DHS Denies Loughner/American Renaissance Connection

Loughner's Parents "Surprised" by Son's Troubles
Like this Story? Share it: New details about Tuscon gunman Jared Lee Loughner are being revealed as investigators search his home. Ben Tracy reports. Chris Wragge speaks with Tucson shooting survivor Eric Fuller about the gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, and his thoughts on Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's recovery. Only On The Web: CBS News digital Journalist Arden Farhi spoke to Tucson-area residents as they reflect on Saturday's shooting and the impact it's had on their community. The home in Tucson, Ariz...

Media whitewashes ultra-right in Arizona massacre
Here the central role was played by the ultra-right media campaign mounted by Fox News, Talk Show hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, including one Republican Senate Candidate who called for a "Second Amendment solution" to political issues -- i.e., the use of Firearms. As the World Socialist Web Site explained yesterday (See "Arizona Assassination spree tied to political right"), the political conceptions in Loughner's Internet postings are...

"You can't outsmart crazy"
By Edward Copeland With those words, Jon Stewart gave another eloquent Speech at the beginning of Monday night's Daily Show, dispensing with humor to address Saturday's horrific events in Tucson. With each passing hour and day since alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, critically injuring her, killing six and wounding 14 others, it becomes clearer that this 22-year-old man was not a political partisan but someone who was severely mentally ill. With Arizona...

Hey, About The AZ Shooters Links to American Renaissance, Those Right-Wing, Racist, Jooo Haters?
Umm. “We have not established any such possible link.” (WaPo) — 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 American Renaissance. The primary source for this claim is a Fox News report from yesterday saying that Law Enforcement had made this determination based on information provided by the Department of Homeland Security. But a DHS official tells me that the department has not estab...

Rush Limbaugh: Its insane to fault Sarah Palin for Ariz. shooting (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Rep. Peter King to introduce bill making it illegal to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of 'high-profile' government official Fellow commenters at UFO Conspiracy website questioned Jared Lee Loughner's sanity in threads We're probably alone in the universe, or else they're out to get us Mark Halperin: Conservatives should turn the other cheek when scapegoated for Murder Could Jon Huntsman really be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012? Talk Radio ma...

Fox New Website Continues Partisan Attack On Sheriff Dupnik's "Vitriol" Comments
If Propaganda is to be believed, it should be repeated. Yesterday, in both an interview on "Fox & Friends" and an article on the Fox News website, Fox News featured critical commentary about Pima County Sheriff's remarks about the vitriol in our society - vitriol that, as he stated, is promulgated by the media. Obviously needing to deflect and divert from the appropriate substance of Dupnik's comments, Fox is maintaining its seeming scapegoating of the sheriff. Today's headline (first under the ...

Fox News Website Continues Partisan Attack On Sheriff Dupnik's "Vitriol" Comments
If Propaganda is to be believed, it should be repeated. Yesterday, in both an interview on "Fox & Friends" and an article on the Fox News website, Fox News featured critical commentary about Pima County Sheriff's remarks about the vitriol in our society - vitriol that, as he stated, is promulgated by the media. Obviously needing to deflect and divert from the appropriate substance of Dupnik's comments, Fox is maintaining its seeming scapegoating of the sheriff. Today's headline (first under the ...

How the Zamudio story could have gone
HOW THE ZAMUDIO STORY COULD HAVE GONE.... In the wake of shooting tragedies, it's fairly common for Conservatives to call for more Gun Ownership -- the idea being there would be less violence if more of the public were armed. This argument has already been presented in Arizona, where there's already a new measure pending to arm politicians and their aides. One state lawmaker said, "When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a Victim." There's ample evidence that reality isn't t...

Novelist: Homeland Security recruited me to 'attack' USA...
Author Brad Meltzer will speak about his experiences being recruited by the Department of Homeland Security's Red Cell program at a book reading Tuesday. Abe Lincoln still No. 1 I was a real-life Secret Agent. I didn't have the hand-grenade cuff links or the poison-dart pen, but in 2004 I was recruited by the Department of Homeland Security for its Red Cell program. As they described it - and as The Washington Post later reported - Red Cell was the government's way of trying to antici...

