The American Spectator

Washington Post

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other innocents are shot by a mentally deranged barbarian who believes in mind control and this is what appears in the Post news story-not commentary, news story:

Her 2010 Republican opponent, 29-year-old former Marine Sgt. Jesse Kelly, held campaign events under the slogan “Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” and invited his supporters to “shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

(January 9, 2011)

New York Times

Precious thoughts from Aurelie Sheehan, “director of the creative writing program at the University of Arizona,” apparently perpetrated with the encouragement of the editors of the imbecilic Times:

I spent early Saturday morning writing a short story set in Tucson. I’ve lived here for a decade, but it’s only recently that I’ve felt I can claim the place as a subject. The impetus for writing about it hasn’t been love so much as anxiety, a sense that it’s in danger somehow-on many fronts.

That feeling of danger hit hard when I slouched out of my office to get another cup of coffee and my husband, mid-chat, looked up from his computer to tell me Representative Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, as had several other people. At a Safeway, of all places.

We stared at the local news Web site, trying to understand this new reality. A headline for an earlier article describing a lesser calamity still dominated the page: “BB Gun Killed 80 Bats Found Under East-Side Bridge, G & F Concludes,” with a picture of a frail bat clinging to an embankment. To the right of this, the stark words of a breaking news bulletin: Gabrielle Giffords, 40, shot point-blank in the head.

Our 11-year-old daughter came out of her bedroom. She was wrapped in her fuzzy blanket, ready to listen to Taylor Swift or play Fruit Ninja on her iPod. Instead she listened to her mother tell of the shooting of our congresswoman and, as the news came in, the killing of her aide, a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl (who, like our daughter, had served on her student council) and three elderly citizens. She watched her mother cry….

It’s been a tough couple of years here since the presidential election, and our friendships with some Republicans have grown strained. In the wake of this attack, I don’t know if we will be able to talk to each other more now, if we will reach out across the political divide, or if the sides will become further entrenched, if this is the harbinger of more divisiveness.

(January 10, 2011)

Huffington Post

The son of Robert Kennedy offers observations of a socio/historical nature before returning to the bottle:

Jack’s death forced a national bout of self-examination. In 1964, Americans repudiated the forces of right-wing hatred and violence with an historic landslide in the presidential election between LBJ and Goldwater. For a while, the advocates of right-wing extremism receded from the public forum. Now they have returned with a vengeance-to the broadcast media and to prominent positions in the political landscape.