Politico’s ‘Morning Energy’ update opened this morning with six paragraphs on Cong. Gabrielle Giffords’s energy and environment policy stances. Fine. Except for its rather clumsy fashion, in the end unable to resist a shame that so many other among their media brethren have also succumbed to.

First was their take that she “vot[ed] in favor of Waxman-Markey (a risky political decision in her competitive district).” Mmm. Then there was some discussion of other stances including threatening the oil industry’s access to tax breaks — no risk to herself in doing this was cited, at least — and a couple that were pretty off the wall. The theme common among them all was that she aggressively promoted increased government spending on and other favors for the otherwise non-viable renewable energy industry.

But then came “POLITICO’s Darren Samuelsohn has a look at the conservative backlash that occurred last June after Giffords asked Gen. David Petraeus to explain whether he had any plans to use solar panels and hydropower to increase fuel efficiency in an otherwise dangerous battle zone” — linking to a full, uh, ‘news’ item, “Gabrielle Giffords’s ‘green’ question riled right.”

Yeah, yeah, I know, they’re just sayin’ she was very outspoken abut the green agenda and then she was shot, is all.