Shootings in Tucson

The Tea Screamers' rhetoric has come home to roost. Yes, there has been wild rhetoric from all sorts of political groups, but left-associated groups tend to be pro-gun-control, while the Tea Screamers have many times explicitly advocated gun violence if the ballot-box didn't produce the results they desired.

Sarah Palin's crowd has denied that her infamous bulls eye map was to be literally interpreted as "targets", yet this was belied by a Tweet in which she herself described them as exactly that. For copies of the map and the tweet, click here.

Giffords' Tea Party opponent from the last election advertised:

"Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

Can't get more explicit than that.

Here's a letter I wrote to the Globe:

The U.S. Justice Department is going all out to build a case against WikiLeaks leader Julien Assange. This includes putting Bradley Manning into very coercive confinement in the hope that it will force him to implicate Assange in the theft of the documents. The government has yet to find one person harmed as a result of the leaks -- except through embarrassment.

On the other hand, the harassment of Democrats by followers of the Tea Party has gone from name-calling and threats to outright murder today. It can't be emphasized too strongly that Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was one of the crosshair targets in Sarah Palin's map of Democrats. If Giffords survives it will be no thanks to Palin and her Tea Partiers who loudly proclaim that Democrats are enemies of the country. The fascists and brownshirt thugs said the same sorts of things in Germany in the 1930's about liberals and Jews.. Oh, by the way, Giffords is Jewish.