History > 2011 > USA > Politics (I)

Rob Rogers

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania

Cagle

20 January 2011

John A. Boehner,

an Ohio Republican,

became Speaker of the House of Representatives

in January 2011.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/john_a_boehner/index.html?inline=nyt-per

William Rusher,

Champion of Conservatism,

Dies at 87

April 18, 2011
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

William A. Rusher, who advanced a rising conservative tide in America for more than 50 years as a political strategist, author, syndicated columnist and publisher of William F. Buckley Jr.’s bible of the right, National Review, died on Saturday in San Francisco. He was 87.

He died at a retirement home, where he had lived since 2004, after a long illness, said David B. Frisk, the author of a coming biography of Mr. Rusher.

Like Mr. Buckley, the founding editor of National Review, Mr. Rusher championed postwar conservatism as a mainstream political movement that first tasted national success in the Republican presidential nomination of Barry M. Goldwater in 1964, and fulfilled its dream with the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980.

A lawyer who helped lay the foundations for conservative ascendancy in the Republican Party, Mr. Rusher was a relentless spokesman for the cause: the author of five books, scores of articles and “The Conservative Advocate,” a syndicated column published in newspapers across the country for 36 years. He also lectured widely and debated opponents of the left and right on television and radio.

While he never held public office, he entered the fray of several campaigns. He and two colleagues founded the draft-Goldwater movement in 1961. With other prominent conservatives, he opposed the re-election of Richard M. Nixon in 1972 because of the president’s overtures to China. He started a third party that faltered in 1976, and was an adviser in Reagan’s presidential campaign four years later.

Mr. Rusher’s 31-year tenure as publisher of National Review, from 1957 to 1988, paralleled the growth of mainstream conservatism. Founded in 1955 in small, cluttered, Dickensian offices in Manhattan, with a circulation of 16,000, the magazine rose by the 1980s to a pinnacle of influence, with 100,000 readers and Reagan, its ideological godchild, in the White House. Besides overseeing the magazine’s business side, Mr. Rusher introduced his column in its pages in 1973.

His first major book, “The Making of the New Majority Party” (1975), was a manifesto for a conservative alliance to replace the Republican Party. Americans calling themselves conservatives were already a majority, he argued, but unaware of it, being politically independent or scattered in Republican and Democratic ranks: people who valued the work ethic, religion and patriotism, and opposed Communism, higher taxes and government spending.

In an Op-Ed article for The New York Times in 1975, Mr. Rusher explained how it might work. “The only practical solution, therefore, is for conservative Republicans (broadly represented by Reagan) and conservative Democrats (most of whom have in the past supported Wallace)” — a reference to Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama — “to join forces in a new majority party, designed to win both the Presidency and Congress and replace the G.O.P. in toto as one of America’s two major parties.”

In 1976, putting his ideas into practice, Mr. Rusher and several colleagues founded the New Majority Party. But it collapsed that summer at a convention in Chicago after a rival group pushed through the presidential nomination of Lester G. Maddox, the former governor of Georgia and an avowed segregationist. Jimmy Carter, the Democrat, defeated President Gerald R. Ford, the Republican, in the general election.

A month after Reagan’s election in 1980, National Review celebrated its 25th anniversary with a party. “I really think this is the watershed moment,” Mr. Rusher said. “Conservatism is at the crossroads. And incidentally, our old enemy liberalism has died.”

William Allen Rusher was born in Chicago on July 19, 1923, the son of Evan and Verna Self Rusher. His father, a Republican businessman, moved the family to the New York area when William was a boy. He attended school in Great Neck, on Long Island, and in New York City, graduated from Princeton in 1943, served in the Army Air Forces in India in World War II and earned a law degree at Harvard in 1948.

He worked at the New York law firm of Shearman, Sterling & Wright from 1948 to 1956, and was associate counsel of the internal security subcommittee of the United States Senate in 1956 and 1957. As the cold war developed, Mr. Rusher turned increasingly to conservative politics.

When he joined National Review as publisher, vice president and a director in 1957, the magazine was a small conservative ship in a sea of liberal journals. For years, it had deficits of $100,000 or more and was kept afloat largely by Mr. Buckley’s earnings from speeches and television appearances.

Mr. Frisk, the author of “If Not Us, Who?: William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement,” which is scheduled for publication this year, said Mr. Rusher’s relationship with Mr. Buckley was close but complex. Beyond the business affairs of the magazine, the two often discussed strategies in the developing conservative movement, including Mr. Rusher’s opposition to Nixon and his desire to break away from the Republican Party to form a national conservative party.

Mr. Rusher took active roles in the Young Americans for Freedom, founded in 1960 at Mr. Buckley’s Connecticut estate, and the American Conservative Union, founded after Goldwater’s landslide loss to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Both organizations promoted conservative ideas and candidates.

In his history, “The Rise of the Right” (1984), Mr. Rusher detailed efforts by conservatives like himself to recoup old and trusted American values, renew the spirit of free enterprise and capture the Republican Party for Goldwater and later the White House for Reagan.

“I do not think it an exaggeration to say that, without William Rusher, the conservative revival in America would not have taken place,” Dr. Edward N. Peters, a Roman Catholic canon lawyer, wrote in a review for Reflections Magazine. “Rusher has written an amazingly informative account of the return to right thought.”

But writing in The New York Times Book Review, Lewis H. Lapham, the former editor of the liberal magazine Harper’s, called the book self-serving. “All but singlehandedly, against some pretty heavy odds (i.e., the entire weight, trend and ethos of the 20th century), he rescued the United States of America from death by liberalism,” Mr. Lapham wrote. “True, he had a little help from his friends, notably William F. Buckley, the editor of National Review, but mostly it was Bill Rusher.”

Mr. Rusher, who never married, left no immediate survivors.

Mr. Rusher joined the Claremont Institute, a conservative research organization in California, in 1989. He ended his syndicated column in 2009.

“Undoubtedly,” he wrote in a farewell, “the most important single factor in the growth of conservatism has been the realization, on the part of individual conservatives, that their views were shared by others, and constituted collectively a formidable national influence.”

    William Rusher, Champion of Conservatism, Dies at 87, NYT, 18.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/us/politics/19rusher.html

The New Republican Landscape

April 17, 2011
The New York Times

Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause — much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.

