ARIZONA: Tucson Tea Party Says It Won't Change Its Campaign Rhetoric

Filner Tries to Tie Popaditch Supporters to the Giffords Shooting
One of my favorite Candidates of this past cycle is Nick Popaditch; see more about him here, here, and here. He’s been dragged, unwillingly, into the Arizona shooting Controversy; the member of Congress he sought to defeat, California Democrat Bob Filner, has explicitly suggested that Tea Party Rhetoric influenced the Tucson shooter, despite the lack of evidence: “I will tell you that in a society we are not isolated, none of us is isolated. Yes, that guy may have acted alone but h...

Tucson Tea Party Leader Being Flooded With Death Threats Following Giffords Shooting
Nice work, Sheriff Dupnik. (TPM)- Trent Humphries, the leader of the largest Tea Party group in this mourning southern Arizona city, has nothing but praise for the way President Obama has led the nation through the aftermath of Saturday’s Mass Shooting at a constituent event for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). But Humphries won’t be there tonight when Obama speaks at a memorial rally intended to unify Tucson after six people were killed in the tragedy. Humphries says he’s ...

Systematic Assassinations Not Part Of Our Politics
The steam seems to be going out of the move to "deftly pin this" -- the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others -- "on the Tea Partiers," as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico. It has become obvious that the murderer was crazy, the follower of no political movement, motivated only by the bizarre ideas ricocheting through his head. If any blame attaches to others, it is to authorities who had notice of his madness and did not do enough to confine hi...

The Politics of Insinuation
David Warren: While it did not quite rise to a blood Libel, the headline in Monday's Guardian (U. K.) did not fail for want of trying: "Gabrielle Giffords shooting reignites row over right-wing Rhetoric in U.S." Elsewhere in the Guardian, the distance was bridged. Consider this heading (over a piece by Michael Tomasky): "In the U.S., where hate rules at the Ballot Box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time: The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of right...

Iowa politicos differ on impact of heated rhetoric
Iowa Democrats and Republicans have drawn very different conclusions about what role heated political discourse may have played in the Jan. 8 shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and what changes politicians might make in the way they communicate following that event. Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said politicians can’t control who hears what they say and how they react to it, but it is politicians’ responsibility to monitor what they say. “I think ...

Rand Paul: Democrats Trying To 'Manufacture' Controversy From Shooting In Arizona
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused Democrats Wednesday of attempting to "manufacture" the Controversy that has arisen over "vitriol" and political Rhetoric in the wake of the shooting in Tucson over the weekend. "Well, these are the kind of things that I think some on the left decided to manufacture even before the events occur. I mean, this is part of the playbook of Rahm Emanuel where they say any crisis should be used to their advantage to further their agenda," Paul said Wednesday on the FOX B...

Boehner Gives Tea Party The Middle Finger With RNC Endorsement
Democrats are criticizing Boehner for skipping Tucson to host an Endorsement party for Maria Cino in the race for the RNC Chair. They have something of a point. He could have gone to Arizona to foster a bi-partisan spirit at the event. But he would have been on the undercard. It was Obama's event, so I'm not certain he had to be there. But what he is doing by backing Cino out of cronyism is even worse. Senior Democrats - who to date had been impressed with Boehner’s response to...

Obama: We Can Do Better
Seeking to distance himself from the premature opportunism of the Far Left, U.S. President Barack Obama stuck to Centrist themes in addressing the Victims of last weekend’s tragic Tucson shooting - which left six people dead and fourteen (including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) wounded. “I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us,” Obama told a sellout crowd at ...

President Challenges Nation
In a moving tribute to the Victims of last Saturday's violence, President Barack Obama challenged Americans to live up to the "expectations of our Children". Using 9-year old Christina Taylor Green's untimely death as an inspiration, Obama bemoaned, "I want to live up to her expectations." The president's 34-minute Speech was delivered to a crowd of nearly 14,000 people at the University of Arizona's McKale Memorial Center. They had gathered for a memorial service dedicated to those who lost the...

How long will the detente last?
One side effect of the Shooting Spree in Arizona is the unspoken truce that’s been established between the party campaign committees in Washington. Excerpts of my story today: The daily barrage of Press Releases, slashing Rhetoric and bare-knuckle politics that typically marks the partisan work of the committees has been, for the most part, put on pause. In fact, the issue of electioneering and campaign Rhetoric is so sensitive at the m...

Poll: 53% Of Americans Say Critics Of Political Rhetoric Are Exploiting Tucson Tragedy
A couple of days ago CBS released a poll indicating that just 32% of Americans felt the Tucson shooter Jarred Loughner was motivated by politics. Overall, 57% felt that there was no connection between the shooting and politics, something even a plurality of 49% of Democrats agreed with. Now Gallup has findings that are similar, indicating that 53% feel those suggesting the Tucson tragedy was about political Rhetoric are just exploiting the tragedy. Also, a full 72% feel that stricter Gun Control...

Barack Obama Reconnects
Has there ever been a bigger contrast between crass and class than former Governor Sarah Palin’s video statement and Pres. Obama’s address at the Tucson memorial? Pres. Barack Obama gave the Speech he wanted to give to the nation last night, conjuring up memories of his 2004 Speech at the Democratic convention, as well as the reason Republicans crossed over to vote for him and Young People engaged to elect him. The atmosphere was a bit odd, the raucous, almost never ending applause m...