The American Renaissance 'links'
THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE 'LINKS'.... As media outlets scrambled over the weekend to better understand why Jared Lee Loughner allegedly went on a shooting rampage in Tucson on Saturday, Fox News said it had a scoop: the network had "obtained" a memo from the Department of Homeland Security connecting the shooter to a Racist group called American Renaissance, and this memo was distributed to Law Enforcement agencies. I held off on mentioning this, because of the source -- the only thing less rel...

King, Bloomberg Team Up to Call for New Gun Control Law
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rep. Pete King, one of the few pro-gun control Republicans in the House of Representatives, today introduced new Legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official. Bloomberg, a staunch Gun Control advocate, and Rep. King appeared together at a Press Conference in New York City just days after a gunman killed six people and wounded Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords during a political event in Tuscon. More than a dozen people...

Tomorrow's speech in Arizona is a big test for Barack Obama
We will find out a great deal about Barack Obama’s character tomorrow - or at least about the wisdom of his advisers. If his Speech at the Memorial service for the Victims of the Tucson shooting is spotlessly apolitical - if it manages to avoid any hint of support for the quite astonishing smear campaign which has explicitly attributed responsibility for this crime to his electoral opponents - then it may help to revive his original 

Times' Mark Halperin: Conservatives should turn the other cheek when scapegoated for murder
The "normally sensible" Mark Halperin from Time completely jumps the shark in this segment from today's Morning Joe, in which Halperin praised the media and politicians for their reaction to the shooting ... while blaming the "anger of the right-wing commentariat," condemning Fox News and conservative pundits for treating the tragedy like "war and fodder for content" ... ignoring the fact that the Controversy started when CNN, other media outlets. and left-wing Bloggers began tying the shooting ...

Homeland Security walking back Jewish claim on Giffords
You will recall that I posted yesterday that the attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords' life was because she is Jewish. That post was based on a memo from the Department of Homeland Security that was posted by Fox News' Greta van Sustern on her blog. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is walking back that memo. Fox News's report yesterday initially claimed that a DHS memo had outlined the possible connection, and defined American Renaissance as a "pro-white Racist organization" th...

Fighting Words: In Tucson Massacre Debate, The Shooter Becomes Irrelevant
Before anyone knew anything about Jared Loughner beyond his name, pundits and politicians began a mad dash to assign ownership of his motives. Clearly, he was driven by conservative politics because Rep. Gabrielle Giffords supported health-care reform and was therefore an enemy of the Tea Party. No, wait. He was a liberal because he once read "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "The Communist Manifesto." The funny thing is that, despite Loughner's written targeting of Giffords and a past, bizarre claim ...

Is Jared Lee Loughner linked to Tea Party, conservatives, or libertarians? (Gabrielle Giffords shooting)
Q. Is Jared Lee Loughner linked to the Tea Party, conservative, or Libertarian movements? A. At this time, there's no indication that Loughner was a member of any organized political movement. He was a registered independent who hadn't voted in 2010 (link). The DHS claim that he was linked to the white racial separatist group AmRen is false. Given what we know now, the chances of him being welcomed as a member of any group outside the far fringe is remote [1]. Given his history, the chances th...

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms to Congress: Leave Guns to Law Enforcement and We Need Fewer Guns
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: With at least two House members saying they intend to arm themselves at events in their districts in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, the man who may know more about Capitol Hill security than anyone else doesn’t think that’s a good idea. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance W. Gainer - who oversees security for the Senate, and who previously served as chief of the Capitol Police - told us on ABC’s “ Top Line ” today that members of

Arizona fast tracks legislation to impede Westboro Baptist Church at funerals
Fox News reports that today Arizona lawmakers are rushing through a bill requiring Protesters to remain 300 feet away from Funerals. Governor Jan Brewer will sign the bill, which will take effect "immediately." Although applicable to all funerals , the bill is aimed at the Kandas based Westboro Baptist Church, which has issued a Press Release announcing plans to picket the Thursday funeral of Christina Greene, the nine year old Victim of the Jared Lee Loughner Shooting Spree last Saturday. Biker...

