Free Republic

Progressives never let a tragedy go to waste. Although it is clear now that the Gabrielle Giffords shooter and 9/11 truther Jared Lee Loughner has no ties to the Tea Party, that hasn't stopped our friends on the Left from spreading a blood libel on the conservative movement. We stand accused of fostering a "climate of hate" in America that subtly influenced an unstable "conscious dreaming" psychopath into attempting to assassinate a Democratic congresswoman. Some leftwing commentators have even asserted that Sarah Palin has the blood of a 9-year-old child on her hands. The most laughable self described "progressive" spreading...

Why Loughner -- who'd been rejected by the military for his past drug use and arrested on drug charges -- was free to buy a 30-round magazine is a mystery. Almost as much a mystery, frankly, as why Glock even markets them: They have no discernible civilian efficacy -- and damned little military utility. Yet sales of the magazines reportedly are way up around the country in the wake of the Tucson massacre. Here's an opportunity for the NYPD -- and every big-city police department in the nation -- to help turn this around by sending Glock a simple message:...

Rep. Sherman on congressional response to Tucson tragedy

This week is enough to make one long for the days when we’d just blame the Arizona shooting on video games and flagrantly use the tragedy to regulate that kind of speech.In what has become a modern American custom, the media began a frantic, mostly fact-free “national conversation” this week about a national tragedy while trauma surgeons were still packing wounds. In the past, this kind of speculative blame-placing has been unfair and uninformed, making targets of Doom, role-playing, action movies, or Pantera despite unconvincing evidence they influenced the crimes at hand.But this time, the national conversation’s clumsy crosshairs are...

"Omission is the most Powerful Form of Lie" - George OrwellNormally, I don't read the Philadelphia Inquirer, as it is one of the most worthless newspapers in America, and that's saying something.But yesterday, I happened across a discarded Inky and read their coverage of the latest news on the Tucson shooting, including their masthead editorial, their selected letters to the editor, the Tony Auth editorial cartoon, and an op-ed column on the front of section B.And all had one thing in commom - omission of key details that would lend balance, instead of bias, to their coverage.First, the masthead editorial,...

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has come out swinging over the shooting spree that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people, linking it to Arizona's "discrimination against undocumented persons" and a "climate in which demonization of others goes unchallenged and hateful speech is tolerated." In a campus-wide e-mail message, Birgeneau said: "It is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons." He added that "this same mean-spirited xenophobia played a major role in the defeat of the Dream Act by our legislators in Washington, leaving many exceptionally talented and...

This afternoon Sanders sent out a fundraising appeal, seeking to raise money to fight Republicans and other “right-wing reactionaries” responsible for the climate that led to the shooting.

Ever since the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, liberals have sought to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the attack. Shortly after the shooting, Jane Fonda sent out tweets blaming Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party. Encouraged by irresponsible and shameful reporting, a number of twitter users have expressed their desire to see Sarah Palin dead, and some tweets actually call for her assassination. “So…will everyone be satisfied then when Palin is assassinated? You know she’s next,” writes one twitter user. According to a report at The Blaze, some are downright vulgar: “Palin is a...

On the day Christina-Taylor Green was born, 19 men using four hijacked airbuses left a pristine American morning forever stained with blood. As she was entering life, the rest of us were absorbing a lesson in how mean life can be. We saw proud towers disintegrate like sand castles, mangled bodies pulled from rubble, people with tear-streaked faces holding up photos of missing loved ones. And there bloomed in us a sense of union strong as blood ties, a renewed reminder of who we are. We are Americans. “All” of us. For some, it was likely a revelation. After all,...

Reacting to the assassination attempt on one of their own, two House members on Monday said they will introduce legislation that would ban certain ammunition clips and make it illegal to threaten a federal official, both of which they say contributed to the mass casualties in a shooting rampage in Tuscson over the weekend. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., plans to introduce a bill that would ban high-capacity ammunition clips like the one used by Jared Loughner, the gunman accused of killing 6 and injuring 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., as they gathered at a “Congress on Your Corner” event....

