BRYAN PRESTON: Clicking through images of Jared Lee Loughners backyard skull shrine, linked fro

The Tree of Liberty
Alex Pareene has a good piece over at Salon. Pareene writes: The Tea Parties are based around the Rhetoric of the American Revolution, which was a violent insurrection. It makes a sad sort of sense that a bunch of comfortable white reactionaries would dress up their childish tantrums with such grandiose language, because “desperately protecting your privilege in the face of what appears to be the demise of the empire” sounds much less inspiring than “defeating tyranny.”...

In defense of Matt Drudge
This article was originally published by Salon on November 17, 1997. The oddest feature of the affair that pits White House flak Sidney Blumenthal against Internet gadfly Matt Drudge is probably the most revealing: the failure of the press to defend one of its own. Last August, Blumenthal filed a $30 million Libel suit against Drudge for reporting a rumor that Blumenthal was once involved in a spousal abuse Court Case and then (though retracting the claim) failed to reveal his unnamed source...

Breaking: Congresswoman, 5 others shot, 9 injured in Tucson, AZ attack
This is just breaking. Via Ed Morrissey: This is just awful: U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot outside a Grocery Store in Tucson while holding a public event, an eyewitness reported Saturday. Giffords, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting her first “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting. At least five other people, including members of her staff, were hurt, according to Pete...

Majority doesn't blame rhetoric for Giffords shooting
Since the Saturday incident in which Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot at point-blank range, various politicians and commentators have said a climate in which strong language and ideological polarization is common may have contributed to the attack. Some of the analysts cited anti-government statements from the man arrested in the shooting, Jared Lee Loughner, as support for that view. But CBS said its nationwide telephone poll found that, "57 percent of respondents said the ha...

Arizona Republics SCATHING smackdown of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik
Send Sheriff Clarence Dupnik a POSTCARD, not a letter or email, telling him what you think of his job performance. This is one of the most direct and scathing smackdowns I’ve ever seen a newspaper hand an elected official. It’s essentially a bare-bottomed spanking, which Clarence Dupnik may or may not actually enjoy. The Arizona Republic is much more charitable towards this man than we’ve been.  In the article, the paper gives Dupnik a pass for anything he did the day Jar...

Loughners Lawyer
The New York Times’ William Glaberson profiles Judy Clarke, the public defender who is representing alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner: Ms. Clarke has helped a number of infamous defendants avoid death sentences, including Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Robert Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her toddlers. Over a legal career of more than 30 years, Ms. Clarke has become perhaps the best-known federal public defender in ...

Random Round-Up 01-11
President Obama Job Approval A secret $6 billion Bailout for Puerto Rico? Smooth move dumbasses. John Adams tried that 200 years ago with the Alien and Sedition Acts and that was an epic fail. Why isn't that liberals have no new ideas? Dem planning bill that would outlaw threats to lawmakers Boehner will keep flying commercial Debt default is no laughing matter In Budget Crises, an Opening for School Reform School systems can put Students first by making sure any Layoffs account for teacher qu...

Loughner's Parents Blame Themselves
It's always the same old story -- everyone knew Jared Loughner was unbalanced but no one chose to do anything. Loughner's father is expected to release a statement. Meanwhile, the right and the left battle it out over what motivated Loughner to shoot. The left contends that Sarah Palin had some sort of influence over him and that the right's anti government Rhetoric helped create Loughner. But Loughner's "politics," if you want to call it that, were erratic. He is registered to vote as an inde...

Arizona shooting suspect's parents said "devastated"
TUCSON, Ariz | Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:03pm EST TUCSON, Ariz (Reuters) - The parents of the 22-year-old Arizona man accused of Saturday's shooting rampage are devastated and planning to release a statement, a neighbor told local media on Tuesday. Jared Lee Loughner appeared in court on Monday on charges including attempting to assassinate Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killing a Federal Judge, some of the 20 Victims of the shootings at a constituent's meeting Giffords was hosting at a loca...

Lawyers: Insanity Defense Wont Work
CNN reports: The alleged shooter in Saturday’s deadly Tucson massacre may have difficulty making the case for a successful insanity plea, experts said Tuesday. Jared Lee Loughner, 22, who authorities say shot up a gathering held by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, outside a Supermarket, has been anecdotally regarded as very troubled and perhaps mentally unbalanced because of his ramblings spotted on the Internet and the ways he has been described by acquaintances. But Paul Callan...

Is Sheriff Dupnik Distracting Public From Looking at His Contacts With Killer?
“I’d like to make one additional point on Sheriff Dupnik. I think we’re missing the point when we’re talking about his political agenda. This man and this suspect has had previous contact with the sheriff’s office. It looks to me, we don’t have many details on this, but it looks as though he slipped between the cracks. I think what we really need to look into is what happened when he had previous contact with the sheriff’s office with their negligence he...

Sheriff Dupnik: Its My 'Legal Responsibility' to Blame the Media
You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship. Read more... We invite all Americans who share these values to join us here at Fox Nation. Investigators today released this Mug Shot of Jared Lee Loughner, the guman accused of killing six individuals and gravely wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Saturday's bloody spree outside a .....

Tucson Terrorism: A Deeply Rooted Assault on American Democracy
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 11:53am. Now it's political Assassination and Murders in Tucson. William Faulkner wrote that the past isn't dead, it isn't even past. I'm a Veteran of Arizona. As one of the state's leading peace advocates and organizers during the Vietnam War, I had more than my share of death threats, including one left on the accelerator of my car. After President Nixon urged "hard hats" to attack peace advocates, the John Birch Society loosed drunken miners agains...

