Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Shot by Gunman at Townhall Event in Tucson — Progressives Blame Sarah Palin 'Hit List'

This is breaking. Conflicting reports.

Huffington Post's headline reported earlier that she was killed (now revised), although Crooks and Liars still has this as of 12:00pm (and check the comments there as well):

But Daily Caller has this, "CONGRESSWOMAN SHOT: U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head during a public event in Arizona, with conflicting reports as to her fate." (And some commenters there are applauding the shooting as evidence of the "evils of conservatism.")

I'm praying for everyone involved.

Expect updates.

12:18pm: Here's Representative Gifford's tweet from this morning: "My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now. Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later." Screencap added:

12:23pm: Crooks and Liars has amended its headline. And at New York Times, "Condition of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Remains Unclear."

12:45pm: TBogg Demon Seed blames Sarah Palin, "Fuck it, I'm going there":

12:50pm: Sarah Palin has released a statement:

My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona.

On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.

- Sarah Palin.

And Jane Hamsher's playing up the "hit list" angle, "Giffords Opponent, Jesse Kelly, Held June Event to “Shoot a Fully Automatic M16″ to “Get on Target” and “Remove Gabrielle Giffords”."

1:05pm: Daily Kos scrubbed this post, but here's the cached version:, "My CongressWOMAN Voted Against Nancy Pelosi And is Now Dead to Me!"

1:15pm: From Pat Dollard, "REPORTS CHANGING, SEE HISTORY BELOW: GIFFORDS IN SURGERY, “RESPONDING TO COMMANDS” - UPDATE: FEDERAL JUDGE CONFIRMED DEAD, STATE SENATOR LINDA LOPEZ SAYS “AFGHANISTAN VET” COMMITTED SHOOTING, BLAMES TEA PARTY."

Also, at The Other McCain, "ARIZONA OUTRAGE: Congresswoman, Several Others Shot in Tucson - UPDATE: Conflicting Reports on Giffords":

Regardless of who perpetrated this outrage or why, it’s terribly harmful to the political process.

While I was on Capitol Hill for swearing-in events Wednesday, I saw Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ-7) walk past on the sidewalk. He was walking alone, with no aides or anybody else with him. I said hello, smiled and waved.

1:33pm. Shooter is identified as 22 year-old Jared Loughner. Pamela Geller has more: "Arizona Shooter Jared Laughner: A Certified Nut." The Knoxville Daily Sun claims that Laughner was "inspired" by "Sara Palin" [sic].

2:10pm: Another progressive blog with a big roundup implicating Sarah Palin, "Sarah Palin’s Target List and the Assassination of Gabrielle Giffords."

Also, at Wizbang, "That Giant Flushing Sound You Hear ... is thousands of diaries at Daily Kos getting purged in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford (D-AZ)."

2:45pm: At WaPo, "Hospital: Rep. Giffords expected to recover from Tucson shooting that killed six including a child and federal judge."

And an update from the New York Times report cited above:

Ms. Giffords, 40, was described as being in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons. Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said that she had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

“I can tell you at this time, I am very optimistic about her recovery,” Dr. Rhee said in a news conference. “We cannot tell what kind of recovery but I’m as optimistic as it can get in this kind of situation.”

3:15pm: Here's Markos Moulitsas on Twitter:

3:28pm: At Fox News, "President Obama Offers Support to Arizona After Tragic Shooting."

5:38pm: At Politics Daily, "Sarah Palin Blamed by Bloggers for Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords," and NewsBusters, "Jane Fonda Blames Giffords Shooting on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party."

And at Time, "Is Violent Rhetoric Behind the Attack on Giffords?":

Sometimes, rumors of violence beget actual violence. Saturday's mass shooting at a Safeway on North Oracle Road in Tucson, which left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition and at least nine others wounded, may well be one of those occasions.

The author then goes on whine about the conservative backlash against illegal immigration, claiming that the threat of violence in Arizona, following the Krenz killing, has been completely overblown.

Nope. No trying to score political points there.

Plus, a roundup at Instapundit.

6:07pm: The shooter doesn't fit into any particular ideological frame, despite the best efforst of the progressive left. See the Arizona Daily Star, "Man linked to Giffords shooting called 'very disturbed'."

And at Fox News, "Giffords Likely Faces Long Road to Recovery."

Plus, at NYT, "2nd Suspect Sought in Arizona Shooting."

John A. Ward, Former Tucson High School Teacher, Supports Arizona Ethnic Studies Law

John A. Ward, a former history teacher with the Tucson Unified School District, offers a devastating account of the radical La Raza indoctrination program he was forced to teach. He's no longer with the district. Amazing that only Fox News is willing to get the facts out there.

From Greta Van Susteren, "Why One Former Ariz. Teacher Supports the Ethnic Studies Law":

And here's Ward's 2008 essay from the Tucson Citizen, "Guest Opinion: Raza Studies Gives Rise to Racial Hostility." Also at Grizzly Groundswell, "Tucson Teacher Exposes "Raza" Studies In TUSD":

As a former teacher in Tucson Unified School District's hotly debated ethnic studies department, I submit my perspective for the public's consideration.

During the 2002-2003 school year, I taught a U.S. history course with a Mexican-American perspective. The course was part of the Raza/Chicano studies department.

Within one week of the course beginning, I was told that I was a "teacher of record," meaning that I was expected only to assign grades. The Raza studies department staff would teach the class.

I was assigned to be a "teacher of record" because some members of the Raza studies staff lacked teaching certificates. It was a convenient way of circumventing the rules.

