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.
lol
No, Slarti. I’m just having a lot of cat induced typos this evening. Think of the graphic from your link for “I hear that alot.” The two of them have a severe case of what I call “jealous butt” today. This always necessitates some cat juggling.
Buddha said:
“When I want to insult someone, it’s must nastier than that.”
Must? Is that like an alot?
BIl:
“When I want to insult someone, it’s must nastier than that. Usually a lot funnier too.”
**************
Indubitably!
anon nurse,
You are truly a woman after my own heart.
BBB,
What James said. I’m a due process kind of guy. And you need to learn to distinguish rhetorical statements from personal attacks, but as I learned from your interchanges with FFLEO elsewhere, you apparently have a low threshold for insult. Trust me. When I want to insult someone, it’s must nastier than that. Usually a lot funnier too.
BBB,
He didn’t say, “Let’s attack criminals where ever we find them”, I assume he meant punish through the legal system.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8aKKF1-f-A&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Goodnight, all!
Mespo,
I think that a sad truism is that the sentiment rarely coalesces without the horror. To me, using the horror as a way to coalesce support for positive change is a way to try and give some meaning to the loss of the victims.
BIL,
“And just exactly why would object to punishing traitors?”
I didn’t say that I had any objection to punishing traitors.
What you advocate “let’s start punishing criminals where we find them” is known as vigilante justice. I object to that.
“That makes you an enemy of the Constitution.”
Why do you find a need to rely on personal attacks instead of just defending your position? It’s not as if adding “You’re a Mr. Poopy Head” bolsters your argument. It only lowers the level of civility and leads to less open and honest discussion.
“I swore to protect and defend the Constitution for all enemies foreign AND domestic.”
I swore to protect it FROM them. Aren’t you glad you weren’t a Tea Party candidate who made the same slip? 🙂
Hail Freedonia!
mespo,
I submit that “culprit” and “likely contributory” as distinct. Clearly, the culprit is the gunman’s mental instability. However, it is not unreasonable to make the leap that incitement exacerbates mental illness and indeed plays to it.
Buddha,
That’s all well and good but what about his rabble-rousing in Freedonia?
I agree with Bob,Esq here. We know precious little about the gunman’s motivation and to assume that the current political vitriol is the culprit weakens the manifestly valid argument against it. It’s as if we must have a poster child to mount a challenge to the likes of Limbaugh and O’Reilly, et clowns. Their rhetoric is repugnant enough and worthy of vilification in its own right, without a specific act of inevitable horror to coalesce the sentiment.
Incidentally, we have many examples of right wing zealots perpetrating all manner of mayhem in their perverse campaign to end “liberalism,” whatever that is. The police killer in Pittsburgh, the abortion doctor murderer in Kansas, and hosts of other loonies and bastards all reflect every negative event through their personal prism of hate and in so doing undermine any notion of the “rightness” of their cause. We here are infinitely better than that.
We should avoid the lure of pointing to examples of the evil we all abhor until we can say with certainty that the evil was there in the first place. Elsewise we look like zealots who substitute emotion for reason and cherish only the satisfaction of gratifying our commonly held prejudices — no matter how well-founded those prejudices appear to be.
Slarti,
You’re probably right. I suppose I’d still prefer to have that discussion take place slightly abstracted (i.e. “Don’t use crosshairs to denote political opposition” rather than “Sarah Palin used . . . ” or “Such and such a democrat used . . .”). I may just be hopelessly naive though.
As I sit here perusing the Internet, it occurs to me that we need a little levity, so in honor of short attention spans, I submit the only Marxist I follow: Groucho Marx.
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”
Buddha,
Point taken.
James,
I see the wisdom of your strategy in the context of your family, but I don’t see how it could be successfully scaled up to apply to our national dialogue. Certainly the focus should be on establishing that certain speech should be inappropriate, but as Buddha points out, that’s impossible without determining (and giving examples of) inappropriate speech. And I have no idea how the issue can be kept in the national spotlight long enough for change to be effected…
James,
“Who knows if the general public has a long enough attention span to make that feasible writ large.”
Aye, there’s the rub. Most people have the attention spans of fruit flies thanks to modern media saturation.
BIL,
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. My own sense on how the Democrats should proceed is based on discussions with the (very) conservative members of my own family. If I was arguing with them, I’d never in a million years be able to convince them that the rhetoric of Glenn Beck et al was inappropriate because they are fans. Getting them to agree that violent rhetoric is wrong in the abstract would be do-able. Then in a few months, when the right wing is back to its usual self, I’d have that agreement to point to and try to make the hard sell that Sarah Palin and Glen Beck are using a rhetoric of violence.
Who knows if the general public has a long enough attention span to make that feasible writ large.
Slarti,
“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…”
Unavoidable similarities?
I say it’s a distinction without a difference. The very act of dissection will function in reality as an assignment of blame.
You can’t learn about a frog’s anatomy from dissecting a salamander although there are some unavoidable similarities.
Brian,
While you are on to something with authoritarianism being a problem? We’ve had the discussion before about adversarial process and its necessity before, whether you agree with it or not. Just because you go to great lengths to avoid conflict, that is not an indicator of how the majority of human behave. Most people are contentious when wronged and without procedural remedy, they would take the self-help option. Then you’d see tragedies like this one occurring on a daily basis. That the perp here was likely insane does not change that he took the self-help route instead of engaging adversarial process.