Christina Taylor Green Laid to Rest

At LAT, "Funeral Held for Christina Green, 9-Year-Old Victim of Tucson Shooting":

The U.S. flag that flew atop the World Trade Center is displayed at the service for Christina Taylor Green, who was born on Sept. 11, 2001. 'I felt I had to be here to pay my respects,' says a mourner outside the church.

Less than a week after the deadly mass shooting that left six dead and 13 injured, Tucson began to bury the dead on Thursday.

The first funeral from Saturday's shooting was for the youngest victim, Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old girl who was born on Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The U.S. flag that flew atop the World Trade Center was displayed at the funeral, linking the two tragedies that served as parentheses enclosing the brief span of the child who has become a symbol of how violence can shatter a life.

Hundreds of mourners lined the roadway leading to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church, where the funeral began at 1 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. Many wore white and carried a single rose.

"I felt I had to be here to pay my respects," said David Johnson, 38, of Phoenix. "It was something I felt really strongly about. It hits really close to home."

According to the program, Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas led the service, a Mass of resurrection. Readings included Psalm 23 and John 14:1-6.

The University of Arizona choir performed as did a piper, who played "Amazing Grace."

The front of the program had a picture of a smiling Christina wearing a tiara. On the back were the lyrics to Billy Joel's "Lullaby," with its haunting lyric, "Good night my angel, now it's time to sleep."

PREVIOUSLY: "Christina Taylor Green (Profiles of the Arizona Shooting Victims)."

RELATED: "Why Progressives Lost It."

Christina Taylor Green

She was just 9 years-old.

My wife, who'd been working most of the weekend, broke down in tears when she saw Christina's father interviewed. She came downstairs and told me what Mr. Green said about his daughter: "She was born and she left us in very tragic moments in United States history." See, U.S. News, "9-Year-Old Girl Is Youngest Victim of Arizona Massacre."

My youngest son was born just over a month before Christina. Yes, that kind of minuscule connection --- of random similarities in age of children who'd never met --- still makes the sadness that much deeper. (And makes the left's ridicule that much more sick and reprehensible.)

I promised my wife I'd say some words for Christina, here at the blog, and all the families involved are in our prayers. See Los Angeles Times, "Profiles of the Arizona Shooting Victims."

Gabrielle Giffords' Medical Status

The video below is from yesterday, but there's updated news this afternoon. At Also, at Tucson Sentinel, "Doc: Giffords '100 Percent' Certain to Survive" (via Memeorandum):

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is "100 percent" certain to survive, said Dr. Peter Rhee, a surgeon treating her for a gunshot wound to the head.

"As a physician I'm going to get into a lot of trouble for this, but her prognosis for survival is 100 percent, as far as it being short term," Rhee told Britain's Channel 4 News ....

At NYT, "Doctors Say Giffords Is Able to Breathe on Her Own":

TUCSON —Gabrielle Giffords has shown no increase in brain swelling and is now able to breathe on her own, doctors said at a news conference Tuesday morning, but they said they planned to keep the wounded congresswoman on a ventilator as a precaution.

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center, said Ms. Giffords remained in stable condition on Tuesday. She was hospitalized after being struck in the head with a gunshot fired at point-blank range while she was talking with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. Six people were killed in the shooting incident and 14 more were injured, including the Ms. Giffords, the apparent main target of the attack.

“I am happy to say that she is holding her own,” Dr. Lemole said. “She is able to generate her own breath.”

Doctors have removed nearly half of Ms. Giffords’s skull to prevent swelling from damaging her brain. “This the phase of the care where so much of it is up to her,” he said. “She is going to take her recovery at her own pace.”

Relatives of some others wounded in the shooting appeared at the hospital news conference along with Dr. Lemole. They said that though their family members continue to recover from the physical wounds they received, the emotional scarring would probably take far longer to heal.

Bill Hileman, whose wife Susan Hileman was shot three times, said that when he visited her bedside, she asked him, “What about Christina?” Ms. Hileman had been holding hands outside the supermarket with the Hilemans’ nine-year-old neighbor, Christina Green, when the shots rang out; the girl was also hit and later died of her wounds.

Mr. Hileman said that though his wife had been in a morphine-induced haze, she was clearly devastated when he told her that the girl had died. “We’re going to have that as an ongoing issue that we’ll be dealing with,” Mr. Hileman said about his wife’s feelings of guilt. Ms. Hileman had invited Christina to accompany her to the event at the supermarket that morning because of the girl’s interest in politics.