I stated that I expected to do more than assign grades. I expected to be involved in teaching the class. The department was less than enthusiastic but agreed.

Immediately it was clear that the class was not a U.S. history course, which the state of Arizona requires for graduation. The class was similar to a sociology course one expects to see at a university.

Where history was missing from the course, it was filled by controversial and biased curriculum.

The basic theme of the curriculum was that Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.

In this narrative, whites are able to maintain their influence only if minorities are held down. Thus, social, political and economic events in America must be understood through this lens.

This biased and sole paradigm justified teaching that our community police officers are an extension of the white power structure and that they are the strongmen used "to keep minorities in their ghettos."

It justified telling the class that there are fewer Mexican-Americans in Tucson Magnet High School's advanced placement courses because their "white teachers" do not believe they are capable and do not want them to get ahead.

It justified teaching that the Southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired his values from the corrupted ethos of Western civilization.

It was taught that the Southwest is "Atzlan," the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, and still rightfully belongs to their descendants - to all people of indigenous Mexican heritage.

As an educator, I refused to be complicit in a curriculum that engendered racial hostility, irresponsibly demeaned America's civil institutions, undermined our public servants, discounted any virtues in Western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty.

When I raised these concerns, I was told that I was a "racist," despite being Hispanic. Acknowledging my heritage, the Raza studies staff also informed me that I was a vendido, the Spanish term for "sellout."

The culmination of my challenge to the department's curriculum was my removal from that particular class. The Raza studies department and its district-level allies pressured the Tucson High administration to silence my concerns through reassignment to another class during that one period.

The Raza studies department used the "racist" card, which is probably the most worn-out and desperate maneuver used to silence competing perspectives.

It is fundamentally anti-intellectual because it immediately stops debate by threatening to destroy the reputation of those who would provide counter arguments.

Unfortunately, I am not the only one to have been intimidated by the Raza studies department in this way.

The diplomatic and flattering language that the department and its proponents use to describe the Raza studies program is an attempt to avoid public scrutiny. When necessary, the department invokes terms such as "witch hunt" and "McCarthyism" to diminish the validity of whatever public scrutiny it does get.

The proponents of this program may conceal its reality to the public. But as a former teacher in the program, I am witness to its ugly underbelly.
Arizona taxpayers should ask themselves whether they should pay for the messages engendered in these classrooms with their hard-earned tax dollars.

The Raza studies department has powerful allies in TUSD, on its governing board and in the U.S. House of Representatives and thus operates with much impunity.

Occasionally there are minor irritations from the state superintendent of public instruction and the Legislature.

Ultimately, Arizona taxpayers own TUSD and have the right to change it. The change will have to come from replacing the board if its members refuse to make the Raza studies department respect the public trust.

Gov. Jan Brewer Delivers Emotional State of the State Address

The full text is here.

And at New York Times, "Governor Strives to Restore Arizona’s Reputation," a discussion of Brewer's speech at the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's annual luncheon:

TUCSON — Gov. Jan Brewer had intended to use her speech at the Convention Center here on Tuesday to talk about the severe budget shortfall that Arizona faces, after two years in which she had been identified with a series of contentious issues, particularly immigration.

But no. “Today is not a day for politics or policy,” Ms. Brewer said. For a fleet eight minutes, Ms. Brewer, looking sober and saddened, paid tribute to those who were killed and injured in a mass shooting on Saturday — and also offered something of a defense of a state whose reputation has been under a cloud.

“I want to speak to you about the Arizona I know, the place we saw again even on such an awful Saturday,” she said. “It is a place of service, a place of heroes, a place with a bruised, battered heart that I know will get past this hideous moment.”

Her remarks, a downstate reprise of the official State of the State address she gave to lawmakers in Phoenix on Monday, illustrate the challenges Ms. Brewer faces. She is eagerly trying to defend a state whose reputation has been battered in recent years, particularly since the massacre here on Saturday.

But fairly or not, Arizona’s image has been forged in part because of Ms. Brewer herself, who has been identified with the tough law aimed at illegal immigrants, budget cuts that include denying aid to people who need life-saving transplants and laws permitting people to take concealed guns into bars and banning the teaching of ethnic studies in public schools.

“She faces some real challenges where the image of Arizona is concerned,” said Nathan Sproul, a Republican consultant here. “I think this is the darkest time for Arizona, per the way the nation looks at us, since when we repealed the Martin Luther King holiday in the 1980s. That took Arizona a decade to overcome. I think this presents Arizona with the strongest challenge since then.”

That's a clever use of quotations from the Times' Adam Nagourny. Public opinion data do not support the notion that Gov. Brewer's leadership left the state's image in tatters. It's the opposite, actually, and Brewer cruised to reelection last November. That said, the massacre itself won't recede from the American psyche for years, although my sense is that the crisis will bring out the best in some of our leaders --- Jan Brewer for sure, and perhaps President Obama as well. He's expected to deliver an address to the nation tomorrow night.

See also, "Brewer Visits Tucson Shooting Victims in Hospital."

RELATED: "Tribute to Rep. Giffords Will Affirm the First Amendment as ‘Bedrock’." (Via Memeorandum.)

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Vetoes Controversial Religious Freedom Law SB 1062

At the Arizona Republic, "BREAKING: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoes Senate Bill 1062."

This morning's Los Angeles Times has a great piece on the enormous political backlash over the bill, which was obviously much too great for Brewer to withstand, "On gay issue, Arizona may heed national outcry this time":

TUCSON — When Arizona took controversial stands in the past — refusing to create a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and enacting a tough anti-illegal immigration law — state leaders shrugged off the criticism from out of state as the meddling of outsiders.

