Why Blame Photos of Political Figures Holding Guns?

The Morning Plum
* Obama steps up: The President is set to travel to Arizona tomorrow to attend the Funeral service of the Shooting Victims, and he is expected to give a Speech about tolerance, a theme he may reprise in the State of the Union address. But Obama's advisers are uncertain about the exact message he should send: It is not clear whether ideology motivated the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, and Obama's advisers may conclude it unwise for the president to lecture the nation on mutual respect -- whi...

Ailes to Fox Anchors, 'Tone it Down'
Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, on Monday embraced the idea of a more civil public discourse in the wake of the shootings in Arizona. In an interview with Russell Simmons, which was posted on the Web site of the founder of Def Jam records, Mr. Ailes said that his network would try to cool the heated Rhetoric. “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” Mr. Ailes said. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other ...

Vanishing Pointless
If there's one thing that the Tucson shooting has provoked, it's a lot of people going back and flushing a whole bunch of stuff down the memory holes. History must be unwritten, embarrassing items purged and denied, awkward truths must be ignored. Of course, this is the Internet, and nothing is ever truly forgotten -- and one's foes will often make copies and Screenshots before they expose your embarrassing postings before they expose them, so they can properly denounce you for your "admission...

Jon Stewart delivers special message on Tucson shootings (Video)
Last night Jon Stewart cut away from his normal comedic routine to deliver a more serious message on the shootings in Tucson, Arizona over the weekend.  Six people were killed and fourteen more were injured in the shooting.  United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who is currently recovering from a gunshot to the head, was the apparent target of the shooter.  As usual, Stewart brought a different perspective to a story which has come to be dominated by partisan “poli...

Ariz. survivor: 'It was like a bad crime drama'
Eric Fuller said Tuesday on the CBS "The Early Show" that he felt the bullet that hit his knee but didn't know he had also been hit in the back. Jared Loughner (LAWF'-nuhr) is being held on federal charges. He's accused of killing six people and wounding or injuring 14 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Fuller says he was lucky and feels fine physically but is outraged that Giffords was attacked. Ariz. survivor: 'It was like a bad crime drama' Why hasn't Obama warned...

Who Else?! NBC New's Matthews Links Bachmann to Shooting
Chris Matthews, on Monday's Hardball, used the attempt on Gabrielle Giffords' life, to not only portray America as some sort of gun crazed country, but also to blame the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann for political violence as he blurted: "Sarah Palin using gun play language. What is she talking about crosshairs and reloading...and Bachmann out there with her kind of talk. I mean it seems like the way people talk now has, has gotten more ballistic...Why are guns talked about so much, ...

It's On: Pawlenty Jabs Palin Over 'Crosshairs'
Possible Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty took a jab at Sarah Palin, saying he wouldn't have used gun crosshairs to target Rep Gabrielle Giffords and others. "I wouldn't have done it," the former Minnesota Governor told The New York Times on Monday when asked if he would have created a map like the one posted last year on Sarah PAC's website showing crosshairs on lawmakers who supported Health Care reform. You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance,...

UC Berkeley Chancellor Says Arizonas Immigration Law to Blame For Giffords Shooting
So what’s he saying, it wasn’t Palin’s map? Doesn’t he know that’s the official leftist line? In an official e-mail to the University of California at Berkeley campus community, chancellor Robert Birgeneau said that it was no “coincidence” that Saturday’s tragic shooting of Ariz. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at a public event in Tucson occurred in a state that recently enacted what he suggested was a discriminatory Immigration law. ̶...

That’s Political Entertainment!
EMOTE CONTROL Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. In Morning Glory, last year’s most underrated movie comedy, go-getter breakfast-show producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams, divine), in a burst of exasperation, explains the facts of life to journalistic warhorse Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, face furrowed with mental indigestion): “The world has been debating news versus entertainment for years, and guess what? You lost!” Which hasn’t stopped the l...

Can't We All Just Get Along?
I would like to know what rock David Gergen has been living under for the last two years if he thinks this tragedy in Arizona is possibly just the beginning of a period of violence. Someone needs to tell him to go read our contributor Jon Perr's post if he actually hasn't been paying attention to how many people have already been killed over the last couple of years. We don't need to know "what part of that culture" of violence led to the actions by the shooter in Arizona to know that it's long ...

Stop the Blame Game
I'm not a media critic and never will be, but this has not been a shining 48 hours for my profession. Following the shooting that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., gravely wounded and six bystanders murdered at a Tucson shopping center, the media have spent as much time trying to assign political blame for the cause of the shooting as they have trying to unearth facts. As it turns out, the murderer is a mentally unstable individual, with no coherent political ideology. For all the blame pl...

Accused gunman warned of brainwashing
Honouring the Arizona Victims ... Barack and Michelle Obama after observing a minute's silence with staff on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday. Photo: AFP Tucson: Online political ramblings of the man charged with the killings in Tucson bear a strong resemblance to the ideas of an extreme right-wing Conspiracy theorist who believes the US government uses grammar to control people's minds. The director of the centre's intelligence unit, Mark Potok, said Mr Loughner's YouTube rant that '...

Thumbs up
Good news: TUCSON,. (AP) - Doctors treating Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' brain wound said Monday the congresswoman was responding to verbal commands by raising two fingers of her left hand and even managed to give a thumbs-up. "When she did that, we were having a party in there," said Dr. Peter Rhee. "That's a purposeful movement. That's a great thing. [. . .] Two patients were discharged Sunday night. Eight others, including Giffords, remained hospitalized. Recent CAT scans showed no fur...