Memorial services were scheduled for Tuesday evening at two Tucson churches for victims of the shooting. President Obama and his wife are expected to attend another memorial service on Wednesday.

More at the link.

James Casper, Stalking Nihilist, Ignores Calls for Civility and Peace in Wake of Arizona Shooting

I've had few dealings with stalking asshat James Casper since he revealed his first-class progressive racism late last year. I do see the hate blog American Nihilist at my Sitemeter on occasion, so I know what these freaks are up to. Or, what they're not up to, actually. It turns out that since the Arizona shooting on January 8th, RepRacist3 hasn't authored a single commemoration for the fallen at his blogs, nor has he denounced the hate and libel on the progressive left. Of course, it'd be just more typical progressive hypocrisy, but RepRacist3 claims to be all about goodness and love: "I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm letting those I disagree with be just as wrong as they want to be for the next 24 hours or so ..." Being respectful of others only applies on opportunistic holidays, apparently. Christmas is a day to score political points, it turns out, as RepRacist3 claims to be all about transcendance and Yuletide cheer (as if December 25th was some political cease-fire day). But then shortly after the New Year dawned, when blood flowed on Tucson's streets, RepRacist3 went silent. What's up with that? Evil. Instead of well-wishes, we have Reppy's demonic henchmen Fauxmaxbaer posting sick screeds attacking my comprehensive reporting as alleged "exploitation." There is no bottom too deep for these vile beasts. And yet, there's rejoice for those entering the Gates of Hell, for a new level of epic godlessness has demonstrated its world historical totalitarianism at American Nihilist. And note that when my regular commenter Bartender Cabbie called them out for unhinged stalking, they wasted no time pumping out lame responses in the comments. They'd rather noxiously allege "bullying" than publish a public prayer for the too-soon-an-angel Christina Green.

I've made screencaps of RepRacist3's blogs. Folks can see for themselves. Clearly civil discourse is a hammer with which progressives suppress dissent. When the times really call for kindness and deliberation, we get silence instead. So unoriginal --- and hateful. So here's a challenge to RepRacist3: Make good on the sentiments of the one-day holiday well wishes by deleting American Nihilist. Follow that up with a new effort --- something good and truly decent --- dedicated to the memories of the fallen, and use that initiative to promote a genuine dialogue of peace and harmony with fellow Americans. I blog about any and all things under the sun, and I pray for those who are suffering. RepRacist3 runs a hate-filled stalking operation with pudd-fiddling Fauxmaxbaer. Never do they post a prayer for the grieving, and never do the denounce the evil in their midst. Thus, do everybody a favor and hang it up. Move on. If you can't do it, it's simply one more confirmation that you're nothing about goodness and cheer, and all about denying reality and destroying political enemies, even in times of tragedy.

Newsweek's Arizona Shooting Cover Story Wraps 'Assassin' in American Flag

The article's entitled "The Peculiar Psyche of the American Assassin." Thus, it would seem for Jonathan Alter and Newsweek's editors that the roots of the January 8th shooting are found most prominently in mental illness. But as we read the story, it's clear the Alter's agenda is much larger. He works overtime to place Jared Loughner into the long line of political assassins going back to John Wilkes Booth. It's an extremely strained exegesis. But particularly egregious is the cover image at the hard-copy magazine (which I saw on the newsstand last night). In the current era, frankly, to wrap an ostensibly political actor in the flag is to imply some relationship with the tea parties. I noted this previously with Jill Lepore's scurrilous linkage of Jared Loughner to the "cult of the Constitution." What Alter does is even worse, since in purporting to offer a grand analysis of political assassination in history, he reveals only a cookie-cutter template within which to place the Tucson rampage:

President Obama was right last week to focus his thoughts—and ours—on the victims of the Tucson rampage and the lives they led. Those who gathered that day were doing something fundamentally American: they were meeting with their elected representative at a “Congress on Your Corner” event, participating in the give-and-take of the democratic process. For nearly 200 years, Americans have also been rightly haunted by that strange subspecies of citizen that is their opposite: those who see killing political leaders as a better form of self-expression. They are a sorry lot, mostly a collection of sexually frustrated loners and misfits united only by their common background in social isolation. But they, too, are a longstanding part of the American fabric.

