FASCIST PIGS, FANATICAL IDEOLOGUES, AND DELUSIONAL ILLNESS

Obama leads moment of silence after shooting
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are joined by government employees on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 10, 2011, to observe a moment of silence for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the other Victims of an Assassination attempt against her. The shooting at a town hall-style event outside a Supermarket in Tucson, Ariz., Saturday left six dead, including a Federal Judge, and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. A somber President Barack...

The Right Doubles Down
A survey of the bloggy scene suggests a rigid, uniform, passionate position that this Assassination has nothing whatsoever to do with violent Rhetoric and political polarization. It is as if some loony had just randomly shot some schoolkids or ran into a mall killing strangers. If you are looking for reflectiveness, you won't find it, in what strikes me as an ominous sign of a right-wing movement more willing to see its opponents gunned down than ever engage in introspection. Among the mos...

MSNBC: Jared Loughner Wrote A Threatening Note To Gabrielle Giffords
A note written by Jared Loughner (pictured), the 22-year-old man who opened fire on an event in Tucson, Arizona, injuring Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killing six others, reveals that Loughner felt a deep hatred towards the Congresswoman. An FBI document reveals that Loughner wrote the words “I planned ahead”, “My Assassination” and “Giffords” on an envelope signed with his name. The letter was kept in a safe in Loughner’s home, along with a lett...

Obama leads moment of silence after shooting
In this March, 2010 photo provided by the office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,... WASHINGTON (AP) - A somber President Barack Obama led a moment of silence on Monday for a nation stunned by an attempted Assassination against an Arizona congresswoman that left her gravely wounded, several other injured and six people dead. On a frigid Washington morning, the president and First Lady Michelle Obama walked out of the White House to the sounding of a bell at 11 a.m. EST. Wearing overcoats, they stood...

Obama leads moment of silence for shooting victims
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has presided over a national moment of silence for severely injured Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the people who were killed during an Assassination attempt against her. On the White House South Lawn, Obama was joined by First Lady Michelle Obama and White House staff members on a cold morning. The moment was marked at the U.S. Capitol and elsewhere around a nation still coming to grips with the tragedy. Giffords is in intensive care at a Tuscon ...

Gun-friendly laws made Arizona shootings possible, Brady Center president tells Raw
Stumble This! The president of the Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence told Raw Story that excessively permissive Gun Laws are a culprit in the tragic shootings of 20 people in Tucson, Ariz. Saturday. Among those shot by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner were Federal Judge John Roll, who was killed, and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was critically wounded. The gun Loughner used was lawfully purchased, The Associated Press reported. "Apparently everyone who knew him lately describes him as v...

Loughners Violence: Illness Not Politics
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the rush to judgment that has characterized the response to the tragic events that occurred at Congresswoman Giffords’ constituent meeting in Tuscon has been the profound misunderstanding of and ignorance about the sort of Mental Illness that appears to characterize her assailant.  It is almost like blaming Jodie Foster for precipitating John Hinckley, Jr.’s Assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Loughner, Giffords’ assailant, apparently has d

Loughners Fixation On Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Started In 2007
Which sort of makes it hard to blame Sarah Palin or the Tea Party for the shooting. After all, in 2007 Palin wasn’t well known outside of Alaska (she rose to prominence in the 2008 Presidential Election) and the Tea Party movement didn’t start until spring of 2009. TUCSON, Ariz.—Accused gunman Jared Lee Loughner appeared to have been long obsessed with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. A safe at Mr. Loughner’s home contained a form letter from Ms. Giffords’ office thank...

Arizona Massacre Prompts Political 'Cheap Shots'
When Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords collapsed outside the Safeway in Tucson Saturday morning, felled by a hail of bullets that killed six and wounded another 13 innocent people that had come to see her, some were quick to claim that the carnage was the product not merely of the tortured mind and trigger-happy fingers of the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Rather, many on the American Left said the horror could be traced to the malign influence of American Conservatives; members...

After Giffords shooting, Palin aide says crosshairs really surveyor marks
An aide to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said on a conservative radio program Sunday that last year’s much-maligned ads by Palin’s PAC showing rifle crosshairs over 20 Democratic Congressional Districts - including Gabrielle Giffords’s CD8 in Arizona - were actually meant to represent surveyor’s symbols on a map. Local politicians responded to the Saturday shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others in Arizona. Giffords survived the shoo...

Loughner Conviction Could Come Down To Why Judge Was At Giffords Event
Whether Jared Lee Loughner is convicted federally of killing Federal Judge John McCarthy Roll could come down simply to why he showed up to Saturday's event with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In the Criminal Complaint filed against Jared Lee Loughner, the FBI is building the case that U.S District Court Judge John Roll attended Rep. Gabrielle Giffords "Congress on your Corner" not by chance or on a social visit, but for official government business. So why does Roll's reason for attending t...

Steinhauer: Arizona's 'Chilling' Political Theater May Have Set Stage for Shooting
Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer’s Monday “news analysis,” “A Harsh Spotlight on a State’s Unique Politics,” maintained the Times quiet drumbeat of coverage on the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords: That conservative political Rhetoric contributed to the actions of a clearly insane and troubled man. Steinhauer was the latest reporter to find unprofessional Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik (today’s liberal hero) a sage: Arizona is not a world ...

ABCs Bob Woodruff Offers Experience, Hope To Giffords In Recovering From Brain Injury
ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff , who suffered a traumatic brain injury On Assignment in Iraq five years ago, is offering his unique perspective to the family of Gabrielle Giffords . “There is hope,” Woodruff writes in a “Reporter’s Notebook” piece on the ABC News website. Woodruff, who’d just been named a co-anchor of ABC’s World News, was severely injured by the Explosion of an IED. In telling his story online and on Good Morning America, Woodruff...

