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Judge John Roll (RIP) was threatened last year

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It's too soon, and too sensitive, yes. But I'm getting two fairly strong and clear impressions of this case.

The first and most important is that the suspected shooter, Jared Loughner, seems not to have been in his right mind at all. In such a situation, calling this a straight-up “political assassination” doesn't seem quite right to me; the political motives can get so tangled up in a deranged person's mind that they don't get expressed in a way a normal person can understand.

(An analogous situation might be the Fort Hood shootings: Were they “terrorism”, or the work of a clearly deranged invididual? Were they a political act, or a result of personal insanity?)

But I think this also may well be relevant:

In February, when U.S. District Judge John Roll presided over a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants against an Arizona rancher, the Marshals Service was anticipating the fallout.

When Roll ruled the case could go forward, Gonzales said talk-radio shows cranked up the controversy and spurred audiences into making threats.

In one afternoon, Roll logged more than 200 phone calls. Callers threatened the judge and his family. They posted personal information about Roll online.

“They said, 'We should kill him. He should be dead,' ” Gonzales said.

Roll, who is the chief federal judge in Arizona, said both he and his wife were given a protection detail for about a month.

“It was unnerving and invasive. . . . By its nature it has to be,” Roll said, adding that they were encouraged to live their lives as normally as possible. “It was handled very professionally by the Marshals Service.”

Needless to say, we should like to know the extent to which the shooter was interested in this case. [Update: The sheriff says Roll was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and not an intended target of the shooter. Maybe that erodes my point — I kind of hope so.]

So, here's where I come down. In this world, there are crazy people. They are a part of life; indeed, they are a part of political life — as practically anyone who has gone door-knocking for political campaigns can tell you. Crazy people are, in their way, everyday people.

Most of the crazy people are relatively benign — at least to the public at large. But a few of those crazy people are marginally, almost, not-quite violent to begin with — in other words, they're looking for an outlet, a mission.

The vast majority of people who listen to overheated rhetoric, from organization meetings, talk radio, friends, church, whatever, know how to process provocation reasonably well. They don't take things too literally; they get their political porn, as it were, and have a cigarette. Even football and hockey games are chockful of bloodthirsty cries, but it's all good — usually.

But the very every-dayness, the ordinariness and ubiquity of crazy people is precisely why a decent person doesn't use inciting, provocative, violent language.  I do not think that putting little “crosshairs” on a Congressperson's district (for instance) represents an actual incitement to assassination; but given the wide variety of human nature, it is very definitely a bad, bad idea. You should know better — because there might be someone out there who doesn't.

These words, from a Tea Party activist, seem wise to me:

 “I've given many speeches to my group and at different events in my area, and in doing so I'm very conscious of who's listening,” he said. “When I look out at the crowd, 99 percent of the people I see are just like me — average every day Americans who want constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, things of that nature. Every once in a while, though, I see someone — how should I put it? — who is getting too excited, who seems a little farther on the fringe…I realized I had to tone down my comments a little bit, less yelling and screaming and more educational.”

I don't really think this is a left-right issue; there have been other eras and places where the shoe has been on the other foot. Again, it's a question of where the sane people set the limits of discussion.

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  1. turns out that Rep. Giffords had something to say about that very subject.

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    p>

    “We are on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said in the interview. “The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of the gunsight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action.”

    • I’m as righty as anybody and I never saw them. Maybe it would be wiser to stick to the evidence.  

      • I see.

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        p>So now, it’s not enough to demonstrate the publication of material that incites terrorist violence, the new standard is we have to show that the terrorist actually sees that material.

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        p>Wrong.

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        p>It’s time for Sarah Palin specifically and the right-wing hate machine in general to be held accountable for their long and disgusting campaign to incite domestic terrorism.

        • I take your point, but I think it’s more likely that this kind of guy is so seriously disconnected that he would have killed somebody sooner or later. If it wasn’t right wing, he could have found a target listening to “Coast to Coast”.

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          p>I don’t deny there is a right-wing story of oppression and rebellion out there and very possibly it spoke to some cracked part of his mind. But his videos look 95% crazy and 5% righty.  

