Fearing tea party violence, four Arizona Republicans resign

Ariz. GOP lawmaker resigns in wake of Giffords shooting, says he recieved threats
A prominent Republican in Arizona resigned in the wake of Saturday's shooting, saying that threats from Tea Party members had him fearing for his life. Anthony Miller, the chairman of Arizona Legislative District 20 and the only black Republican to hold a chairmanship in the state, was reelected to a second one-year term last month. He said he was stepping down due to constant verbal threats against him and his family from people with Tea Party ties, The Arizona Republic reported. "I wasn't go...

Ariz. GOP officials resign after shooting
While federal lawmakers debate how best to increase safety for themselves and their staff, some Arizona Republican party officials are choosing to leave office in the face of threats. A conflict that has been going on between local Arizona Republicans came to an end in the wake of the shooting in Tucson on Saturday when Arizona's Republican District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller and several others chose to resign. The Arizona Republic reports that Miller, 43, a former campaign worker for Sen.Jo...

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 ...

Poll: Obama better than Bush, McCain
Voters believe that President Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush and think that the country would be worse off if Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won the 2008 election, according to a new poll. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday showed that voters think Obama's time in the White House has been better than Bush's by a 46-30 percent margin. Forty-one percent of voters also say that the country would be in worse shape if McCain was in the Oval Office.  The poll shows O...

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...

Obama offers comfort after Tucson shootings
(01-13) 04:00 PST Tucson -- President Obama comforted a community suffused with grief and summoned the nation to recommit to a more civil public discourse as he delivered a eulogy Wednesday evening urging Americans to talk with each other "in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds." Evoking memories of the six killed on Saturday, Obama seized upon the Mass Shooting at Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Supermarket meet-and-greet to tackle the subject of the nation's harsh political dialogue...

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 ...

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...

What the Hell is Happening in Arizona?
An Arizona district GOP chairman in the Phoenix area, Anthony Miller, and four of his lieutenants resigned after the Giffords shooting: In an e-mail sent a few hours after Saturday’s massacre in Tucson that killed six and injured 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Miller told state Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen he was quitting: “Today my wife of 20 yrs ask (sic) me do I think that my PCs (Precinct Committee members) will shoot at our home? So with this being said ...

After AZ Shooting, UFC Fighter Regrets Making Threatening Obama Comment
In the wake of the Mass Shooting in Arizona that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition, UFC fighter Jacob Volkmann regrets saying he would like to "knock some sense into that idiot" President Barack Obama. "I would never make that comment if that shooting happened first," Volkmann told the Huffington Post. "I can't imagine what it's like for the parents. I got a 4-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy." Volkmann said in a recent interview that he would next like to fight O...

The Curious Politics of Arizona
"What's it like, working for the Jews?" It was 20 years ago, and I was home visiting my parents in Phoenix. We were chatting in the living room with old family friends; the question was directed at me, a Journalist, from one of my father's more serious buddies. The others in the room listened politely, eager to hear my answer. The moment stays with me, not so much because of the crude Anti-Semitism, but due to the many levels of risibility that radiated, goofily, from the question. The men i...

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...

Several AZ Republicans Resign Amid Fears of Tea Party Violence
What the Arizona Republic calls a “nasty little battle” has broken out among Republican members of Arizona’s Legislative District 20 in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Several Republicans have resigned, citing fears that local Tea Party supporters will harm them or their families for not being conservative enough. Now-former Chairman Anthony Miller was among those to resign. A former campaign worker for Sen. John McCain, Miller sent an email to state Repu...

Arizona GOP Official Resigns, Citing Tea Party Threats: 'I Don't Want to Take a Bullet'
Several GOP officials from the same area in Arizona have resigned following last week's shooting rampage in Tucson, including a district chairman who said threats from local Tea Party members caused him to be worried for the safety of himself and his family. Anthony Miller, 43, stepped down earlier this week as chairman of Republican District 20 after his wife expressed concerns about "constant verbal attacks" against him since helping Sen. John McCain narrowly win Reelection in November, The A...

Black GOP Official Resigns, Citing Arizona Tea Party Threats
Source: Huffington Post The sole black Republican Party district chairman in Arizona resigned from his post in the wake of Saturday's shooting, citing threats from the Tea Party faction and concerns for his family's safety, The Arizona Republic first reported. Republican District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller was not the only party official to resign following the shooting that killed six and wounded 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and a Federal Judge. But Miller had been an ...

North Dakota Republican weighs 2012 challenge to Sen. Conrad
North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk (R) said Wednesday that he's weighing a run against Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) in 2012.  The Republican told supporters in an email, obtained by the AP, that he has formed an Exploratory Committee and has already received encouragement and pledges of financial support from GOP Activists ahead of 2012.   Kalk is a former Marine who was elected to the state's public service commission in 2008.  Conrad, who is the only Democrat left in North D

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...

Media Point Fingers at a Favorite Enemy -- The Second Amendment
It was inevitable. After spending several days following the Tucson massacre working to curtail the 1st Amendment, the left and the media are now targeting the 2nd. As always, they have help from either those legitimately concerned for their safety or others trying to scavenge political points from the dead and wounded. Following the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is planning to push a bill “to ban the carrying of any firearm within 1,000 feet of what he describe...

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...

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 ...

Blame Arizona shooting on the shooter
It will be all too easy and popular to claim that the shooting in Arizona that killed six people was caused by the vitriol prevalent in American political discourse, but as usual the easy and popular explanation of this tragedy will avoid the truth, R. Lee Wrights, Libertarian writer, Activist and potential 2012 presidential Candidate said in a statement today. "As a father of two daughters myself, I am especially saddened by the Murder of a 9-year-old girl, and I mourn the death of all those ki...

Greens, Libertarians Re-Affirm Commitment to Non-Violence in Wake of Arizona Shooting
The Arizona Green Party is both saddened and outraged in response to the acts of Domestic Terrorism that plagued not only the City of Tucson this weekend, but our whole nation. Our hearts go out to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords as well as all the Victims and their families, friends, and communities affected by this senseless tragedy. Our sincerest condolences to those lives that were lost devastatingly on Saturday and we hope for a speedy recovery to those beginning their healing process. Non...

AZ Republicans Resign After Giffords Shooting, Citing Threats From Local Tea Partiers
Just hours after 22-year-old gunman Jared Loughner launched a Shooting Spree at a Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) constituent event in Tucson on Saturday that left six dead and 14 wounded, Legislative District chairman Anthony Miller, a Republican, announced that he would resign his position. In an email to the state’s GOP chair, Miller cited “constant verbal attacks” after his election last year “and Internet blog posts by some local members with Tea Party ties made him...

Ariz. GOP official resigns: Won't 'take a bullet'
A local Arizona Republican Party official resigned from his post after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot out of concern for his and his family's safety. Anthony Miller, a GOP district chairman and former campaign aide to Sen. John McCain, told The Arizona Republic: I don't want to take a bullet for anyone." Miller, the first African American to hold the post, was recently re-elected to a one-year term as chairman of the Legislative District 20 Republicans. He told the newspaper that verbal abuse ...

Trying to make Haiti's economy grow, among tent cities and despair
Arizona shooting Six people were killed and 14 others wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. Keeping suppliers interested in giving work to Haiti's large garment industry after the Earthquake was a big goal....