At first it seemed that only a few freshmen and noisy followers of the Tea Party would support the new extremism. But on Friday, nearly unanimous House Republicans showed just how far their mainstream has been dragged to the right. They approved on strict party lines the most regressive social legislation in many decades, embodied in a blueprint by the budget chairman, Paul Ryan. The vote, from which only four Republicans (and all Democrats) dissented, would have been unimaginable just eight years ago to a Republican Party that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Mr. Ryan called the vote “our generation’s defining moment,” and indeed, nothing could more clearly define the choice that will face voters next year.

His bill would end the guarantee provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor, which has been provided by the federal government with society’s clear assent since 1965. The elderly, in particular, would be cut adrift by Mr. Ryan. People now under 55 would be required to pay at least $6,400 more for health care when they qualified for Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Fully two-thirds of his $4.3 trillion in budget cuts would come from low-income programs.

In addition to making “entitlement” a dirty word, the Ryan bulldozer would go much further in knocking down government programs to achieve its goals. It would cut food stamps by $127 billion, or 20 percent, over the next 10 years, almost certainly increasing hunger among the poor. It would cut Pell grants for all 9.4 million student recipients next year, removing as many as one million of them from the program altogether. It would remove more than 100,000 low-income children from Head Start, and slash job-training programs for the unemployed desperate to learn new skills.

And it would do all that while preserving the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and even expanding them. Regulation of business and the environment would be sharply reduced.

The mania for blindly cutting has also spread to statehouses, many with new Republican governors and legislatures. Several states have cut their unemployment benefits below the standard 26 weeks. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has proposed removing 138,000 people from Medicaid. Many recession-battered states, including some led by Democrats, have been forced to cut other services because Republicans have made it so politically difficult to raise taxes. Education, mental health and juvenile justice funds have been particular targets.

In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and Florida, Republican governors have used the smokescreen of a poor economy to pursue a long-held conservative goal of destroying public and private unions. This has nothing to do with creating jobs, of course, and it has shocked many blue-collar voters who are suddenly second-guessing their support for Republicans last November. Several states are also adopting Arizona-style anti-immigrant laws.

President Obama, after staying in the shadows too long, is starting to illuminate the serious damage that Republicans are doing. Their vision, he said last week, “is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.” Other Democrats are also beginning to stand up and reject these ideas, having been cowed for months by the electoral wave. Their newfound confidence will give voters a clearer view of this bare and pessimistic landscape.

    The New Republican Landscape, NYT, 17.4.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/opinion/18mon1.html

Geraldine Ferraro,

first woman on U.S. presidential ticket, dies

WASHINGTON | Sat Mar 26, 2011
2:42pm EDT
Reuters
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic congresswoman who became the first woman on a major party presidential ticket as Walter Mondale's running mate in 1984, died on Saturday at the age of 75, her family said.

Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston of a blood cancer after a 12-year illness, according to a statement from her family.

"Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed," the statement said.

Ferraro was an energetic and articulate three-term congresswoman with a liberal reputation when Mondale picked her from the male-dominated U.S. House of Representatives. Ferraro's presence on the Democratic ticket generated excitement on the campaign trail, particularly among women.

Yet on Election Day, Republican President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush won in a landslide, carrying every state except Mondale's home state of Minnesota.

In delivering her concession speech that night, Ferraro saluted Mondale for helping women reach new political heights.

"For two centuries, candidates have run for president. Not one from a major party ever asked a woman to be his running mate -- until Walter Mondale," she said. "Campaigns, even if you lose them, do serve a purpose. My candidacy has said the days of discrimination are numbered."

She drew attention during the campaign for breaking with her Catholic Church in supporting abortion rights.

As the first Italian-American on a major presidential ticket, Ferraro also faced questions about whether her family had connections to organized crime but none surfaced. The finances of her husband, John Zaccaro, also faced scrutiny.

President Barack Obama praised Ferraro's service and said she would have an impact on his daughters' lives.

"Geraldine will forever be remembered as a trailblazer who broke down barriers for women and Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life," he said in a statement. "... Sasha and Malia will grow up in a more equal America because of the life Geraldine Ferraro chose to live."

PIONEER FOR PALIN

In the years that followed Ferraro's candidacy, more women were elected to Congress and governorships and earned spots in presidential cabinets. No woman was on a presidential ticket, however, until Sarah Palin was chosen as the running mate for Republican John McCain in his losing 2008 campaign.

"So very sad, the passing of Geraldine Ferraro," Palin tweeted on Saturday. "God bless her family and friends; thank you for sharing this accomplished American with all of us."

In that 2008 election, Ferraro was a strong supporter of Democratic New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady. But Ferraro got the Clinton campaign in trouble when she said Clinton's rival, Obama, who was trying to become the first black presidential nominee, would not be leading the pack if he were white or a woman.

"He happens to be very lucky to be who he is," she said.

Some called her comments racist but she denied any racist sentiments. Still, she left Clinton's campaign shortly after.

Ferraro was born on August 26, 1935, in Newburgh, New York. Her father, Dominick, an Italian immigrant restaurant owner, died when she was 8. Her mother, Antonetta, was a seamstress.

Ferraro was a grade-school teacher and prosecutor in New York City before being elected to the House in 1978, representing the Queens section of New York City.

She gave up the seat to run with Mondale and then lost Democratic Senate primaries in 1992 and 1998.

In 1998, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer, but continued to lead an active life. She worked as a TV commentator and contributor for CNN and Fox News.

During the 1984 campaign, Ferraro was the target of sexist remarks, including some by Bush and his wife, Barbara. Mrs. Bush, talking to two reporters, said she and her husband had no intention of hiding their wealth -- "not like that 4 million dollar -- I can't say it but it rhymes with 'rich.'"

Bush, after his debate with Ferraro, told a group of longshoremen, "We tried to kick a little ass last night."

At a news conference the next day, Ferraro replied: "I would not address my opponent in the same way."

(Editing by Bill Trott and Doina Chiacu)

    Geraldine Ferraro, first woman on U.S. presidential ticket, dies, R, 26.3.2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/26/us-usa-ferraro-idUSTRE72P1IL20110326

Union Leader Minces No Words When Labor Issues Are at Stake

The New York Times
February 22, 2011
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

MADISON, Wis. — As executive director of the main union of Wisconsin state employees, Marty Beil is at the vortex of the hurricane here — and that makes some union members gulp.

