Free Republic

The suspect in the January mass shootings in Tucson has been cited by former Congressman Patrick Kenndy as an example of discrimination against the mentally ill. Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, mentioned Jared Loughner during an interview on CNN Sunday night to discuss his past problems and addictions and his campaign for recognition of brain disease. Loughner, 22, is charged with shooting 19 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in a Tucson parking lot in January. Six people were killed. Giffords was shot in the head and is currently in a rehabilitation center in...

CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight has been such a parade of celebrity interviews it’s almost made Larry King Live look like a hard-news show. But on Wednesday night, Morgan interviewed Ted Nugent and pounded him repeatedly and personally, especially insulting him as a “draft dodger.” He also suggested he was homophobic and not compassionate toward the poor. Morgan naturally picked a big fight on the Second Amendment, which he declared “the reality is you end up with what happened to Gabby Giffords in Tucson.” Morgan insisted to Nugent, “Eighty people a day die in America from gunshots.” Nugent replied, “Kiss my...

Lawmakers' bids to reduce their own pay are caught up in committee.While career federal employees have seen a number of threats to their salaries and benefits, including an extended pay freeze, higher health care payments and an increase in contributions to retirement accounts, lawmakers have proposed cuts to their own compensation, citing a need to reduce costs and share the sacrifice.Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., in January introduced legislation mandating two-week furloughs for all federal employees that also would cut lawmaker pay by 10 percent. Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., and Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., sponsored similar legislation. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.,...

Two federal court filings Monday in the criminal case of the man accused in the January shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson, Ariz., strongly suggest that two health professionals who evaluated his mental state have determined he isn't competent to stand trial, according to legal experts. The filings, one by the defense and one by the prosecution, indicate that a competency hearing for Jared Loughner scheduled in a Tucson federal court for May 25 could largely be a formality. Both filings agreed that the two doctors who evaluated Mr. Loughner wouldn't need to testify. The filings...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Representative Gabrielle Giffords arrived in Florida for the this morning’s planned launch of the space shuttle Endeavour that will be commanded by her husband, Mark Kelly. A posting on the congresswoman’s Facebook page said she flew in on a NASA jet yesterday afternoon and got a quick fly-by of Endeavour at the pad. The Democrat from Arizona arrived with the family of Endeavour pilot Gregory Johnson. The shuttle was being fueled last night, and the weather looks good for Endeavour’s 8:56 a.m. launch. An April launch try was delayed because of electrical problems. Giffords suffered a...

Remember earlier this year when civil discourse was en vogue in the wake of Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting in Tucson? That theme has eroded somewhat over the past several months. On Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski asked her co-host Mike Barnicle if former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s run would “reignite hope” for the Republican Party. And that led Barnicle, the once-accused plagiarist who resigned his position at the Boston Globe in the wake of those charges, to go off a diatribe about the former House Speaker. “Well, they better hope not,” Barnicle said. “He...

A judge has denied a bid by defense lawyers to keep confidential information about Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner's behavior while in federal custody. District Court Judge Larry Burns, in a ruling made public on Thursday, said there is no reason to prohibit the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from releasing to law enforcement and federal prosecutors psychological records and other information about the 22-year-old college dropout. Loughner's lawyers said such a release would violate the federal government's own guidelines and Loughner's constitutional right to protection from self-incrimination and due process. "The Court finds that neither the psychotherapist-patient privilege nor the...

Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) would start a Senate campaign with a 7 point lead over the likely Republican nominee Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)according to a survey by Public Policy Polling. The Democrat also enjoys a 57-31 lead over former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.).

I know the two events are UNrelated...one is a tragedy, and the other is a victory. But the liberals are POINTEDLY trying to make political capital for Hussein out of two similar events--people getting shot. BOTH events created SIMILAR reactions amongst the American people. Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords' shooting created NATIONWIDE shock and dismay--throughout the entire society. Terrorist (isn't it AMAZING to see the media using THAT word again?!) Usama bin Laden's death created NATIONWIDE relief and a sense of justice--supposedly no matter WHAT you believe politically. Yet, here we are again, with Hussein and his hacks trying to make...

