House law enforcement official: No sign Ariz. shooting part of larger threat against Congress

Top Journalists Join World Journalism Institute at CPAC
New York, NY (PRWEB) January 6, 2011 The World Journalism Institute has become a participating organization in the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), seeking to equip young conservative Journalists to effectively compete for jobs in the mainstream newsrooms of America. This year’s conference will be held in Washington, D.C., from February 10 - 12. CPAC is the nation’s largest gathering of Conservatives annually. It is a project of the American Conservative Union Foundati

Queer Talk: Palin Retweets in Support of Gays?
Last Tuesday (January 4) Sarah Palin retweeted a comment by conservative radio host Tammy Bruce (who is “openly” Lesbian, and chairs the Advisory Board of GOProud, a pro-gay rights Republican group). Bruce’s original tweet referred to Owen Honors, the captain of the Aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise who was relieved of that command Tuesday when a part of his past commandery actions came to light. A few years ago, while second-in-command, Honors was responsible for a series of vid...

Hating the Sinner
Harsanyi: it’s Social Conservatism that will most often turn those with Secular sensibilities away from the right. Even within the movement, a Libertarian vs. social conservative debate has roiled on forever. This dynamic is only going to change when political expediency becomes a force more powerful than faith — which is to say the day after we pay off the National Debt. Now, it’s true that social Conservatives can be unfairly ridiculed as bigots in these debates. But sometimes,...

MRC Scooped By WND On Its Own Story
MRC Scooped By WND On Its Own Story Topic: Media Research Center In a story posted at 9:55 p.m. ET on Jan. 6, WorldNetDaily's Brian Fitzpatrick reported that the Media Research Center would not participate in the conservative confab CPAC "because of the continued participation of the Homosexual Activist organization GOProud." As of this writing, however, this news has not appeared on any MRC-operated website. That is curious. Why did the MRC allow WND to scoop it on a story it ar...

Behind the CPAC battle
Byron's and my story today: Friction between parts of the social conservative and Libertarian wings of the Conservative Movement has escalated into a shooting war in the run-up to the 28-year old Conservative Political Action Conference, with accusations of embezzlement (true), Homosexuality (true), and creeping Sharia (disputed) hurled against the 28-year old conservative institution. CPAC&r...;

Just talk or real threat? Shooting raises questions about rhetoric
WASHINGTON — When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords found herself targeted for defeat last year with a map showing a rifle's crosshairs over her district, she worried it might incite violence. "When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action," she said, after Sarah Palin used the crosshairs to tell her followers of 20 House Democrats who should be defeated. There's no evidence that Palin's ad contributed to a gunman's decision Satur...

Liberal media promoting big lie against Tea Party, Palin in AZ shooting
There is an old saying - tell a lie often enough and eventually it becomes the truth. The "big lie" technique, originally named by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf was instrumental in what eventually became known as the "Final Solution" - the State-sanctioned Murder of millions of Jews. The same technique is apparently at work in many of today's newsrooms, as shown by the baseless attacks against Sarah Palin and Conservatives in general. Consider:  The man under arrest for the shoot...

Republicans Tussle Over Conservatisms Future
Dissent is rippling through the ranks of the Republican Party. Some prominent right-wing groups have announced that they will not attend a major party event next month due to the presence of gay groups and others perceived to be at odds with Conservatism. —JCL Some prominent right-wing groups say they will not attend a major Republican gathering in Washington next month, objecting to the presence of gay groups and other organizations whose aims they say are incompatible with Conservatism. ...

Defending Arizona
Bruce Ash, a Republican National Committeeman from the state, emails: Tucson is where I have lived my entire life. Tucson and all of Arizona is NOT a hot bed of any sort of nasty or radical Right Wing politics. Arizonans are the fairest people I know in America. Arizona is a great place I am proud to call home. Despite the current circumstances our GOP/Conservative Activists have always acted...

Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head
(01-09) 04:00 PST Tucson -- Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head Saturday by a gunman who opened fire outside a Grocery Store during a meeting with voters, killing a Federal Judge and five others in an attempted Assassination that rattled the country and left Americans questioning whether divisive politics had pushed the suspect over the edge. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said Giffords was the target of a gunman whom he described as mentally unstable and possibly act...

Oh, By the Way...
Posted by John at 6:37 PM The Democratic Party is trying to blame Jared Loughner's crime on Sarah Palin. So, if Governor Palin or any other Republican were to be raped, or shot, or come to any other harm, would it be the liberals' fault? By their logic, the case would be more than air-tight. I haven't had much time to watch Cable News over the weekend, but from what I've seen, I've been disappointed in the performance of Republicans. Conservatives need to hit back aggressively against the Democ...

Political rhetoric and political violence: Are conservatives like Palin to blame for the Arizona shooting?
By Michael J.W. Stickings In the wake of yesterday's deadly shooting in Arizona, the Assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, with fingers being pointed (justifiably, I think) at the likes of Sarah Palin (and the Tea Party, as well as much of the Republican Party), much of the talk today is about Political Speech: Do Palin and others deserve any of the blame for what happened yesterday? More broadly, what is appropriate and what isn't? At Slate, Jack Shafer defends "inflamm...

State Dept Reverses, Will Keep Mother, Father on Passports
Good. The Political Correctness of LibProgs stopped (a bit) but only made possible by the conservative midterm victory. In a bid to forestall a backlash from congressional Conservatives, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has ordered the State Department to amend a bureaucratic change that would have eliminated the titles “mother” and “father” in favor of the gender-neutral term “parent” in passport applications and other documents. The State Departmen...