A bear of a man, Mr. Beil has been known to use razor-clawed insults to maul government officials who anger him. When a former Democratic state senator took a job in the administration of Wisconsin’s new Republican governor, Scott Walker, Mr. Beil said he was engaging in “the world’s oldest profession” — prostitution.

And when the State Senate president, a Democrat whom unions had often endorsed, provided a pivotal vote in December to torpedo a contract Mr. Beil had negotiated with the departing Democratic governor, Mr. Beil called the man “a whore.”

Now, as Mr. Walker pushes a budget bill that would force most public employees to pay more toward health care and retirement benefits and largely eliminate their collective bargaining rights, many eyes are on Mr. Beil (pronounced beel) to see whether his combative style can win over a skeptical public and achieve results with a governor who is hardly a shrinking violet himself.

Despite — or perhaps because of — his abrasive language, Mr. Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, can certainly be effective in stirring labor’s troops. His behind-the-scenes work and organizing skills have helped transform Madison into a national battleground over labor rights as tens of thousands of union members and supporters have demonstrated at the Capitol. These protests, which many other unions have helped organize, have come to resemble a labor version of Woodstock.

“It’s absolutely clear that the governor’s budget bill is all about taking away our right to bargain collectively and organize into unions,” said Mr. Beil, 64, who first took a job with the state of Wisconsin in 1969, as a probation officer. “It’s difficult for us to understand how stripping people of their collective bargaining rights will help close a hole in this fiscal year’s budget.”

His battle with Mr. Walker is the toughest fight of Mr. Beil’s career. Already, the union has agreed to Mr. Walker’s demands to have public employees pay more toward their pensions and health coverage, translating into a 7 percent cut in pay.

Those concessions drew a moment of gloating from Mr. Walker at a Monday news conference. “That’s an interesting development, because a week ago they said that’s not acceptable,” he said.

Mr. Walker says passing his “budget repair” bill will give the state, cities and school districts the flexibility they need to cut costs while minimizing layoffs, not just this year, but in future ones, too.

“It sets the table to make sure we can balance the $3.6 billion budget we face,” he said Monday. “On top of that, we need to make sure that we are giving local governments the tools they need to balance their budgets.”

Mr. Walker has made no secret that he believes Mr. Beil and his parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has 68,000 members in Wisconsin, are obstacles to necessary change.

Back in December, before taking office, Mr. Walker lobbied hard to persuade the Legislature to vote down a tentative contract that Mr. Beil had negotiated, saying it did not save enough money despite its two-year wage freeze.

Mr. Beil hung tough at the time, likening Mr. Walker to “the plantation owner talking to the slaves.”

Speaking of Mr. Beil’s stance then, William Powell Jones, a labor historian at the University of Wisconsin, said: “My sense is his position was, ‘We’re in a position of power. We don’t negotiate.’ It’s certainly not the kind of thing to make an anti-union public sympathetic to the union movement.”

With the nation watching, Mr. Beil reversed course last week and accepted Mr. Walker’s demand that public employees pay 5.8 percent of their salaries toward their pensions and double their contributions toward health coverage. Union leaders said that since they had now met the governor halfway, he should compromise by dropping his plan to curb bargaining rights.

But Mr. Walker has held firm. For his part, Mr. Beil said his union would never agree to the bargaining limits.

“It’s all about taking our rights away,” he said. “Whether you’re a teacher, a state employee, a municipal employee, under his bill, your rights are gone to sit down as an equal at the bargaining table to work out issues like work schedules or how to transfer to another job or where do you work. All that would be gone.”

A key Walker ally in the Legislature, Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, a Republican, called Mr. Beil “very combative” and added: I think Marty has unfortunately been out of touch for a while. He has probably led his members in the wrong direction.”

Last month, Mr. Beil called Mr. Fitzgerald and his brother, Scott, the new Senate president, “lightweights” as well as “crybabies and whiners.”

Such comments anger not just legislators, but also members of the public. A recent letter to The Wisconsin State Journal, a Madison daily, began, “Memo to Marty Beil: Take a vacation — a long one — and quit your never-ending sniping at Gov. Scott Walker and anyone else who disagrees with you.”

Mr. Beil acknowledged, “I can be a lightning rod.” He said he upset many rank-and-file workers in the 1990s when he twice endorsed Tommy Thompson, a Republican, for re-election as governor.

“I will support Republicans or Democrats, whoever is good for us,” he said.

Mr. Beil says he just tells it like it is. His role is to fight for labor, he said, and he seems stunned that much of the public has turned so suddenly against public-employee unions.

“The average working person is under a lot of pressure from the economic downturn,” he said. “There’s a lot of anger out there, a lot of fear, and that was played by the right wing against us.”

“We’re as much a victim as anybody else,” he continued. “Public employees did not create the recession and the deficit here in Wisconsin. It was Wall Street.”

Ever since Mr. Walker announced his plan to curb bargaining rights, Mr. Beil has worked closely with other Wisconsin labor leaders. Every day, he confers with Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin State A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, which represents 98,000 school employees, to strategize on how best to mobilize support, often by using phone banks, e-mail blasts and Facebook.

“Marty is very passionate and cares deeply about what happens to his members,” Mr. Neuenfeldt said.

Asked whether Mr. Beil sometimes goes too far, unnecessarily alienating people, Mr. Neuenfeldt answered, “As I said, he’s very passionate.”

    Union Leader Minces No Words When Labor Issues Are at Stake, NYT, 22.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/us/23beil.html

Thousands March on Capitols as Union Turmoil Spreads

February 22, 2011
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and A. G. SULZBERGER

COLUMBUS, Ohio — First Wisconsin. Now Ohio and Indiana.

Battles with public employees’ unions spread on Tuesday, with Republican-dominated Legislatures pressing bills that would weaken collective bargaining and thousands of pro-union protesters marching on Capitol buildings in Columbus and Indianapolis.

After a week of upheaval in Madison, Wis., where the thumping din of protesters has turned almost celebratory, the battle moved to Ohio, where the Legislature held hearings on a bill that would effectively end collective bargaining for state workers and drastically reduce it for local government employees like police officers and firefighters.