In their ongoing crusade to target and silence decent, everyday Americans as racists, some in the MSM love to use the term “dog-whistle” in order to ascribe racial motives to words like, say, “basketball.” Well, lately I’ve been hearing a dog-whistle of my own — a dog-whistle of the journ-o-list variety that tells me that in their relentless campaign to destroy Sarah Palin and undercut her as a serious political force, the MSM is preparing to up the ante when it comes to using the Governor’s own family and children as a political weapon against her. First, a little background…...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The president was on his way. Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts were riding out to the launch pad in a van. And a wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had flown in from her Houston rehab hospital to watch her husband blast off Friday on the historic, next-to-last shuttle mission. Then it all came to a sudden stop. Without warning, a faulty heater part forced NASA to scrub the launch and slam the brakes on the space agency's biggest event in years, a flight made more fascinating to many by the plight of Giffords and her husband, Mark...

Well, it sure didn't take long for the Tucson Truce to collapse. After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot on Jan. 8 by a berserker who killed six others, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and wounded 13, the media were aflame with charges the right had created the climate of hate in which such an atrocity was inevitable. The Washington Post story on the massacre began, "The mass shooting ... raised serious concerns that the nation's political discourse had taken a dangerous turn." Following Barack Obama's eloquent eulogy and call for all of us to lower our voices,...

NASA abruptly called off space shuttle Endeavour's final launch Friday because of a puzzling heater failure in a critical power unit, disappointing huge crowds converging on the area for the afternoon liftoff. President Barack Obama and his family were planning to watch Endeavour blast off. It would have been the first time in NASA history that a sitting president and his family witnessed a launch. Already at Cape Canaveral for the liftoff was wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wife of the shuttle's commander.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — When the National Rifle Association gathers for its annual convention in Pittsburgh, gun control advocates will try to make sure Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is on people's minds, even if she's hundreds of miles away watching the space shuttle launch in Florida. The meeting of the nation's largest gun rights group "will be a great celebration of freedom" in a city where 1 million of the NRA's 3.5 million members live within a four-hour radius, said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam....

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will attend husband Mark Kelly's space shuttle launch in Florida on Friday. In an interview in Houston with CBS' Katie Couric, Kelly said the Arizona congresswoman's doctors in Houston have cleared her to fly to Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the launch of Endeavor. Kelly is the commander of the shuttle mission. CBS released excerpts Sunday of the interview scheduled to air Monday on the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." President Barack Obama and his family also are scheduled to watch the launch, although it's unclear if they'll watch it with Giffords.

Giffords, whose astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, will command the shuttle, was "very pleased" to hear of the news, the congresswoman's spokesman C.J. Karamargin said Wednesday. The Arizona congresswoman, who served as chairwoman of the House subcommittee overseeing NASA, had previously asked the president to attend launches, but to no avail, he said. "She smiled broadly," Karamargin said. "This is something very important to her. She has invited the president to attend numerous launches on various occasions, both in person and in writing, so the fact that he is now going to be attending is something that is very meaningful to...

President Obama plans to bring his family to the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour on April 29 to see Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's husband lead six astronauts into space. Giffords wrote on Twitter: "We are very happy that Pres. Obama is coming to Mark's launch! This historic mission will be Endeavour's final flight." The Orlando Sentinel reports that Obama decided to attend for a few reasons, one of which was that he was going to be in the state already to speak at Miami Dade College's

RedState co-founder Josh Trevino has noticed the following: back in January, Paul Krugman was one of many drooling idiot leftists devoid of any moral compass who tried to pin the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords on a lack of Republican civility. Even though, by the time Krugman’s column ran, it was clear that Giffords’ shooter was a mentally disturbed individual whose assassination plot was not motivated by coherent political theory of any stripe, Krugman was not about to let facts get in the way of a good partisan narrative: It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally...

Conservative Sarah Palin returned to the U.S. political arena on Saturday after several months absence with a feisty speech attacking both the establishment Republican Party and Democratic President Barack Obama and proclaiming "the 2012 elections begin here." In a move apparently aimed at keeping her name in the running for the Republican nomination in next year's presidential election, Palin addressed several thousand people in Wisconsin, a state bitterly divided by a political fight over union rights. Palin has been mostly absent from politics since the January shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, when she was criticized for accusing...