Would Congressman Bob Brady want to ban Angry Birds?
We've been hearing a lot of references in the media to an iPhone game called "Angry Birds". Thomas Drayton mentioned it in passing on the Fox 29 News a few days ago and it seems to keep coming up in discussions about cell phone apps and games in general. The Philadelphia Libertarian Examiner wouldn't dare say that we constantly read the pulse of Pop Culture - for most of Pop Culture these days is really mind-numbing drivel and quite annoying. However, we just had to ask the following question la...

Tea Party Express fundraises off reaction to Arizona shootings
Stumble This! A leading Tea Party group is raising funds based upon public reaction to the Tucson, Arizona shootings. In an e-mail sent to supporters Wednesday, the California-based conservative group Tea Party Express invoked the tragic shootings of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and nineteen others, asking for donations to fight back against liberals in the media who cite inflammatory right-wing Rhetoric as a possible instigator for such violence. "Instead of prayers for the Victims and their...

Palin getting death threats after libs attack
ABC News: An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska Governor's team has been talking to security professionals. Since the shooting in Tucson, Palin has taken much heat for her "crosshairs" map that targeted 20 congressional Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of Saturday's attack. Friends say Palin, a po...

The President's speech as consolation: Is that what is needed?
The president along with many others, like Daniel Hernandez, gave a beautiful, graceful Speech last night. It was a eulogy for those who died like the lovely 9 year old girl, Christina Taylor Green, we all would have wanted as our own. He eloquently evoked the child who skipped in puddles and yearned to be someone to make the world a better place like the woman she admired and came to see, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whom we all hope is valiantly beginning a recovery. Make the world a b...

Ex-girlfriend says Tucson shooting suspect changed
(01-13) 05:03 PST Tucson, Ariz. (AP) -- An ex-girlfriend of the suspect in Saturday's Mass Shooting in Tucson says he was a lot different than when they dated six years ago when both were in High School. Kelsey Hawkes was interviewed Thursday on CBS'"The Early Show" about Jared Loughner, whom she hasn't spoken to in five years. Hawkes says he was caring, sweet and kind when they went out, and she remembers his parents as being great. She says she never saw any violent tendencies in Loughner. H...

Democrats Ignore Obama's Advice on Civility
Never let a crisis go to waste (from the Daily Caller): 1.) Catty Hill Dems can't resist spinning a tragedy-- Here are two good ways to win votes and influence people: Hours after a national tragedy, phone a reporter and spin the event this way: The Obama White House "need[s] to deftly pin this on the tea partiers….Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the Militia and anti-government people.” When Pres. Obama instead says before a crowd in Tuc...

Using The Giffords Shooting To Destroy Free Speech
Now it is clear that Jared Loughner was stalking Gabrielle Giffords for years, long before Sarah Palin and her supposed “target” electoral map. Now it is clear that Loughner’s classmates were afraid of him months ago. One teacher wrote last summer: “Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.” A Student wrote: “He frightened the daylights out of me. I kept saying to people, ‘I’m afraid he’s going ...

Why the Left Lost It: Most Important Article You Will Read Today
This is an absolutely perfect analysis of why the Left went so overboard in politicizing the Assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and why they surpassed the disgusting “Paul Wellstone” moments of the past in their zeal to attack Governor Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck in the wake of this tragedy:  “Why the Left Lost It” by Daniel Henninger. It is a must read. (1) Leftist writers like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Jonathan Alter, and the ...

On the Origins of Delusion
(The) available evidence dates Loughner’s fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: “I hate Presiden...

Politicizing the Tucson Tragedy Not Without Precedent
Within minutes of the revelation that Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona had been shot while attending a public event in Tucson, political partisans and their media counterparts began to assign blame for the tragedy to the supposedly dangerous Rhetoric fomented by Tea Party groups and their ideological brethren. Although without facts in hand, partisans were unable to restrain themselves from leaping to conclusions that ostensibly validated their preconceived notions of cause and eff...

The Morning Plum
* After Obama's Speech: The President's speech last night, in which he eloquently called for healing, civility and national unity in the wake of the Arizona killings, has been rightly hailed on all sides. He managed to call for us all to tone down the political discourse without appearing political, tackling large themes in plain, emotionally accessible language. In a remarkably agile way, the speech implicitly bridged the gap between both sides of the argument over the meaning of the shooting...

Did 'blood libel' hurt Palin for president?
Will Sarah Palin's use of the term "blood Libel" hurt her chances if she decides to run for president in 2012? That is the question being debated in political circles and the answers are mixed. Palin attracted Controversy by accusing her critics, particularly in the News Media, of committing "blood Libel" by blaming incendiary political Rhetoric by her and other Conservatives for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. A new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds a majority of those surveyed say the idea ...

Gun control? Civility? My Predictions
Nothing will happen. I anticipate we will see reduced restrictions on Gun Control actually, as the NRA and its allies push back against the Tucson tragedy. That means no laws requiring gun registration, closing private sale and gun show Loopholes, reinstating the ban on extended clips, eliminating open carry laws, better Background Checks, etc. That's just not the way gun proponents roll, regardless of the tragedy. After all Columbine had no effect, nor did the Virginia Tech shooter. Why shoul...