They may have something to teach the rest of us, however unintentionally, about the consequences of our atomized country. Where political violence in other countries is nearly always associated with extremist movements, religious fundamentalism, or criminal organizations, American assassins are usually peculiar stalkers defined less by ideology than vague political and personal grievances.

Jared Lee Loughner would seem to be just the latest to fit this American profile. The 22-year-old gunman killed six people, including federal Judge John Roll and 9-year-old Christina Green, and wounded 14, among them Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Wielding a Glock semiautomatic, the assassin fired 30 rounds in a few seconds outside a Tucson supermarket. His mugshot, with that twisted smile and weirdly sparkling eyes, told you almost everything you needed to know about the coherence of his motives.

And this next passage is forced to the extreme:

It’s often impossible to cite specific, direct causes for individual episodes of mayhem. Most people can hear repeated references to comments like “If not ballots, bullets” (Florida radio talk-show host Joyce Kaufman) or “Tiller is a baby killer” (a reference to Dr. George Tiller, murdered by an anti-abortion activist) or “Second Amendment remedies” (Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle) and do nothing violent. Still, Arizona alone is home to roughly 21,000 schizophrenics, according to the calculations of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, and about 10 percent of them are potentially dangerous. When they explode, they could be responding to the voices in their heads, or the voices on the radio (or in books and online), or, most likely, some cacophony of voices within and without.

An “Insurrectionism Timeline” posted by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence cites more than 100 examples of incitement (gun sights on congressional maps weren’t threatening enough to make the list) and direct threats of bodily harm in the last two and a half years. Just two days before the Tucson attack, police arrested a man for threatening to shoot members of the staff of Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. Three days after Giffords and the others were attacked, police took a man into custody after he allegedly made threatening phone calls to the office of Rep. Jim McDermott, suggesting he deserved to die for voting against the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Loughner’s motives were less coherent, but that doesn’t mean his heinous act was nonpolitical. This was not a case of a lunatic going berserk and shooting up a random shopping center. Loughner felt aggrieved by what he considered to be Giffords’s failure to answer a question he asked her at a previous community meeting in 2007. He obsessed over his desire for vengeance (“Die bitch!” read one of the missives recovered from his personal possessions) and apparently plotted the attack in advance. By aiming for a political leader, he moved from the ranks of mass murderer to assassin.

I'm calling bullshit right there.

Actually, it is a case of a lunatic going berserk. The key questions discussed this last week focused on how states had been cutting mental services, including Arizona (and the implications for public health and safety), and on whether Jared Loughner's legal team would be able to use an insanity defense at trial, as the Los Angeles Times points out:

In Loughner's case, defense attorney Judy Clarke would have to show that her client did not know his actions were wrong. Evidence that Loughner was paranoid or delusional would not be enough to shield him from punishment, under either federal or Arizona law.

Such evidence may be good enough to shield him from a death sentence, however, if the Justice Department or the state asks for one.

Last Sunday, New York Times ombudsman Arthur Brisbane published an apology for the paper's erroneous reporting on the Arizona shooting. While strained, the essay at least acknowledged that reporters had jumped the gun (metaphor) in their early coverage and the editors had failed their responsibility to provide professional, untainted journalism. But in the case of Newsweek, it was Jonathan Alter himself who was the very first journalist to recommend that President Obama exploit the massacre for political gain. Never let a crisis go to waste, they say. And while the facts have long been clear regarding what happened on January 8th --- and while the country has made great attempts to increase civil debate --- not wasting the crisis remains the top agenda item for the progressive left.

The DeSantis Dilemma

From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "Is he the only politician who can save us from a second Trump term?":

“I would say my big decision will be whether I go before or after. You understand what that means?” Donald Trump told New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi this week. He likes to tease. But we know what’s coming. The deranged, delusional liar who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power is going to again. He still commands a huge lead in the GOP primary polls; he shows few signs of flagging energy; and the president who succeeded him is imploding in front of our eyes.

The preeminent question in politics right now is therefore, to my mind, a simple one: how to stop Trump — and the spiraling violent, civil conflict and constitutional chaos a second term would bring. To re-elect a man who attempted a coup is to embrace the definitive end of the American idea.