Several thousand pro-union protesters filled a main hall of the state courthouse in Columbus and gathered in a large crowd outside, chanting “Kill the bill,” waving signs and playing drums and bagpipes. There were no official estimates, but the numbers appeared to be smaller than those in Madison last week. One Democratic state legislator put the figure at 15,000.

In Indiana, nearly all of the Democratic members of the state’s House of Representatives stayed away from a legislative session on Tuesday in an effort to stymie a bill that they say would weaken collective bargaining. By late Tuesday, they seemed to have succeeded in running down a clock on the bill, which was to expire at midnight. Representative Brian Bosma, the speaker of the Indiana House, said the bill would die when the deadline passed.

Fleeing was not an option for Ohio Democrats because the Republicans had enough members on their side for a quorum. Republicans have a 23-to-10 majority in the Ohio Senate, and the bill needs 17 votes to pass. It was not clear when it would be voted on.

The bills have amounted to the largest assault on collective bargaining in recent memory, labor experts said, striking at the heart of an American labor movement that is already atrophied.

“I think we are looking at the future of the labor movement being defined in rotundas in several states,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in labor issues. “This is a structural change with profound repercussions.”

The Ohio bill was introduced this month by a Republican senator, Shannon Jones, who said it was intended to give state and local governments more control over their finances in hard economic times. But opponents say the bill is about politics, calling it a direct attack on the unions, which have long been reliable Democratic supporters.

“They’re using a fiscal challenge as an excuse to consolidate political power,” said former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, who was in the crowd of protesters in Columbus.

Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, strongly denied that characterization.

“This is nothing more than an effort to reduce the cost of governance so we can start to create jobs,” he said by telephone. “This is an effort to save the state, no agendas.”

Ohio is facing an $8 billion budget deficit, about 15 percent of its two-year budget, far less than states like California, Illinois and New Jersey, but still significant, and Mr. Kasich says drastic steps are required to plug the gap.

“The state is at a point of no return,” said Chris Kershner, a Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce vice president, who testified last week before the Senate committee overseeing the bill. “Change must happen now if Ohio emerges solvent from the current fiscal situation.”

Some in the Columbus crowd compared themselves to protesters in Egypt: a growing movement of people who will not take it anymore. But labor experts and political analysts were skeptical.

Unionized workers represented just 6.9 percent of all workers in the private sector in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics down from about 36 percent in 1955. The number of unionized workers in the public sector has held steady at about 35 percent since the late ’70s.

“Seven percent in the United States makes them a very rare breed,” said Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard. “I don’t think there’s a high probability that this will be an explosive event where the average American says, ‘Wait, this is what’s left of the middle class — what are you doing?’ ”

In Wisconsin, Senate Democrats remained in hiding across the state line, depriving the chamber the quorum needed to take up the budget repair bill, which includes provisions they view as an attack on public sector unions.

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker, who introduced the legislation, warned that if the bill was not passed, layoff notices could be sent to state workers as early as next week.

Seeking to increase pressure on Mr. Walker to compromise, the South Central Wisconsin Federation of Labor announced on Tuesday that it had endorsed a rare labor action — a general strike that would begin if he signed the bill that would curb collective bargaining rights.

The federation, which represents 45,000 unionized workers in the Madison area, said it was not a formal call for a general strike, but the first step toward preparing for an eventual strike. .

The Ohio bill, if passed, would do away with the legal protections passed in 1983 governing collective bargaining for state workers, including prohibitions on hiring alternate workers during a strike. Bargaining power would be weakened for local workers, doing away with binding arbitration, an option favored by police officers and firefighters, who are not allowed to strike.

It would also slice into public-worker benefits by taking health insurance off the bargaining table and requiring government workers to pay at least 20 percent of the cost. It would strip automatic pay increases and mandatory sick days for teachers.

The bill could have political repercussions for Ohio Republicans, who draw some of their votes from union members. Jeremy Mendenhall, president of the Ohio Troopers Association, who is an active duty sergeant and a registered Republican, said he was angry with his party for pushing it.

“People won’t forget this in 2012,” he said.

But Republicans could also gain, said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Taking a cost-cutting position against unions is part of the mantra for far-right groups like the Tea Party, and not necessarily unpopular.

“There is a strong sentiment against pension benefits and all that has accrued over the years as a result of organized public labor,” Mr. Beaupre said.

For the working class in Ohio, government jobs are highly desirable, with the median salary about 20 percent more than in the private sector, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. This is partly because employees tend to be more skilled: more than half of state and local workers have college degrees, far more than in the private sector. But among college graduates, public workers make less than those in the private sector.

Public employees say they have sacrificed. The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association said they had taken five pay cuts in nine years with a savings to the most recent budget of about $250 million.

Monty Blanton, 50, who worked for 31 years as a food service worker and an electrician in a state facility for mentally retarded people, made a gross salary of $44,000 before retirement. His pension, he said, stands at $19,500, barely enough to live on.

“We’re barely making a living wage,” he said. “I don’t think they understand how hard it is in southeastern Ohio.”


Sabrina Tavernise reported from Columbus, and A. G. Sulzberger from Madison, Wis. Reporting was contributed by Bob Driehaus from Cincinnati, Steven Greenhouse from Madison and Robert Gebeloff, Sarah Wheaton and Timothy Williams from New York.

    Thousands March on Capitols as Union Turmoil Spreads, NYT, 22.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/us/23ohio.html

Palin Criticizes Obama on Egypt

February 5, 2011
9:40 pm
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — As Sarah Palin delivered a weekend address here, paying tribute to Ronald Reagan on the centennial of his birth, she directed a forceful line of criticism at President Obama and his administration, though she did not mention the crisis in Egypt. But in a subsequent television interview, she took Mr. Obama to task for his handling of the matter.

“It’s a difficult situation,” Ms. Palin told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “This is that 3 a.m. White House phone call, and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the White House, it seems that that call went right to the answering machine.”

The early-morning phone call that Ms. Palin mentioned was reprised from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary fight, when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton aired a stinging television ad suggesting that Mr. Obama lacked foreign policy experience. To drive home the point, the commercial showed a telephone ringing — unanswered — in the middle of the night.