But now, after the Legislature passed a measure to bolster the rights of business owners to refuse service to gays and others on the basis of religion, Arizona leaders seem to be listening to a national outcry and are urging the governor to veto the bill.
So what's different this time?

Political insiders and observers say the change can be attributed to a number of forces at work: a growing acceptance of gay rights sweeping the nation, the power of social media and an economic backlash unleashed by the passage of the anti-illegal immigration law that is still fresh in the minds of those in the business community.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has said she has not made a decision on the bill, SB 1062, which the GOP-dominated Legislature approved last week. But some of her longtime advisors have said they believe she will veto the measure because of the negative reaction to the bill inside and outside the state.

Barrett Marson, who heads a public relations outfit in Phoenix, recalled that an uproar arose against Arizona in the 1990s when voters rejected a referendum to create a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. But there is a significant difference between then and now.

"That was pre-Internet," Marson said.

Much of the outrage about SB 1062 spread via social media, especially Twitter. Republican leaders, such as former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Arizona's U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, have taken to Twitter to urge Brewer to veto the bill.

They have joined a loud chorus on social media — including celebrities such as Judd Apatow as well as Arizona business owners and residents — that has tweeted against the measure.

The tweets opposing the legislation are so numerous they have overshadowed the few who have taken to Twitter in support of the bill. Proponents say the measure is not discriminatory but intended to protect religious freedom. "Would you force a Muslim butcher to slaughter pigs b/c you want bacon?" read one tweet.

Arizona also became a target of criticism after Brewer signed the anti-illegal immigration measure, SB 1070, into law in 2010. But the outcry then wasn't as  great as the current controversy, partly because the immigrant rights lobby wasn't as powerful as today's gay community and its supporters, Marson said.

"Certainly there was a short-term economic hit from 1070 … but there aren't many illegal immigrants who are CEOs or management of Fortune 500 companies," he said.

The "economic hit" Marson referred to was boycotts of Arizona businesses following SB 1070. Shortly after SB 1062's passage last week, businesses and companies took to the Internet, saying they still welcomed gay, lesbian and transgender customers.

Marriott, American Airlines and Apple are among the companies and businesses that have come out against the bill.

Some of the same foes of the legislation have threatened to boycott Arizona if the bill becomes law, and that possibility worries these businesses — some remembering the sting of the SB 1070 boycotts.

More at Memeorandum.

Tucson Unified School District Under Fire for Ethnic Studies Program

Give it up, once again, for Arizona.

At KGUN9-TV Tucson, "Does TUSD's ethnic studies program violate Arizona's new law?":

Tucson Unified School District has insisted repeatedly that its ethnic studies program does not violate the terms of Arizona's new law placing restrictions on such courses. Are those statements true? A closer look at TUSD's teaching materials casts doubt on some of TUSD's denials. But even so, that does not answer the larger question of whether students have a right to study the material or whether Arizona has a right to stop them ....

What are the facts?

9 on Your Side took a closer look. One of the textbooks that TUSD uses in its ethnic studies program is Chicano!, by F. Arturo Rosales. The book teaches the history of racism and oppression in the United States directed against the Mexican, Mexican-American, and Hispanic populations. As the name implies, a large portion of the textbook is devoted to the Chicano movement that sprang up to fight social injustice and to push for civil rights. There are some similarities between the Chicano movement tactics that the book documents and the tactics some TUSD students have practicing recently.

The cover of the book features graphic art of protesters with their fists in the air. Pages 248, 249 and 253 feature photographs of Chicano movement members with raised fists. The photograph on page 253 shows a student with a raised fist sitting in a classroom with other students; the text on that page makes the point that Chicano studies programs in the Southwest are "the most visible vestige" of the Chicano movement. A review of KGUN9 News footage over the past week shows many TUSD students raising their fists in the same fashion as those shown in the textbook.

Page 185 shows a picture of students walking out of school as part of a protest. Such student walkouts have been a major component of recent protests in Tucson against the ethnic studies restrictions and against Arizona's controversial immigration crackdown.

And then there is the brown beret issue. Pages 193 and 199 of the textbook show pictures of demonstrators wearing brown berets. The book acknowledges a link to Che Guevara as an inspiration for the berets. Interestingly, the textbook does not explain who Guevara was. Guevara was a Marxist revolutionary leader and a major figure in the Cuba's communist revolution, revered by some as an inspiration to the downtrodden, but reviled by others as a ruthless killer who bragged about personally shooting defectors.

More at the link (via Memeorandum).

Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics

At NYT (at Memeorandum):

WASHINGTON — The shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others at a neighborhood meeting in Arizona on Saturday set off what is likely to be a wrenching debate over anger and violence in American politics.

While the exact motivations of the suspect in the shootings remained unclear, an Internet site tied to the man, Jared Lee Loughner, contained antigovernment ramblings. And regardless of what led to the episode, it quickly focused attention on the degree to which inflammatory language, threats and implicit instigations to violence have become a steady undercurrent in the nation’s political culture.

Clarence W. Dupnik, the Pima County sheriff, seemed to capture the mood of the day at an evening news conference when he said it was time for the country to “do a little soul-searching.”

“It’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included,” Sheriff Dupnik said. “That’s the sad thing about what’s going on in America: pretty soon we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.”

In the hours immediately after the shooting of Ms. Giffords, a Democrat, and others in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, members of both parties found rare unity in their sorrow. Top Republicans including Speaker John A. Boehner and Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona quickly condemned the violence.

