This is the rather bizarre mugshot of Jared Loughner that was released yesterday afternoon. He has been assigned lawyer Judy Clarke, who defended the Unabomber.
One of the more interesting facts to emerge is that Loughner was expelled from his community college after complaints from classmates that he seemed on the edge of violence.
In the meantime, the Sheriff is being attacked for criticizing right-wing commentators for their over-the-top rhetoric, including conservative icon, Rush Limbaugh. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik stated “The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information. . . [Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences.” [Update: Limbaugh has reportedly fired back by saying that the Democratic Party supports Loughner and is “attempting to find anybody but him to blame.” Wasn’t he supposed to be Costa Rica?] Reportedly near the scene of the shooting is this billboard:
Sarah Palin is also being criticized for putting a bullseye over Giffords’s district as someone she has “set her sights on” for defeat:
Notably, Palin was previously associated with threats against the President by the Secret Service, here.
Gifford’s husband has also blamed inflammatory rhetoric for the shooting.
For its part, the Brady Campaign, may the following point in a statement from Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:
“The 22 year-old shooter in Tucson was not allowed to enlist in the military, was asked to leave school, and was considered “very disturbed” (according to former classmates), but that’s not enough to keep someone from legally buying as many guns as they want in America.” For the full statement, click here
One of the more worrisome (and predictable) developments is the proposal of legislation to further criminalize speech, here.
Buddha,
I think what James means (please correct me if I’m wrong, James) is to point fingers the next time someone uses violent rhetoric to incite their audience, not to wait for the next tragedy. I agree with him that blame isn’t very productive right now – I think we need to identify what speech is unacceptable first and foremost, but as there is a disparity in how the left and the right have used this tactic in recent years this process is going to have some unavoidable similarities to blaming the right…
Has, forgive me and pardon the outrageous and false analogy, the Achilles’ heel of Adversarial Authoritarianism indecently exposed itself as the actual criminal, while concurrently asserting its being duly deserving of its just punishment precisely where it is?
James,
I simply don’t see both assigning blame and both agreeing that certain charged language is inappropriate as being mutually exclusive. In fact, I see both playing out across the media concurrently right now.
Slarti,
By the way, I really liked the Slate article you quoted about the effects of the right questioning the government’s legitimacy.
It’s a matter of tactics. Pointing out that the right uses far more violent language than the left is trying to assign blame. The right will react defensively and point out all the times that extremists on the left use violent language. As a result, both sides get into a shouting match about who is more to blame, and nothing changes. If we could get both sides to agree that certain charged language shouldn’t be used in political discourse, there’s a chance that we could actually change how people talk. Or at least be in a better position to chastise them the next time they cross the line. The only way I see of doing that is to try not to point fingers right now.
A valid point, Slarti.
“but save the finger pointing for the next time someone ignores that lesson.”
So we should wait for a higher body count to hold those most responsible for incitement responsible for their words?
Sorry, James.
This is one of the few times we disagree. Justice is blind and, from what I hear, has no sense of taste either.
James,
That’s exactly what I’m in favor of – pointing fingers at anyone who uses inappropriate speech in the future – but how can that be done without looking at speech in the recent past in order to determine what is and isn’t appropriate?
I find the whole impulse to focus on whether the left or the right is more vitriolic to be in very poor taste right now. Treating this shooting as a wake-up call for all concerned to use less violent rhetoric is appropriate, but save the finger pointing for the next time someone ignores that lesson.
anon nurse,
You are most welcome.
Why would you object to punishing traitors?
Art. III, Sec. 3 reads:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
Considering it was Saudis, funded by Saudis, operating out of Afghanistan who did the attack and Bush’s immediate response was to use U.S. resources to get Saudi royals out of the country ASAP?
That’s a no brainer.
Not to mention the whole Bugliosi murder angle.
BBB,
And just exactly why would object to punishing traitors?
Just so you know? I’m non-partisan. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are at fault. The Republicans drove the car into the ditch and the Democrats proceeded to set it on fire. I am a party of one, a Jeffersonian Constitutionalist. An egalitarian who firmly believes in both equal protection and equal application of the law. And if you won’t punish treason – the only Constitutionally defined crime? No matter who committed it?
That makes you an enemy of the Constitution.
Like Bush, Cheney and – with his assassination without due process proclamation – Obama.
Well, pardon my French, but fuck them.
I swore to protect and defend the Constitution for all enemies foreign AND domestic. Not either party. And certainly not criminals who go to war for personal profit while protecting their primary business partners – the perpetrators of 9/11, the Saudis.