Nation gets first look at suspect, Tucson grieves
A woman prays at the memorial located in front of the University Medical Center, Monday, Jan. 10, 2011, in Tucson, Ariz. The memorial has been set up for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who is in critical condition at the Hospital, and other Victims who were shot on Saturday, leaving six dead and more injured. When Jared Loughner walked into the courtroom, everything fell silent. Law clerks, courtroom artists and reporters alike turned from the wooden benches to look at the vacant-e...

The false rush to cry 'balance'
By: Michael Kinsley Politico.com January 11, 2011 When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six other people — including a Federal Judge who was coming out of Mass — were killed at a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz., I was staying at a resort a few miles away. Among the guests, there were three immediate reactions: outrage, sadness and, if you’re headed to the airport, make sure to turn right at Tangerine instead of staying on Oracle to Ina, because traffic’s going to be a mess dow

The false rush to cry 'balance' (Politico)
When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six other people — including a Federal Judge who was coming out of Mass — were killed at a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz., I was staying at a resort a few miles away. Among the guests, there were three immediate reactions: outrage, sadness and, if you’re headed to the airport, make sure to turn right at Tangerine instead of staying on Oracle to Ina, because traffic’s going to be a mess down there. Life goes on incredibly quickl...

Poisonous Politics
On Feb. 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara, delusional and a loner, fired his .32-caliber pistol at FDR in the Bayfront Park area of Miami. Five feet tall, Zangara could not aim over the crowd. So, he stood on a folding chair and was piled on after the first of five shots. He wounded four people, including Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. In two weeks, Zangara, who pled guilty, had been sentenced to 80 years. When Cermak died on March 6, Zangara was retried for Murder and sentenced to the electric chai...

White Power, White Terrorism, White Mainstream
As you’ve probably heard by now, Jared Lee Loughner is accused of a horrific attempted Assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ.) and the Murder of six other people, including a Federal Judge and a 9-year-old little girl.  Loughner also injured 14 other people.  Remarkably, Giffords survived - in no small measure due to the heroic actions of a gay, Latino intern who rushed to administer first aid - and doctors are cautiously optimistic that she will recover. ...

First Post-Shooting Poll - Most Americans Still Sane
CBS News has released a poll in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the Murder of several others. The poll results show that the attempts by the left-blogosphere, Mainstream Media and some Democratic politicians to blame right-wing Political Speech and Sarah Palin for the shooting have not worked, so far, with most Americans: Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country's heated political Rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and ...

Poll: Only 32% Of Americans Think Tucson Shooter Was Politically Motivated
Despite a 48 hour campaign by Demcorats and their surrogates in the media to pain the Tucson shooter Jarred Loughner as a tea-partying Sarah Palin devotee, most of the public isn’t buying it. Even a plurality of Democrats are saying that the shooting had nothing to do with politics: Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country’s heated political Rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to ...

The Lefts Script of Hate
“Just the facts, ma’am,” Dragnet’s Joe Friday famously informed witnesses he interviewed. Oft-interviewed Pima County Sherriff Clarence Dupnik might adopt the catchphrase: “Save the facts, ma’am. Just the narrative.” The narrative of right-wing Rhetoric fueling accused mass-murderer Jared Lee Loughner proved so seductive to partisans that they didn’t wait for the compilation of facts, or burial of the dead, to advance their politically opportunisti...

NBCs Mitchell Digs Back to 2005 to Locate Becks Hate Speech, But Cant Find Any on MSNBC
There’s no evidence political vitriol of any kind drove Jared Loughner’s murderous rampage, ABC, CBS and NBC all acknowledged, but that didn’t deter them on Monday night from taking up the left-wing line holding Conservatives culpable as NBC, incredibly, managed to castigate Sarah Palin and go back more than five years to find an incendiary quote from Glenn Beck – but couldn’t find anything over the line from its own Keith Olbermann or Ed Schultz. “It was, by ...

NBCs Mitchell Digs Back to 2005 to Locate Becks Hate Speech, But Cant Find Any on MSNBC
There’s no evidence political vitriol of any kind drove Jared Loughner’s murderous rampage, ABC, CBS and NBC all acknowledged, but that didn’t deter them on Monday night from taking up the left-wing line holding Conservatives culpable as NBC, incredibly, managed to castigate Sarah Palin and go back more than five years to find an incendiary quote from Glenn Beck – but couldn’t find anything over the line from its own Keith Olbermann or Ed Schultz. “It was, by ...

Arizona, where the American Dream went to die
When I arrived in Arizona last March, my bones were still practically numb from the snowiest winter in the modern history of my native Northeast. There was radiant sunshine that made the Valley of the Sun feel like a warm soaking bath, bordered on my far horizon by New-Age red rocks and big sky -- natural beauty that inspired awe for me as it surely once did for so many new arrivals over so many decades. I didn't travel to Phoenix to witness beauty, unfortunately, but to get an up close look a...

Hate Speech the Rights Magic Bullet (Guest Voice)
Hate Speech the Right’s Magic Bullet by Michael Winship The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a rule: if you show a gun in the first act, by the time the curtain falls, it has to go off. For weeks and months, that gun, the weapon of angry Rhetoric and intemperate rabblerousing, has been cocked and loaded in plain view on the American stage; Saturday morning outside a Shopping Mall in Tucson, Arizona, it went off again and again and again. The target, Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the Un...