Three years later, Mrs. Clinton is deeply entwined in the diplomatic crisis in Egypt as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state. (These days, if there are any 3 a.m. phone calls, it probably means that the situation was elevated to the attention of the White House, where the telephone is answered around the clock.)

In an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ms. Palin criticized the Obama administration for failing to explain “to the American public what they know.” In an excerpt of the interview released Saturday evening on the network’s Web site, Ms. Palin declared: “Now, more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House.”

This is a transcript, provided by the network, of Ms. Palin’s response to Mr. Brody’s question about how she believes the president has handled the situation in Egypt:

“And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from D.C. in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so volatile right now, because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And, we do not have all that information yet.”

At her appearance here in Santa Barbara on Friday evening, Ms. Palin spoke for about 30 minutes and did not take questions from the audience or reporters.

She spoke exclusively to Mr. Brody in a 10-minute interview following the speech. Asked what she might do differently if she decided to run for president, Ms. Palin said: “I would continue on the same course of not really caring what other people say about me or worrying about the things that they make up, but having that thick skin and a still spine.”

    Palin Criticizes Obama on Egypt, NYT, 5.2.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/palin-criticizes-obama-on-egypt/

Politics and the Court

February 4, 2011
The New York Times

When it comes to pushing the line between law and politics, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each had a banner month in January.

Justice Scalia, who is sometimes called “the Justice from the Tea Party,” met behind closed doors on Capitol Hill to talk about the Constitution with a group of representatives led by Representative

Michele Bachmann of the House Tea Party Caucus.

Justice Thomas, confirming his scorn for concern about conflicts of interest and rules designed to help prevent them, acknowledged that he has failed to comply with the law for the past six years by not disclosing his wife’s income from conservative groups.

In Supreme Court opinions, they showed how their impatience for goals promoted in conservative politics is infecting their legal actions. They joined in an unusual dissent from a court decision not to take a case about the commerce clause that turned into polemic in favor of limited government. In an important privacy case, NASA v. Nelson, they insisted the court should settle a constitutional issue it didn’t need to.

Constitutional law is political. It results from choices about concerns of government that political philosophers ponder, like liberty and property. When the court deals with major issues of social policy, the law it shapes is the most inescapably political.

To buffer justices from the demands of everyday politics, however, they receive tenure for life. The framers of our Constitution envisioned law gaining authority apart from politics. They wanted justices to exercise their judgment independently — to be free from worrying about upsetting the powerful and certainly not to be cultivating powerful political interests.

A petition by Common Cause to the Justice Department questioned whether Justices Scalia and Thomas are doing the latter. It asked whether the court’s ruling a year ago in the Citizens United case, unleashing corporate money into politics, should be set aside because the justices took part in a political gathering of the conservative corporate money-raiser Charles Koch while the case was before the court.

If the answer turns out to be yes, it would be yet more evidence that the court must change its policy — or rather its nonpolicy — about recusal.

One possible reform would be to require a justice to explain, in a public statement and in detail, any decision to recuse or not. It would be even better to set up a formal review process. A group of other justices — serving in rotation or randomly chosen — could review each decision about recusal and have the power to overrule it.

In the NASA case, the two justices issued opinions on a unanimous ruling that NASA can require background checks for contract workers. Six justices (Justice Elena Kagan was recused) said the court didn’t need to decide whether there is a right to informational privacy.

Justices Scalia and Thomas, on the other hand, insisted that the Constitution doesn’t protect such a right and the court should settle the issue. The Scalia opinion is a rambling, sarcastic political tirade. The Thomas opinion is short but caustic. This is the sort of thing that gets these justices invited to gatherings like Mr. Koch’s.

About Justice Scalia, the legal historian Lucas Powe said, “He is taking political partisanship to levels not seen in over half a century.” Justice Thomas is not far behind.

Both seem to have trouble with the notion that our legal system was designed to set law apart from politics precisely because they are so closely tied.

    Politics and the Court, NYT, 4.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/opinion/05sat1.html

Two G.O.P. Responses Point to Potential Fault Lines

January 25, 2011
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELEN

WASHINGTON — The crosscurrents inside the Republican Party were on fresh display Tuesday evening with the unusual sight of two lawmakers delivering responses to the State of the Union address.

In the party’s official reply, which immediately followed President Obama’s speech, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the country faced “a crushing burden of debt.” He vowed that Republicans, after assuming control of the House this year, would honor their pledge to provide Americans “a better choice and a different vision.”

“Americans are skeptical of both political parties, and that skepticism is justified — especially when it comes to spending,” Mr. Ryan said, striking a conciliatory tone as he vowed to work with the president to find cuts. “So hold all of us accountable.”

But Mr. Ryan, who was designated by Speaker John A. Boehner to respond to the president, did not have the last word. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who founded the Tea Party Caucus last year, gave a response of her own in a message to the Tea Party Express, one of the movement’s largest groups of activists.

“For two years,” Ms. Bachmann said, “President Obama made promises, just like the ones we heard him make this evening, yet still we have high unemployment, devalued housing prices and the cost of gasoline is skyrocketing.”

She stood in front of a chart, which she used to illustrate how federal spending has increased in the Obama administration. The broadcast was delayed for several minutes, and after Ms. Bachmann finally arrived in front of the cameras, she glanced offstage throughout her six-minute speech.

While the speech from Ms. Bachmann was initially to be carried only on the Web site of the Tea Party Express, her speech was elevated when CNN provided live coverage after Mr. Ryan’s remarks. The dueling responses, which privately angered several leading Republicans, highlighted the potential fissures inside the party as Republicans face the challenges of governing in a time of severe budget constraints.

Mr. Ryan, a rising figure inside the party who has become a leading Republican voice on budget cuts, characterized the nation’s fiscal outlook as urgent and dire. He did not dwell upon his often-discussed plan to overhaul Social Security and other entitlement programs — ideas that are controversial even inside his own party — but instead focused on differences with the White House, particularly the health care law.

“Health care spending is driving the explosive growth of our debt. And the president’s law is accelerating our country toward bankruptcy,” Mr. Ryan said. “Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal crisis.”

He delivered his remarks from the Budget Committee hearing room on Capitol Hill, where many of the difficult debates will take place as lawmakers decide how to try to control spending. He offered few specific ideas in his 10-minute address, saying that the role of the government “is both vital and limited.”