“An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement. “Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society.”

President Obama made a brief appearance at the White House, calling the shooting an “unspeakable act” and promising to “get to the bottom of this.”

More at the link.

I think it's fair to say that if a Republican had been shot we'd have likely seen a similar burst of partisan finger-pointing from the right. What's surprising to me is that progressives started laying blame before even a fraction of the facts were known. I covered that in my updates today: "Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Shot by Gunman at Townhall Event in Tucson — Progressives Blame Sarah Palin 'Hit List'." I didn't cite this previously, but one of the most devious attacks on the right was Andrew Sullivan's, "An Assassination?":

When a congresswoman is shot in the head in the very act of democracy, we should all pause. This is fundamentally not a partisan issue and should not be. Acts of violence against political figures destroy democracy itself, for both parties. We don't know who tried to kill congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (she appears to be still alive) and we should be very cautious in drawing any conclusions yet about why. But we can know that, whoever tried to kill her and for whatever reason, political rhetoric involving words like "target" and "gun-sights" is inherently irresponsible.

For a public figure who has appeared on a national ticket and who commands a cult-like following, the irresponsibility is even more profound. And so one reads the following sentences from the Arizona Wildcat last September with the blood draining from one's face:

Palin Reloads; Aims For Giffords

Earlier this year, Palin drew sharp criticism for featuring a map on her web page riddled with crosshairs targeting Democrats in vulnerable congressional districts. Tucson's Gabrielle Giffords is among the 20 Democratic incumbents whom Palin intends to use for target practice.

Giffords was one of twenty members of Congress placed within metaphorical "gun-sights" in SarahPac's graphic. That is not the same thing as placing a gun-sight over someone's face or person. No one can possibly believe - or should - that Sarah Palin is anything but horrified by what has taken place. But it remains the kind of rhetorical excess which was warned about at the time, and which loners can use to dreadful purposes. It is compounded by the kind of language used by the Arizona Wildcat as well. Maybe "Palin Reloads; Aims For Giffords" is good copy as a headline. But next time, an editor should surely pause before enabling forces whose capacity for violence is real.

Of course, Andrew Sullivan should be the last person to decry "rhetorical excess." But today's been an exceptionally revealing day, a day when the left has exponentially proven itself completely bereft of even a shred of divine grace and decency.

That said, President Obama was very presidential in his statement today, so I'll close with an appreciation for that.

Added: Thoughts from The Rhetorican, "Blood and Tears In Tucson."

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.

VIDEO: Hidden Cameras Show Traffickers Smuggling Aliens, Drugs Across Border 'No-Man's Land' in Arizona!

At NBC News, "Hidden Cameras Capture Smugglers Crossing Border 'No-Man's Land'":

TUCSON, Arizona – A cattle-ranching couple in southern Arizona hopes that dramatic hidden-camera video showing suspected drug or immigrant smugglers crossing their property will help persuade federal officials to shift resources southward to eliminate what they call a dangerous "no-man’s land” along the border.

“It just confirmed what we already knew,” Jim Chilton, who runs the 50,000-acre ranch with his wife, Sue, said of the video, which was filmed this spring by a border-security advocacy group. …“We have ceded to the cartels 20 miles, 30 miles inside the United States.”

For years, the Chiltons have publicly complained — even testified before Congress -- that their ranch southwest of Tucson, which shares a 5-1/2-mile border with Mexico, has been flooded with smugglers. They’ve told of surprise encounters with groups of migrants – some of them armed –- break-ins at their home and finding piles of trash and clothing left by the trespassers.

But they hope the new video footage will help others understand what they are up against.

“The fear we have is running across a group coming across with an AK-47 dressed in camouflage garb and carpet shoes and small backpacks on their backs carrying meth, crack or heroin,” said Jim Chilton.

With the Chiltons' permission, a border-security advocacy group placed hidden cameras on well-worn paths in March and April about 10 to 15 miles north of the international boundary with Mexico, which is marked on their ranch only by a four-strand barbed wire fence.

In June, the advocacy group, which posts its video on the website SecureBorderIntel.org, returned and recovered footage of suspected smugglers crossing the ranch in broad daylight.

Two of the groups carried large backpacks commonly used to hold bundles of marijuana.

Another group carrying smaller backpacks was dressed head-to-toe in camouflage. The man at the end of the line could be seen trying to sweep away their footprints in the sand.

The director of the SecureBorderIntel.org website asked not to be identified publicly, but provided NBC News with a statement explaining why his group posted the video:

“The United States government has failed to secure our land, air, and sea borders, despite the wishes of and responsibilities to the American people,” it said. “Our effort to document the porous border between the United States of America and Mexico serves as date and time stamped evidence of this failure.”

More.

HAT TIP: Glenn Spencer.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Signs Legisition Banning Ethnic Studies Program

Don't you just love Arizona?

At NYT, "Arizona Law Curbs Ethnic Studies Classes." Plus, from LAT, "signs bill targeting school district's ethnic studies program":

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.

State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.

Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.

"It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.

Brewer's signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated.

The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.

For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors.

Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He's been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that " Republicans hate Latinos."

District officials said the program doesn't promote resentment, and they believe it would comply with the new law.

Nope. No ethnic resentment here.

BONUS: An absolute doozy of an attack by Michael Eric Dyson on Arizona's State Schools Superintendent Tom Horne (who comes back quite well, thank you):

Amid Open Borders Surge, Feds Shipping Hundreds of Illegal Alien Children to Arizona

At Pat Dollard, "Feds Say ‘No End In Sight’ to Policy of Dumping Illegal Alien Children In Arizona."

