Tea Party Express defends Palin

Supporters urge Palin to hit back at liberal critics on Giffords shooting
Sarah Palin has stayed mostly silent on the Arizona massacre. This may be smart for her in the long-term - and if so, she is right to take the long-term view. After all, at this point no one should second-guess Palin’s political instincts . You do not rise from PTA mom to the head of the conservative political stratosphere by making dumb moves. Facing a firestorm of unwarranted criticism over gun metaphors that her enemies claim fed the heated political climate surrounding the Tucso...

Daily scoreboard
1. From the Baltimore Sun: If the cold keeps up, the Chesapeake Bay may freeze over. First time in 7 years. Which was 2004. Which was one of those Hottest Years Ever. Under tough luck, you stole the Browns rule… GOOD. 2. From the Associated Press: “The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that the Supreme Court freed it from any authority to regulate drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a quick overseas source of lethal sodiu...

Tea Party Express fundraises off Arizona tragedy, lies about Daily Kos
Uh, what? From a Tea Party express Fundraising email: The media didn't tell you that the left-wing website, DailyKos, had targeted Congresswoman Giffords, putting a BULLSEYE on her, did they? But that's just what happened. The media didn't tell you that because it never happened. It's fantasy. It's a lie. And of course, since they can't verify the existence of such a bullseye image on this site, they'll claim it was scrubbed. Except that no one got a Screenshot of this supposed bullseye image....

Tea Party Express Raises Cash Over Arizona Shooting 'Smears'
The Tea Party Express, one of the movement's largest national groups, blasted out an email plea Monday afternoon asking their supporters to send money to defend them from liberals who are allegedly "assigning blame" to them and Sarah Palin for the shootings in Arizona over the weekend. "It is quite clear that liberals are trying to exploit this shooting for their own political benefit, and they used deception and dishonesty to try and smear all of us and our beliefs," the email read, according...

Both Sides Arent The Same
The big difference between right and left, as I and others have noted repeatedly, isn’t just in the amount of violent Rhetoric, but its source. On the liberal side, it only occasionally comes from movement leaders. On the right, it regularly does. It comes from opinion leaders, political leaders, and media leaders, and the more heated they get, the more popular they get. In the past 2½ years, prominent Republicans have stoked the fires of Extremism. During the 2008 campaign, Palin acc...

Citing shootings, Sen. Sanders solicits campaign donations
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) issued a Fundraising plea Tuesday in which he cited the Tucson shooting and accused "right-wing reactionaries" of contributing to a threatening political climate. "Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country," he wrote at the opening of the lengthy plea for campaign donations. Sanders, who is up for Reelection i...

Video: Tea Party Express chief strategist responds to attempts to link tea party movement to Arizona shooting
It just simply doesn't matter that the shooter was a "left-wing pothead." Or that his favorite book was the Communist Manifesto. Or that his favorite YouTube video was of the burning of the American Flag. A tea partier he was not, but that sure hasn't stopped the left. The Tea Party express Strategist responds: ...

Tea Party Express Fundraises Off Giffords Shooting: 'Tea Party Won't Be Silenced'
In an apparent effort to distance themselves from the Mass Shootings in Arizona over the weekend, the Tea Party Express sent out an email to supporters proclaiming that they "won't be silenced" -- and asking for contributions. Earlier today, TPE leader Sal Russo went on Fox News and lamented how "revolting and disgusting the left is for trying to associate the tea party with violence like this." This latest email emphasizes how "horrified" the TPE was to hear about the shootings, which includ...

Tea Party Express Leader: Left Is 'Revolting And Disgusting' For Blaming The Tea Party
Another Tea Party Leader is accusing the left of unfairly blaming the Tea Party for the Mass Shootings in Arizona, describing how "revolting and disgusting the left is for trying to associate the tea party with violence like this." Sal Russo, the leader of the Tea Party Express, said on Fox News today that shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner "was obviously a leftist. He admired Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. Those are not volumes that are popular with the Tea Party so he was obviously...

Congressional leaders lay blame for Tucson killing
Partisan representatives and their aides have slung Rhetoric over the circumstances that led to the Murder of 6, and the wounding of 14 more, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, last weekend.  While Obama assured the country that “the perpetrator of a heinous crime” would be brought to justice, Democrats and Republicans slumped into their comfort zone.  Most media outlets have concluded that Jared Loughner, the man who held the gun, is mentally unstable, yet politi...

Zev Yaroslavsky: A Time to Cool the Rhetoric
On Saturday morning, before she was shot, Gabrielle Giffords was performing one of her most vital duties as a public servant. She was meeting with the public. The Arizona congresswoman knew there were risks; last March, the windows of her office were shattered after her vote for Health Care reform. During her hotly contested campaign for Reelection, gun gimmicks and imagery abounded. On a map on Sarah Palin's political action committee's website, Giffords' district was among a number that had ...

Rick Santorum Opposes Bullseye Ban
By Grant Bosse (MANCHESTER, NH) Rick Santorum doesn’t want to restrict Political Speech in the wake of this weekend’s shooting in Tuscon, Arizona. The former Republican Senator discussed calls for toning down fiery political Rhetoric following the attempted Assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday, which left six people dead. Congressman Robert Brady (D-PA) has proposed banning cross-hairs and bullseyes in political ads, as liberal commentators have tried to tie accu...