          • Really?????? And you know that how exactly?

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            p>Do you have the same attitude towards terrorists? They are going to kill someone anyway, so why bother doing anything to avoid it?

          • “Maybe it would be wiser to stick to the evidence,” you wrote a mere two hours earlier.

            <

            p>Maybe, apparently, not?

      • of a nearly systemic problem on the right. The entire Tea Party, talk radio and Fox News cult talks like that, from Sarah Palin’s crosshairs to Bill O’s “Tiller the baby killer.” The more this stuff happens, the more likely the crazies will be instigated by them.  

        • For whatever reason the party out of power can only talk with the amp on 11. A lot of the same screeching happened with Bush.  

          • The right-wing, who bleated so long about “responsibility” and “accountability”, now whines when they are held responsible and accountable for their relentless incitements of violence.

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            p>I encourage you to go sit quietly for awhile and think about what your side’s rhetoric is doing to all of us.

            • I think you can be responsible for making your mental state better or worse. So even if you start as a mentally ill person, there are ways to put yourself in a good situation, or into a situation that makes your affliction worse.

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              p>For instance approaching the internet as a way to be combative can develop parts of your mind that are not good for your overall mental health.

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              p>Terrorism involves a bunch of different things: evil motivators, suicidal actors, a story. Grievances come in there somewhere too.  

              • For instance approaching the internet as a way to be combative can develop parts of your mind that are not good for your overall mental health.

                I bow to your personal experience.

          • No it didn’t, certainly no where near to the same extent. Let’s remember the media when Bush was in power — people practically weren’t even allowed to criticize him and be on TV at the same time during most of the administration.

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            p>You need a whole lot of examples if you’re going to prove your point — and I extremely doubt you’re going to find anything to the level of extremism or as systemic on the right. As the saying goes, “pictures or it didn’t happen.”

            • I think you’re going to find that he was an outsider whatever the definition of insider was at the time.  

  2. I don’t really think this is a left-right issue; there have been other eras and places where the shoe has been on the other foot. Again, it’s a question of where the sane people set the limits of discussion.

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    p>We are experiencing violence against people targeted by the right by deliberate lie campaigns orchestrated and funded by wealthy right wingers. Your evenhanded statement obscures that.

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    p>The closest your statement can come to being true is that right now we do not know that the assassin was conspicuously part of a right-wing hate group or “just” a nut influenced by this systematic right-wing propaganda. Whether, in other words, the killer was an actor or merely the weapon set in motion by the actions of others.

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    p>As for the “other era / shoe on foot” statement, please back it up or retract it. I am unable to recall any instance in the history of this country in which the rich and powerful conspired with a major political party to incite leftists to violence against moderate judges and members of Congress.

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    p>(I was going to say “Not since the Civil War,” but I don;t think even those examples could be stretched to apply.)

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    p>David’s quote of Giffords says it all:

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    p>

    “We are on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said in the interview. “The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of the gunsight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action.”

      • War chests, war rooms, battlegrounds, battle plans, taking aim, target lists, ammunition — enough already

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        p>And she’s right.  What had long been the rhetoric of a campaign – designed to motivate people for the short spurt of a campaign – has taken on different significance in an era of unending campaign. Even ten years ago, the ‘off-year’ was dead; people legislated, lived lives, etc.  Now – we had a congressman declare his campaign for reelection before he had been sworn in for his new term.  The worst thing is that is makes governing – the former GOAL of the now-perpetural campaign season – less effective.

        <

        p>I watched football all day, so I’m not up on all the permutations of this – didn’t see the news, just FB stuff.  But from the little I’ve read about this kid, his stuff strikes me as VERY much like the LaRouche people with the Obama/Nazi signs – I met them at the Frank Town Hall, the lady he called a ‘table’ was one of them.  They have the feel of a politicized ‘cult’, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were involved.

        • …that we miss the larger picture by looking at just this one act from just this one guy.

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          p>this is one act of many that have been directed at this member of congress, and this is just one of many members of congress who are facing a recent jump in threats from the public, some of which were almost as concerning as this attack, some less so.

