UPDATE: Arizona congresswoman shot in head
The Associated Press
TUCSON, Ariz. — Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head Saturday when an assailant opened fire outside a grocery store during a meeting with constituents, killing at least five people and wounding several others in a rampage that rattled the nation.
House Speaker John Boehner re-enacts the swearing in of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., last Wednesday on Capitol Hill in Washington. Giffords was shot in the head today in Arizona.
AP
Giffords was among at least 10 people wounded, and the hospital said her outlook was "optimistic" and that she was responding to commands from doctors despite having a bullet go through her head. The hospital said a 9-year-old child was among the dead, and a U.S. Marshal said a federal judge was also fatally shot in the attack.
Giffords' spokesman C.J. Karamargin said an unspecified number of her staff members were injured in the shooting. Congressional officials said an aide to the Democrat was killed, and President Barack Obama said five people died in all.
The reaction to the shooting was swift and rippled across the globe. Obama held a nationally televised news conference, calling the shooting "an unspeakable tragedy" and that such "a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society."
The shooting cast a pall over the Capitol as politicians of all stripes denounced the shooting as a horrific act of violence.
In Maine, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree described Giffords as one of her good friends in the House.
"When she was brutally shot, Gabby was out doing what she loved to do — meeting with her constituents in a local setting, allowing people to speak to her directly about the issues that concerned them," said Pingree, a fellow Democrat. "This act of shooting Gabby and many others is an act of unthinkable, uncivilized brutality and we all fear acts like this could have a chilling effect on our democratic system."
Pingree said she and Giffords have been colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, sitting just a few seats away from each other.
"She is a fighter there for the people she represents and now she is fighting for her life," Pingree said in a preparerd statement. "She has been one of the hardest working members of the House since she was first elected four years ago. She is dedicated to her constituents, and well liked by all her colleagues. We are all praying for Gabby, her family and the families of all the other victims."
Maine Rep. Mike Michaud said he and Giffords are both members of the House Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of fiscally conservative Democrats. In September 2008, Michaud, as chairman of the Veterans Health Subcommittee, travelled to Tucson to co-host a discussion with Giffords on mental health care for veterans.
“This is a national tragedy and an extremely sad day for our country," Michaud said in a prepared statement. "Congresswoman Giffords is a true advocate for the people of Arizona and is an exceptional member of Congress. My prayers are with Congresswoman Giffords, her family, her staff and all the victims of this senseless act of violence."
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also released a statement, saying: "I am shocked and saddened by the horrific shootings in Arizona today. My prayers are with Congresswoman Giffords, her family and staff, and all of those who were killed and injured in this senseless attack."
.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, issued the following statement: "I was horrified and deeply saddened to learn of the unspeakable tragedy in Tucson. My thoughts and prayers are with Representative Giffords, her staff, and with all of the families whose loved ones were killed or injured as a result of this deplorable rampage. Our nation is the greatest in the world partly because our constituents can have unfiltered interactions with those individuals who represent them in the U.S. Congress.”
Capitol police asked members of Congress to step up security in the wake of the shooting, and some politicians expressed hope that the killing spree serves as a wakeup call at a time when the political climate has become so emotionally charged.
"I am horrified by the senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and members of her staff," newly elected House Speaker John Boehner said. "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society. Our prayers are with Congresswoman Giffords, her staff, all who were injured, and their families. This is a sad day for our country."
Police say the shooter was in custody, and was identified by people familiar with the investigation as Jared Loughner, 22. Pima County Sheriff's officials said he used a pistol to carry out the shooting spree. U.S. officials who provided his name to the AP spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release it publicly.
His exact motivation was not immediately clear. Federal law enforcement officials were poring over captured versions of a MySpace page that belonged to Jared Loughner and over Youtube video published to the Internet weeks ago under an account "Classitup10" and linked to him.
The MySpace page, which was removed within minutes of the gunman being identified by U.S. officials, included a mysterious "Goodbye friends" message published hours before the shooting and exhorted his friends to "Please don't be mad at me."
In one of several Youtube videos, which featured text against a dark background, Loughner described inventing a new U.S. currency and complained about the illiteracy rate among people living in Giffords' congressional district in Arizona. Two spellings of his last name were given in the aftermath of the shooting — Loughner and Laughner.
I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People," Loughner wrote. "Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen (sic)."
U.S. Marshal for Arizona David Gonzales confirmed to the Associated Press that U.S. District Judge John Roll was one of the dead.
Giffords, 40, was first elected to Congress amid a wave of Democratic victories in the 2006 election, and she won a narrow victory against a tea party favorite in the 2010 election. She has been mentioned as a possible Senate candidate in 2012 and gubernatorial prospect in 2014.
Giffords is married to astronaut Mark E. Kelly, who has piloted space shuttles Endeavour and Discovery. The two met in China in 2003 while they were serving on a committee there, and were married in January 2007.
Sen. Bill Nelson, chairman of the Senate Commerce Space and Science Subcommittee, said her husband is training to be the next commander of the space shuttle mission slated for April. His brother is currently serving aboard the International Space Station, Nelson said.
