Antidotes to political alienation

Jacob Volkmann Regrets Obama Comment In Wake Of Arizona Shooting
Jacob Volkmann, the mixed-martial arts fighter who said last week he wanted to "knock some sense into that idiot" Barack Obama, told HuffPost on Wednesday that he regretted the comment in light of the Saturday Assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) that left six people dead. "I would never make that comment if that shooting happened first," said Volkmann, 30. The Arizona shooting has resulted in widespread, and sometimes Controversial, calls for toned-down political rheto...

The Political Consequences of Violence
I believe that The New Yorker’s George Packer has mistaken the meaning of a line in my column this week. He writes: Douthat wrote, in the spirit of phony equivalence, “If overheated Rhetoric and martial imagery really led inexorably to Murder, then both parties would belong in the dock,” but also this: “the Attempted Murder of a Democratic congresswoman is a potential gift to Liberalism.” In other words, everyone goes over the line now and then, no one actually want...

Some historical perspective on political civility
In the aftermath of the attempted Assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), there has been near-hysteria about the tenor of our political culture. Has the inflammatory Rhetoric gone too far? Is there too much vitriol in American politics? Is the Tea Party movement to blame? This entire pointed conversation about our current state of political affairs — spearheaded largely by the American left —reveals a serious lack of self-reflection or historical perspective. For those who feel...

Sarah Palin's 'blood libel' blunder | Peter Beaumont
The sense of victimhood of the Tea Party and its fellow travellers should now be well known. It was Glenn Beck, after all - the man who accused America's first African American president of being "Racist" - who last year told a rally of his followers in Washington that they had taken on the mantle of the Civil Rights movement. Now Sarah Palin, former vice Presidential Candidate, has repeated this same repellent inversion, accusing those who criticised her for her violent political rh...

Does Moderation Work?
In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday. Tags: Gabrielle Giffords, Tucson shooting Susan Walsh/Associated PressGabrielle Giffords, a moderate in the most immoderate state in the union. Gail Collins: David, we can’t not talk about the shootings in Tucson. I know you’ve been wanting a more moderate and sane political dialogue. But I am sorry to admit that one of my thoughts is that the aftermath of Tucson proves h...

Lee Harvey Who?
**Written by Doug Powers From Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Huffington Post column about JFK’s Assassination: Jack had received myriad warnings against visiting the right-wing Texas City. Indeed, there had been a sense of foreboding even within our family as he and Aunt Jackie prepared for the trip. Jack made an unscheduled trip to Cape Cod to say goodbye to my ailing grandfather. The night before the trip, Mummy found Jack distant and brooding at a dinner for the Supreme Court Justices....

The Black-Jewish Alliance
Martin Luther King (center) and Abraham Joshua Heschel (second from right) at the 1965 Selma march. As Martin Luther King Day approaches and as we prepare for the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights movement’s seminal moments—beginning, this year, with the semicentennial of the first Freedom Rides—Sue Fishkoff has a typically excellent retrospective that reminds us of the outsize role both Jews generally and Jewish clergy especially played. (A quick way to remember this is t...

Westboro Baptist Church Agrees Not to Protest 9-Year-Olds Funeral
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 By Staff, Associated Press Kansas City, Mo. (AP) - A Kansas church has decided to not Protest at the Funeral of a 9-year-old girl killed in a shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz. Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka says church members will skip Thursday's Funeral of Christina Taylor Green in Tucson. Phelps-Roper says the church decided against the picket in exchange for airtime with 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, Canada, and an interview with K...

Gabrielle Giffords Shooting: Jared Loughner May Have Been Influenced by Occult
© Splash A macabre 'altar' in the backyard of Tucson shooter Jared Loughner In messages left on the Internet before the shooting Loughner, 22, revealed himself to be a social outcast with paranoid, nihilistic beliefs and a fixation with grammar. At a public meeting with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords three years ago he asked: "What is government if it doesn't exist?" It left the politician baffled. According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a US Civil Rights group, Loughner's lang...

Church Agrees Not to Protest Funeral
KANSAS CITY - A Kansas church has decided to not Protest at the Funeral of a 9-year-old girl killed in a shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz. Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka says church members will skip Thursday's Funeral of Christina Taylor Green in Tucson. Phelps-Roper says the church decided against the picket in exchange for airtime with 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, Canada, and an interview with KXXT-AM in Phoenix, Ariz. on Saturday morning. Phelps-Roper says the gr...

Pope Benedict set to beatify John Paul II
Vatican City | Wed Jan 12, 2011 12:39pm EST Vatican City (Reuters) - Former Pope John Paul II will move a step closer to sainthood this week when his successor Pope Benedict approves the case for his beatification, Vatican sources said Wednesday. In "a few days" the Vatican's Prefect for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato, is expected present Benedict with the evidence that John Paul performed a miracle and should be beatified, one source said. At that point Benedict is expected to a...

Boehner to toast RNC members in Wednesday night reception
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will join members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) at a reception Wednesday evening. The Republican Speaker will attend a reception with RNC members in an event several days before committee members vote on choosing a new chairman. "Speaker Boehner will attend an organizational meeting with RNC members this evening, but will leave before the president’s Speech begins," said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Boehner's political organization.  The recep...

Disruptive Arizona suspect axed from online group
Singapore (Reuters) - The Arizona man accused of a Killing Spree that targeted a U.S. congresswoman was kicked out of an Internet gaming group last year in part due to statements that other members found disruptive and disturbing. "Wondering why i feel hate," Jared Loughner wrote in an Internet chatroom. "You know like when you sit there and you feel tingles of hate. ... like you did something wrong." His online chat sessions were available to members of the online gaming group, of which I am a...