Corn on Hardball: Who is Jared Loughner?
Tue Jan. 11, 2011 9:13 AM PST Get Mother Jones by Email - Free. Like what you're reading? Get the best of MoJo three times a week. We've launched a new commenting system. How do you like it? What if 31 Shots Had Been Only 10? Had Congress not rolled back Gun Laws, the death toll would have been much lower. A longtime friend shares a message sent hours before the massacre. Some Haitians are busy rebuilding. Well, at least the ones who don't live in tents. The religious groups she affiliates ...

Tom Brokaw Praises Sheriff Dupnik
You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship. Read more... We invite all Americans who share these values to join us here at Fox Nation. Investigators today released this Mug Shot of Jared Lee Loughner, the guman accused of killing six individuals and gravely wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Saturday's bloody spree outside a .....

Maxim Mag Cover Shocker
Maxim, the bawdy men’s magazine, isn’t exactly known for the modesty of its cover subjects. But at least one observer says that the February issue featuring "Perfect Couples" star Olivia Munn wearing little more than a pair of verrrry transparent lace panties is going a bit too far. “It’s disgusting,” Dan Gainor, Vice President of Business & Culture at the Media Research Center, tells FOX411.“Maxim has moved their magazine from tawdry to full-on pornograph...

Listen Up Lefties: Jon Stewart Doesnt Play Blame Game
Jon Stewart addressed the tragic events that occurred in Arizona this weekend by asking “How do you make sense of these types of senseless situations?” Giving up on any real attempt at satirical humor, Stewart instead taking a meaningful, measured and earnest approach to the current political finger pointing over the incident, which he called “as predictable as it is dispiriting.” While Stewart didn’t blame toxic discourse, he did seek a distinction “between r...

Neighbor Says Arizona Suspect's Parents Blame Selves
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 By Staff, Associated Press Phoenix (AP) - A neighbor says the parents of the suspect in Saturday's Shooting Spree in Tucson are devastated and guilt-ridden. Jared Loughner appeared in court Monday on federal charges that he tried to assassinate U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed a Federal Judge. He is also accused of killing five others and wounding or injuring 13 others. Wayne Smith, who lives across the street from the family, said Randy and Amy Loughner bla...

In Arizona case, experts say planning undermines insanity plea
The alleged shooter in Saturday's deadly Tucson massacre may have difficulty making the case for a successful insanity plea, experts said Tuesday. Jared Lee Loughner, 22, who authorities say shot up a gathering held by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, outside a Supermarket, has been anecdotally regarded as very troubled and perhaps mentally unbalanced because of his ramblings spotted on the Internet and the ways he has been described by acquaintances. But Paul Callan, a criminal def...

What do you do when you think government is fucking you over?
By Michael J.W. Stickings For some interesting background on Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year old charged in the Arizona shooting, see this piece at Mother Jones, based on an interview with a close friend. Key passage (emphasis added): [Bryce] Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period [2007]. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges ...

Goldberg to mainstream media--'shut the hell up!'
Goldberg made the comment last evening on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox. O'Reilly had already castigated the Mainstream Media for joining in the Leftwing chorus of blaming Conservatives for the massacre that killed a Federal Judge and wounded a U.S. Congresswoman, among others. As a nightly guest on The O'Reilly Factor, Goldberg exposes bias inherent in the news reporting of the media.  Goldberg had been part of CBS News under former anchor Dan Rather, and subsequently became a Whistleblower ...

Let's Just Say...
...for shits and giggles that Jared Lee Loughner grew up in a void and the violent Rhetoric and imagery that permeates our national political discourse had no relation whatsoever to his actions. Let us leave aside any notion that people are affected by growing up in a culture in which it's acceptable to a Republican president for his lunch guests to say things like "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will ne...

The Tucson tragedy: over the line
I gasped when I saw the picture on my Facebook news feed. Joe Jervis, creator of the widely followed gay blog Joe.My.God, posted a separated at birth-like coupling of alleged Tucson murderer Jared Lee Loughner and Fox News's Glenn Beck. Folks, this is despicable. Beck may be a fire-breathing blowhard who doesn't deserve the mass following he has for the vitriol he spews daily, but to equate him with the twisted monster who stands accused of killing a 9-year-old girl and a Federal Judge and crit...

Reflections About Jared Lee Loughner and John Hinckley, Jr.
The Warriors Sculpture By anguila40 / Alejandro Groenewold In their book THE WARRIOR WITHIN: ACCESSING THE KNIGHT [ARCHETYPE] IN THE MALE PSYCHE (William Morrow, 1992), Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette refer to the psychodynamism behind contesting behavior as the warrior archetype at the archetypal level of the human psyche. (They center their attention on the male psyche in this book, but they claim that there is a feminine counterpart to the warrior archetype in the archetypal level of the...

Lone nuts and convenient definitions of "terrorism"
"Columbine" author Dave Cullen wrote yesterday that most media figures compulsively -- and incorrectly -- assign all killers to one of two binaries: Crazy or political. Right-wing commentators do the same thing, for the most part, though they tend to say killers are either crazy or Terrorists. And while they'll usually freely admit that Tim McVeigh counted as a terrorist, for the most part they reserve that term for Muslims who kill. There is, for example, Charles Krauthammer's classic column on...