Academic

BYRON YORK: Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootin?

By Glenn Reynolds

BYRON YORK: Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin: “You can almost hear the disappointment from the left that he was a pothead rather than a Tea Partyer.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Politico: Dems Want To Blame Tea Partyers:

One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did. “They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,? said the Democrat. ?Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.?

Because unfounded accusations of complicity in murder are what America needs right now. Well, Mark Penn said Obama needs another Oklahoma City. And they want to give it to him. But aren’t they being a bit transparent, here?

Or is it a ruse?

But whose interests are served by chewing up the wounded flesh in the meat grinder of political rhetoric and whose interests are served by pretending to be above all that? Liberals have an interest in creating a big distraction that might undercut the prevailing conservative momentum. To conservatives, I would say: Don’t help them.

Hmm.

New York Times:

Another former high school classmate said that Mr. Loughner may have met Representative Giffords, who was shot in the head outside the Safeway supermarket, several years ago.

?As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,? the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. ?I haven?t seen him since ?07 though. He became very reclusive.?

?He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ?07, asked her a question & he told me she was ?stupid & unintelligent,? ? she wrote.

So: “Quite liberal,” and didn’t like Giffords in 2007, before anyone had heard of Sarah Palin or the Tea Party. But it’s their fault.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on January 09, 2011 (boomark / email).