Not A Video Game: Grand Theft - The Constituion

Hit And Run Compares Arizona Rampage To…..Wait, Hit And Run?
Michael C. Moyhnihan produces a whopper of a tale, with all sorts of paranoid and incorrect blamestorming, hours before Obama told people like him to just stop it. Witness the insanity: The Assassin Who Would Save America from the Extreme RightIf political Rhetoric can inspire Murder, then it follows that those issuing warnings about the current “tone” in American discourse—those breathless invocations of “eliminationists” acting like “Brownshirts” and &...

The feckless left Exhibit TDFR: Total Disconnect from Reality
This my friends, is a shining example to why I hung it up with the Democratic Party and with Progressive Politics in General. RFK Jr. Muses over at HuffPo: Uncle Jack’s Speech in Dallas was to have been an explosive broadside against the Right Wing. He found Dallas’ streets packed five deep with Kennedy Democrats, but among them were the familiar ornaments of presidential hatred; high-flying confederate flags and hundreds of posters adorning the walls and streets of Dallas showing Jack’s

The Politics of Insinuation
David Warren: While it did not quite rise to a blood Libel, the headline in Monday's Guardian (U. K.) did not fail for want of trying: "Gabrielle Giffords shooting reignites row over right-wing Rhetoric in U.S." Elsewhere in the Guardian, the distance was bridged. Consider this heading (over a piece by Michael Tomasky): "In the U.S., where hate rules at the Ballot Box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time: The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of right...

Palin Borrows Blood Libel from Israeli Far Right
“Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood Libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” The “blood libel” was the false and outrageous accusation launched against Jews in medieval and early modern Europe by Christians that they stole Christian babies and used their blood in secret rituals. This bizarre obsession of European Christians resulted in attacks on and Pogroms against the poor Jews on...

Tea Party Express fundraises off reaction to Arizona shootings
Stumble This! A leading Tea Party group is raising funds based upon public reaction to the Tucson, Arizona shootings. In an e-mail sent to supporters Wednesday, the California-based conservative group Tea Party Express invoked the tragic shootings of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and nineteen others, asking for donations to fight back against liberals in the media who cite inflammatory right-wing Rhetoric as a possible instigator for such violence. "Instead of prayers for the Victims and their...

Alert Captain Renault
pic via Bruce_Fulton at flickr.com The usual right-wing suspects seem to really have strong objections to any memorial service involving someone who isn’t right-wing. From Paul Wellstone to Coretta Scott King to Ted Kennedy and so it shall be in regard to the service for the Victims of the violence of Jared Lee Loughner (three name rule for all assassins). Because THAT is the first thing you complain about after a service remembering victims…not the victims, but how the Memorial Se...

Age of Healing Begins: 'Begging for Civility Out of Teabaggers is Like Trying to Convince a Treeful of Chimpanzees to Stop Mastu
Looks like Obama's got his work cut out for him.Palin is the monstrous Love Child of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, and she long ago crossed the line between hateful Rhetoric and incitement to violence. Palin was warned again and again that her violent imagery was getting dangerous, that she was stoking the flames of the fringes with language that insinuated a coup d'état was necessary. Pundits, politicians, and even the intended target of this weekend's attack all tried to warn her. Amazing ho...

The Left shoots itself in the foot in Tucson
This past Saturday, Janurary 8, 2011 while conducting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway Grocery Store in Tucson, AZ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a would-be assassin who subsequently opened fire on the crowd in attendance killing six and wounding another fourteen. Congresswoman Giffords was lucky to survive such an horrendous attack and remains in critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson where she continues to make remarkab...

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...

Obama Urges Americans to 'Stay United'
President Barack Obama called on Americans to stay united on Wednesday evening during a memorial service in memory of the people who were killed and to honor those who were injured in the Tucson, Ariz., shooting last Saturday. It was a chance for Arizonans as well as all Americans to remember and begin to heal. At times, the crowd of 14,000 was moved to tears and at other times they were moved to tears of joy, as President Obama remembered each of the six people killed and voiced America's ho...

How Warner and Sony's video game rivalry led to cooperation on DC Universe Online
In early 2005, Sony Online Entertainment's and Warner Bros.' interests in the online gaming business were very far apart. Warner was preparing to launch The Matrix Online, a Multiplayer online gaming world based on its series of hit movies. And it was considering producing a similar game based on the super-heroes and villains from its DC Comics unit. Sony Online, the online gaming division of the giant electronics parent company, was in advanced negotiations to create a gam...

Tom DeLay: Liberals Sentenced Me To Jail (VIDEO)
Former House Republican leader Tom DeLay says his conviction on Money Laundering charges was a politically-inspired case brought by prosecutors in "the most liberal county in Texas." DeLay tells NBC's "Today" show that prosecutors "never proved" their case against him. DeLay is free on bond after being sentenced to three years in Prison and 10 years' Probation on a conviction of scheming to illegally influence Texas Elections. On Thursday, he again denied the charges. "I was tried in the most ...

Alemayehu G. Mariam: Corporations Are Persons, But Women Are Not?
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the corporation was elevated to the highest level of democratic Citizenship and endowed with the right to free Speech under the First Amendment as the equal of human beings (arguably including women). U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia joined the majority in Citizens United; and in a recent interview said the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect women against Discrimination. "Certainly th...

