A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue
Jared Lee Loughner, who attempted to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at a Tucson, Arizona political rally, but succeeded in murdering a federal judge and five others while injuring several others, was found to be not competent to stand trial:
Mental health experts have concluded that Jared Loughner - the man accused of fatally shooting six people in January and gravely wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords - is not competent to stand trial, CBS News reported Wednesday.
Loughner, 22, faces a competency hearing Wednesday before U.S. District Court Judge Larry Burns in Tucson. Burns must rule on whether Loughner is capable of understanding the charges against him and assisting in his defense.
CBS said it spoke with Justice Department sources who said Loughner "will almost certainly be declared mentally unfit for trial." The issue of Loughner's competence to stand trial is separate, as a legal matter, from any effort he and his defense attorneys may make to argue that he was insane at the time of the Jan. 8 shooting in a Safeway supermarket parking lot.
In court filings last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys said they did not plan to dispute the findings of a Bureau of Prisons psychologist and an independent psychiatrist who examined Loughner, who has been in custody since the shooting. The court papers suggested that the mental health experts agreed with each other about Loughner's mental state, but the documents did not specify their conclusion.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined Thursday to comment on Loughner's competence.
As the report notes, the competence to stand trial is separate from any defense team arguments that he was insane at the time of the January 8 shooting. It has to do with whether Loughner is capable of understanding the charges against him and assisting in his defense.
Loughner faces 49 felony counts in connection with the January shooting spree, which wounded Giffords (D-AZ), and killed U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, Giffords aide Gabriel Zimmerman and four others.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is making tremendous progress in recovering from the gunshot wound sustained when Jared Loughner attempted to assassinate the Congresswoman at an event in a Tucson supermarket.
Doctors have been reducing the sedatives being given and while swelling remains a concern, they are seeing hopeful signs for a positive outcome.
Yesterday, President Obama, in the midst of his speech about the civil discourse and the need for unity, announced that Rep. Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time since surgery.
The Arizona congresswoman has been sitting up, dangling her legs on the edge of the hospital bed and moving her limbs in response to commands. That's after she spontaneously opened her eyes during visits with her colleagues Wednesday night. She is able to lift both of her legs on command and is yawning and starting to rub her eyes, doctors said.
"She's becoming more aware of her surroundings," trauma chief Dr. Peter Rhee said during a news conference at the University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz., Thursday.
The next milestone will be removing her breathing tube, and perhaps have her sit in a chair on Friday, said Rhee, who has treated soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Doctors want to make sure Giffords doesn't regress and are watching for pneumonia and blood clots.
One of the keys to her survival and seemingly miraculous recovery to date is the prompt medical attention, including by her intern, Daniel Hernandez, whose actions helped save her life.
Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel (emphasis added: ed) that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.
There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government. Our Founders’ genius was to design a system that helped settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So, we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure.
The comments that spark controversy begin when she claims that she's the focus of a blood libel. The attempted assassination is not about her, but postings on her website were highlighted as a means of showing the coarseness of the political debate and this is part of her response.
I can't disagree with Ed Morrissey or Glenn Reynolds enough about their interpretation that "blood libel" is somehow a political term. Reynolds points out to Politico’s Ben Smith that Israel uses "blood libel" today to rebut charges of deliberately killing Palestinians, and Tony Blankley used it in a column to describe John Murtha’s accusations against Marines about murders in Haditha that it's somehow a functional political term.
Tony Blankley was wrong in his usage as well. Murtha libeled those Marines, but it was not a blood libel.
Differentiate that from the fact that Israel is responding to ongoing and persistent claims made by Palestinians that the Israelis are purposefully targeting and murdering Palestinian children and other Arab regimes perpetuate the blood libel annually - typically around Passover.
Those Palestinian claims are the blood libel. Israel is rebutting those offensive and odious claims. Israel has not turned it into a functional political term. Israel is defending itself against one of the most offensive memes in history.
Words have meaning. Blood libel has a very specific meaning and when you start taking words and concepts out of their proper usage you reduce the word's value and usage.
I'd say that Palin's usage was incredibly stupid, particularly when the victim of the attack was herself Jewish. Palin isn't a victim here, and she certainly wasn't the victim of a blood libel under any tortured reading into the meaning of that concept.
Had Palin claimed that the media and bloggers were engaging in libel and ascribing to her blame for the Loughner attack, she may have had a point. Pundits and the media began pointing fingers moments after the shooting took place and have not stopped since. Loughner's motivations are still unknown and he isn't cooperating with authorities. But when she used "blood libel", which has a very specific meaning and is a loaded term, especially those who understand the religious significance of the term, it showed tremendous insensitivity particularly because Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish.
