NYT columnist blasts Left for witch hunt after Tucson shooting

Where was Charles Blow getting his news?
WHERE WAS Charles Blow GETTING HIS NEWS?.... One of the stranger pundit reactions to the tragedy in Tucson comes by way of the New York Times's Charles Blow, whose disappointing column this weekend was largely inexplicable. Tragedy in Tucson. Six Dead. Democratic congresswoman shot in the head at rally. Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled:...

The Backfire
When the latest leftist witch hunt backfires, even one of the New York Times columnists notices : The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political Rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative Rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point bu...

P.J. ORourke: The New York Times Loses It
Back in November, I quipped that at some point, the Gray Lady of the New York Times slowly morphed into the vapor-filled dowager form of Margaret Dumont, the Marx Brother’s hilariously straitlaced comic foil, but without Dumont’s grand sense of irony and whit. While we’ve had some fun with Paul Krugman this week (and welcome to the readers from Ricochet who joined in as well yesterday), in the latest edition of the Weekly Standard, P.J. O’Rourke writes that plenty of ot...

HOW BAD WAS THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF TUCSON? So bad that Charles Blow is writing about The Tucson Wit
HOW BAD WAS THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF Tucson? So bad that Charles Blow is writing about “The Tucson Witch Hunt.” Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right. “I saw Goody Proctor with The Devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With The Devil!” The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated Rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who s...

Tucson Shooting Victim Arrested For Threatening Tea Party
James Eric Fuller In the wake of the horrific Tucson shootings politicians have asked that Rhetoric be "toned down," and this is a reminder that that request applies to people on both sides of the political spectrum. James Eric Fuller, a Victim of the Tucson shooting, was arrested yesterday for making a Death Threat at Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries. Fuller was in the front row as Humphries was interviewed on ABC's "This Week," and yelled "you're dead" after Humphries suggested conve...

Did Liberal Rhetoric Influence Eric Fuller to Threaten Tea Party Member?
ABC News held a town hall event in Tucson, Arizona and a tea Party Leader, Trent Humphries, stood up and spoke. According to Gateway Pundit, Humphries has a neighbor who was killed by Jared Loughner, so Humphries  was personally effected by the tragedy. He’s also received death threats since the shooting. Eric Fuller, who was shot in the knee by Loughner, didn’t like what Humphries had to say and descended into a fit of rage. Fuller then swiveled in his chair, raised his camera an...

Tea Party Nation leader: Founding fathers would have hated Bill Maher
Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips wrote in a blog post that the Founding Fathers would have hated Bill Maher because of his support for Socialist policies. Now, I want you Teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up  like them, and smell like them, I think it’s pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated  your guts. And what’s more, you would’ve hated them. They were everything you despise. They s...

National Debt Passes $14T
WASHINGTON - The United States just passed a dubious milestone: Government Debt surged to an all-time high, more than $14 Trillion. That means Congress soon will have to lift the legal Debt Limit to give the nearly maxed-out government an even higher credit limit or dramatically cut spending to stay within the current cap. Either way, a fight is ahead on Capitol Hill, inflamed by the passions of Tea Party Activists and Deficit hawks. Today’s Debt level represents a $45,300 tab for ea...

Rep. Napolitano: 'Stigma' thwarts mental health care
Congress and state officials must spend more time focusing on treating mental Health Problems, and not wait for tragedies that like the massacre in Arizona to respond, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley. Napolitano and Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), co-chairs of the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, acknowledged that there is little likelihood of Federal Funding being directed at the problem because of fiscal constraints, althoug...

Bad blood between left and right continues unabated
Most of the event was calm, although emotional, as witnesses talked of what they saw on that fateful day but there was an incident . Toward the end of the meeting, when the topic of Gun Control and Mental Health came up, one audience member who is a Tea Party Activist said that discussions on the political implications of the shooting should wait until emotions have settled. That's when 63-year-old Eric Fuller , a Democratic Party Activist who was wounded in the knee during the shooting , began ...

Man injured in Arizona shooting detained after threat at Tea Partier
Authorities in Tucson, Ariz., have arrested a man injured in the Mass Shooting that severely injured Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) after he threatened a Tea Party Leader. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Saturday detained James Eric Fuller, 63, on Misdemeanor disorderly conduct and threat charges stemming from an outburst during a taping of an ABC “This Week” special, the Associated Press reported. Fuller, who was shot in the knee and back during the Jan. 8 shooting

AZ Shooting Victim Committed To Mental Health Facility After Making Death Threat
Definitely one of those WTF moments. James Eric Fuller, one of the Arizona Shooting Victims from January 8, 2010 when Jared Lee Loughner shot 19 people and killed 6 of them, instantly became a poster boy for the Far Left when he publicly blamed Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Glenn Beck and others for Loughner going off the deep end. Seems in the rush to declare a "Victim" believed that, not many decided to find out anything more about Mr. Fuller. Two things are clear from Saturday's ABC News town ...

Voters failed to follow media discourse on dialog about violent rhetoric
Image via Wikipedia Jonah Goldberg: ... ... There’s no disputing — nor any surprise — that left-wing Activists didn’t need to wait for accurate reporting to jump to conclusions about the “real” culprits in the Tucson massacre. For instance, within minutes of the news hitting the wires, commentator Markos Moulitsas wrote on Twitter, “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” David Brock, the head of a left-wing activist outfit called Media Matters for A...