And Blazing Cat Fur, "This is What 'The Camp of the Saints' Looks Like."

Also at the Arizona Republic, "300 more immigrant children shipped to Arizona."

The thing is, administration policy is being touted as a de facto amnesty south of the border, and single mothers with children are swarming into the United States to take advantage.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Rumors of U.S. haven for families spur rise in illegal immigration":

Yoselin Ramos had long wanted to trek to the United States to escape the crushing poverty and rising violence in her hometown in Guatemala.

But it wasn't until the 24-year-old heard about a "new opportunity" that she packed a bag and left her home with her 3-year-old son, Yovani, for the treacherous journey north.

Ramos became part of an unprecedented surge of families crossing illegally into the U.S., drawn by reports circulating throughout Central America that parents with children are allowed to stay in the United States indefinitely, according to Guatemalan consular officials and parents who are making these trips. But these families, U.S. officials say, are getting only half the story.

The surge of single parents and children has surprised and overwhelmed border agents in the Southwest — particularly Texas — and flooded the Greyhound bus stations in Phoenix and Tucson over the last several months with hundreds of immigrant families dropped off there by U.S. immigration authorities who had nowhere else to put them.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, federal officials flew at least 400 migrants apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to Tucson to be processed, said Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Arizona.

From there, many were dropped off at bus stations with orders to appear before immigration authorities at their chosen destination within 15 days. "The Border Patrol does not have enough space in its processing facilities to handle a surge in illegal immigrants in south Texas," Adame said.

The unusual situation represents not a change in policy but an attempt to accommodate the unexpected numbers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said. Immigration authorities have recently opened shelters on military bases in Texas and California for the wave of children crossing the U.S. border in ever-greater volumes in recent months. Detention centers are available for adult immigrants. But there are no similar facilities for families, at least in the Southwest.

In 2008, immigration officials stopped placing parents traveling with their children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, after allegations surfaced of human rights violations at the facility.

The fact that so many parents with children have been freed to travel within the U.S. has sent rumors flying through Central American nations that parents will not be detained in the U.S. if they arrive with a child — spurring even more families to launch the journey, according to immigrant advocates and Guatemalan consular officials in Phoenix who have been working to help find shelter for families stranded at bus stations.

More.

ACLU, NAACP, Other Rights Groups File Suit Against Arizona's SB 1070

Jeez, how frightening for the left that Arizona takes the law seriously. See CBS News, "Arizona Immigration Law Faces New Legal Fight":

The developing legal fight over Arizona's sweeping immigration law escalated Monday as major civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the measure's constitutionality.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were among groups that filed the latest challenge.

They filed the case in U.S. District Court on behalf of plaintiffs that include labor unions, a Tucson church, social-service organizations and numerous individuals.

The new suit, the fifth legal challenge filed since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation, asks a federal judge to declare the measure unconstitutional and block it from taking effect in late July. The cases could be consolidated, and no court hearings have been scheduled.

Key provisions of the law include requiring police enforcing other laws to verify a person's immigration status if there's "reasonable suspicion" of illegal presence in the United States. It also makes being in the country illegally a state crime and prohibits seeking day-labor work at roadside.

The lawsuit alleges that the law is unconstitutional because the federal government has responsibility to regulate immigration, and because enforcement of the law will violate protections for due process and equal treatment under the law.

The suit argues that enforcing the law will subject U.S. citizens and others to racial profiling and other harassment, interfere with delivery of social services, and deter people from approaching law enforcement to report crimes.

"This law is shameful and un-American and will undermine public safety," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

Blah, blah ...

These people are way outside the mainstream, and they're freakin'. Katie Couric's citing the New York Times poll from early this month, "Poll Shows Most in U.S. Want Overhaul of Immigration Laws."

And check Pew Research as well, "Broad Approval For New Arizona Immigration Law: Democrats Divided, But Support key Provisions."

And not only that, the Obama administration has yet to overturn a 2002 legal opinion holding that "state police officers have 'inherent power' to arrest undocumented immigrants for violating federal law." Naturally, the left's radical open-borders fanatics are already going bonkers over it.

In Defense of Arizona's Ethnic Studies Law

An essential essay, from Stanly Fish, "Arizona: The Gift That Keeps On Giving":

The loud debate over the recently passed Arizona House Bill 2281, which bans from the public schools ethnic studies courses that promote race consciousness, is a clash between two bad paradigms.

The first paradigm is embedded in and configures the bill’s targeted program, the Mexican American Studies Department of the Tucson Unified School District, which, its Web site tells us, adheres to the Social Justice Education Project model. That model includes “a counter-hegemonic curriculum” and “a pedagogy based on the theories of Paolo Freire.” Freire, a Brazilian educator, is the author of the widely influential book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

Freire argues that the structures of domination and oppression in a society are at their successful worst when the assumptions and ways of thinking that underwrite their tyranny have been internalized by their victims: “The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped.” If the ideas and values of the oppressor are all you ever hear, they will be yours — that is what hegemony means — and it will take a special and radical effort to liberate yourself from them.

That effort is education, properly reconceived not as the delivery of pre-packaged knowledge to passive students, but as the active dismantling, by teachers and students together, of the world view that sustains the powers that be and insulates them from deep challenge. Only when this is done, says Freire, will students cease to “adapt to the word as it is” and become “transformers of that world.”

