If Sarah Palin caused the Arizona shootings, then Heavy Metal causes teen suicides.

In the aftermath of crazed killer Jared Loughner's murder of six people and wounding of many others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, there has been a rush to exploit the tragedy for political purposes.

Without any actual evidence that Loughner was influenced by or even listened to any of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck's "right-wing rhetoric," Democrats leaped upon the opportunity to lay blame on their political and ideological opponents for the act of a mentally disturbed individual.

But the facts that we do know are that Palin, Beck, and Rush Limbaugh never had any direct contact with Loughner. They never told him, or anyone, to go out and commit acts of violence.

This brings to mind the people who try to lay blame for teen suicides on Heavy Metal bands that the perpetrators of their own deaths listen to. In those cases, some conservatives exploited an opportunity to attack something they disliked with absurd allegations. As one empirical study observed to discredit such contentions, " it seems more plausible that those angrier after listening to preferred music were individuals with some combination of personal characteristics and/or life situations that have resulted in a general proneness to feeling angry, and that these characteristics and situations are tied to reduced reasons for living."

Now the tables have turned and the left is engaging in the same absurd, expolitative hysteria. What Jared Loughner did was because of what was going on in the warped mind of Jared Loughner and not because of American political rhetoric.

In a case brought against Judas Priest following the suicide of two young men who listened to their music, the Heavy Metal band's lawyer said, ''the risk that ideas may cause undesirable behavior'' in a small and unstable segment of the population ''is a small price to pay for a free society.''

There is no proof that in the Loughner case it was the ideas espoused by Republicans that inspired his actions, just as there is no proof that music causes suicides. Even if there were, the principles of the First Amendment and that of personal responsibility should matter even more.

One of Jared Loughner's shooting victims arrested for death threat against Tea Party spokesman

From MSNBC:

TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson mass shooting victim was taken into custody Saturday after yelling "you're dead" at a Tea Party spokesman during the taping of an ABC-TV town hall event hosted by Christianne Amanpour. 

The Pima County Sheriff's Office said J. Eric Fuller, 63, was involuntarily committed to an undisclosed medical facility, NBC News reported. The Associated Press said he was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation. ...  

KGUN reported that Fuller took exception to comments by Republican state Rep. Terri Proud and Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries.

Fuller was in the front row and apparently became upset when Humphries suggested that any conversations about gun control should be delayed until all the dead were buried, KGUN reported. 

Fuller took a picture of Humphries and shouted, “You’re dead.”

Why the Left lost it - from The Wall Street Journal

Dan Henninger wrote an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal explaining the left's particular reaction to the Arizona mass murder by Jared Loughner. It's a very insightful perspective.

Hillbuzz summarizes it as follows:

Henniger says two things:

 (1) Leftist writers like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Jonathan Alter, and the rest who have been shamelessly using this tragedy to score political points for Democrats do so because they don’t know how to write any other way: they are just programmed to turn anything that happens into something that they think will help Democrats and hurt Republicans. They are purely agenda driven in all their content.

(2) The Leftist writers, and the Left in general, genuinely believe the lies they tell. And they are terrified of the Left being banished to the political wilderness for another three decades or so, the way it was after Carter’s disastrous presidency. They must, thus, stop at nothing to destroy the things they know will bring the Left down…and that is personified in Governor Palin and the Tea Party movement.

The Jared Loughner of nations is among us

A crazy, belligerent exhibits warning signs for years.

Violent rhetoric and threats are a routine characteristic. There are clear signs of mental instability marked by incoherence with desultory and delusional outbursts. There have even been actual incidents of violence perpetrated from this source.

When a vicious, pernicious maelstrom of death inevitably occurs, there is outrage directed towards those who seemingly should have recognized the dangers and yet did nothing.

No, this isn’t just a description of Arizona mass murderer Jared Loughner. It’s also a description of something far more dangerous: the leadership of The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Amazingly, some of the people who are so upset at the supposed instigation of Loughner by right wing vitriol are among those who are acting as apologists for, if not proxies of the murderous Iranian regime.

The leadership of Iran are Holocaust-deniers who have repeatedly threatened violence. They are responsible for international terrorism. They deny their people the right to free speech and political dissent. They actively persecute religious minorities, like the Bahia's whose only crime is to believe that a prophet lived after Mohammad. Iran's religious police imprison women for immodesty and then rape them in jail.

If the Iranian leadership were a single person living in the US, it would have been given a death sentence a long time ago.

Iran's theocracy is far more dangerous than a crazed lone gunman with a pistol. It's a crazed ideological movement that is about to acquire a nuclear weapon.

The opportunity to prevent that still exists, but will pass soon.

President Obama attended a memorial service Wednesday for the victims of a single madman. People look at this tragedy and say, "If only we would have acted when we had the chance."

Unless Obama finds the courage and determination to effectively confront Iran, there may be thousands upon thousands of memorial services for Americans and others as a result of his inaction.

Explicit calls for political violence come from the radical left in Canada

Any mass murder in North America has ramifications beyond the transparent tragedy that accompanies the death of innocents in a society that is comparatively among the safest in the world.

In trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, there are some who will try to find a culprit beyond the obvious, sometimes without any rational basis. The atrocity perpetrated by demented killer Jared Loughner over the weekend in which six innocent people were murdered and Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded has, what seems to be, an obvious explanation. The perpetrator, whose public pronouncements suggest an incoherent, unbalanced madman, was mentally ill and acted out out of psychosis.