Patricia Ireland: Equal Justice for Whom?
January 2011 has brought a strange spotlight on the U.S. Constitution. First, Justice Scalia pronounces that women are not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Then Republicans recite the entire Constitution on the floor of the House. It is true that anyone listening to the Republicans' reading did not hear the word "women" anywhere in the equal protection clause. But then the word "corporations" did not pass their lips either, and corporations have been covered by...

Keli Goff: Finding Hope in Arizona
More than a year ago former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi generated headlines due to a rare public display of raw emotion. She became visibly choked up while voicing concern that the increasingly heated Rhetoric permeating our political discourse at the height of the Health Care debate could soon turn violent; something she had seen firsthand years before with the 1978 shooting of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, one of the nation's first Openly Gay elected officials. (Click he...

Daily Beast, Newsweek piece contradicted by storys source, DHS statements (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Midterm Election most negative ever, study says Call to reinstate fairness doctrine after Arizona shooting not likely to result in action Daily Beast, Newsweek piece contradicted by story's source, DHS statements Democrats slam Boehner for missing Arizona memorial service FNC's Hume praises 'pep rally' atmosphere of Obama Arizona Speech, but adds parts 'most peculiar' It’s only been four days since the senseless Tucson shooting, but the blathering ...

L.A. Times: Health Care Repeal Too Divisive What with Our New Need for Civil Rhetoric
The deck headline: “House Republican leaders are eager to fulfill their promise to vote to Repeal the Legislation, but taking up the divisive issue could hurt the party at a time of calls for rejecting partisan Rhetoric.” As lawmakers promise a new era of comity after the Arizona shooting attack that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in critical condition, Republican leaders grappled with how and when to return to an issue that brought political discourse to a boili...

Stephen Stromberg: Palin proves -- again -- that she's a terrible politician
Sarah Palin didn't retreat. She reloaded. And she proved, again, that she is a ruinously incompetent politician. Over the weekend, liberal pundits overeagerly speculated that she may have inspired the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). After learning more about alleged shooter Jared Loughner, many of those same commentators restrained their criticism of the former Alaska Governor, and polls showed that Americans are skeptical of any connection. People recognized Palin had been unf...

Overnight Open Thread
And now for something really important... In Praise of the Sci-Fi Corridor A photo essay on the importance of corridors in making Science Fiction movies work: Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they're so utilitarian by nature - really they're just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are 'sold' to viewers,...

Climate Change
The eruption of wild accusations after the shootings in Arizona illustrate once again that those who talk about civility the most practice it the least. Pious calls for the restoration of civility have come from a parade of pundits and pols famous for celebrating or rationalizing the most egregious violations of it.   Civility is a political, not moral concept, in the minds of many on the left. "Civility" means to them peaceful submission to Liberalism and "Incivility" means annoyingly effectiv...

Rand Paul: Democrats Trying To 'Manufacture' Controversy From Shooting In Arizona
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused Democrats Wednesday of attempting to "manufacture" the Controversy that has arisen over "vitriol" and political Rhetoric in the wake of the shooting in Tucson over the weekend. "Well, these are the kind of things that I think some on the left decided to manufacture even before the events occur. I mean, this is part of the playbook of Rahm Emanuel where they say any crisis should be used to their advantage to further their agenda," Paul said Wednesday on the FOX B...

T-shirts Handed Out at Tucson Memorial
Some Conservatives are upset over t-shirts bearing the logo "Together We Thrive: Tucson & America" that were handed out to attendees at tonight's memorial service in the McKale Center on the campus of the University Of Arizona here. The shirts, which bear the same logo that adorns other items from the event -- including press passes, signage and volunteer t-shirts -- were placed on many of the seats in the lower sections of the arena when tonight's capacity crowd walked in. You must login to...

Obama takes opportunity Palin missed (Politico)
In the span of a single news cycle, Republicans got a jarring reminder of two forces that could prevent them from retaking the presidency next year. At sunrise in the east on Wednesday, Sarah Palin demonstrated that she has little interest—or capacity—in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics. And at sundown in the west, Barack Obama reminded even his critics of his ability to rally disparate Americans around a message of Reconciliation. Palin was defiant, making the c...

Tea Party Foes Smell Blood, Shanghai Children Into Their Cause
In the wake of the Tucson shooting tragedy, leftists are decrying all the violence. Yet they are clearly out for blood.  Sound contradictory? Of course it does, but there it is.  Those who hate on the citizen movement for smaller government, as exemplified by the Tea Party, really smell blood now. The shots from Jared Loughner’s gun truly have been heard around the world.  An article in Sunday’s Guardian online describes the sort of feel-good event

Palin's Arizona defence fuels 2012 talk
Sarah Palin has fanned speculation about her presidential ambitions as she cast herself as chief defender of arch-conservatives accused of inspiring a horrific act of violence with their fiery political Rhetoric. Palin accused those linking bellicose politicking by the right-wing Tea Party movement to the attempted Assassination of a US congresswoman of spreading a "blood Libel" in a slickly produced video released on Wednesday. "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and e...