To say that this view of education is political is to understate the point, although that descriptive will not be heard by its adherents as a criticism. The Social Justice Education Project means what its title says: students are to be brought to see what the prevailing orthodoxy labors to occlude so that they can join the effort to topple it. To this end the Department of Mexican American Studies (I quote again from its Web site) pledges to “work toward the invoking of a critical consciousness within each and every student” and “promote and advocate for social and educational transformation.”

If the department is serious about this (and we must assume that it is), then there is something for the citizens of Arizona to be concerned about. The concern is not ethnic studies per se — a perfectly respectable topic of discussion and research involving the disciplines of history, philosophy, sociology, medicine, economics, literature, public policy and art, among others. The concern is ethnic studies as a stalking horse or Trojan horse of a political agenda, even if the agenda bears the high-sounding name of social justice. (“Teaching for Social Justice” is a pervasive and powerful mantra in the world of educational theory.)

It is certainly possible to teach the literature and history (including the history of marginalization and discrimination) of ethnic traditions without turning students into culture warriors ready to man (and woman) the barriers. To be sure, the knowledge a student acquires in an ethnic studies course that stays clear of indoctrination may lead down the road to counter-hegemonic, even revolutionary, activity; you can’t control what students do with the ideas they are exposed to. But that is quite different from setting out deliberately to produce that activity as the goal of classroom instruction.

RTWT at the link.

RELATED: Victor Davis Hanson, "How Could They Do That in Arizona!"

Vanessa Ruiz, Anchor for NBC 12 News in Phoenix, Defends Spanish Pronunciation of Words (VIDEO)

Heh, you gotta love this.

And she handles it beautifully. Watch: "News Anchor Shuts Down Haters Giving Her Sh*t For Her Spanish Accent."

And at the New York Times (where else?), "Arizona News Anchor Is Drawn Into Debate on Her Accent and the Use of Spanish":

PHOENIX — An Arizona news anchor defended her pronunciation of Spanish words during English broadcasts, saying she delivers them the way the language is intended to be spoken.

In a broadcast on Monday, Vanessa Ruiz, who works for 12 News here, waded into the running debate over the use of Spanish that has divided Americans in different ways for years, and has been percolating on the campaign trail.

Ms. Ruiz, who was raised in a bilingual household, said some viewers had questioned her way of pronouncing Spanish words. Sandra Kotzambasis, the station’s news director, said viewers were asking why Ms. Ruiz “rolled her Rs.”

In the broadcast, Ms. Ruiz said, “Some of you have noticed that I pronounce a couple of things maybe a little bit differently than what you are used to, and I get that, and maybe even tonight you saw a little bit of it.

“I was lucky enough to grow up speaking two languages, and I have lived in other cities, in the U.S., South America, and Europe,” she continued. “So yes, I do like to pronounce certain things the way they are meant to be pronounced. And I know that change can be difficult, but it’s normal and over time I know that everything falls into place.”

The use of Spanish in the United States has been contested in a range of ways over the years, from objections to its use in the Pledge of Allegiance; to casual conversation on school buses, such as in Nevada; and in a New Mexico supermarket accused of having singled out Spanish-speaking employees with an “English-only” policy, according to some of the cases pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union.

It has most recently reached into the political stage among rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, such as when Donald J. Trump said this week that Jeb Bush should “really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”

The United States has more than 55 million Hispanics and, according to the 2011 American Community Survey, 38 million residents age 5 and older who speak Spanish at home. But questions about the use of Spanish persist.

In Arizona, where the Hispanic population is at 30 percent and is growing, the conversation about language has included questions over the English fluency of candidates for public office. It has surfaced regularly in schools, notably in a state law banning, with some exceptions, b ilingual education.

In July, an appeals court agreed to give challengers a chance to void a state law designed to end an ethnic studies program in Tucson’s school district, where 60 percent of the children enrolled were of Mexican or other Hispanic descent. A former state school superintendent championed the law, taking particular issue at a popular district’s Mexican-American studies program.

Timothy M. Hogan, the executive director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, has worked on some state laws involving the use of Spanish in public schools. “My observation is people generally feel threatened by use of communication that they are unfamiliar with,” he said. “Underlying all of that is the implied threat to the vanishing majority.”

Ms. Ruiz was born in Miami, grew up in Colombia, and studied in Spain before a career in journalism that has taken her on international assignments. She joined 12 News in July.

She followed her comments on air with a statement posted on the station’s website: “Let me be clear: My intention has never been to be disrespectful or dismissive, quite the contrary. I actually feel I am paying respect to the way some of Arizona’s first, original settlers intended for some things to be said.”

Still more.

The Left's Big Lie: A Chronology of Progressive Deception in the Aftermath of Tucson, 1/8/11

I'm intrigued by the meme this weekend on the blame-righty progressive left. It turns out that Gateway Pundit mistook the closed-captioned "applause' text at the Phoenix Jumbotron for audience prompts at last Wednesday's Obama-Democrat Tucson exploitation rally. And then faster than you can despicable smear, Charles Johnson slams Gateway as a "dim bulb" troglodyte of the "wingnut blogoshpere." But Gateway's Jim Hoft came back with a withering reply: "Figures. Charles Johnson’s Crackpot Hero Arrested For Threatening to Kill Tea Party Leader on National TV." Heh. That's good.

And staying with it for a moment, compare these two screencaps from Little Green Footballs. When James Eric Fuller threatened some conservatives at this weekend's ABC News town hall in Tuscon, Johnson chalks that up to the "Wild West" atmosphere in Arizona. Completely understandable, no doubt.

But just the other day we had news that Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington State received death threats, but that was the work of raving right-wing "lunatic." And Charles chirps in with feigned superiority: "I wonder how the wingnuts will try to explain this one away."