The Democrats, meanwhile, appear to have run out of fake “moderate” candidates, are doubling down on every woke mantra, presiding over levels of inflation that are devastating real incomes, launching a protracted war that may tip us into stagflation, and opening the borders to millions more illegal immigrants. They are hemorrhaging Latino support, and intensifying their identity as upper-class white woke scolds. And a Biden campaign in 2024 would be, let’s be honest, “Weekend At Bernie’s II.”

So get real: If you really believe that Trump remains a unique threat to constitutional democracy in America, you need to consider the possibility that, at this point, a Republican is probably your best bet.

One stands out, and it’s Ron DeSantis, the popular governor of Florida. And yet so many Never Trumpers, right and left, have instantly become Never DeSanters, calling him a terrifyingly competent clone of the thug with the bad hair. He’s “Trump 2.0” but even “more dangerous than Trump,” says Dean Obeidallah. “He’s dangerous because he is equally repressive, but doesn’t have the baggage of Trump,” argues a fascism scholar.

“DeSantis has decided to try to outflank Trump, to out-Trump Trump,” worries Michael Tomasky. He’s a clone of Viktor Orbán, says Vox, and on some issues, “DeSantis has actually outstripped Orbán.” Then there’s Max Boot: “Just because DeSantis is smarter than Trump doesn’t mean that he is any less dangerous. In fact, he might be an even bigger threat for that very reason.”

Jon Chait frames the case: “Just imagine what a Trumpified party no longer led by an erratic, deeply unpopular cable-news binge-watcher would be capable of.” Chait’s critique focuses at first on the fact that DeSantis is an anti-redistributionist conservative, and believes that pure democracy is something the Founders wanted to curtail. Sorry — but, whatever your view on that, it’s light years away from Trump’s belief in one-man rule.

On this, in fact, Chait acknowledges that DeSantis once wrote that the Founders “worried about the emergence of popular leaders who utilized demagoguery to obtain public support in service of their personal ambitions.” He meant Obama — not Trump. Unfair to Obama, of course. But the same worldview as Trump’s? Nah.

Chait then argues that DeSantis is an anti-vaxxer, or has at least toyed with anti-vaxxers, and out-Trumped Trump on Covid denialism. But like many criticisms of DeSantis, this is overblown. Dexter Filkins reports that DeSantis, after his lockdowns during the panic of April 2020, studied the science himself, became a skeptic of lingering lockdowns and mask mandates, and, for a while, risked looking like a crazy outlier.

But from the vantage point of today, not so much: Florida’s kids have not been shut out of schools for two whole years; the state’s economy beat out the other big ones except Texas; Covid infection and death rates were not much higher than the national average; and compared with California, which instituted a draconian approach, it’s a viral wash.

As David Frum put it in a typically perceptive piece:

The DeSantis message for 2024: I kept adults at work and kids at school without the catastrophic effects predicted by my critics. Because I didn’t panic, Florida emerged from the pandemic in stronger economic shape than many other states — and a generation of Florida schoolchildren continued their education because of me. Pretty powerful, no?

Very powerful in retrospect. And again: not Trump.

And this is a pattern: DeSantis says or does something that arouses the Trumpian erogenous zones, is assailed by the media/left, and then the details turn out to be underwhelming. His voter suppression law provoked howls; but in reality, as Ramesh Ponnuru notes,

the law includes new restrictions, such as requiring that county employees oversee ballot drop-boxes. But it’s also true that the law leaves Floridians with greater ballot access, in key respects, than a lot of states run by Democrats. Florida has no-excuse absentee voting, unlike Delaware and New York.

DeSantis wins both ways: he gets cred from the base by riling up the media, but isn’t so extreme as to alienate normie voters.

Ditto his allegedly anti-gay bigotry. Vox’s Beauchamp says DeSantis is another Orbán. But Orbán’s policies are a ban on all teaching about gays in high schools, a ban on anything on television before 10 pm that could positively show gay or trans people, and a constitutional ban on marriage rights. DeSantis’ policy is to stop instruction in critical gender and queer theory in public schools for kids under 8, and keep it neutral and age-appropriate thereafter. In other words: what we used to have ten minutes ago before the woke takeover.

And who but a few fanatics and TQIA++ nutters really oppose this? I know plenty of gay people who agree with DeSantis — and a majority of Floridians support the law as it is written. The fact that his opponents had to lie about it — with the “Don’t Say Gay” gimmick — and then resorted to emotional blackmail — “This will kill kids” — tells you how unpopular their actual position is.