          <

          p>you’ll recall that census takers were afraid to go out and do business because of the crazy climate…and you’ll recall that michelle bachmann, personally, helped to fan that flame by implying that internment camps are the result of filling out census forms.

          <

          p>this is a bigger story, and we would do well to keep that in mind.

          • The rhetoric gets ratcheted up as it moves down the food chain from the politicians through the pundits, talk show hosts, blogs, and hangers on. At each level, it gets hotter with the next lowest participant taking the latest level as a starting point and permission to get harsher. This guy is just the bottom of the pile who took all this talk as a call to act. Sadly, his interpretation of action was murderously inappropriate, and his state of mind told him to carry it out. The problem started at the top.

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            p>Trying to compare this to liberal crimes, such as the anti-war violence of the late ’60s and early ’70s, is no more than an attempt to avoid responsibility by saying “they did it too”. That’s no excuse for behaving that way, now, and even so, as wrong as they were, the overall rhetoric, from a whole side of the political spectrum, was nowhere as virulent and violence imaged as it is today. They incited this atmosphere by their speech.

            • I don’t recall the 60’s left having an entire cable network dedicated to spreading and amplifying right-wing memes, talking points and over-the-top violent rhetoric like we do now.

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              p>Nor do I recall the left trying to have these same inflammatory personalities elected to Congress, or, God help us, the vice-presidency.

                • Funny you should bring up Al Franken.

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                  p>He was elected many long months before being allowed to serve, based solely on GOP stonewalling. We can only imagine what the uproar from the RWHM (Right Wing Hate Machine) would have been had Al Gore or the Democratic Party done anything comparable in Florida.

      • Your examples are interesting and had occurred to me (except for the Panthers–see below).

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        p>You seem to suggest that my description of the violence, entailing a connection between nutcases with guns and rich and powerful classes and factions, is some kind of precious irrelevancy, as if I had discounted your argument by saying that leftists had never shot anyone named Gifford on a Saturday.

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        p>I suggest that the relationship between the Republican Party, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, and many large corporations on the one hand, and your “crazy people” on the other, as the most important, and most alarming, element of the current events.

        <

        p>There is historical precedent for it, for example in Europe in the 1930s, but not in the U.S. on the Left. I think you are wrong to trivialize this fact in your quest for “they all do it” evenhandedness. I guess that is where you and I really disagree.

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        p>The Weather Underground was a case of unbelievable stupidity and delusion. See for instance Cathy Wilkerson’s Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman, in which the WU is described as a kind of mindless cult, complete with mandatory sex rituals.

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        p>However, even in its collective insanity the WU directed its violence against property, smashing windows and blowing up buildings (with warnings in advance so no one would be hurt). The managed to blow themselves up pretty well.

        <

        p>I think there is a lot more you could say about WU–they are sort of horribly fascinating–including some damning things about their relationship to parts of the left in the 1970s, some of which romanticized WU shamelessly. But to draw an analogy with today’s situation to make some kind of point about parity is sloppy.

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        p>Not to belabor a point on which you and I plainly do not agree, but McKinley’s assassins lacked anything like the today’s assassins’ relationship with the political efforts of rich and powerful elites.

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        p>You could make a case about John Brown, though not a strong one (as the abolitionist movement is really not analogous to Fox News or the leadership of the Republican Party); that was 150 years ago.

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        p>I am puzzled by your reference to the Black Panthers, a group that was armed, and certainly the subject of terrible violence, but that did not carry out violent attacks. I’m aware of one possible exception to that.

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        p>The above is not to argue for WU or assassination or the Panthers, more a footnote to set the record straight. The fact that you need to draw on these strained examples to find the “shoe on the other foot” illustrates the poverty of that argument.

        • That is your inference, not mine. To say that left and right are all the same is not what I said, and incorrect, but also irrelevant to my point.

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          p>I am saying that deranged people are capable of responding to provocation as such, and that the ideological dimension is mostly incidental in individual cases.

          <

          p>To you, the role of moneyed elites in fomenting violence is the big difference. I didn’t address that in my post, so that’s your contribution, not mine.