Imagine the Saturday morning of congressional aide Mark Kimble. Kimble told of going to a Safeway for a typical meet-and-greet event with his boss, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Kimble said he went into the store for coffee, and as he came out, Giffords was talking to a couple about Medicare and reimbursements, and federal judge John Roll had just walked up to her and shouted “Hi” – when a gunman opened fire. Nobody in America should greet this scene with any other initial reaction than horror. Six people were killed, including Judge Roll, several retirees, and a nine-year-old girl. Over a...

Within hours after Jared Loughner's killing spree, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman went straight for the gutter, proclaiming, with no evidence whatsoever, that Loughner's act was in all likelihood "political," and going on to blame Republicans for the murders. I denounced Krugman's vile blog post here. We now know that Loughner's murders were not political. He was deranged and had no coherent political philosophy. To the extent that he had any political beliefs at all, his friends describe him as left wing. He thought the Bush administration was behind the September 11 attacks. He has been more or less...

Is Ed Schultz really this dumb or simply incapable of honesty? Within the first 10 minutes of his radio show yesterday, Schultz was bellowing about an alleged connection between the massacre in Tucson and remarks by Rep. Michele Bachman, House candidate Jesse Kelly and other Republicans (audio) -- SCHULTZ (initially referring to Congresswoman Giffords' medical condition): The latest medical update is she is responding, it's been consistent since they started to try to get responses out of her, which is very positive. But if you want to talk about the political climate in this country, if you really want think...

The ramblings of accused Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner are difficult to tie to a coherent political philosophy, yet in them can be discerned a number of themes drawn from the right-wing patriot and militia movements, experts said. Analysts on the left and the right have debated Loughner's disjointed Internet and YouTube postings, each finding fodder to blame the other for inspiring the 22-year-old. Most wind up concluding that Loughner suffered from mental problems. But experts said that several oft-repeated phrases and concepts — his fixation on grammar conspiracies, currency and the "second United States Constitution" — seem derived from...

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires. The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence. As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder. Not only is...

Act I of the politicization of the Tucson shooting was pundits and liberal politicians asking if right-wing rhetoric contributed to the violence. Act II was conservatives rejecting this and pointing out, by the way, that the media did not rush to judgment when Nidal Hassan killed 12 people at Fort Hood. Act III is the conservative fightback, as exemplified by this message from the Tea Party Express to its members. Dear Friends: The attack on conservatives and the tea party movement has continued over the past 24 hours. Media figures and liberal activists continue to falsely suggest that Rush Limbaugh,...

If any good can come of the horror in Tucson, it will be that this becomes a McKinley moment for Sarah Palin and her chief spokesman, Glenn Beck. One hundred and ten years ago, during another low point in the nation's political discourse, newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst — who was angling for a presidential run in 1904 — published a pair of columns fantasizing about violence against President William McKinley. Columnist Ambrose Bierce wrote that a bullet "is speeding here to stretch McKinley on his bier." Next, an unsigned column widely attributed to Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane declared:...

I am writing today about how you are responding to and how you will respond to the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six other people. By way of introduction and background, I am a cousin of Congresswoman Giffords. I am also an ally of Dr. George Tiller, the Kansas doctor who provided abortion services and who was assassinated on May 31, 2009. When the Congresswoman’s offices were vandalized after her vote on healthcare reform, I wrote to her. As I recall, I congratulated her on her strong spirit in the face of that attack and...

Sanders Fundraises Off Arizona Murders There has been no shortage of individuals and institutions that have sought to capitalize on the shootings in Tucson. Add Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to that list. This afternoon Sanders sent out a fundraising appeal, seeking to raise money to fight Republicans and other “right-wing reactionaries” responsible for the climate that led to the shooting. He writes: Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country. I also want...

Joseph P. Kennedy III — whose grandfather Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 42 years ago — demanded an end today to the “partisan rancor” in Washington that he said helped foster “an atmosphere of hate,” leading to the assassination attempt of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. “Ladies and gentlemen, something happened last weekend. It is time for a change. For too long, the rhetoric from Washington has been toxic,” said the 30-year-old, who spoke to a hushed gathering of legislators at the State House this afternoon. Kennedy, son of the former Massachusetts congressman, currently an assistant district attorney on Cape Cod,...