But one of the tragedies in this case, that compounds the original one, is that there are no shortage of people who are happy to exploit these deaths for political and ideological motives.

Because the central victim in is a Democratic legislator whose district was identified by Sarah Palin as a "target" for  Republicans to take, Democrats and others on the left, both in the US and in Canada, have ebulliently grasped the opportunity to lay blame on the former Republican Vice Presidential candidate,the Republican party and "right wingers" in general for allegedly creating a climate filled with violent rhetoric that supposedly created these events.

Nothing could be more absurd.

From The Democratic Leadership Council website

Despite preposterous suggestions from people like Paul Krugman in The New York Times, there is no evidence whatsoever establishing that anything Sarah Palin, or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh said that played any role in Loughner's deranged violence. Sarah Palin may be a bit of a buffoon more famous for celebrity itself than for political adroitness, but her use of political rhetoric never called for violence of any kind and it falls within the scope of discourse that typifies much of American politics.

Responsible conservatives are as opposed to violence as much as responsible liberals. We live in a democratic society where change can be achieved through persuasion and elections.


Sane people are appalled by and reject the idea of initiating transition by terror.

But what may be shocking to some is that in Canada, explicit calls for violence to achieve political ends are coming from none other than the radical left.

Or perhaps not so shocking. The most recent acts of publicized political violence in Canada came from The Black Bloc during Toronto's G20 conference. It was radical leftists who rioted and caused millions of dollars in damage to make a political statement.

But it doesn't end there. Prominent Canadian leftist Judy Rebick founded a Marxist-leaning website called rabble.ca. It's now published by the spouse of the NDP's Deputy Leader, Libby Davies and is mainly funded by Canadian unions like CUPW and CUPE. That site's discussion forum recently hosted a thread entitled, "When is the time for violent revolution?" in which its contributors made comments like:

"I was wondering when it would be ok to overthrow a government, violently if need be."

"Perhaps the reason the ballot box isn't working is because the ballot box isn't the way to the solution."

"I think 9/11 was just a test run. The people failed with flying colours. And I think it's an example of what's in store for the future if fascists back themselves into another corner."

"How many more decades should we wait? It appears that Canadians arent catching on, so should we suffer in silence for 30 more years? maybe a generation or three? Dont the better people of our society have a responsibility to the stupid?"

and worse.

Beyond that,  CUPE, CUPW, Independent Jewish Voices (an anti-Israel group) and the NDP's Socialist Caucus were all endorsers of a recent rally where one of the speakers called for violent revolution in Canada.

At a Toronto rally in support of convicted American cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamar, one of the speakers was an organizer from the Communist newsletter BASICS. Following a rambling speech about conspiracies and praising violent revolutionaries, he said "we haven't had any threat of insurrection or any, you know, revolutionary uprisings in Canada quite for, for quite some time, right? But that that doesn't mean that operation is not still in play."

This suggests that the Canadian radical left is not only advocating violence, but planning it.

This type of organized insurrection against democracy is far more dangerous than a lone madman. Violence for political means is deplorable, and no ideology or political movement has a monopoly on it. But its strongest proponents these days are not the "right-wingers" and "neo-Cons" but their opponents.

Arizona Rampage Reaction Round-up

The (alleged) crazed murderer, Jared Loughner, who killed six people over the weekend and shot U.S. House Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) in the head, leaving her in critical condition has shocked America and much of the world. 

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has called for a thorough review of security measures.  

According to a readout of the conference call, Boehner said he had asked Larson and House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) to arrange the "in-depth security overview."  

In addition, the sergeant at arms and Capitol Police will conduct a bipartisan security briefing for district directors. "This is a time for the House to lock arms, both in condemnation of this heinous act, and in prayer for those killed and wounded in this attack," Boehner said. "At a time when an individual has shown us humanity at its worst, we must rise to the occasion for our nation and show Congress at its best."

Also on Wednesday, Congress will meet to consider a resolution honoring Giffords and the other victims of the shooting. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced that Congress will only meet pro forma on Tuesday, with no votes scheduled.

Paul Krugman, in a New York Times blog, blamed the shooting on a climate created by the rhetoric of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Ruch Limbaugh. 

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.  

Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.  

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard suggested that comments like Kriugman's amount to "McCarthyism."

He said there is no proof that Jared Loughner, the suspect, was a fan of Palin nor went to her website, which had labeled Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and other Democrats a political target last year; it was illustrated with a graphic of a crosshairs that has triggered a political debate.  

Federal authorities on Sunday filed murder charges against Loughner.  

Kristol said those who are blaming Palin, such as Paul Krugman of The New York Times, are practicing "McCarthyism."  

"The attempt to exploit this tragedy is distasteful," Kristol said.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey cautioned against jumping to any political links in the shooting and said "the answer will come from psychology, not from sociology or political science."

"The fact of the matter is, we still have extremely important critical issues of public policy that must be sorted out," Armey said on ABC's "This Week." "Now, hopefully this will be done in a more civil way. But this incident is no basis by which anybody who sees their duty to America to stand down from that duty, but to redouble it, perhaps with a greater degree of caution, and hopefully with a greater degree of civility. "We've always wanted that," he said. "But still, nevertheless, we must do our duty and defend our liberties in this great country."