      • I lived through the sixties and seventies. I am unaware of any big-money corporate sponsorship of the Weathermen that is in any way comparable to the flood of funding that benefits right-wing hate groups and the politicians who pander to them. Can you identify a person comparable to Richard Mellon Scaife who bankrolled the Weathermen? Was there a Weatherman equivalent to Fox News? I don’t think so. The same is true for the Black Panthers.

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        p>Perhaps our historians can address the similar question of financial backing for anarchists.

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        p>We do not draw fine distinctions about sanity when Muslim terrorists kill innocents in service to the Muslim Jihad — we instead describe them simply as “terrorists” and continue a “war on terror” directed against the organizations that encourage such violence. AQ certainly inspires its own deranged individuals — we don’t excuse AQ from responsibility for the blood those individuals shed.

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        p>Yesterday’s episode in Arizona was a terrorist event. Gabrielle Giffords was not randomly targeted.

        <

        p>This was another episode of domestic right-wing terrorism. It seems to me that the question is whether we have the courage to stop those who encourage such right-wing terror.

            • People cannot be emotionally involved and committed unless paid?  I know that’s your take on TEA Party activists, but I was actually acquainted with some of the leaders of that era, and the burning emotion was a DISDAIN for consumer culture and institutional money of ANY kind.  I knew more people in SDS than WU, but then again, everybody IN SDS got off on saying thery were also a clandestine member of WU…

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              p>In my attic, I have a hardcover copy of the Anarchists’s Cookbook, in a box with the Wretched of the Earth and Hannah Arendt’s trilogy.  None of these books were expensive, and none had a ‘swoosh’ of sponsorship on them either.  But not having corporate sponsorship doesn’t make the Movement non-existant.

              • Advertising and publicity work. Corporations buy expensive media placements because they work.

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                p>Are you seriously claiming that SDS et al had anything like the influence that Fox news, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Joyce Kaufman, and the rest of the right-wing horde now enjoy?

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                p>America has found a way to reconcile our First Amendment rights with laws that make child pornography illegal, that make offering material support to terrorist organizations illegal, and that make falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater illegal.

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                p>It is time to do the same with incendiary political speech — specifically, speech that incites political violence — from any place in the political spectrum. The plain fact is that such restrictions will fall far more heavily on the extremist right-wing hate machine.

                <

                p>So be it.

                • decide which speech falls into that category?  And how? Be careful that chickens don’t come home to roost-some of your recent posts have been fairly incendiary, too.

                • From 1969 to @ 1973, you could not open a newspaper or turn on the television without a reference to student demonstrators, flag burning, protest marches, etc.  S(tudents for a ) D (emocratic) S (ociety) helped orchestrate these things nationwide.  They don’t count because they didn’t own one of the three television braodcast systems?  If so, then they did a remarkable job on ‘placement’ as Huntley-Brinkley, Cronkite, and Reasoner reported on them daily.

                  <

                  p>And I wish you luck with detrmining in a legal fashion what speech is deemed to incite violence.  It is remarks like yours that gave that insane kid the idea that people were trying to control his mind with grammar restrictions.  Would you say “It is time to do the same (criminalize) with incendiary political speech – specifically, speech that incites political violence – from any place in the political spectrum” was INTENDED to incite violence?  

      • The 60’s was about peaceful protest – for the most part. As time wore on tensions increased and some passionate activists, tired of being beaten, clubbed, gassed and fire hosed turned to violence – for the most part.

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        p>This is entirely different from the current situation, where systematic right wing rhetoric is responsible for inciting repeated acts of violence we all knew was coming when we listened to Beck and Palin.

  3. Looking at this as a “left/right” issue, in terms of where he ‘stands on the issues,’ is beside the point. I think what is very much on point, though, is looking at where he was getting his information.

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    p>I looked at some of his reported-to-be videos on Youtube and I think he’s definitely a Ron Paulist brand of Tea Bagger. His writing is virtually unintelligible, but his rant about not having a gold-backed currency is a huge giveaway (skip to 3:45) to that brand of (often crazy) libertarianism.