Q Of The Day: Should I Be Able To Buy A Gun?
It's no secret at all than I'm bipolar. I've talked very plainly about having a Mental Illness -- I came out about it here. There's talk that the Arizona shooter might have been mentally ill. Prima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was quoted about the alleged killer this way: "There's reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue," Dupnik told reporters today. "I'm not a Psychiatrist so I have no reason to believe the person was insane. Was he unstable? I would agree with that...

Alex Jones' Take on the AZ Shooter
By now I'm sure you've seen, heard and read endless stories about the crazed Arizona shooter. Of course, this is horrific. What's also awful is how the MSM and certain lefties are trying to spin this event into a means to deprive good, honest citizens of their free Speech and rights. When I first learned of this on Saturday, I said to myself, "I can't wait to see AJ's take on this." Sure enough, Alex put out a series of four enlightening video's with Jim Marrs on the topic. I will embed the firs...

Support for public employee unions drops significantly
With states across the country finding that benefits for public workers are becoming nearly impossible to fund in the current economic climate, support for Public Employee Unions has fallen. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 45% of Americans now at least somewhat favor Unions for public employees, while the identical number (45%) are opposed to them. These findings include 21% who Strongly Favor such Unions versus 30% who are Strongly Opposed to them. Bye-bye bland! Mu...

Moment of silence observed at Capitol
Hundreds of congressional Staffers have gathered on the east steps of the Capitol to observe a moment of silence for critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others killed or wounded in Saturday's attack in Arizona. Congress was not in session Monday and most of those participating were employees of congressional offices and others who work in the Capitol. Girl killed in Arizona Mass Shooting has Md. roots Bye-bye bland! Multiple uniforms game's new craze Bye-bye bland! Multiple uni...

Federal Charges in the Shootings
The Times has posted the Criminal Complaint filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona. It charges two counts of murdering, and three counts of attempting to Murder, federal officals. Specifically, Count One alleges the Attempted Murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; Counts Two and Three allege the murders of legislative aide Gabriel Zimmerman and chief Federal Judge John M. Roll, respectively; and Counts Four and Five allege the attempted murders of legislative aides Pamela Simon an...

What is Happening in Our Society That We Need to Drug Five-Year-Old Children?
© GETTY CREATIVE Attention Deficit disorder can be hard for parents A report in today's newspaper says that Children with attention Deficit disorder (ADHD) can't switch off the default mode network (DMN) in their brains, the daydreaming function. Stimulant drugs such as methylphenidate may help to switch off this DMN, turn down the volume, as it were, and enable the ADHD sufferer to focus on a task. These findings are interesting, but they do not address the question of why so many child...

Atheist to Christians: Throw away the Bible to make your religion "friendly"
A new non-profit group calling itself "Changing the Face of Christianity" has started up in Dallas with the mission to reverse "Christian intolerance, hypocrisy, homophobia, judgmentalism, and other negative Christian stereotypes, by helping Christians to be more like Jesus Christ." Interestingly enough, the group's founder R. Brad White is a former atheist. He was raised in a Methodist family, but he himself as a youth was not a believer as he relates that he "had zero conne...

Violent rhetoric and the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords
In the two days since the attempted Assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the debate has been raging over the culpability of the violent Rhetoric that is so commonplace in today's political climate. Which of course has led to the rapid-fire peddling of false equivalencies by the right, where now, saying a Congressional District is being targeted is the same as actually putting crosshairs on a district and saying it's time to "RELOAD." And while there are many examples of the violent languag...

Jared Loughner and Charles Guiteau
 I said who was it that did it who was it that shot the president? And he said it was Charlie Guiteau that shot Mr. Garfield and I said Johnny Cash, "Mr. Garfield," 1965. Okay, point your finger at me if you must, but in my speculation about why Jared Loughner shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and killed six others--I see a man who had a distorted view of the world--who believed he had to insert himself into the public eye to make some sort of bizarre statement. Don't blame Tea Partie...

The Market For Palin
It just tanked (via Josh). The point Josh makes is a clear one. A political Assassination cannot be dismissed as non-political. And even if one argues, as I would, that Palin bears no direct responsibility at all for this act of violence and that the idea of her as an "accomplice" of some sort is offensive, it remains true that a) Palin specifically targeted this political opponent for "re-loading" within literal gun-sights, b) this was noticed at the time by the future vic...

Obama leads moment of silence after shooting
WASHINGTON (AP) — A somber President Barack Obama led a moment of silence on Monday for a nation stunned by an attempted Assassination against an Arizona congresswoman that left her seriously wounded, several other injured and six people dead. On a frigid Washington morning, the president and First Lady Michelle Obama walked out of the White House to the sounding of a bell at 11 a.m. Both wearing overcoats, they stood next to each other on the South Lawn, each with their hands clasped, hea...

U.S. cites evidence of assassination plot
TUCSON, Ariz. -- Piece by piece, details of the weekend rampage in Tucson are beginning to emerge: The heartbreaking tales of people slain on a sun-splashed morning, the courage of those who overpowered the gunman and the state of mind of the suspect, a young man who the authorities say had plotted for weeks, and perhaps longer, to assassinate a member of Congress. As the full scope of the tragedy sank in Sunday, it also had rekindled a national conversation, sparked by the outspoken sheriff of...