DHS uses Giffords shooting to push loose borders political agenda (Jared Lee Loughner, American Renaissance)
The Department of Homeland Security and various media sources are using the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner as an opportunity to try to smear opponents of illegal Immigration, focusing on the higher-level white racial separatist group American Renaissance (DHS memo at [1], report at [2]). Not only do they get that group's ideas wrong, but they mislead about what was in Loughner's videos and what appears to have been on his MySpace page. From the memo at [1]: no direct conn...

Jared Loughner Not Tied To Anti-Semetic American Renaissance Group, Either
In the aftermath of Saturday’s tragedy, the most wanted commodity in the political world seems to be a shred of recognizable political identity to attach to shooter Jared Loughner , and so far no major ideology- neither left nor right- has sufficed. The latest group to be dismissed as an influence in Loughner’s heinous acts is the previously accused group “American Renaissance,” described by the Department of Homeland Security as an “anti-semetic” ...

The 2nd Amendment helped end Arizona Shooting, it didnt cause it
Twenty-four year old Joe Zamudio quietly stood at the Safeway counter waiting to buy a pack of Cigarettes as shots rang out in Tucson Arizona Saturday.  As most followed their natural instinct to run to safety, Zamudio put his hand on his gun and ran towards the chaos.   Zamudio was not an off-duty Police Officer nor did he possess Military training, he was merely an Arizona resident who was legally carrying a Concealed Weapon who believed he could stop the carnage.  In an in...

Words Matter.
( - promoted by Rob Kailey) Right-wing radio personality/shock jock(and former GOP Staffer) Aaron Flint is taking, according to him, a "tongue in cheek" look at the tragedy in Arizona on Twitter. But what this reminded me of was Flint's earlier mockery of the presence of Law Enforcement at congressional events here in Montana. From his blog: No mention, of course, by the New York Times during their "he's a well grounded man" piece of the fact that the Senator felt he couldn't even hold an in...

Glenn Beck Defends Sarah Palin With New Pledge Scam
It was a no-brainer that Glenn Beck would jump on the hastily gerrymandered “FOX ‘News’ Protect Palin” bandwagon after the Tucson massacre. Beck has a lot invested emotionally in the Half-Governor. Not only is she his BFF—she was his first guest on Fox “News”—but he is also knew that an attack on Sarah Palin for her “target maps” would quickly spread to the Beckinator himself. As offensive as the bulls eyes might have been—and the...

Brave Woman Who Grabbed Clip from Shooter Blames Right-Wing Media and Rhetoric In Fox News Interview
Patricia Maisch, 61, was the brave woman who kept alleged shooter Jared Loughner from unloading a second clip into a Tuscon crowd on Saturday. Wounded herself from a bullet, she saw him attempting to equip his gun with another magazine, grabbed him and knelt on his ankle, delaying the reload and potentially saving many more lives.  So when Fox News interviewed her on Sunday, they clearly wanted to know if her strength could translate to psychic healing as Americans grappled with the tragedy...

Fox News Part Of Right Wing Attack On Sheriff Dupnik?
As I have reported, Fox News wasted no time in presenting Democratic County Sheriff in a negative manner. (here, here, here) His remarks about the kind of vitriol, spread by media, seem to have also sparked quite the outrage in the Right Wing. As "Right Wing Watch" points out, Dupnik is being attacked by Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, David Limbaugh, "Gateway Pundit," the Heritage Foundation, the Media Research Center, and Michelle Malkin who accuses him of being a "pro-illegal alien Amnesty sheriff." W...