It is unfortunate that the tragedy in Tucson continues to stimulate a political blame game. Rather than step back and reflect on the lessons to be learned from this tragedy, both parties have reverted to political partisanship and finger-pointing at a time when the American people are looking for leadership, not more vitriol. In response to this tragedy we need to rise above partisanship, incivility, heated rhetoric, and the business-as-usual approaches that are corroding our political system and tainting the atmosphere in Washington and across the country.
It was inappropriate at the outset to blame Sarah Palin and others for causing this tragedy or for being an accessory to murder. Palin has every right to defend herself against these kinds of attacks, and we agree with her that the best tradition in America is one of finding common ground despite our differences.
Still, we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase “blood-libel” in reference to the actions of journalists and pundits in placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on others. While the term “blood-libel” has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.
In the midst of Jared Lee Loughner's murderous rampage through Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's meet and greet with constituents at a Tuscon supermarket that left six people dead and 13 people injured, including Rep. Giffords, there were people who stepped up and became heroes.
These people ought to be recognized for their bravery and heroic actions for they saved lives.
Moments later, he was at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' side. Less than a week after the 20-year-old intern started working for the congresswoman, he was using his bare hands to stop blood gushing from where a bullet had entered her head.
Hernandez, who trained as a certified nursing assistant, said he lifted Giffords' head to make it easier for her to breathe, then applied pressure to her wound.
"She was alert and conscious, but she wasn't able to speak, so the way she was communicating was by grabbing my hand and squeezing," Hernandez said.
Employees from the nearby Safeway supermarket brought out clean smocks from the meat department to cover Giffords' wound until paramedics arrived, he said.
"My main thing was just to keep her as alert as possible and just keep trying to interact with her... The entire time I was with the congresswoman, she was still responding," Hernandez said. "She was obviously in a lot of pain, so I let her know to squeeze my hand as hard as she needed to."
She "was my first and only priority," Hernandez added later in a CNN interview. I was "trying to take care of her emotional needs" and "keep her calm."
Hernandez's calm and methodical actions saved Giffords' life by providing prompt medical attention and tending to Giffords. So too were the unnamed supermarket workers who found needed items to help Hernandez get the bleeding under control and provide easier access for her to breathe.
The other heroes in this traumatic event included spunky 61 year old woman, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away another magazine from Loughner as he was attempting to reload after two men who are so far unnamed wrestled Loughner to the ground.
"He shot the woman that was next to me, and I was just waiting for the next bullet," Maisch said.
Then Maisch saw the gunman was on the ground near her. "Two gentlemen had knocked him to the ground, and somebody yelled 'Get the gun,'" Maisch said. "So I knelt up - he was on his right side - I knelt up and reached over him. I couldn't reach the gun, but as he was doing that he also pulled another magazine out of his left pocket, which he dropped on the pavement, and I was able to get it before he did.
"At the same time, another gentleman had picked up the gun. So he was secured."
She said she could not get a good look at the gunman's face. "He had a stocking cap on, and the way he was pushed on the ground, I could only see a little bit of the left side of his face, 'cause he had the stocking cap almost up to his eyes, both at the side, and above his eyebrows," she said.
Had he been able to reload, the crowd would have been in jeopardy of being hit by another 30 rounds. After arriving on scene, law enforcement found more than 90 rounds of ammo in Loughner's pockets.
Currently, Rep. Giffords remains in critical condition although doctors are cautiously optimistic. She's in a medically induced coma that allows doctors to control swelling and they revive her from time to time to check her responses, which have so far been positive.
Six people were killed, including a federal court justice, a nine year old girl, and four others at a political event sponsored by Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a Safeway supermarket in Tuscon. The Congresswoman has survived a gunshot wound to the head. Federal Judge John Roll was among the six killed along with nine year old Christina Green was born on 9/11 and was featured in a book about babies born on 9/11. The others murdered by Loughner are:
* Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was recently engaged to be married, was Giffords' director of community outreach. He graduated from Rincon High School in 1998 where he was active in student government. A vigil was held tonight by his friends who described him as "caring," "motivated," "a free spirit," and "a man who understood how to live life"
* Dorwin Stoddard, 76, was a church volunteer. When the shooting started, Dorwin tried to protect his wife by laying on top of her when the shooting started. She was wounded in the attack.
* Dorthy Morris, 76
* Phyllis Scheck, 79
Loughner, 22, who is in law enforcement custody, lives near the scene of the shooting, which killed six people and injured at least a dozen others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said there's reason to believe Loughner has "a mental issue" and described him as "unhinged."
