NYT Editorial ... Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona

[Trajan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10mon1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona

She read the First Amendment on the House floor — including the guarantee of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” — and then flew home to Arizona to put those words into practice. But when Gabrielle Giffords tried to meet with her constituents in a Tucson parking lot on Saturday, she came face to face with an environment wholly at odds with that constitutional ideal, and she nearly paid for it with her life.

Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting Ms. Giffords, killing a federal judge and five other people, and wounding 13 others, appears to be mentally ill. His paranoid Internet ravings about government mind control place him well beyond usual ideological categories.

But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semi-automatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare.

Last spring, Capitol security officials said threats against members of Congress had tripled over the previous year, almost all of them from opponents of health care reform. An effigy of Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., Democrat of Maryland, was hung on a gallows outside his district office. Ms. Giffords’s own district office door was smashed on the night of the health care vote, possibly by a bullet.

-snip-

[rfranklin]

1. The Koch brothers are the source of this vile river of hate...

They are so greedy and self serving that they would destroy our government to get more, more and more. They are criminals, and should be treated accordingly.

[TygrBright]

2. Optimist.

>>Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments.<<

Won't happen.

Not in Arizona.

There are a lot of great people, warm and wonderful and smart and hard-working and funny and tolerant and caring, living in Arizona. Many of them live in Tucson.

But they are way, way, WAY outnumbered by sick, hateful, narrow-minded, selfish dickheads. Particularly in the government.

sadly,
Bright

[ProudProgressiveNow]

3. K&R