The Jigsaw Puzzle of Jared Loughner

A team of reporters at the NYTimes dug up exhaustive background material on Jared Lee Loughner and published the long result this a.m.

He began to come unhinged around four years ago, about the time he dropped out of high school, and he cobbled together scraps of strong opinion that he picked up from currents and eddies in the swirl of national conversation, melding them with his own theories and strange beliefs. Some of it seemed all too similar to what others had been saying who never picked up a gun and killed people:

...He became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government and that the country’s central banking system was enslaving its citizens. His anger would well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government....

“He was all about less government and less America ... He thought it was full of conspiracies and that the government censored the Internet and banned certain books from being read by us.” ...

It was not just his appearance — the pale shaved head and eyebrows — that unnerved [employees at a local branch bank]. It was also the aggressive, often sexist things that he said, including asserting that women should not be allowed to hold positions of power or authority....

Not exactly the apolitical madman that some want to make him, and far, far from the "liberal of the liberals" of Congresswoman Foxx's rhetoric, and bent imagination.

Foxx-Speak

Today's Watauga Democrat just arrived, and we noticed the headline, "Mood subdued in wake of Tucson shootings." It never occurred to us that the "mood" being described was Virginia Foxx's ... until we began reading and learned that "U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx is staying guarded in her response...."

That brought us up short.

So what mood, exactly, was she in when she gave the Winston-Salem Journal that extensive quote published in Monday's paper?

Nary a word about the many victims in that long screed. Not one. Instead, we got -- first -- defensiveness. It has nothing to do with any member of Congress, and nothing they've ever said, nor especially anything to do with Sarah Palin and anything she's ever said. Nut-jobs happen. If she'd stopped there, she could (almost) get away with "Virginia Foxx's response is guarded."

But then she launched into her own brand of inflamatory up-the-ante-ism.

"This guy appears to be a communist," she said. Really? Because Karl Marx was on his reading list? Ayn Rand is on there too. She might just as easily have suggested that "this guy is a doctrinaire libertarian." But she was only warming up for her real target.

She grabbed the single worst noun she could personally think of ... liberal. He's a liberal. And not just any liberal, but "the liberal of the liberals" [sic]. What evidence she would have to base that assessment on is not only invisible but also mythic.

Her intention, however, is crystal clear.

The Party Line

From this a.m.'s Winston-Salem Journal:
Rep. Virginia Foxx, U.S. Congress, N.C. 5th District (Republican):

"I don't think members of Congress incite that kind of rhetoric -- I don't think the things we say incite that kind of behavior. And I don't know that the things other people say incite it. I just think we have deranged individuals in this country and occasionally they do bad things.

"This guy appears to be a communist. His beliefs are the liberal of the liberals. There is no evidence whatsoever that this man was influenced by Sarah Palin or anybody in the Republican Party. This man is not a conservative; he's a fan of communism -- that's the opposite of conservatism.

"The members of Congress, we put ourselves out there, and we're willing to take whatever risk there is, but it is so sad that this involved innocent people. We never want anyone else to be harmed because of our positions."

The Rhetoric of Violence

A list by no means complete and in no particular order:

1. From the campaign calendar of Jesse Kelly, the Tea Party Republican who ran against Gabrielle Giffords last fall: "Sat, 6/12/10, 10:00 AM - Get on Target for Victory in November - Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office - Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly"

2. Republican senatorial candidate Sharon Angle, who said she wanted to "cure" Nevada of Sen. Harry Reid and said she knew a Second Amendment "remedy": "I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...."

3. Florida GOP congressional candidate Allen West, talking to a crowd of Tea Partiers about his opponent last fall, incumbent Dem Ron Klein: "Let me tell you what you've got to do. You've got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That's the only way that you're going to win. That's the only way you're going to get these people's attention."

4. Someone dropped a gun at a Gabrielle Giffords event in August 2009. Also that August, another man brought a gun to a town hall meeting by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) in Memphis. On August 18, 2009, at least a dozen men were carrying weapons outside the Phoenix convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech. The week before that in 2009, during a presidential health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading "It is time to water the tree of liberty" stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

5. On the May 17, 2005, broadcast of The Glenn Beck Program, Mr. Beck said: "Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?"

6. Bill O'Reilly mentioned Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller on his radio show 29 times between 2005 and the doctor's assassination in his church on Sunday, May 31, 2009, nicknaming the doctor "Tiller the Killer."

7. In August 2010, a day after talk radio host Laura Schlessinger quit her show, following criticism for using the N-word repeatedly in a broadcast, Sarah Palin told her: "Don't retreat ... reload!" Subsequently, Palin used that line repeatedly in public rallies.

8. On March 4, 2010, James L. Schmidlin placed a call from Tennessee to the office of Democratic Congressman John Boccieri, in which he threatened to set fire to Boccieri's home. (Schmidlin has actually been charged with a crime.)

9. On March 20, 2010, at the Tea Party Republican rally against health-care reform on Capitol Hill, several protestors carried signs reading "If [Sen. Scott] Brown Can't Stop It, A Browning Can." Another: "Vote No Or Else!" Another: "Kill the Bill or Face the November Slaughter!"

10. In September 2010, Justin Carl Moose, 26, of Concord, NC, was arrested by the FBI after posting tips on bomb-making and making threats against Planned Parenthood on his Facebook page. According to the FBI, he had planned the bombing of an abortion clinic in North Carolina.

11. "I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that [health reform] bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country." --Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, November 2, 2009, on the floor of the U.S. House. "All the promises [President Obama] has kept have endangered our lives." --Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, on the Bill Lumaye Show, NewsRadio 680 WPTF, Jan. 5, 2010. "We're talking about four years. If we don't take this country back from the leftists who are running it now, we will lose our country." ---Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, to the Iredell County Republican Party's Reagan Day Dinner, Feb. 6, 2010

Not that any of this would have anything whatsoever to do with influencing the mind of a Jared Lee Loughner. No never.

Jared Loughner's Video Testament

The gunman in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. On YouTube.

It's a strange rant, but give it time. He gets around to referring to himself as a "terrorist." Also as a recent military recruit.

Apparently -- and we're not making this up -- it all comes down to the government's controlling grammar.

Giffords Did Not Vote for Pelosi for Speaker

On Roll Call # 2 on the first day of the 112th Congress, Gabrielle Giffords voted for John Lewis (Ga.-5) to be Speaker of the House.

It's being confirmed right now that a federal judge and a child of nine are both dead. Five others are in critical condition, including the congresswoman. At least another five were wounded.

Shooter in his early 20s. He's alive.

For the Record

This is the map of the 20 targeted members of Congress on the Palin website cited below. Gabrielle Giffords was one of the three that are "bulls-eyed" in Arizona.

Notice the heading to the page: "We've dianosed the problem... Help us prescribe the solution."

Jeebus.

Gabrielle Giffords Was in Palin's "Bulls-eye"

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (Ariz.-5) was shot point-blank in the head this morning in Tucson where she was holding a "Congress On Your Corner" event at a grocery store.

The gunman ran up and shot Giffords in the head and then shot some six of the Congresswoman's aides and unknown others, including apparently at least one child. (These numbers are approximate. We tried getting on the Tucson Citizen, but its servers appear overloaded.)

Back in September 2010, Sarah Palin launched a website identifying 20 House members who voted for the health overhaul bill. Giffords was one of those. The map of the United States on the Palin site contained 20 rifle-scope bulls-eyes (still contains, actually, but you better go look quick, before the site disappears entirely -- scroll down on the homepage).

Palin posted an apology on Facebook that does not mention the website linked above.