"As we understand it, there have been law enforcement contacts with the individual where he made threats to kill," Dupnik said during a press conference Saturday evening. But he wouldn't say who those threats were aimed at.
Police are also seeking a second, older man who may have had a role in the shooting.
The evidence and reports about Mr. Loughner’s unusual conduct suggest an increasing alienation from society, confusion, anger as well as foreboding that his life could soon come to an end. Still, there appear to be no explicit threats of violence that explain why, as police allege, Mr. Loughner, 22, would go to a Safeway supermarket north of Tucson on Saturday morning and begin shooting at a popular Democratic congresswoman and more than a dozen other people, killing 6 and wounding 19.
Police officials on Saturday said that Mr. Loughner had a criminal record of some kind, but they did not provide any details. They also hinted that he might have had the help of a second person, adding that they were searching for another man.
Don Coorough, 58, who sat two desks in front of Mr. Loughner in a poetry class last semester, described him as a “troubled young man” and “emotionally underdeveloped.” After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a “terrorist for killing the baby.”
“No one in that class would even sit next to him,” Mr. Coorough said. Another fellow student said that he found Mr. Loughner’s behavior so eccentric — including inappropriate remarks and unusual outbursts — that he wondered if he might be on hallucinogens. Mr. Loughner grew up in Tucson and was an unremarkable student at Mountain View High School, classmates said.
Grant Wiens, 22, who graduated in 2006 from Mountain View High School, a year ahead of Mr. Loughner, described him as “a kind of rare bird, very shy.”
“He didn’t seem very popular, but he kind of did his own thing,” Mr. Wiens said.
Mr. Wiens said that something Mr. Loughner said during a discussion about religion had stuck in his mind: “Whatever happens, happens,” Mr. Wiens recalled the suspect saying. “Might as well enjoy life now.”
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.”
Expect that Loughner will be given a psychological evaluation and that his lawyers (when he is either assigned or obtains one) will likely make an insanity case rather than face the death penalty. Clearly, the charges that would likely flow from such criminal acts include the state and federal charges of murder in the 1st and 2d degree, and the attack on Rep. Giffords falls under 18 USC 351.
UPDATE:
Was Loughner motivated by anti Semitism? Anything remains a possibility at this point as Giffords was Jewish and investigators think that Loughner may have been involved in a group called American Renaissance, which is anti-government, anti-immigration, anti -ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), and anti-Semitic. However, that article claims that Giffords was the first Jewish female to be elected to such high position, but that doesn't quite make sense. Giffords is hardly the first Jewish woman to be elected to Congress (so I'm not sure how that article's assertion was made or the context). After all, we've had Jewish congresswomen before, and Sen. Feinstein of CA is Jewish (and one of the senior members of the caucus at that). It could make sense in the context of being the first female Jewish member of Congress from Arizona. The SPLC file on American Renaissance highlights the group's typical anti Semitic and racist diatribes.
UPDATE:
Rep. Giffords remains in critical condition as Loughner has begun to be charged in the murderous rampage. First up are a series of federal charges:
Jared Loughner is charged with one count of attempted assassination of member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to killing a federal employee.
Heather Williams, the first assistant federal public defender in Arizona, says the 22-year-old suspect doesn't yet have a lawyer, but that her office is working to get a lawyer appointed for Loughner.
Expect the state counts to roll in with murder and attempted murder in the coming days. Loughner would face the death penalty on the federal charges alone, but his mental health is all but likely to come into play here and may see him incarcerated in a mental health facility.
UPDATE:
A copy of the federal criminal complaint can be found here. It outlines the premeditated efforts by Loughner to assassinate Rep. Giffords.
UPDATE:
Federal Judge John M. Roll was killed in Arizona attack, NBC News reports along with a staffer of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords was among those seriously injured after being shot in the head at close range. At least 12 people were shot.
President Barack Obama called the shooting an "unspeakable tragedy," and said that some had died and the congresswoman had been gravely injured, Reuters reported.
"And while we are continuing to receive information, we know that some have passed away, and that Representative Giffords is gravely wounded," Obama said in a statement.
C.J. Karamargin, a spokesman for Giffords, said the congresswoman was in surgery as of 1 p.m. local time and that an unspecified number of Giffords staff members were involved in the shooting. Karamargin said he had no other information on the conditions of the injured or on the circumstances of the shooting.
Gabrielle Giffords
Congressional officials said an aide to the Democrat was killed, and unknown number of others were injured, including staffers to the lawmaker.
'Sad day'
Little was known about the shooter in the chaos after the rampage; one official said the attack was carried out with an automatic weapon. The officials who described the events did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not permitted to comment publicly.