That's typical for the morally bankrupt "husky pony-tailed blogger."

But there's more.

I cruised over to Althouse earlier, and she has a hilarious post picking up on Whiskey Fire's demonic ramblings at Firedoglake: "Hoft gets this through Instadouche and, unsurprisingly, Ann Althouse, who has been looking at pictures again, something that never ends well..." The Whisky Fire proprietor is Thers. He's a classic progressive and morally-bankrupt attack blogger from the TBogg "F*ck Me Pumps" school of racist misogyny and character assassination. Or, as Ann responds, "Heh. I got FireDogLake writing in the anti-Althousiana genre." The link goes to FDL:

Jim Hoft, The Gateway Gobshite, the Dollar Store version of Michelle Malkin, is very possibly the dumbest wingnut on this or any other Internet. To be sure, he has his competition (SASQUATCH ISRAEL!). But he is rather special!

Notice that? The "competition" is me, from last September and my "Sasquatch Israel" gaffe. I noticed some traffic coming in last night from the Sadly No! asshats, and I chuckled this morning at finally figuring out the source. Even better is that I'm lumped to not only with Jim Hoft, but the great Michelle Malkin. Now that's some bragging rights, yo!

But stupid is as stupid does, as they say. Or in this case, as evil does, and you can't touch the left on that. Because as I've been documenting, along with many other voices of moral clarity on the right, the aftermath of Tucson has revealed a depth of progressive depravity thus far unknown to man. I have yet to see a single progressive publish an apology or retraction for their baseless smears that came within minutes of the shooting on January 8th. It's been truly sickening. Here's Thers, for example, at Whiskey Fire, alleging "heated right-wing rhetoric" for the death and destruction at the Gabrielle Giffords event:

Busting wingnut rhetoric for these latest shootings wouldn't be like busting Al Capone for tax evasion. It would be like busting Al Capone for fucking jaywalking.

The reason the Tucson nightmare fearfully resonates is not because of a simple causal relationship between say Glenn Beck and direct incitements to murder, but because "conservatives" have an insatiable appetite for crazy bullshit.

Are wingnuts opposed to incitement to murder because, well, it's incitement to murder, or because they're afraid being caught out doing it might lose them Valuable Political Points?

Dunno! But once you've gone ahead and, say, made excuses for state-sponsored torture, if you want the benefit of the doubt, fuck you.

These people have no shame.

Whiskey Fire posted these lies on Wednesday, fully four days after the shooting. By then it was fully known of Jared Loughner's insanity. But the Democrat-rats smelled a political opportunity, and that night we saw crowds erupt in applause for President Obama at the progressive's University of Tucson progressive pep rally that should have otherwise been an evening of somber reflection. It was just that morning that Zach Osler, a "best friend" to the deranged Loughner, indicated at ABC News that the shooter "didn't listen to political radio, he didn't take sides, he wasn't on the left, he wasn't on the right":

But this is how it all works.

It's the big lie of the progressive-left, as I argued yesterday, as well as Diana West earlier, "Tragedy Exposes 'The Big Lie'":

The suppression of the facts is by no means the most dangerous aspect of any Big Lie. After all, facts don't go away even amid efforts to suppress them. All sorts of inconsistencies, impossibilities and clues remain behind, and sometimes in plain sight, for anyone who cares to look. The real threat the Big Lie poses to society comes when it is not stopped in its tracks, exposed and trashed for what it is -- a lie -- but rather accepted, accommodated and, indeed, treated as if it were the truth. At that point, a Big Lie is a big success, having created an alternate reality that turns its very targets into hapless accomplices.

Unfortunately, that last bit describes most Republicans' supine reaction to the reaction -- the Big Lie -- about the Arizona massacre ....

In the end, though, what's worse than the Big Lie itself is the failure to reject and expose it -- the failure, in this case, to identity the lie as a naked influence operation to mute conservative political expression. This failure is the crime Republicans are guilty of each time they stoop to defend themselves within the phony terms of the lie itself.

I'm not completely down with Diana's condemnation of conservative capitulation to the left's Big Lie. Politically, it would have been much worse to hold back a response in real time, just as the nihilist hordes were building up their deceits and distortions. But she's right to place the lies squarely in the longstanding tradition of leftist totalitarian utopianism. She illustrates her blog post with the image of Joseph Stalin above, and writes: "'Never mind, they'll swallow it', said Stalin, the 20th Century's first successful progenitor of the Big Lie."

Exactly.

I'll have more later.

Meanwhile, the Big Lie continues with the latest from Frank Rich of the New York Times, "No One Listened to Gabrielle Giffords" (via Memeorandum).

RELATED: "The Lies of Bill Maher — And the Epic Struggle Between Good and Evil in the Aftermath of Tucson, 1/8/11."

At Least Two Dead in Arizona Flooding

At the Arizona Republic, "Pima, Pinal county motorists die as vehicles swamped."

But also at Tucson's Arizona Daily Star, "A 76-year-old woman was killed when she was swept away in a flooded wash today near Oracle Junction."

Also at KABC-15 Phoenix:

James Eric Fuller, Tucson Shooting Survivor, Arrested for Making Death Threats at 'American Conversation' Town Hall for ABC News

Yeah. How's that for conversation? Pretty much the kind of conversation we've been having all week on the progressive left.

Nice Deb call it the "irony of ironies."