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    p>There has been an enormous amount of incitement to violence by the Tea Party and whether or not he considered himself a part of it, if he was getting his information from that, combined with his obvious insanity, I do think this is a definite example of how dangerous incitement can be.

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    p>All along, the fears people have had about the sort of incitement displayed by the Tea Party hasn’t been that it would urge all sorts of rational individuals to arms. It’s always been that a few confused and/or crazy people would be listening, take that rage and then take it a step further.

    <

    p>—-
    PS. A tangent: He tried to get into the military and was rejected. Good for the military to at least be able to weed that kind of craziness out.  

    • to see this as a tea party act of violence;  ok no surprise there, you just tried to abolish the senate so you are prone to erm – extreme views.  He was crazy, tea party is crazy, therefore he is one of them.  He used the word currency – aha!  Got him!

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      p>Here is what his classmate / bandmate says about him:

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      p>http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.c…

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      p>

      @lakarune I haven’t seen him since ’07. Then, he was left wing. 25 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to lakarune
      @noboa more left. I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive. 27 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to noboa
      @antderosa he had a lot of friends until he got alcohol poisoning in ’06, & dropped out of school. Mainly loner very philosophical. 29 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa
      @antderosa As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy. 33 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa

      <

      p>Oops.

      <

      p>Personally, I watched his videos and I agree with Charley.  This person is not at all in his right mind.  There is nothing rational or coherent to be found.  Your determination to attach this to your political enemies is exactly what I was talking about in the earlier thread which everyone tried to say BMG was above.

      <

      p>(Even David who has since tiptoed into it himself – again no surprise there)

      • to point out my “tiptoeing.”  If you’re talking about my quoting Rep. Giffords’ comment on her district being “targeted” by Sarah Palin, then shame on you.

      • Mentally ill people like this assassin can switch from extreme left to extreme right at the drop of a hat.  His personal politics really are tangential to the point.  The point is that incivility and incendiary language, including the language of war and the gun culture set these nut jobs off.  Responsible people don’t engage in that kind of rhetoric for that reason.

        <

        p>BTW, I’m glad the military screened this guy out, but it seems to me we need to find out why this mentally ill person was able to get an automatic pistol like a Glock 19.  Whoever allowed that to happen should be held criminally liable.

        • I am not the one claiming that this was a political attack.  I do not think it was motivated by Palin or the tea party or anything else that you and I are familiar with.  I base this opinion on the youtube videos made by this nutcase before the act.  They are totally incoherent and insane.

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          p>Insane people do not necessarily pay attention to the heat of the political moment, one way or another.  They are just insane.  You idea that our incendiary political language caused this, similar to what others here are saying, is one without any supporting evidence whatsoever that I can see.

          <

          p>A separate point that political language is heated, and might someday cause something similar, would seem to be valid.

          <

          p>I don’t think the person who sold the gun should be criminally liable unless that person specifically ignored some flag that the gun should not be sold.  My assumption is that no such flag existed, which, given the expulsion from college pending mental health review, seems pretty bad.

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          p>With HIPAA and all this other privacy stuff going on, is it easy or even possible for a college mental health worker to flag someone as “shouldn’t own a gun”?  My guess is:  no.  Not easy, maybe not possible.

          <

          p>That is something to think about.  Lots of implications in both directions.

          • And they have conversations with angry and/or bitter people who may not know they are not quite sane. Many of them watch shows like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck with a decreased ability to recognize the fact that Limbaugh or Beck may not necessarily even mean what they say and are just trying to make money. It’s very foolish to think that our society is not increasing the likelihood of these sorts of attacks because of the ramped-up spewing of hatred in the right wing. Indeed, this is just the latest attack (Congresspeople have had their offices attacked — including this Congresswoman — and we’ve seen abortion doctors assassinated, Unitarian Universalist churches attacked, etc. etc. etc.).

            • as far as anyone knows, anyway.

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              p>This guy was a far leftist who wore a “One Term President” pin in 2004 with his buddies and was heavily into left-punk, for example Anti Flag.  OK, so there is some data garnered from his ex-bandmate and friend (link posted elsewhere).