While Mr. Ryan’s remarks had the blessing of his party’s leadership, and were intended to serve as a blueprint for a way forward, aides said Ms. Bachmann had not shared her comments in advance with Republican leaders or sought their approval, but rather was speaking on behalf of leaders of the Tea Party Express.

“I’m here at their request,” she said, “and not to compete with the official Republican remarks.”

    Two G.O.P. Responses Point to Potential Fault Lines, NYT, 25.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/politics/26repubs.html

Tea Party Activist Takes Over New Hampshire G.O.P.

January 22, 2011
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

DERRY, N.H. — A fight to lead the New Hampshire Republican Party through next year’s presidential race ended Saturday with an upset victory by a conservative candidate backed by members of the Tea Party and other grass-roots groups.

The candidate, Jack Kimball, a relative newcomer to party politics who ran for governor last year as a fiscal and social conservative, beat Juliana Bergeron, who leads the Cheshire County Republicans and was supported by former Gov. John H. Sununu, the outgoing party chairman.

The race was watched as a sign of how much influence Tea Party groups will exert here in the lead-up to New Hampshire’s presidential primary, the first in the nation, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 14, 2012. Mr. Kimball wasted no time in saying, minutes after his election, that he wanted the state’s Republican primary voters to choose a “good, strong conservative” candidate.

At least one potential presidential candidate hustled to congratulate Mr. Kimball. Before speaking with reporters, he took a cellphone call from former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who is scheduled to be here on Monday for a book-signing.

Andrew Hemingway, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, said Mr. Kimball’s win was evidence that the Tea Party and similar groups were pushing the state’s Republican Party to the right. Mr. Hemingway’s group helped a large number of conservatives, including many with Tea Party support, win election to the state legislature in the fall.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that New Hampshire is a moderate state, and I think this proves it,” Mr. Hemingway said. “There are new people voting, and they have a conservative outlook.”

Others said that the vote was not a sure sign of a changing Republican electorate. Republican primary voters here chose John McCain in 2008, and Barack Obama won the state decisively in the general election, with help from its many independents. In a presidential straw poll conducted at the party meeting by ABC News and WMUR-TV, Mr. Pawlenty received 8 percent of the vote.

In backing Ms. Bergeron for Republican leader, Mr. Sununu seemed to be sending the message that Mr. Kimball, a self-described “warrior” who has said he would not tolerate deviation from the party platform, would threaten party unity at a crucial time. In a strongly worded speech to state committee members before the vote, Mr. Sununu said that he was worried about divisions within the party and warned that its leaders must not alienate more moderate members, independents — who make up about 40 percent of the state’s voters — or even Democrats.

“We don’t want to be seen as a party that’s a sliver of a party,” he said. “We want to be seen as a party that welcomes all views.”

Mr. Sununu also urged the roughly 425 members in attendance not to alienate any Republican presidential candidates leading into the 2012 primary, saying it was imperative for New Hampshire to provide a “comfortable environment” for all.

“We have a responsibility because every four years the world watches as we are the most significant component in selecting a president of the United States,” he said. “The worst thing for the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primary is for people to feel this is not a place they want to participate.”

This month, Mr. Kimball alarmed some Republicans here when he said the new chairman should let presidential candidates know that New Hampshire Republicans want their party to “get back to its conservative values and stay there.” Traditionally, the state party chairman remains diligently neutral in presidential primaries, serving more as a good-will ambassador.

Mr. Kimball won the support of several powerful Republicans, including the new speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, William O’Brien, and its majority leader, D. J. Bettencourt. After his victory, which came in a 222-to-199 vote, Mr. Kimball told reporters that he would not take sides in the primary.

“It’s the folks that are going to make those determinations,” Mr. Kimball said. “It is the state G.O.P. chair’s responsibility to remain neutral and to make sure that there is an even playing field for all candidates.”

Addressing committee members, Mr. Kimball promised to build on Mr. Sununu’s successes and keep the party unified.

“I feel I can be that bridge for the new activists and the old,” he said. “I am a Republican — a conservative Republican who happens to have come out of the Tea Parties, but you will find the Reagan values in this guy.”

He also vowed to fight to ensure New Hampshire’s primary remained the first in the nation, a point of pride that was challenged in 2008 and almost surely will be again next year.

In the straw poll, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who has not curried Tea Party support, won with 36 percent of the vote, followed by Representative Ron Paul of Texas with 11 percent. Mr. Pawlenty was next with his 8 percent, and Sarah Palin received 7 percent. More than a dozen other potential candidates won smaller percentages.

    Tea Party Activist Takes Over New Hampshire G.O.P., NYT, 22.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/politics/23hampshire.html

Palin Defends Use of ‘Blood Libel’ Phrase

January 17, 2011
9:59 pm
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON – Sarah Palin said in a television interview on Monday evening that she agreed with bipartisan calls for civility in the wake of the Arizona shooting rampage, but she vowed to not be deterred from political debates while deciding whether to run for president.

“Peaceful dissent and discussion about ideas, that is what makes America exceptional,” Ms. Palin said in a prime-time appearance on the Fox News Channel. “We won’t allow that to be stifled by a tragic event in Arizona.”

Ms. Palin, a former Alaska governor, said that she had not yet decided what course her political future would take, but declared: “I’m not going to sit down. I’m not going to shut up.”
www.foxnews.com Sarah Palin was interviewed by Sean Hannity, a Fox host, on Monday.

In her first television interview since the Arizona shooting, Ms. Palin defended using the term “blood libel” to describe what she perceived as a rush to judgment by her critics for drawing a link between heated political rhetoric and the shooting that killed six people and wounded 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords. She dismissed suggestions that she did not know the historical significance of the phrase.

“Blood libel obviously means being falsely accused of having blood on your hands and in this case,” Ms. Palin said, “that’s exactly what was going on.”

The 30-minute interview with Sean Hannity, a Fox host, came five days after Ms. Palin was criticized by Democrats and several Republicans for a video message she released in the wake of the Arizona shooting rampage. Her tone was conciliatory throughout the interview, and she repeatedly pointed out that she was not attempting to engage in an act of political self-defense.