Giffords, known as "Gabby" in Arizona, tweeted shortly before the shooting, describing her "Congress on Your Corner" event: "My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now. Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later."
"It's not surprising that today Gabby was doing what she always does, listening to the hopes and concerns of her neighbors," Obama said. "That is the essence of what our democracy is about."
Giffords has drawn the ire of the right in the last year, especially from politicians like Sarah Palin over her support of the health care bill.
Her Tucson office was vandalized a few hours after the House voted to approve the health care law in March, with someone either kicking or shooting out a glass door and window. In an interview after the vandalism, Giffords referred to the animosity against her by conservatives. Palin listed Giffords' seat as one of the top "targets" in the midterm elections because of the lawmakers' support for the health care law.
"For example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action," Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC.
In the hours after the shooting, Palin issued a statement in which she expressed her "sincere condolences" to the family of Giffords and the other victims.
Law enforcement officials and reporters from around the country descended on Tucson, the second biggest city in the state and home to the University of Arizona. The scene has been converted into a command post with about a dozen or so emergency vehicles and agents in FBI jackets milling about the location.
The shooting occurred at a shopping center called La Toscana Village that is home to a Beyond Bread bakery, a Jenny Craig, a cleaners, a nail salon and the Safeway grocery store near the scene of the crime.
Outside Giffords' office on Capitol Hill, a handful of congressional staffers could be seen walking into her office without comment, some with roller bags and one who was in tears. About a half dozen yellow flowers placed by one mourner sat outside the door.
In Loughner's middle-class neighborhood — about a five-minute drive from the scene — sheriff's deputies had much of the street blocked off as curious neighbors asked what was going on. The neighborhood sits just off a bustling Tucson street and is lined with desert landscaping and palm trees.
Neighbors said Loughner kept to himself but that they often saw him walking his dog, almost always wearing a hooded sweat shirt listening to his iPod. Neighbors said Loughner lived with his parents.
"We're getting out of here. We are freaked out," 33-year-old David Cleveland, who lives a few doors down from Loughner's house, told The Associated Press.
Cleveland said he was taking his wife and children, ages 5 and 7, to her parent's home when they heard about the shooting.
"When we heard about it we just got sick to our stomachs," Cleveland said. "We just wanted to hold our kids tight."
Caroline LaPer, who lives only a few blocks from the crime scene and was walking her golden retriever past the store Saturday afternoon, was looking out her window earlier in the day when she saw helicopters circling above. Then her husband called from a home show in downtown Tucson to say "There's been a shooting at Safeway. Don't go anywhere."
"It's just devastating. It's numbing. It's disheartening," said Caroline LaPer, who didn't witness the shooting. "What is going on this world?"
The shooting comes amid a highly charged political environment that has seen several dangerous threats against lawmakers but nothing that reached the point of actual violence.
A San Francisco man upset with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's support of health care reform pleaded guilty to threatening the Democratic congresswoman and her family, calling her directly on March 25 and threatening to destroy her Northern California home if she voted for health care reform.
In July, a California man known for his anger over left-leaning politics engaged in a shootout with highway patrol officers after planning an attack on the ACLU and another nonprofit group. The man said he wanted to "start a revolution" by killing people at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation.
During the his campaign effort to unseat Giffords in November, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly held fundraisers where he urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle. Kelly is a former Marine who served in Iraq and was pictured on his website in military gear holding his automatic weapon and promoting the event.
"I don't see the connection," between the fundraisers featuring weapons and Saturday's shooting, said John Ellinwood, Kelly's spokesman. "I don't know this person, we cannot find any records that he was associated with the campaign in any way. I just don't see the connection.
"Arizona is a state where people are firearms owners — this was just a deranged individual," Ellinwood said.
Giffords is known in her southern Arizona district for her numerous public outreach meetings, which she admitted0 in an October interview with The Associated Press can sometimes be challenging.
"You know, the crazies on all sides, the people who come out, the planet earth people," she said with a following an appearance with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Tucson where Mullen was questioned by a woman who wanted the military to start "building cities instead of destroying them." ''I'm glad this just doesn't happen to me."
I always wonder what drives a person to commit such a violent act. It's so sad and senseless.
Now, I know this isn't the point of your posting this topic, FFG, but I am astounded by the last paragraph, "You know, the crazies on all sides, the people who come out, the planet earth people," she [Giffords] said following an appearance with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Tucson where Mullen was questioned by a woman who wanted the military to start "building cities instead of destroying them." ''I'm glad this just doesn't happen to me."
It sounds like Giffords is saying she's annoyed by the woman who doesn't support war and concludes that she must be a crazy tree-hugger for having the audacity to suggest that we should create rather than destroy. Doesn't Giffords realize we're all "planet earth people?"
I'm not saying her comment was any motivation for the shooting. My point is her words are so out of touch with the realization that we live in an interconnected ecosystem. It seems to me our elected representatives should have a basic grasp on the fact that what affects the least of us, affects us all. We are an inseparable One.
Accordingly, like many people, I feel these shooting victims' pain and wish them well... even if it "doesn't happen to me."
Noa
I found it interesting that this was the only article that mentioned mind control, the new currency, and downsizing the military. I am finding the smaller newspapers are reporting news more acurately--- even though it is still heavily censored, there is greater truth filtering through.