              <

              p>

              From: Devan Chavez in Tooele, UT

              Hello, I’ve listened to AF for a very long time. But i just recently adopted the straightedge lifestyle. Althought, i do not agree with the whole “Kill all who do not beleive as i do”. Anyway, i was told by a fellow AF fan, that i cant listen to AF and be a member of straightedge. But i feel as if its my lifestyle choice not theirs. Im not a violent person. Can you guys please give me some advice. Thanks. -Devan Chavez

              If someone honestly thinks that by being straight edge they automatically need to resort to violence to get their point across then they’re WAY off base.

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              p>(Good that they say you don’t have to be violent, I guess)

              <

              p>What do you have, besides your imagination?

              • Or not.  Fox News (yes, that Fox News):

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                p>

                Jared Lee Loughner, a 22-year-old man with a troubled past who law enforcement say may have been influenced by American Renaissance, a pro-white publication, bought the gun from Sportsman’s Warehouse’s Tucson store in November….

                New details are emerging about Loughner as a law enforcement memo based on information provided by the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by Fox News suggests he may have ties to the American Renaissance group, though it’s unclear if he was directly affiliated with the publication or group.
                The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the group as “white nationalist” whose leader, Jared Taylor, is “a kind of modern-day version of the refined but racist colonialist of old.”
                The memo states that there is “no direct connection” between Loughner and the group, “but strong suspicion is being directed at AmRen / American Renaissance. Suspect is possibly linked to this group. (through videos posted on his MySpace and YouTube account.). The group’s ideology is anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti-Semitic.”

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                p>AP has a similar story.  Whether or not that turns out to be accurate, it strikes me as pointless to try to ascribe any kind of sensible political orientation to this guy.  So, maybe you should stop trying.

                • Reading comp, David.  I’m the one saying its not political or sane.  My counterpoint above is to Ryan, who insists insists insists it must be because of the political climate.  Its nothing but a counter.  Everything I’ve written says its not political or sane, read it, duh.

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                  p>Frickin pavlovian propgandist I tell ya.

                • You said:

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                  p>

                  This guy was a far leftist who wore a “One Term President” pin in 2004 with his buddies and was heavily into left-punk, for example Anti Flag.

                  <

                  p>I simply pointed out that you might be the teensiest bit wrong about that.

        • His personal politics really are tangential to the point.  The point is that incivility and incendiary language, including the language of war and the gun culture set these nut jobs off.

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          p>That was my point. It doesn’t really matter what his personal politics were; what is far more relevant is how he was getting his ‘news.’ With the ramped-up hatred going on in today’s ‘media’ — be it radio, Fox News or right-wing blogs, etc. — more and more nuts are going to be set off.  

          • And Ryan – FWIW, his stuff bears a stonger resemblance to the LaRouche people’s stuff than Cong. Paul’s.

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            p>OT – why the heck SHOULDN’T we audit the Fed?

              • Ry – EXTREMISTS are extreme.  They exist on the far fight, they exist on the far left.  Do you REALLY think ‘eliminationis rhetoric’ is standard conservative thoguht?  That just sounds paranoid of you.

                • Produce some links, or something. We’d like to check your claim out for ourselves. Maybe we could reconsider.

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                  p>My recollection is that Kos has banned 9/11 Truthers from his site, because they’re nuts and waste time.

                  <

                  p>On the other hand, if it turns out that your memory and impressions weren’t 100% accurate, i.e. that Kos (or Olbermann, or whomever) have not made the kind of comments you ascribe to them, maybe you should reconsider.

                • How this?  If KOS – no huge apologist for the Bush Adminsitration – found their remarks about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al bad enough to ban them, can we agree they carried an amount of vitriol to compare to Palin talking about targeting races?

    • that “reload” page and it’s accompanying crosshairs map on elected Democratic politicians across the country, has been suddenly taken down. In her case, the horse is already out of the barn, and it is well known the language and imagery she used.

  5. We already have special laws for killing Police Officers and POTUS… and it may be time we had similar laws to protect all elected officials. If they are going to take a chance and represent us, then the least we can do is create some additional deterrent to keep them safe. Maybe this whacko who shot Congresswoman Giffords would not have cared about the consequences since he was so obviously unconcerned about other lives or even his own, but we need to make our elected officials feel that they matter.