“This isn’t about me,” Ms. Palin said, speaking from a television studio in her home in Wasilla, Alaska. “My defense wasn’t self-defense, it was defending those who were falsely accused.”

Ms. Palin expressed her condolences to the victims of the shooting. She recited a Bible verse from the Book of Jeremiah, asking that God touch and comfort the families. She acknowledged that she and her family receives death threats, but she offered no specific details.

Ms. Palin, who is a paid Fox analyst, has been uncharacteristically quiet since the shooting. Several Republicans had urged Ms. Palin to come forward and join the national conversation over political civility that has been underway for more than a week.
In the midterm elections last year, Ms. Palin used a map with cross hairs over several swing Congressional districts, which Ms. Giffords, whose district was among those singled out, highlighted at the time as an example of overheated political speech. Ms. Palin has rejected suggestions that the map played any role in the shooting. The authorities have found no connection between vitriolic political rhetoric and the motive of the gunman.

As the field of potential 2012 Republican presidential contenders begins taking shape, Ms. Palin has given few signals about whether she intends to enter the race. Republican officials in early primary states say that Ms. Palin is one of the few prospective candidates who has not inquired – even privately – about scheduling a political visit.

Ms. Palin is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech on Jan. 29 at a Safari Club hunting convention on Jan. 29.

The television appearance on Monday evening provided a friendly venue for Ms. Palin to address the criticism that erupted in the last week. As the interview drew to a close, Mr. Hannity asked Ms. Palin whether the controversy had caused long-term damage to her political career.

“In a situation like we have just faced in these last eight days of being falsely accused of being an accessory to murder, I and others need make sure that we too are shedding light on truth so a lie cannot continue to live,” Ms. Palin said. “If a lie does live, then of course your career is over and your reputation is thrashed and you will be ineffective in what we intend to do.”

    Palin Defends Use of ‘Blood Libel’ Phrase, NYT, 17.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/palin-defends-use-of-blood-libel-phrase/

Palin Joins Debate on Heated Speech With Words That Stir New Controversy

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin broke her silence on Wednesday and delivered a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video message about the Arizona shootings, accusing commentators and journalists of “blood libel” in a frenzied rush to blame heated political speech for the violence.

As she sought to defend herself and seize control of a debate that has been boiling for days, Ms. Palin awakened a new controversy by invoking a phrase fraught with religious symbolism about the false accusation used by anti-Semites of Jews murdering Christian children. It was unclear whether Ms. Palin was aware of the historical meaning of the phrase.

“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” Ms. Palin said. “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

The video from Ms. Palin, running nearly eight minutes, was recorded in her home television studio in Alaska and released early Wednesday morning. Her words dominated the political landscape for nearly 12 hours before President Obama arrived in Tucson to speak at a memorial service honoring the six dead and 14 injured in the shootings.

For Ms. Palin, a former Alaska governor, the video provided one of the clearest signs yet that she is carefully tending to her image as she decides whether to seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. And it showed her continued determination to do so on her own terms and under her own control, without responding to questions or appearing in a public forum.

She spoke in a somber tone, absent the witticisms often woven into her political speeches, as she sought to contain a debate that had linked her — unfairly, she argued — with the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona.

In the midterm elections last year, Ms. Palin used a map with cross hairs over several swing Congressional districts, which Ms. Giffords highlighted in a television interview at the time as an example of overheated political speech. In the video statement, Ms. Palin rejected criticism of the map, and sought to cast that criticism as a broader indictment of the basic rights to free speech exercised by people of all political persuasions.

“We know violence isn’t the answer,” Ms. Palin said, sitting against a backdrop of a fireplace and an American flag. “When we take up our arms, we’re talking about our votes.”

The video stirred an emotional response from some Democratic lawmakers, Jewish groups and even some fellow Republicans, who said it was in poor taste for Ms. Palin to deliver her statement on a day that was devoted to remembering victims of last weekend’s shooting. The video played throughout the day on cable television and on the Internet.

Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush who has become a frequent critic of Republicans, said that the tone of Ms. Palin’s message was not appropriate for the moment of national grief and that she had missed an opportunity to be seen as a leader.

“Sarah Palin seems trapped in a world that is all about confrontation and bravado,” Mr. Dowd said. “When the country seeks comforting and consensus, she offers conflict and confrontation.”

Advisers to Ms. Palin did not respond to interview requests on Wednesday, and she did not cite any specific examples of what she considered to be unfair coverage or commentary. Ms. Palin offered her deep condolences for victims of the shooting, then went to on dismiss suggestions that political speech should be toned done. She did not mention the shooting suspect, Jared L. Loughner, by name, but said that the violence could not be blamed on talk radio or those who participated in political debate.

“There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged apparently apolitical criminal,” Ms. Palin said. “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?”

Ms. Palin also turned to the words of former President Ronald Reagan, saying that society should not be blamed for the acts of an individual. She said she had spent the last several days “praying for guidance,” as she sorted out the lessons of the Arizona tragedy.

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker,” Ms. Palin said. “It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

The video, which seemed to be aimed at appealing to her committed supporters rather than winning over her critics, contained several references to the country’s “foundational freedoms” and the intentions of the nation’s founders. Twice, she called the United States “exceptional,” a frequent dig at Mr. Obama, whom conservatives accuse of not believing in the concept of “American exceptionalism.”

The White House did not comment on Ms. Palin’s statement, and the president did not mention her in his address on Wednesday evening.

“President Obama and I may not agree on everything,” she said, “but I know he would join me in affirming the health of our democratic process.”

    Palin Joins Debate on Heated Speech With Words That Stir New Controversy, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13palin.html

Obama Calls for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and JEFF ZELENY

TUCSON — President Obama offered the nation’s condolences on Wednesday to the victims of the shootings here, calling on Americans to draw a lesson from the lives of the fallen and the actions of the heroes, and to usher in a new era of civility in their honor.

The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.”

It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from Saturday’s shootings to urge Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

The president led an overflow crowd at the evening service at the University of Arizona in eulogizing the six people who died on Saturday and asking for prayers for the wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who the authorities said was the target of an assassination attempt.

He warned against “simple explanations” and spoke of the unknowability of the thoughts that “lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.” He suggested that the events should force individuals to look inward, but also that they should prompt a collective response against reflexive ideological and social conflict.