The Don't-Tread-on-Meter: Life after Jared Lee Loughner.
Some events stop the news cycle, freeze politics, and start them both over on a schedule no one can control. The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the Murder of six people who were attending a meeting with her in Tucson, was one of those events. Within hours of the news, Republicans had announced that the ongoing debate over the Repeal of the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act would stop, to be picked up again in one week. What else changed for Republicans and Tea Partiers that day?...

Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Coverage Becomes Media Navel Gazing
The Tucson shootings, three days removed, have reached the predictable place in the story arc in which media analysis turns into a meta-narrative about the nature of the coverage rather than the event itself. The Victims, intermittently remembered, first were props for an analysis of political Rhetoric, then a playing field for accusations of partisan opportunism and, finally, now are an excuse for media navel-gazing. The coverage and meta-discussion have laid bare this essential truth: There ...

Tea Party Express: Shooting blame is 'outrageous' (AP)
Sacramento, Calif. – The Tea Party Express says blaming the constitutionalist movement and Sarah Palin for the Arizona shooting that killed six people and wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is "outrageous." The California-based group says liberals are trying to exploit the shooting for political gain and place the blame on society for embracing the tea party movement, but the 22-year-old charged in the shooting is the only person responsible for the violence. In a statement Monday, the...

Tea Party Express raising money in aftermath of Arizona shooting (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Tea Party Express raising money in aftermath of Arizona shooting Barbara Walters: 'I'm feeling bad for Sarah Palin' TheDC on TV: Jamie Weinstein on RT's 'The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann' Tom DeLay sentenced to three years in Prison Political cartoons exploit Arizona tragedy in effort to score crude political points The Tea Party Express, a California-based conservative political action committee, sent out a letter to supporters Monday requesting donat...

Maybe people just aren't buying it
Has the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson Saturday made Americans more worried that opponents of Barack Obama’s policies will turn to violence? Actually, a little less so, according to pollster Scott Rasmussen. When he asked the question last March, 53% of respondents said they were very or somewhat worried. When he asked the question again on Sunday and Monday, after the Tucson shooting, 45% said they were very or somewhat worried. Not the response I would have expect...

CBS Attacks 'Permissive Gun Laws' And Gun-Toting Tea Partiers in Wake of Shooting
On Monday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric used the Tucson shooting to go after Gun Ownership: "As we reported, Jared Loughner purchased his gun legally....Saturday's attack is now putting the state's Gun Laws under a magnifying glass." In the report that followed, correspondent Dean Reynolds declared: "Arizona has among the most permissive Gun Laws in the nation." Reynolds portrayed Arizona's commitment to Gun Rights as a danger: "The right to ke...

Gabrielle Giffords staffers, volunteers carry on in face of tragedy
As the House reconvened for the first time since Saturday's rampage in Tucson, Staffers and volunteers in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) Washington office did what they have done since the Mass Shooting -- persevere in the face of tragedy. Of the 20 or so Staffers in the office, eight have remained in Washington; the others returned to Arizona following the attack. Those currently in Washington are expected to travel to Tucson for Wednesday's memorial service and may stay in Arizona through ...

Extremist Rhetoric, Violence and American History
The massacre in Tucson has generated a major and intense debate across the country about whether the overheated political climate—the Rhetoric, the “vitriol, “Extremist Speech”—has influenced or motivated the Tucson shooter to commit his dastardly crime. Just as reflected in the commentary on this site, the national opinion runs the gamut, from holding the shooter solely and 100 percent responsible, to holding personalities such as Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh solely and 100

Adolf Hitler responsible for Arizona shooting?
While Victims of the Tucson shooting still lied in the Parking Lot, propagandists on the left started to lay the ground work in an attempt to spin the horrific incident into a rightwing self-fulfilling prophesy.  With no regard for the truth, a broad spectrum of liberals jumped on the political vitriol bandwagon attempting to connect Conservatives from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh to the shooting.  However, to date the only information gleaned from the investigation indicate the discov...

The first instinct of weak minds is to blame the Tea Party, Palin
Image via Wikipedia Marc Thiessen: After the attempted car bombing in Times Square last year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg publicly speculated that the attack had been carried out by "somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health-care bill or something." At the Nation, columnist Robert Dreyfuss wrote that "a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government Far Right" was probably behind the bombing. Countless others in the left-wing blogosphere joined the "...

Content Provider! That Would Be Me.
I find the term "content provider" hilarious. It's getting more common as a definition of what writers do on the net, sorta like viewing birthday gifts from the point of view of how to sell the largest possible amount of wrapping paper and bows. To sell those, you gotta put something in the box itself. Jennifer Armstrong provided the link to a story about the squinting bush brown butterflies. From the article: Squinting bush brown butterflies use reflective "eye spots" on their wings to attract ...

Gray Lady editorials respond to Ariz. massacre by demanding increased gun control (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Tapper: Some say civil Libertarians the reason loonies like Loughner are out on the street Leahy warns against calls for government Speech restrictions Sen. Kerry calls for political 'civility' post-shooting, but doesn't seem to agree with Republicans on anything Rep. Peter King to introduce bill making it illegal to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of 'high-profile' government official Fellow commenters at UFO Conspiracy website questioned Jared Lee Lough...

Church Helping with Tucson's 'Psychological Wounds'
Tucson, Ariz. - The community of Tucson is still in shock as many struggling emotionally to deal with the tragedy. Crisis and stress management centers are being set-up around the city. Some of the counselors belong to a group sponsored by one local church whose members are trained to help in times of crisis. A candlelight vigil was held Monday night at the Tucson medical center where Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was undergoing surgery to try and save her life. Most stood in reverent silenc...