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    p>We have had attempted assassinations of Presidents, including the shooting of President Reagan. These assassins need to punished and made examples of. But I also know that when you have crazed individuals, conventional deterrents may not work so some extra security may be in order as well.

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    p>I am hoping this criminal gets the death penalty.

    • But the harshness of the penalty isn’t going to deter mentally ill people from committing these crimes.  They’re mentally ill, not rational.  
      Don’t you think that we should do a better job of preventing these crimes?  It starts with keeping firearms out of the hands of mentally ill people.  I think even 2nd amendment strict constructionists would agree with this.  Secondly, we need to eliminate the incivility to those with whom we disagree, and put a stop to the language and symbolism of hatred and violence.  There may be other things we can do, but those two would be a good start.

      • We should have some sort of standard for who gets guns. This is especially true when we live in a country where people have used their low IQ as a valid defense as to why they couldn’t be held responsible for a crime. If your IQ is that low, you should also not be able to do a lot of other things, including owning a gun.

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        p>I’m all in favor of a more civil debate… on all venues.

    • There was a very good article in the New York Times that I cannot find or else I’d link to it, bemoaning the fact that Capitol Hill used to be entirely open to the public, and then in the 80s someone tried to blow up the Senate so they started metal detecting everyone, and then there was the 98′ Capitol Shooting so they restricted public access to official tours and increased the Capitol police presence in the building, then after 9/11 they put permanent cement barricades in front, and now the new visiting center is primarily designed to ensure that all the visiting public enters through one place and is monitored throughout their time in the capital. White House tours have been canceled entirely. Obviously the days when Jefferson and Lincoln personally received visitors is over (Lincoln ended it actually since there were so many to talk to it prevented him from getting his work done). But to me the worst part of this tragedy is that the Congresswoman was one of the few who intentionally went out of her way to meet with constituents, one of the reasons she managed to win this past election was due to her personal touch and connection with the people in her district, and these office hours should be encouraged and practiced by all members of Congress. Instead they will now be worried, rightly, for their safety which will only make a more civil discourse and openness within government even less likely. One can only hope the intense rhetoric on both sides and the use of us against them militant partisan language can abate after this tragedy. Its important to note that Markos also listed Rep. Giffords as ‘targetted’ and as a DINO ‘not worth a damn’; this is just to say that moderation, perhaps not in ideology but at least in tone, would do a lot to cool off passions on all sides.  

      • banning tours of government buildings is the answer. There are reasonable ways to keep people safe in government buildings, and security can be strong there in case all those (many) security measures are circumvented.

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        p>I do think it’s entirely reasonable to talk about ensuring Congressmen and women are given police details when they go out. Even having one security official with them, trained in how to act should something arise, as well as how to detect things before they can, would do a lot to prevent another tragedy like this one.  

  6. The two times I was given a police escort arose during heated family law cases, where my efforts led to transfer of custody to a father, and the mother or her relatives became so emotional, or made statements in front of court officers such that I was escorted to my vehicle and/or followed by a state trooper when I drove a child to an airport for my protection.  It is not pleasant.

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    p>During the heated debates and rallies of the 60s, rhetoric also got out of hand, and those in power over reacted at times, in my opinion, leading to clubbings and gassings, a couple of times I was part of the group clubbed or gassed, including once in Washington, DC.

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    p>These experiences are part of why I believe that rhetoric that leads to desensitization towards violent behavior, or dehumanizing entire groups provides both cover and a kind of over stimulation for the emotionally unbalanced.  Whether some kill or indulge in violence for the attention, or come to believe themselves justified, over heated hate talk makes us less safe, less civilized, and is expensive in every way.

  7. There is a disturbingly growing pattern of killing judges that have been occurring for the past two decades and is not just because of ideological issues but also criminals actively conspiring to silence judges that have been defending justice. The FBI and DHS need to do a whole lot more to protect one of our most crucial branches.  

