Fool For The Ages

Violent Rhetoric Can Lead to Tragedies Like Arizona Shooting
David Brock is CEO of Media Matters, which tracks and corrects conservative misinformation in the media As we learn more about Jared Loughner, the young man allegedly responsible for the tragedy in Tucson last weekend, it seems clear that he is a mentally unstable individual whose motivations for committing such a horrific crime remain unknown. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a conversation about current political discourse and how it has gone too far. It is a conversation Media Matte...

Political Discourse and the Tucson Shootings
Should the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded in a Shooting Spree that left 14 injured and six dead, become a "teachable moment" about hate and polarization in American political discourse?  Yes—not because of the shooting but because of its aftermath. First there was the blame game on the left, with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and others jumping with indecent haste to pin the shootings on right-wing and Tea Party Rhetoric. In fact, the gun...

FBI pays visit to blogger as potential "threat"
 This local ABC report out of southwest Missouri suggests a law enforcement response to the Mass Shooting in Arizona that has, until now, been conducted behind the scenes: CHRISTIAN COUNTY, Mo. — A local blogger who was critical of Rep. Billy Long during last year's congressional campaign has been interviewed by the FBI about his encounters with the congressman. Clay Bowler, who lives in Christian County, says he was shocked to find an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation at...

8 year-old Elizabeth Hughes becomes latest YouTube star for her 'Star Spangled Banner' rendition at hockey game
Just in case you missed this on TV and aren't one of the 2,633,036 people that have already viewed this on YouTube, here's 8 year-old Elizabeth Hughes' debut singing the National Anthem on January 7, 2011 at the Norfolk Admirals game. The good news is that she did a wonderful job. The bad news is that the mike died after "gave proof." However, the crowd picked up the song and she kept her composure and stood there singing. But nobody got to hear her amazing high note on "free." But more good new...

Tucson survivor: 'It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target'
We speak with Tucson shooting survivor Eric Fuller. A 63-year-old disabled Veteran, Fuller had campaigned for Arizona Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in her Reelection campaign and was at the Supermarket in Tucson on Saturday to meet with her. He was shot in the knee and also wounded in the back. "It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target," Fuller says. "Their wish for Second Amendment Activism has been fulfilled." Cue the right-wing waaaaaahmbulance. I wonde...

In Wake of Arizona Shooting, Media Needs to Find the Forgotten Majority
"There is a need for some reflection here: What is too far now? What was too far when Oklahoma City happened is accepted now. There's been a desensitizing. These town halls and cable TV and Talk Radio, everybody's trying to outdo each other." Those were the words of an unnamed Republican senator after America's latest shooting rampage, this one a political Assassination attempt in Tucson, Ariz. How sad-and telling-that the lawmaker refused to attach his or her name to such an important truism...

The Tucson Shootings, Blood Libels, and Those Who Perpetrate Them
[ By Barry Rubin , crossposted from The Rubin Report.] The main street of Dolhinov, then in Poland, in 1931 on Polish national day. The 1886 Pogrom took place in the area pictured and against Jewish shops on the left behind the onlookers. Without taking any partisan position, but purely on the issue's historical merits, nothing could have been more appropriate than Sarah Palin's use of the term "blood Libel" to describe what happened to her after the Tucson killings. I know because my direct a...

MSNBC Exonerates Jared Loughner
Jared Loughner almost certainly had never heard of Sarah Palin back in 2007 when he first developed the psychotic fixation on Gabrielle Giffords that climaxed in mass Murder. He did not follow the news, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he was motivated in any way by any conservative. But that's not going to stop MSNBC from exploiting the tragedy. Spinning the news is behind this astonishingly vile network. Now they invent it out of whole cloth. Check out the graphic they've been running ...

Dave Pell: Tucson Shooting: When Having an Opinion Precedes the News
As a kid at my local county fair, I used to ride a roller coaster that rumbled around a circular track as songs like Foreigner's "Urgent" blasted through a set of giant speakers. Every few times around the track, the guy running the ride would pause the music long enough to bellow out one loud question: Do you wanna go faster? It didn't really matter how you answered. The ride got faster. I could hear that roller coaster guy's voice echoing in my head in the minutes following the shooting of G...

Tucson shooting aftermath: What it means for Obama
By the way, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Dr. Sally Satel, in an article in the New York Times, provides backing for my understanding, which I referenced in my Wednesday Examiner column, that the law in Arizona, more than the laws in most states, would have permitted an involuntary commitment of the Tucson shooter. Of course, hindsight is perfect. And most people are rightly skittish about infringing on a person's Civil Liberties. But given Mr. Loughner's troubling track record-the ...

Limbaugh Vs Krauthammer: Low Road Vs High
Rush Limbaugh’s reaction to the Arizona tragedy has been nothing short of embarrassing, and not worthy of the Talk Radio host with the largest audience in that medium. Limbaugh railed against the Fox News “All Stars”, Chris Wallace, Brit Hume and Charles Krauthammer for “slobbering” over President Obama’s Arizona Speech, going so far as to derisively call it a “pep rally.” Either Limbaugh really believes the drivel he’s been emitting since th...

Shootings Another Shock For 'Turbulent Generation'
At age 22, Aaron King already sounds world weary. A senior at the University of Arizona, King says that the recent shootings in Tucson brought back memories of other traumatic events. Today's Students either were just starting college or finishing High School when Seung-hui Cho opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 people before committing Suicide. "If you go back to something like Columbine, that happened while we grew up," King says. "We're part of a turbulent generation." For...