Obama, Gillibrand en route to Tucson for memorial
President Obama and a delegation of lawmakers jetted off to Arizona Wednesday afternoon for a memorial service for the Victims killed during the Assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a close Capitol Hill pal of Giffords, joined Obama aboard Air Force One. The groups of lawmakers, which included Giffords' friends and her fellow Arizona reps, planned to first visit her at the Hospital, where she's being treated for a gunshot wound to the head. "We ma...

John Boehner Cries About Giffords, Heads Over To Cocktail Party
The House was supposed to get down to the very important business of passing a Repeal of ObamaCare that will never get approved by the Senate or president, but unfortunately, an actual event got in the way of their puppet show: Gabrielle Giffords was shot. So now everyone is just sort of hanging around getting paid to really do nothing, instead of doing things that equate to nothing. The House did come together today, though, to finally get around to passing a resolution about this shooting. BRE...

Loughner Was Stopped, Warned About Running Red Light Saturday Morning
What is this? Neighbors watch the media outside the Loughner home in Tucson. Neighbors watch the media outside the Loughner home in Tucson. "A wildlife officer pulled over the suspect in the Assassination attempt against an Arizona congresswoman less than three hours before the deadly attack," the Associated Press writes. "Jared Loughner ran a red light but was let off with a warning at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, the Arizona Game and Fish Department said. The officer took Loughner's driver's license an...

Loughner Was Stopped, Warned About Running Red Light Saturday Morning
What is this? Neighbors watch the media outside the Loughner home in Tucson. Neighbors watch the media outside the Loughner home in Tucson. "A wildlife officer pulled over the suspect in the Assassination attempt against an Arizona congresswoman less than three hours before the deadly attack," the Associated Press writes. "Jared Loughner ran a red light but was let off with a warning at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, the Arizona Game and Fish Department said. The officer took Loughner's driver's license an...

Apocalyptic Rhetoric
The Rhetoric of violence is not the only kind of Rhetoric that encourages violence. The apocalyptic Rhetoric we’ve seen from some on the right, most notably Glenn Beck, should be part of this discussion too. When Beck portrays Barack Obama as the head of a Socialist/Communist/Nazi Conspiracy whose goal is the literal destruction of America, he is implicitly encouraging violence. If that really were the nature of the administration, and our liberty really were on the verge of being snuffed ...

The Right Word: Fox and inflammatory rhetoric | Sadhbh Walshe
Rightwing talkshow hosts were horrified by the Arizona massacre - and by the allegations that their fiery Rhetoric may have somehow influenced the shooter. O'Reilly is convinced that the attack was simply the work of an out-of-control "nut job" and was furious with others in the media for suggesting that anyone on the right was in any way responsible for fostering a hostile political environment (View clip here). "The killer Jared Loughner is a psychopath. Civilisation has always had them ...

First Comes Fear
By ROBERT WRIGHT NYT People on the left and right have been wrestling over the legacy of Jared Loughner, arguing about whether his Shooting Spree proves that the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks of the world are fomenting violence. But it’s not as if this is the only data point we have. Here’s another one: Six months ago, police in California pulled over a truck that turned out to contain a rifle, a Handgun, a shotgun and Body Armor. Police learned from the driver — sometime after he opened

Glenn Beck makes Bob Brady look even more foolish
So Democrat Congressman Bob Brady, who represents Philadelphia in DC, now wants to write a bill that will ban the use "violent words" and "violent symbols" in dialogue - political or otherwise. Brady is doing this to advance his anti-Conservative agenda after pegging the Tea Party responsible for last Saturday's shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. Glenn Beck took Brady to task yesterday in a frank and hilarious segment on his show on the Fox News Channel. Beck pointed out that Children wh...

Rush Limbaugh: Jared Lee Loughner has the "Full Support" of Democrats
(Credit: AP Photo/Gary He) Controversial, conservative Talk Radio host Rush Limbaugh is stepping up his assault against the Democratic Party in the wake of the Mass Shooting in Tucson, Ariz., claiming the Democrats fully "support" the alleged shooter. On his Radio Show Tuesday, Limbaugh said, "What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that... the Democrat party is attemptin...

Shameless Palin Claims Victimhood, Refuses to Apologize
Wow, Sarah Palin sure has got no shame. You’d think after the horrible shooting in Tucson, and after literally putting Gabrielle Giffords in the cross-hairs, that Palin might have had the dignity either to say nothing or to show at least an ounce of remorse or pledge to lower her own Rhetoric by a decibel or two. But not Palin. No, now she’s made herself the Victim. She said: “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood Libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violen

Palins choice of words raises new questions
It didn’t take long for Sarah Palin to go from an uncompromising response to critics of her campaign Rhetoric to new questions about her choice of words. Not the gun-toting choice of words that had already landed the former Alaska Governor in hot water with political opponents who tried to blame her Rhetoric for last weekend’s melee in Tucson, where a gunman tried to assassinate congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords while killing six and wounding 13 others. This time the qu...

Time for Bipartisan Agreement on Tax Reform
There is no doubt I should be writing about the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But the wild media narrative, which has taken every conceivable twist and turn, has veered into an area that I am loath to discuss. Partisan point scoring, which is what this whole tragedy has become, may drive website traffic, but it also drives me up the wall. The fact is, young adults are increasingly being driven away from the two parties by partisan attacks that appeal to a narrow, if influential, ...