      • Tragically it seems to have been a wrong place wrong time as the Judge was an old friend of Rep. Gifford’s who was planning on surprising her at the event. All too tragic as most of this event has turned out to be. The heroism of the bystanders, in particular the intern that (fingers crossed) saved the Congresswoman’s life, is the silver lining in this story. No matter how many nutjobs are out there, and no matter how they might be encouraged intentionally and unintentionally by our modern media culture, there will always be ordinary people who rise to the occasion to perform extraordinary acts of heroism during moments of crisis. That was the silver lining on 9/11, the silver lining during both of these wars, the silver lining during Katrina and the Tsunami, and certainly the one here.  

      • Tragically it seems to have been a wrong place wrong time as the Judge was an old friend of Rep. Gifford’s who was planning on surprising her at the event. All too tragic as most of this event has turned out to be. The heroism of the bystanders, in particular the intern that (fingers crossed) saved the Congresswoman’s life, is the silver lining in this story. No matter how many nutjobs are out there, and no matter how they might be encouraged intentionally and unintentionally by our modern media culture, there will always be ordinary people who rise to the occasion to perform extraordinary acts of heroism during moments of crisis. That was the silver lining on 9/11, the silver lining during both of these wars, the silver lining during Katrina and the Tsunami, and certainly the one here.  

  8. But I can’t help but see the way this tragedy is played.  When Congressman Ryan was murdered by cult members the press ran his story with the other victims of the violence.  Here, the story plays out to the congresswoman that sustained horrific injury.  Little is told of the others that were killed or maimed.  It’s as if the others don’t count for much.  Maybe at a time when our service members deaths in endless war only make the local news, we hold the life of commoners as cheap.  

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    p>Or maybe there is purpose to focus on one person so that talking heads find it easier to blame those in their sights.  If one never lets a crisis go to waste, does that not include tragedy?  When I see the alleged perpetrator called a terrorist and reports he is not in cooperation with authority, is it too far out of line to expect his torture for confession or to implicate others?  Or expect new laws to damper speech of citizens?  Or require license for internet access?  

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    p>We shall see.

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    p>“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”  –H. L. Mencken

    <

    p>  

    • All reports seem to indicate that the Congresswoman was the target of this shooting with the others being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Therefore, she is the focus of the stories especially in the context of how heated politics has gotten of late.

    • I think you are comparing apples to oranges. Rep. Ryan knew the risks he was taking when he went on a fact finding investigation to foreign soil to investigate his former constituents and see what they were up to. This is not to say he was seeking his fate, just to say that there is a massive difference in how guarded one would be visiting a cult and visiting a Safeway. A Safeway in suburban America is the last place you would expect an average person, let alone a member of Congress, to be shot and killed at point blank range in cold blood. That’s what is bringing this tragedy home to so many people. Ryans fellow members of Congress were ambivalent about making the trip and he actively assisted in trying to rescue cult members and bringing them home, which was a far more active and dangerous thing to do. He was just as brave and courageous and his death just as tragic, but his was far more likely than Giffords attack due to the drastic differences in circumstances. As far as I know, no member of Congress has been shot dead in cold blood on US soil, at least not in quite sometime (excluding duels between fellow members of course). So that is why this is a wake up call. The other big difference is that Jones and his men were universally derided by mainstream society, whereas the media have been accomplices in allowing the viewpoints of extremists to have larger platforms and without properly filtering their contents.

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      p>Lastly I think just as much attention has been focused on the girl, the Judge, the other victims, and the bystanders and survivors who aided in saving the lives they could. That coverage has been quite well balanced, though again seeing that Giffords was the main target what more exposure she does get seems merited considering that was the perpetrators intent.

  9. For anyone who continues to insist (as Paul Krugman does) that this act was a result of Palin, tea party or the right in general:

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    p>http://www.humanevents.com/art…

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    p>I continue to assert that this was not an act attributable to any political philosophy or movement that anyone here could identify (I have to make sure to say that for David) but for those of you who disagree, read this article.

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    p>There is junk flying all around from both sides.  True.  This person was a loon not connected to reality.  Also true.  The two things do not appear to be related.

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