trying to do, as I said before, is to use this tragedy to silence political opposition. Politicians and activists of all stripes use inflammatory rhetoric. Such things have been said for years, and they weren't a problem, because most people aren't crazy and understand no one was calling for violence.

It is increasingly obvious this man was not a tea party supporter. And yet you would use his actions to condemn an entire group of people for speaking against the scale of government, and would have us believe that to criticize the government is to call for the killing of people.

Instead, everyone who disagrees is expected to do so mutely and without opposition.

Nuts to that, I say.

CR

[Fragony]

To be fair it is, they are marked as targets. This really shouldn't have happened, it isn't just clumsy, intentional meh let the loonies think that, but stupid yes and not a little bit stupid, but very very stupid

[HoreTore]

This is the very definition of terrorism.