Hard part begins for tea party
WASHINGTON — Welcome to Washington, tea partiers. Now that they're freshmen in a GOP-run House, the political movement's Candidates are running smack into the traditions, partisan divisions and powerful competing interests that make it so hard to redirect the government. Some Tea Party Activists - part of a loose-knit, Libertarian-tinged network advocating Small Government and less federal spending - already are dismayed to see their new lawmakers plunge into familiar patterns of raising...

Test for pols: Can they behave after the Tucson shooting?
House Republicans delayed a vote planned last Wednesday on rolling back the Health Care overhaul while Giffords is being treated in a Tucson Hospital. When they turn back to the health law on Tuesday, Republicans will focus on moderating their tone, Strategists said, in contrast with some lawmakers' stronger language from last year's campaign. "There's going to be a natural cautiousness," said pollster David Winston, who advises GOP leaders. "Members a...

Green-eyed monster hits Joe Scarborough
Hugh Hewitt had a nice bit about Politico going from New Media to old Media Bias in a 2-year time period. Not unexpected. Conservatives aren’t the cool kids in Washington. But what caught my eye was his excerpt of Tuesday’s column in Politico by Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, in which Scarborough blamed the Tucson massacre on right-wingers — days after they had been exonerated. From Joe Scarborough: “No one should give a free pass to Talk Show hosts and their political guest...

When Even Excitable Charles Blow Thinks The Left Went Nuts With Their Blamestorming…
...Then most assuredly, they did. Charles calls his op-ed The Tucson Witch Hunt, and he believes the Left was way off base, and, consider, this comes from a super liberal with his head in the sand, who says later in the articleI have written about violent Rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.Obviously, he doesn't get aroun...

When Even Excitable Charles Blow Thinks The Left Went Nuts With Their Blamestorming
…Then most assuredly, they did. Charles calls his op-ed The Tucson Witch Hunt, and he believes the Left was way off base, and, consider, this comes from a super liberal with his head in the sand, who says later in the article I have written about violent Rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson. Obviously, he doesn’...

Loughner Video Released By Community College
This appeared last night and the reaction from folks on Twitter and email was that it's a tough watch. The guy is genuinely disturbed. We knew that but to hear and see it so clearly is pretty shocking. I would love to sit with Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and the like to watch this. Then when it's over, I'd like them to explain to me how they think this broken and damaged man was in any way influenced by the 'tone' of our political discourse. Yes, his ramblings involve phrases...

Political Vitriol and Society's Fringe Element
"It may be that Laughner, like other like-minded Extremists, believe that a violent act against the government by their hand will precipitate a second Civil War between conservative so-called "patriots" and the Federal Government (including anyone who disagrees with them). This was the motivation of Oklahoma City bombers Timothy Mcveigh and Terry Nichols when they detonated a huge bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 innocent people, including 1...

Shooting survivor arrested for threatening tea party leader (The Ticket)
For all the talk of the need for a new civility in the wake of the Jan. 8 shooting attack in Tucson, Ariz., one of the shooting's Victims clearly hasn't gotten the message.  James Eric Fuller, 63, was arrested Saturday for threatening an Arizona tea Party Leader. Fuller allegedly took a picture of Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries during the taping of an ABC "This Week" town hall about the shooting. Fuller then yelled, "You're dead," at Humphries, police informed the press. Fuller,...

No More Mister Nice Blog
THIS IS WHY I HAVEN'T BEEN WITH THE PROGRAM I've been extremely uncomfortable with our side's Rhetoric over the past week. I detest Sarah Palin and the Tea Party/Talk Radio/Fox News right, and I agree that the ratcheting up of angry Rhetoric on the right is bad for America, but I simply don't agree that that Rhetoric must have been a contributing factor in what happened in Tucson eight days ago -- every day it seems to become more and more obvious that Jared Loughner was a paranoid schizophreni...

The Top 10 Most Ridiculous Left-Wing Attacks on U.S. Conservatives Following the Arizona Shootings
From Nile Gardiner, at Telegraph UK, "A Shameful Week for America's Liberal Elites": This has been a hugely shameful week for sections of the American Left, who have exploited a horrific tragedy that claimed six lives, in order to advance political attacks upon some leading conservative politicians and media commentators, as well as an entire political movement in the form of the Tea Party. The vitriolic and hate-filled attacks have marked a low point for liberal media elites in America in the 2...

The Top 10 Most Ridiculous Left-Wing Attacks on U.S. Conservatives Following the Arizona Shootings
From Nile Gardiner, at Telegraph UK, "A Shameful Week for America's Liberal Elites": This has been a hugely shameful week for sections of the American Left, who have exploited a horrific tragedy that claimed six lives, in order to advance political attacks upon some leading conservative politicians and media commentators, as well as an entire political movement in the form of the Tea Party. The vitriolic and hate-filled attacks have marked a low point for liberal media elites in America in the ...

An Obama Comeback?
Posted by John at 11:53 AM We've heard a lot lately about President Obama's political resurgence. It started, we are told, with the Lame Duck session of Congress and got another boost from the Tucson shootings. Contrary to that narrative, some, like Byron York, saw Obama's performance at the Arizona memorial service as an act of political opportunism: [S]ince it was impossible to tie the violence in Tucson to Republican Rhetoric, the president couldn't very well use the shootings as the premise...