The Morning Plum

Watering the tree of liberty
Whether Jared Loughner is a far-left nihilist or a right-wing Racist or -- as he most likely is -- some weird politically incoherent amalgamation of Extremist beliefs tinged with paranoia, he wasn't driven to Murder by angry campaign slogans. Steve Kornacki's right -- Loughner was not a Gadsden Flag-wielding Tea Partyer incited to violence by the Twitter messages of Sarah Palin. But he is a product of the culture, and there's a reason he chose to attack a Democratic congresswoman. There's a reas...

Arizona massacre shoots down GOP rhetoric
When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor postponed the vote scheduled Wednesday to Repeal Health Care reform, it came as no surprise hours after Jared Lee Loughner had sprayed a crowd with bullets from his Glock 19 pistol. While the obvious reason may be out of respect, one can not discount the possibility this tragedy may be the price our country must pay to return political discourse to some semblance of civility. What happened two days ago should be a wakeup call to politicians and me...

Free speech and bullets
First, let me say I believe absolutely in the First Amendment to the Constitution, which says “Congress shall make no law … abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Don’t wait for a “but,” or an “except,” or “in some cases.” I don’t have one. Second, at least one idea arising from the tragic, despicable and appar...

The Arizona Shooting Is Not A Product Of Right-Wing Rage
Conservatives are furious that the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is being pinned on them. Their indignation is justified. The mania of Giffords' would-be assassin may be slightly more right-wing than left-wing, but on the whole it is largely disconnected from even loosely organized extreme right-wing politics. The rhetorical attempts to connect Jared Loughner to mainstream politics take two forms, neither convincing. One is to condemn the use of combat metaphors in politics, such as Sarah Pali...

Climate of Hate
By Paul Krugman NYT When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowd

Who are the lunatics who helped create this grammar-driven climate?
Who are the lunatics who helped create this grammar-driven climate? As I explained in earlier posts, the fact that so many people are trying to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for the actions of a deranged gunman does not surprise me, because placing blame is what people do. When a horrible Violent Crime is committed against a loved one, the enemies of that person tend to become suspects in the minds of those who love the Victim. When the loved one is a politician, obviously those with pol...

Accepting the simple math of blood-crazed American politics
"How can you deny math instead of accepting it?" So asked Student, Jared Loughner. to his algebra teacher, Ben McGahee, a few months before Loughner became America's latest, bloodiest, assassin. What Jared Loughner meant was: why can't you do simple addition, like putting 2 and 2 together to come up with the obvious conclusion that Jared was on the brink of breaking—dangerously loose? In fact, McGahee informed the school administration of his concerns about Loughner, that he might "pull ou...

Kristol Cries "McCarthyism" Over Palin Criticism
In the aftermath of this weekend's Shooting Spree in Tucson, Arizona, leaving six dead and Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition, a heap of criticism is being leveled at the right's queen of Controversy: Sarah Palin. The former Alaska Governor has been blasted for a map on her political action committee's website (since taken down) depicting gunsights over the districts of twenty lawmakers who voted for the Health Care Reform Bill. One such gunsight targeted Giffords'...

Slippery insinuations about a "climate of hate"
People have been having a hard time holding two ideas in their head at the same time: 1. What Paul Krugman calls "eliminationist Rhetoric" is bad. 2. Contrary to his suggestion, there is no evidence that such rhetoric caused Saturday's events. Even if such evidence is later found, it would not justify the evidence-free claims that have been made in the last 48 hours. For an example of the murky guilt-by-association tactics that have been employed by people on the left since the minutes afte...

Shrine With Skull In Loughners Backyard
From the New York Daily News: Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Frightening, twisted shrine in Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner’s yard By Matthew Lysiak In Tucson and Lukas I. Alpert Monday, January 10th 2011 A sinister shrine reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman accused of shooting a member of Congress and 19 others. Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner’s home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with s...

Satanic Shrine Found at Home of Tucson, AZ Gunman Jared Loughner
Maybe the LEFTIST MSM and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik might want to comment on this? A SATANIC SHRINE was found at the home of the gunman, Jared Loughner, responsible for the deaths of 6 and injuring 14, including US Rep Gabby Giffords who was shot in the head and recovering in critical condition. Let’s focus on the real person responsible for this heinous crime, not try and play party politics. Honor those who were lost, those who are trying to recover and those who acted so bra...

Military: AZ Shooter Failed Drug Test
Liberal Left:  We told you he was a right-wing, Tea Party druggie. You know you can’t go to one of those dang Tea Party rallies without getting a contact high. (WaPo) — A Military official says the man charged with trying to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a shooting rampage was rejected from The Army in 2008 because he failed a Drug Test. The official spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because Privacy laws prevent the Military from disclosing such information about a...