But frankly, it's just more proof that the left's violent fantasies are driving their partisans to death threats and the politics of personal destruction. And it's sad too, since this guy simply needs to just take some time away for himself. Recover from the trauma. Man, that's a terrible experience to go through. Frankly, I was surprised to see him on Democracy Now!, although they're communists, so that explains how quickly events went down hill for him. See KGUN 9 Tucson, "Shooting Rampage Victim Arrested at ABC-TV Town Hall Meeting." And NYT, "Man Shot in Tucson Rampage Is Arrested at a TV Taping."

TUCSON — A victim of the shooting spree here that killed six people and wounded 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was arrested Saturday after he spoke threateningly at a televised forum intended to help this stricken city heal, the police and witnesses said.

The man, J. Eric Fuller, 63, a military veteran who supports Ms. Giffords, was “involuntarily committed for mental health evaluation,” said Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima County sheriff’s office.

Mr. Fuller, who was shot in the left knee and back on Jan. 8, was among several victims, medical personnel and others who attended a special forum at St. Odilia Catholic Church hosted by Christiane Amanpour to be televised Sunday on ABC.

State Representative Terri Proud, a Republican, was sitting two rows behind Mr. Fuller. The topic of gun control came up in the forum, she said, and one of the speakers made a comment about a bill introduced recently in Arizona that would allow faculty members on college campuses with concealed weapons permits to carry guns.

Ms. Proud said she spoke up to clarify the bill’s language. Trent Humphries, the founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who was sitting one row behind her, rose to speak and suggested that discussion about gun legislation be postponed until after the funerals. He started to say that he had also been affected by the tragedy because a neighbor was a victim.

At that point, Ms. Proud said, Mr. Fuller blurted out to Mr. Humphries, “You’re dead.”

Mr. Fuller then began to “behave in a very odd manner,” she said. “He was making inappropriate comments.”

Ms. Proud said that after the forum ended, she went to one of the police officers providing security at the forum and asked him to file a report about Mr. Fuller’s remark to Mr. Humphries. The officer told her it was being investigated.

About five police officers surrounded Mr. Fuller and escorted him out. As he was leaving, Ms. Proud said, he turned and yelled, “You’re all whores!”

Actually, Fuller's not just a "Giffords supporter." He's a hardcore "Democratic activist," and progressives like Eric Boehlert have used his appearance on the communist Democracy Now! segment to taunt conservatives such as Michelle Malkin. Doc Zero has the details, and he adds:

Let me make this nice and clear for simple minds: getting shot does not confer either insight or sainthood, and neither does service in the military. I already know people like Bohlert understand the latter, since I don’t think you’ll see a “McCain-Palin” bumper sticker on his car. Every decent American should run like the wind from the creepy notion that certain people are completely above criticism, even when they question the very humanity of others.

Honorable military service is a strong point on any resume… but the military doesn’t stand for suppressing dissent through bloody slander. A lot of the people who think Eric Fuller’s military service make him impossible to disagree with usually have a much more… nuanced view of veterans, and their red-faced insistence on perfect virtue for their icons of the moment is very temporary. Ask Cindy Sheehan to read you the expiration date on her Absolute Moral Authority card.

Anyone who would go on the air to accuse Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle, or John Boehner of having anything to do with Jared Loughner’s actions is a disgrace. Nothing they did earlier in life changes that, and their deeds earlier in life are not erased by their current willingness to become part of the most disgusting political narrative of the new century. It’s all part of the concept of free will, which implies the ability to choose badly, and be held accountable for it… no matter who you are. Despite the urging of fringe characters like Bohlert, the mainstream media might back away from Fuller because he’s such an obvious nut. Then again, certain networks might be unable to resist the temptation to lean forward.

And Jeff Goldstein piles on:

Right-wing extremism caused this violent outburst of left-wing extremism.

I eagerly await the breathless reports from CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC that tells us how Sarah Palin’s “eliminationist rhetoric” led to the Loughner shooting, which led to the wounding that directly led to a death threat issued against a TEA Party leader by a member of the left, whose crime seems to be his connection with the violent eliminationist rhetoric the left is so bravely fighting against.

By, you know, issuing death threats.

These people are who we knew them to be. And it’s been great to watch them try to hang themselves. Now, if only the establishment GOP will stop rushing over to cut the rope.

Obama Rides Wave of Support After Arizona Shooting: Seven-in-Ten Americans Reject Progressives' Blame-Righty Allegations

At WSJ, "President's Ratings Climb." The president is at 53 percent approval. It's a tragedy bump, to be expected following such a horrific event, and the sensational media coverage:

The poll was conducted days after a shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., in which six people died and 14 were injured, including Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman from the state.

Surges in presidential popularity are common after a galvanizing national tragedy, said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who co-directs the Journal/NBC News poll with Democrat Peter Hart. Bill Clinton saw a four-point jump after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. George W. Bush a huge surge after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

And at the raw pdf survey, 71 pecent said that the shooting was an "isolated incident by a disturbed person" (Question 35):

Thinking about the shootings of a Member of Congress, a Federal judge and others in Tucson, Arizona last weekend, do you feel the extreme political rhetoric used by some in the media and by political leaders was an important contributor to the incident or do you feel this is more of an isolated incident by a disturbed person that occurs from time to time?

That's 7-in-10 who reject the left's blame-righty campaign, although given a choice, substantial numbers say that radio and television, and blogs and the Internet, contributed "to a climate that some say encouraged the shootings" (at Question 37).

Encouraging overall, but those latter items remind me of William Jacobson's comments earlier:

The ruthless efficiency with which the left-wing blogosphere tied Palin to the shooting, and the success of their efforts in equating Palin with mass murder, is a lesson we should not forget.