Some more contrasts: Trump famously wanted to torture captured prisoners, steal the oil in occupied Iraq, and desecrate Islam to break down Muslim detainees. DeSantis, on the other hand,

was responsible for helping ensure that the missions of Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets [in parts of Iraq] … were planned according to the rule of law and that captured detainees were humanely treated. “He did a phenomenal job,” Navy Capt. Dane Thorleifson, 55, said of DeSantis … [describing him] as “one of my very close counsels that as we developed a mission concept of operations, he made sure it was legal. I respected him a lot as a JAG. He was super smart, articulate, resourceful and a positive part of the staff.”

Imagine Trump taking care to make sure anything is legal!

Trump ripped children from illegal immigrant parents. DeSantis opposed the policy. Trump launched his real estate empire with a “small loan of a million dollars” from his mega-wealthy dad. DeSantis grew up in a working-class neighborhood, scored in the 99th percentile on his SAT, and worked several jobs to help pay his tuition at Yale.

Trump is a teetotaler, and while in office “his administration made a number of hostile anti-marijuana actions — rescinding Obama-era guidance on cannabis prosecutions to implementing policies making immigrants ineligible for citizenship if they consume marijuana.” DeSantis ensured that Florida’s overwhelming vote in favor of legal medical marijuana was passed into law, and he even suggested that the drug be decriminalized — despite his distaste for the smell of weed in public.

Trump wings everything, and almost never delivers. He couldn’t even build a fraction of his wall. DeSantis is disciplined, studies issues closely, and follows through. On a good day, Trump is fun. DeSantis, to be kind, isn’t. He has a Nixonian edge.

Trump believes climate change is a Chinese hoax, and, given the chance, would cover our national parks with condos and oil rigs. DeSantis is a governor in a state where rising sea levels and floods are real, so Trumpian insanity is a non-starter. “I will fulfill promises from the campaign trail,” DeSantis said shortly after taking office:

“That means prioritizing environmental issues, like water quality and cleaning the environmental mess that has resulted in toxic blue-green algae and exacerbated red tide around the state. We will put Everglades restoration into high gear and make it the reality that Floridians have been promised for three decades.”

This year he followed through — with more than $400 million in funds for containing rising sea levels. And last year, Filkins noted,

DeSantis signed into law a remarkable piece of environmental legislation that could become a model for the rest of the country. The project will establish the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a blueprint for the state to connect all of its large national and state parks with tracts of open land.

The corridor, once complete, would create an unbroken swath of preserved land from the Alabama state line all the way to the Florida Keys, nearly eight hundred miles away. It would insure that a population of wildlife — whether it be black bears or panthers or gopher tortoises — would not be cut off from other groups of its species, which is one of the main drivers of extinction.

So far, DeSantis is not that far from the “Teddy Roosevelt conservationist” he claimed to be. Yes, he’s mainly focused on responding to, rather than preventing, climate change — “Resilient Florida” is the slogan. And he’s allergic to green uplift or catastrophism. But another Trump? Nope.

His authoritarianism? He certainly gives off vibes. He picked a fight with Disney, for example, over their belated opposition to his parental rights bill — and punished them even after the law had passed. Using executive power to target companies for their free expression is not conservatism. (It’s worth noting, however, that in this case, the “punishment” was ending very special state treatment for the company.)

There is also disturbingly vague wording and vigilante enforcement in his parental rights bill — which is why I opposed it. He has tried to curtail free speech in colleges in ways that will almost certainly be struck down by the courts. Three state university professors were prevented from testifying against state policies (DeSantis denies any involvement). His comments on tenure are chilling. He said something dangerous about the role of child protective services in punishing parents for taking their kids to raunchy drag shows. Parental rights for conservatives, but not for liberals?

His spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, is Trumpian in her provocations, reviving the ugly trope that gays are pedophilic “groomers” until proven otherwise. DeSantis wages the power of government in the culture war — and with alacrity. There’s a pugilism to his style that comes off as bullying at times, so he can, quite clearly, be a charm-free prick. He’s been a coward over January 6 and Trump’s Big Lie. And as Tim Miller notes, he hasn’t exactly declared he would not be another Trump in his contempt for constitutional democracy (although such a stance now would effectively sink his bid to replace Trump). He’s said nary a word on abortion; and has ducked real questions about guns in the wake of Uvalde. Who knows what his position on Ukraine is?

I’m deeply uncomfortable with much of this...