Kristol: Palin Critics Practicing McCarthyism
Conservatives are circling their wagons around Sarah Palin and other incendiary figures on the right in the wake of Saturday's Shooting Spree in Arizona. The latest is Weekly Standard editor, and Palinisto Bill Kristol, who said that Palin's critics are practicing "McCarthyism." On C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" Monday morning, Kristol claimed there's no evidence to suggest that shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner is an acolyte of Palin's. "The attempt to exploit this tragedy is distasteful," K...

A Way Forward on Civility After Tucson Rampage
I hate to rain on everyone’s parade when it comes to the possibility of political civility in the wake of this tragedy in Tucson Arizona. But it ain’t gonna happen. Not a chance. Will we hear nice words coming from Republicans and Democrats in the next few days or few weeks? Sure. Will everyone SAY the right things? Absolutely.  But let’s have a reality check here for a moment. The divisiveness and heated Rhetoric over Public Policy in this country will not end and won’t get any

Democrat hate machine politicizes Arizona tragedy
Cover of Rush Limbaugh James Rosen, Fox News: When Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords collapsed outside the Safeway in Tucson Saturday morning, felled by a hail of bullets that killed six and wounded another 13 innocent people that had come to see her, some were quick to claim that the carnage was the product not merely of the tortured mind and trigger-happy fingers of the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Rather, many on the American Left said the horror could be traced to the mal...

Tragedy in America
I know I'm supposed to cover only Republican politics in South Carolina, but recent events have prompted me to address a broader subject. Saturday morning in Tuscon, AZ, Rep. Gabrielle Gifford (D - AZ) was attacked by a lone gunman at a political rally where the Representative was meeting with some of her constituents outside of a Grocery Store.  The suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, killed 6 and wounded 14 others. My prayers go out to the Victims and their families. A tragedy like this takes us...

Giffords, Ghouls and Gimmicks
On Saturday, Jared Loughner attempted to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). He killed a federal judge, a nine-year-old girl and four others, and injured many more. Their fates were still unknown when political ghouls leapt from their muck to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and other assorted elements of the right. Doug Mataconis and Gabriel Malor identify some of the more prominent ghouls and respond to them, so I need not do so at length. Notably, the most prominent ghouls reek with ...

Where Is The Decency In Blood Libel?
American Journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist Terrorism. “Where,” asked Mr. York, “was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?” Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no ...

How Sarah Palin Should Defend Herself Against the (Unfair) Loughner Charges
Photo: Matt Stroshane/Getty Images It didn't take long after one of Jared Loughner's bullets passed through the head of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday for the Internet to recall that infamous Sarah Palin map from September, the one in which gun sights marked the districts of Democrats she hoped to remove from office in the November Elections. The violent imagery created an outcry at the time, and even Giffords herself remarked on MSNBC, "We’re on Sarah Palin’s...

Reconsidering Violent Rhetoric From Radio Host: If Ballots Dont Work, Bullets Will
Hey critics of “vitriolic Rhetoric,” lay off Sarah Palin for a minute and focus on someone who actually advocated for violence when things don’t go your way politically. Conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman already lost one job because of circumstances surrounding her fiery language and it seems her frightening words will justifiably receive some renewed interest in light of the Arizona shooting. At a Tea Party rally last summer, Kaufman screamed to “supporters” (l...

Flashback: How Clinton exploited Oklahoma City for political gain
NASA Won’t Speculate on Shuttle Flight of Rep. Giffords’ Husband, Mark Kelly. mike r. on Now: NYT’s Paul Krugman Blames Giffords Shooting on Right-Wing Rhetoric. Before: Kurgman Encourages Lefties to Hang Sen. Lieberman in Effigy…...

Times Goes to Left-Wing SPLC to Suggest Shooter Had 'Far-Right' Leanings
Monday’s front-page story from Tucson, the site of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Murder of six others, began with concerns from suspect Jared Loughner’s college classmates about his bizarre and aggressive behavior, but the Times switched to the role of politics in his life. Times reporters treated as an objective source of facts an unlabeled left-wing group that reliably finds right-wing “hate” wherever it looks on the right. Sure enough, the Sout...

Giffords shooting prompts proposed limits to freedom and hypocritical recriminations
Well, as you can imagine, the Giffords shooting has sucked all the oxygen out of just about every other subject. And, as you can probably further imagine, the "let’s make a law" crowd is busily at work trying to again limit our freedoms in the name of "security". We have a representative from PA who wants to outlaw "crosshairs" in political advertising. I have to wonder what part of "Congress shall make no law " in the 1st Amendment and political sp...

From Job Killing To Death Panels Republicans Have Numbed Us To Implications Of Their Rhetoric
From ‘Job Killing’ To ‘Death Panels’ Republicans Have Numbed Us To Implications Of Their Rhetoric Following Saturday’s tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, which led to the death of six people and the serious injury of 20 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) echoed the growing call for a more civil political discourse by challenging Republicans to change the name of their Health Care Repeal Legislation. “The bill, titled the ...

Op-Ed: The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's Killing Spree might fill the bill. With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and report...