Brian,
Thanks for your insights, as well as the book recommendation.
Thanks, bdaman.
Did he vote in 2008?
Buddha wrote:
How about this for a solution . . . let’s start punishing criminals where we find them. Be they rich, crazy or politicians. Or rich crazy politicians.
In a just world, the insane will have less to focus on as somehow being a social injustice that only bullets will resolve.
And our rights and our Founding Fathers vision will be strengthened.
Let’s start by prosecuting Bush and Cheney, repealing the Patriot Act, and amending the Constitution so that emphatically no President from either party can circumvent due process for citizens under any circumstances.
========
As I said… that was like a breath of fresh air… (Thanks, Buddha.)
And we have another shot at repeal of the Patriot Act in February.
Pretend that I expanded my two previous comments ten-fold in length and intensity and put the expanded versions here?
Please stop pretending…unless you never started because you noticed that little “?”…
Then ponder, if you will, how I learned about psychosis, how it works, what social process causes it, and what people may learn to actually do that will relegate events such as the Tuscon murders and the adversarial banter here on this blawg that just might be an attenuated form of that which the comments here seem to me to protest.
When I needed colon elimination to eliminate near certain death from cancer while I was yet willing to be alive, morphine for post surgical pain dumped me into flashbacks of being paddled catatonic as a second grade student, as though such paddling would lead me to decide not to be autistic.
In 1986, knowing about James Duranty, Sumner Harris, and Grace Harris, I decided that nothing on earth or elsewhere would take me along such a psychotic-break-driven path. I had known people who met with psychotic breaks, some few of whom broke into violence. I chose, on finding myself in flashbacks of catastrophically shattering past terror, and I was willing to die before taking the path of revenge or retaliation.
So, I became a voluntary psychiatric inpatient in the 8-East Psychiatric Unit of the University of Illinois Hospital, in Chicago. I was the only patient in my room at the U of I Hospital. A spate of subsequent hospitalizations followed the diagnostic and treatment errors of that first hospitalization, most of which were in places where I had roommates.
Some of my roommates were such as to plausibly, given a triggering incident, do violence, but had not yet done anything which would put them in isolated care. I needed to learn to talk with very psychotic people with decency and respect for my safety as well as theirs.
I lived as roommates with people who had arrived at a state of being much like I would guess Jared Loughner was a couple months ago, but who activated other people’s “this person needs urgent help” alarms sufficiently that those of my roommates who may have been able to get pushed to a place similar to where Jared Loughner’s live circumstances pushed him were hospitalized before tragedy struck with horribly irreversible consequences.
I am not alone, nor I am the first, in working at making sense of terror, terrorism, and terrorists. Stanford psychology professor emeritus, Philip Zimbardo has written of such in his book, “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,” Random House, 2007.
Flinging substantial “high explosive laden” verbal petards may turn the thrower of such petards evil, in the sense I find of which Zimbardo wrote, and may do so even if the petards fail to detonate.
I did not write Zirbardo’s book.
I did read it.
Twice and then some.
I found it well worth reading.
And then some.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law emergency legislation to head off picketing by a Topeka, Kan., church near the funeral service for a 9-year-old girl who was killed during Saturday’s shooting in Tucson.
Unanimous votes by the House and Senate on Tuesday sent the bill to Brewer. It took effect immediately with her signature Tuesday night. The new law prohibits protests within 300 feet of a funeral or burial service.
The Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket Thursday’s funeral for Christina Taylor Green. The fundamentalist church has picketed many military funerals to draw attention to its view that the deaths are God’s punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7377196.html
Like a breath of fresh air… (Thanks, Buddha.)
The Patriot Act is coming up for reauthorization in February.
BIL,
“let’s start punishing criminals where we find them.”
Are you channeling the diseased rhetoric of the left or the right? 🙂
It doesn’t matter. I would still strongly disagree with your suggestion and the making of the suggestion itself.
“First of all, what I said is never allow a good crisis go to waste when its an opportunity to do things you had never considered or didn’t think were possible,” said Emanuel. “That’s not intended for this moment, or does it apply to this moment.”
Emanuel went on to say that Giffords is a friend and that he pioneered the kind of event where Giffords was gunned down. He did not offer any criteria for which crises should be exploited and which ones shouldn’t. Perhaps the Emanuel Rule needs to be amended to exclude mass murders from the category of crises to exploit.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rahm-tucson-shooting-we-shouldnt-exploit-crisis_533485.html