I see this reprehensible act of violence as a reaction from the PTB. This is a lot bigger than just a young man with issues. Who is responsible for programming these issues into this man who did this?
fairyfarmgirl
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09capital.html?hp
Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics
By CARL HULSE and KATE ZERNIKE
Published: January 8, 2011
WASHINGTON — The shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others at a neighborhood meeting in Arizona on Saturday set off what is likely to be a wrenching debate over anger and violence in American politics.
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
A woman dropped off flowers outside the office of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Washington on Saturday.
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While the exact motivations of the suspect in the shootings remained unclear, an Internet site tied to the man, Jared Lee Loughner, contained antigovernment ramblings. And regardless of what led to the episode, it quickly focused attention on the degree to which inflammatory language, threats and implicit instigations to violence have become a steady undercurrent in the nation’s political culture.
Clarence W. Dupnik, the Pima County sheriff, seemed to capture the mood of the day at an evening news conference when he said it was time for the country to “do a little soul-searching.”
“It’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included,” Sheriff Dupnik said. “That’s the sad thing about what’s going on in America: pretty soon we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.”
In the hours immediately after the shooting of Ms. Giffords, a Democrat, and others in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, members of both parties found rare unity in their sorrow. Top Republicans including Speaker John A. Boehner and Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona quickly condemned the violence.
“An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement. “Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society.”
President Obama made a brief appearance at the White House, calling the shooting an “unspeakable act” and promising to “get to the bottom of this.”
Not since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 has an event generated as much attention as to whether extremism, antigovernment sentiment and even simple political passion at both ends of the ideological spectrum have created a climate promoting violence. The fallout seemed to hold the potential to upend the effort by Republicans to keep their agenda front and center in the new Congress and to alter the political narrative in other ways.
The House was set to vote Wednesday on the new Republican majority’s proposal to repeal the health care law that had energized their supporters and ignited opposition from the Tea Party movement. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the new majority leader, said Saturday that the vote and other planned legislative activity would be postponed.
The original health care legislation stirred strong feelings that flared at angry town hall meetings held by many Democratic lawmakers during the summer of 2009. And there has been broader anger and suspicion rising about the government, its finances and its goals, with the discourse partially fueled by talk shows and Web sites.
Tea Party activists also condemned the shooting. Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, noted on his Web site that Ms. Giffords is “a liberal,” but added, “that does not matter now. No one should be a victim of violence because of their political beliefs.”
But others said it was hard to separate what had happened from the heated nature of the debate that has swirled around Mr. Obama and Democratic policies of the past two years.
“It is fair to say — in today’s political climate, and given today’s political rhetoric — that many have contributed to the building levels of vitriol in our political discourse that have surely contributed to the atmosphere in which this event transpired,” said a statement issued by the leaders of the National Jewish Democratic Council. Ms. Giffords is the first Jewish woman elected to the House from her state.
During last spring’s health care votes, the language used against some lawmakers was ratcheted up again, with protesters outside the House hurling insults and slurs. The offices of some Democrats, including Ms. Giffords’s in Tucson, were vandalized.
Ms. Giffords was also among a group of Democratic House candidates featured on the Web site of Sarah Palin’s political action committee with cross hairs over their districts, a fact that disturbed Ms. Giffords at the time.
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”
The image is no longer on the Web site, and Ms. Palin posted a statement saying “my sincere condolences are offered to the family of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona. On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.” (Late Saturday, the map was still on Ms. Palin’s Facebook page.)
Democrats have also pointed out cases where Republican candidates seemed to raise the prospect of armed revolt if Washington did not change its ways.
But many Republicans have noted that they too are subject to threats and abuse, and during the health care fight some suggested Democrats were trying to cut off responsible opposition and paint themselves as victims.
Sensitive to the issue, Tea Party activists in Arizona said they quickly reviewed their membership lists to check whether the suspect, Mr. Loughner, was associated with them. They said they found no evidence that he was.
Tea Party members in Tucson had disagreed sharply with Ms. Giffords, particularly as the health care debate unfolded, but she ended up backing the measure despite the political risks. They strongly supported her opponent, Jesse Kelly, in the November election, and staged several protests outside her office.
DeAnn Hatch, a co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party, said her group had never staged any rallies against the congresswoman elsewhere, and she did not believe there were any Tea Party protesters at the event Saturday.
“I want to strongly, strongly say we absolutely do not advocate violence,” she said. “This is just a tragedy to no end.”
But others said it would be hard to separate this shooting from the ideological clash.
“At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter’s motivations were, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Phillips, from Tea Party Nation, said on his Web site.
“While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote. “Within the entire political spectrum, there are extremists, both on the left and the right. Violence of this nature should be decried by everyone and not used for political gain.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 8, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated the year when Democratic lawmakers held town hall meetings about the health care legislation. It was 2009, not 2007.
The above is more on the Tucson, AZ shootings. Interesting times we live in. I believe this is the first time that there has been a widely spread publicly acknowledged connection between the Media and human behavior... ie: mind control.
--fairyfarmgirl