Another law enforcement official told NBC News that the suspect was born in 1988, but did not have more details at the time.
A bystander apparently tackled the assailant as he tried to run away. According to the Pima County Sheriff's Office, at least 18 shots were fired from some kind of pistol with an extended magazine. Video tapes are being pulled from nearby businesses. Details about the shooting are still developing.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those involved and now 6
Giffords, who was re-elected in November, has focused on immigration reform, military issues, stem cell research and alternative energy while serving in Congress. She is married to U.S. astronaut Mark Kelly.
She served on the House Armed Services, Science and Technology committees.
Before going to Washington, Giffords served in the Arizona Legislature from 2000 to 2005 and ran her family's tire and automotive business.
Jared Laughner is the accused gunman and MSNBC is reporting that at least six people were killed.
UPDATE:
Media reports are indicating that this is not the first run-in that Laughner has had with law enforcement.
The University of Arizona Medical Center is holding a briefing. 10 patients were received. One died at the hospital. Five are in critical condition with five currently undergoing operations. Neurosurgeons have completed surgery on the Congresswoman and have a good prognosis.
The deceased victim from the hospital was a young child.
Also, this may be Laughner's YouTube channel, and his videos are quite disturbing and present some insight into what he was thinking.
UPDATE:
Culling through Loughner's background reveals someone who appears to have planned this attack and was looking to carry out attacks against the existing political order. He also appears to have a video channel "Classitup10"
My name is Jared Lee Loughner!
Hometown:Tucson
Country:United States
Schools:I attended school: Thornydale elementary,Tortolita Middle School, Mountain View Highschool, Northwest Aztec Middle College, and Pima Community College.
Interests:My favorite interest was reading, and I studied grammar. Conscience dreams were a great study in college!
Movies:(*My idiom: I could coin the moment!*)
Music:Pass me the strings!
Books:I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.
The shooting took place just about 10:00AM local time at a Safeway Shopping Center in Tuscon.
To get to the point, this was an attack on democracy itself. It affects how members will interact with their constituents and how constituents can join with their representatives.
UPDATE:
Reading through Laughner's materials, it's striking that not only is he expressing his interests in the past tense, but that he was calling for a change in the political currency of the country. While some people might think that Laughner was insane for espousing extreme political thought, and I fully expect his eventual lawyers to make that claim to avoid the death penalty for his attempted assassination of the Congresswoman, the murder of the federal judge, the young child, and anyone else who may have died or was injured in connection with this attack, that doesn't make him a murderous bastard with an expectation that he would not survive his plan (his writings were given in the past tense).
He clearly wanted a change in currency - not the tangible currency - but the currency of the existing political order. He was apparently looking to overthrow the government and existing polity. That puts him way out on the fringe politically, but that doesn't make him insane.
UPDATE:
President Obama speaks about the shooting:
Sen. John McCain has also responded about the shooting: "Whoever did this; whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race, and they deserve and will receive the contempt of all decent people and the strongest punishment of the law."
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. It's still not clear if the gunman had the health care debate in mind or was focused on his own unique set of political beliefs as witnessed in the Internet videos.Law enforcement officials said members of Congress reported 42 cases of threats or violence in the first three months of 2010, nearly three times the 15 cases reported during the same period a year earlier. Nearly all dealt with the health care bill, and Giffords was among the targets.
Giffords' 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.
The shooting occurred at a shopping center called La Toscana Village as Giffords met with voters outside a Safeway grocery store.
Alex Villec, 19, a volunteer for the event, told the Arizona Daily Star that the gunman asked to speak to Giffords, but Villec told him to go to the back of the line. The gunman did that, and minutes later he walked toward her.
"He was intent," Villec said. "He was intent when he came back - a pretty stone-cold glance and glare."
"I didn't see his gun, but it was clear who he was going for," he added. "He was going for the congresswoman."
Villec said the shooter walked past tables and toward Giffords, then raised his hand. Villec said he heard gunshots before ducking behind a pillar.
"It was bedlam," he said. "People were getting down on the ground. They were screaming. I just did what I could to keep myself protected."
Villec said he did not see two men tackle the gunman but afterward spoke with one of the men who was next in line to greet Giffords.
Law enforcement officials and reporters from around the country quickly 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.
I'd be interested to see who were the targets of those incidents and the disposition as to whether anyone was arrested.
UPDATE:
The New York Times is reporting that a second suspect is being sought. I'm going to surmise that the second suspect may be somehow related to how Loughner arrived at the supermarket - a driver or someone who provided him with the weapons/ammo, etc. Suspect may not have been a shooter, but he or she enabled Loughner to arrive at the supermarket and go on his murderous rampage.
