It’s always a crackpot who pulls the trigger. Mulling over the motivations of Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman who killed six and injured fourteen, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Saturday, has become the latest national political parlor game. Politicians and pundits are already spinning the story, with many urging colleagues to dial back the rhetoric. [...]
Gabrielle Giffords was the target of an assassination attempt today in Tucson, Arizona. The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, 22 approached from behind and shot her in the back of the head before gunning down many others before getting wrestled to the ground. This act of terrorism is the culmination of a long campaign of fear mongering and hate by right wing leaders, and is not an isolated incident.
Can anyone truly claim to be taken completely by surprise by these tragic events? With the less-than-easy access to deadly firearms, a rise in religious fundamentalism in both the military and civilian society, and Right-Wing politicians, and pundits, claiming that the federal government is filled with everything from illegitimate foreign usurpers to unconstitutional oppressors of the American people…A 9mm Glauk in the hands of a mentally unstable individual (of which there are potentially many in any society) was simply a tragedy waiting to happen.
Montana’s new Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Milburn, wants to repeal the state’s medical marijuana law. Milburn, who claimed the law is allowing cannabis to become too available, is sponsoring a bill what would repeal it, despite the fact that an overwhelming 62 percent of Montanans voted for the law in 2004.
“Another proud day in Mississippi,” a friend who teaches at Ole Miss scoffed last month, following Haley Barbour’s revisionist history lesson about his home town’s answer to the KKK. The cherubic good ol’ boy governor, who is often named among a slew of 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls, had to back peddle his well scrubbed version [...]