Dont Forget: Statewide North Dakota Tea Party Coming Up On Martin Luther King Day
It’s called Converge on the Capitol. The point is to indicate that Conservatives didn’t exactly win a victory in North Dakota in the 2010 Elections. Governor Dalrymple has already proposed a Budget that will increase state spending by over 20%, and special interests across the state are scrambling to get Lobbyists to the capitol to help divvy up the loot. Those concerned with limiting government need to be on guard, and this is our chance to send a message at the beginning of the new...

Stanek Sunday funnies 1-9-11
“Criticize ideas, not people.” Create one original moniker and stick with it. Please use a unique name. Be civil and considerate. Read fully and consider carefully before responding. Blasphemy will not be tolerated. No swearing or slandering of others. No deliberate inflammatory comments. Do not violate another’s Privacy. Do not threaten fellow commenters or anyone else. No personal, racial, ethnic or gender-based insults/slurs. Violations will be deleted and you may be banne...

"MORE LAWS ARE NEEDED!"
"MORE LAWS ARE NEEDED!" Yes, that is what exactly what they will say, if they haven't already. As I just said to M. Simon in an email, I find the uproar over what happened yesterday so predictable that I can barely stand it. I have seen the same type of opportunistic demagoguery in reaction to every shooting incident -- from Oswald to Sirhan to James Earl Ray to Columbine to David Purdy to whoever -- right on down to the latest loony tune asshole. I loathe having to listen to these reactions,...

Appropriations staff staying put
Republican leaders have bucked pleas from some Conservatives for a massive staff shakeup of the House Appropriations Committee - a move critics say would help the party fulfill its promise to reform and tamp down Washington's out-of-control spending pr......

Monday Is Going To Be A Huge Day For The Muni Debt Crisis Debate (MUB)
Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. According to Forrest Wilder at The Texas Observer, on Monday the Texas Comptroller will unveil its revenue estimate for the forthcoming Budget session. The subject of the Texas Budget has become a national sensation ever since we wrote about the story last week. Paul Krugman followed up on our piece, and since then the debate has fallen down across predictable partisan lines, with liberals claiming that Texas shows the fallacy of low-tax, low-...

This Week in Automotivators, January 3-9
Just a few stories that caught my eye this week, whether I blogged them or not. Click the link under each picture if you need a little explanation. Link: Future of Capitalism. Link: The TrogloPundit. Link: The MacIver Institute. Link: GoDaddy Bowl. Link: The Other McCain. Make your own automotivators. Share this article! Conservatives with Attitude!...

The Style - Not Content - Of Loughner's Reading
A reader notes something significant in the assassin's reading list. What unites it is paranoia, a sense of others controlling you, of Conspiracy theories and government plots, of illegitimate government and its agents of control: Loughner had very incoherent, hard to classify beliefs. But they were clearly paranoid and conspiratorial.  The conspiratorial or paranoid style is very much alive in our political discourse. Naturally, it's not just a right-wing phenomenon. I live in ...

Chicago Sun Times Takes Low Road on Giffords Shooting
Leave it up to the Chicago Sun Times editorial page to take opportunistic privileges with the Arizona Shooting tragedy and post a shamefully rambling and incoherent smear against the right. With the claim that “we cannot walk away from this one” the newspaper rails against the tone of America’s political Rhetoric, to end the fear-mongering and “ quit the demonizing ”. And then in an incredibly inane example of ideological laziness the editorial demonizes “the ...

Widow Applauds New Bike Safety Crackdown
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) - Cyclist safety watchdogs are applauding the news as officers throughout Brooklyn are under orders to ticket bike riders riding on sidewalks, running red lights and riding in opposite direction traffic. Nancy Gruskin, whose husband was killed by a wrong-way cyclist in 2009 on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, said it’s a start. “If we are going to change our infrastructure to include cycling, this is a zero-tolerance policy. You must obey the rules. If you donR...

House suspends work on Obamacare after shooting
House Republicans suspended their work this week, including a much-anticipated vote on ObamaCare, in response to the shooting rampage in front of a Tucson, Ariz., Supermarket that left six people dead and Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords clinging to life. In a Conference Call with House Democrats and Republicans, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said he was canceling the regular schedule, including the Wednesday ballot on a bill to Repeal the Health Care reform law. Instead, Cantor said, t...

WaPo Publishes Sociologist Who Compares 'Low-Income' Supporters of Bush Tax Cuts with Poor Southerners Who Backed Slavery
A recurring feature in the Washington Post's weekly Outlook section is a column devoted to "Five myths about" a particular topic. The feature for January 9 -- "5 myths about why the South seceded" -- happened to address a timely historical topic considering this year marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the U.S. Civil War. Yet the author, sociologist James W. Loewen, couldn't resist the opportunity to lump modern-day Republicans and Conservatives with non-sl...

Dont Let the Progressive Rhetoric Talk Distract You. Its a Ruse.
Don’t Let The Progressive “Rhetoric” Talk Distract You. It’s a Ruse. I should not have to say that a mass Murder and attempted Assassination by a wackjob who did everything to advertise his wackjobbery short of renting the Goodyear Blimp had nothing to do with political discourse, but it appears I must. Even before we knew Jared Loughner’s name, members of the progressive commentariat and the MSM blamed his crime on the so-called violent rhetoric of Sarah Palin and/...