New at Reason: Cathy Young on Political Discourse and the Tucson Shootings
Should the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded in a Shooting Spree that left 14 injured and six dead, become a "teachable moment" about hate and polarization in American political discourse? Contributing Editor Cathy Young says yes, but only because of the political discourse that followed the attack. View this article. ...

McCain aide: 'This is a time for grieving'
TUCSON, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., does not believe this is the appropriate time to make public statements about the Tucson shooting, an aide says. Brooke Buchanan, the senator's spokeswoman, said McCain has been calling and meeting with the families of the Victims, The Washington Post reported. He issued two statements Saturday, one about the shootings and the other about his friend, U.S. District Judge John Roll, who was among the dead. But McCain has not joined the argum...

Shooting victim says Beck, Palin, Angle got their first target (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller No consensus on winner, number of ballots in RNC chairman election ABC News: U.S. snow, floods in Australia and Brazil the product of Global Warming Top House Republican: Sure, I'd sit with a Democrat during the State of the Union Russia warns of arms treaty pullout if U.S. pursues Missile Defense Poll: Very few Americans blame Arizona shooting on 'political Rhetoric' A survivor of Saturday’s shooting rampage in Tucson blamed Fox’s Glenn Bec...

How is 2011 faring so far? Ethnic studies and the 14th amendment
At this moment it is very hard to focus on anything but the tragic incident that marked the beginning of this year when a man in Tucson, Arizona opened fire on a public meeting killing 6 people and gravely injuring 14 others last Saturday. While this tragedy cannot be undone, there are a number of issues around which we can hope for some positive developments in 2011. In Arizona, the first week of 2011 saw all classes in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American Ethnic Studies ...

Arizona Shooting Survivor It Looks Like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the Rest Got Their First Target
The Video Via Democracy Now! (A very Far Left Internet news website): Transcript: Juan Gonzalez: The youngest Victim of the Arizona shooting rampage has been laid to rest. More than 2,000 people packed into a Tucson church, and hundreds more lined the road outside, to remember nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green. The third-grade Student was born on September 11th, 2001. She had recently been elected to her school’s Student council. Her Funeral was the first for the six people killed last wee...

OReilly: Bachmann, Palin snubbing media after Arizona shootings
More than seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law criminalizing “Homosexual conduct,” the Unconstitutional provision remains on the books. “The law is unconstitutional. It needs to be deleted from the statute,” said Chuck Smith, deputy Executive Director of LGBT Advocacy Group Equality Texas. There wasn’t a great deal of fanfare last week when U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley released a three-year-long committee staff review of the financial activit...

Jared Loughner's G-String
Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old Veteran and survivor of the Tucson shootings pulled no punches in assigning authorship for Jared Loughner’s actions. In an interview with Democracy Now, Fuller related the thoughts he wrote down while in the Hospital.  “How many other people? How many other demented people are out there? It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target. Their wish for Second Amendment Activism has been fulfilled—senseless hatred leadin...

When your name is Palin, you have no right to defend yourself
**Posted by Phineas I was going to go off on another rant‡ about Democratic politicians, mainstream Journalists, and leftist Activists (but I repeat myself) and their blood Libel against the Right and Sarah Palin, but then I watched this episode of PJTV’s Trifecta and realized that Greene, Ott, and Whittle said everything I could. And did it better. Just watch; I’ll wait here. Take away line from Whittle: “I have to count to ten.” Of the many odd, even outrageous, thing...

Veteran Wounded in Tucson Shootings Blames Palin, Beck, and Angle
Eric Fuller, the 63-year old Veteran shot twice last Saturday in the attack that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, said today that he blames the violent Rhetoric of people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Sharron Angle. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW. “Their wish for Second Amendment Activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to Murder, lunatic fring...

Pat Caddell: Krugman is a flat-out Asshole
During an episode of the late late night Fox show known as “Red Eye”, former Jimmy Carter pollster and political analyst Pat Caddell expresses his distain for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “He is a flat-out asshole.”, said Caddell.. “[T]he point is - you know, this thing started - I have to say, when I look at [Paul] Krugman and Jonathan Alter, with his advice and the president, ‘Don’t let this go to waste - let’s make it like Okla

An Open Letter to the New York Times Regarding Paul Krugman
Below is the full text of an email I sent Friday afternoon to Arthur Brisbane, Public Editor of the New York Times. In it, I detail a serious error made by Times columnist Paul Krugman in his Sunday column - documented at NB - and request that the Times correct the record, in keeping with its own ethics policies. If Mr. Brisbane or another member of the Times's staff responds, I will post the response as an update. Even if the Times does correct the record, however, Krugman's error has a...

Turning a Kosher Boy to the Dark Side
The first question-and-answer in New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton’s advice column, “Hey, Mr. Critic,” concerns a girlfriend who, “after two years of endless nagging,” got her Kosher boyfriend to agree to eat treyf one night. After praising various pork and shellfish dishes at various New York City restaurants, for this particular instance Sifton suggests—what else?—Chinese Food: As my hero Arthur Schwartz, formerly the restaurant critic for T...

Loughner posed in g-string with Glock (Politico)
Police said Friday they have semi-naked pictures accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner took of himself posing with a Glock 9mm gun while wearing a g-string, police said Friday. In photos turned over to the cops by a Walgreens drug store, Loughner posed bright-red g-string underwear with the same type of gun recovered at Saturday’s shooting at a Tucson Safeway. In some photos, Loughner is holding the gun near his crotch, The New York Times reported. In others that appear to have been sh...