While the tone and content were distinctly nonpolitical, there were clear political ramifications to the speech, giving Mr. Obama a chance, for an evening at least, to try to occupy a space outside of partisanship or agenda.

“If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost,” Mr. Obama said. “Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”

In Washington, members of the House reconvened for the first time since the shooting, setting aside a partisan health care debate to honor the lives of the victims.

The memorial service in Tucson took on the form of a national catharsis, including a presidential reading from the Book of Psalms. Thousands of students and others in the crowd cheered at several points during Mr. Obama’s 32-minute address, which sometimes had the feel of a rally dedicated to the Arizona victims.

“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse,” Mr. Obama said, “let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

The president spoke after stopping to visit Ms. Giffords in her hospital room. He said he was told that shortly after his visit, Ms. Giffords opened her eyes for the first time, a moment that was witnessed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York; Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California; and other lawmakers who were there to pay their respects.

“Gabby opened her eyes for the first time,” Mr. Obama announced. “Gabby opened her eyes!”

The scene inside McKale Memorial Arena was a mix of grief and celebration, where a capacity crowd of 14,000 gathered beneath championship banners for the University of Arizona Wildcats. The service, which was televised nationally on the major broadcast and cable news networks, gave the president an opportunity — and burden — to lead the nation in mourning during prime time.

Aides said Mr. Obama wrote much of the speech himself late Tuesday night at the White House. Laden with religion nuance, the speech seemed as though Mr. Obama was striking a preacher’s tone with a politician’s reverb.

The remarks came hours after former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a potential Republican rival to Mr. Obama in 2012, issued a sharp condemnation of the criticism that has been leveled against her in the days since the shooting. In a video message that filled the airwaves on Wednesday, she accused pundits and journalists of committing “blood libel” in a rush to place blame.

“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,” Ms. Palin said. “But when was it less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols?”

Since the shooting, Mr. Obama has spoken to many of the victims’ family members on the telephone, conversations that he helped spin into life lessons. In his speech, he told stories of each of the fallen victims: John Roll, a federal judge; Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck and Dorwan Stoddard, all retirees who had gone to hear their congresswoman speak; Gabe Zimmerman, a 30-year-old Congressional staffer; Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old with a budding interest in politics.

He also praised the people who rushed to the scene outside the Safeway supermarket, including the two men who wrestled the suspect, Jared L. Loughner, to the ground; the woman who seized his ammunition; and the intern who rushed to Ms. Giffords’s side to try to stem the bleeding.

“We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us,” Mr. Obama said. “I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

The first lady, Michelle Obama, traveled to Arizona for the memorial service and, with the president, visited family members and victims in hospital rooms and in private sessions before the memorial. At the service, she sat next to Mark Kelly, the astronaut who is married to Ms. Giffords, often reaching over to hold his hand.

The president was surrounded by a bipartisan group that included Justice Anthony Kennedy; retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a native of Arizona; and Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl and Gov. Jan Brewer, all Republicans. A bipartisan Congressional delegation from Washington also was seated nearby.

In Washington, House Republicans and Democrats met separately with the sergeant-at-arms and with officials from the United States Capitol Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who urged them to appoint a security coordinator in their home districts and to reach out to local law enforcement agencies for assistance, while also staying in contact with officers at the Capitol.

Several lawmakers described the message from law enforcement experts as telling them to use common sense, and that protecting all 535 members of Congress from largely unpredictable threats was a somewhat unmanageable task.

The president’s speech marked the third time since taking office that he had led the country in mourning. In November 2009, he eulogized the 13 soldiers who were shot at Fort Hood, Tex., and five months later he traveled to West Virginia to remember the 29 men who were killed in the nation’s worst coal mining disaster in four decades.

Here in Tucson, he saved his final words for Christina Green, the 9-year-old who wanted to meet her representative in Congress on Saturday.

“If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today,” Mr. Obama said, as the girl’s family, seated nearby, held hands. “We place our hands over our heart,” Mr. Obama said, promising to work to forge “a country that is forever worthy of her gentle happy spirit.”

Helene Cooper reported from Tucson, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington. David M. Herszenhorn, Janie Lorber and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Washington.

    Obama Calls for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13obama.html

Palin Calls Criticism ‘Blood Libel’

January 12, 2011
8:15 am
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Sarah Palin, who had been silent for days, issued a forceful denunciation of her critics on Wednesday in a video statement that accused pundits and journalists of “blood libel” in what she called their rush to blame heated political rhetoric for the shootings in Arizona.

“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” Ms. Palin said in a video posted to her Facebook page. “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

Ms. Palin’s use last year of a map with cross hairs hovering over a number of swing districts, including that of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, has become a symbol of that overheated rhetoric. In an interview with The Caucus on Monday, Tim Pawlenty, a potential 2012 rival and the former Republican governor of Minnesota, said he would not have produced such a map.

In the video, Ms. Palin rejected criticism of the map, and sought to cast that criticism as a broader indictment of the basic political rights of free speech exercised by people of all political persuasions.

She said that acts like the shootings in Arizona “begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state.”

“Not with those who listen to talk radio,” said Ms. Palin, who is also a Fox News contributor. “Not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle. Not with law abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their first amendment rights at campaign rallies. Not with those who proudly voted in the last election.”

In her seven-and-a-half minute video, Ms. Palin said that “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin’s use of the phrase in her video, which helped make the video rapidly go viral, is attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish.

In the video, posing in front of a fireplace and an American flag, Ms. Palin looks directly at the camera as she condemns the shooting and talks about “irresponsible statements” made since it happened.

With President Obama scheduled to travel to Arizona to speak at a memorial for the victims, Ms. Palin posted the video early in the day Wednesday, getting a jump on the discussion.

“President Obama and I may not agree on everything,” she said, “but I know he would join me in affirming the health of our democratic process.”

Ms. Palin quoted former President Ronald Reagan as saying that society should not be blamed for the acts of an individual. She said, “it is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

In the past several days, some pundits have wondered aloud why Ms. Palin had not been more vocal, considering the criticism being leveled at her. In the video, Ms. Palin, who is mentioned as a possible presidential contender for 2012, returns again and again to her contention that critics were unfairly tarring people who engaged in political debates last year.

“When we say ‘take up our arms,’ we are talking about our vote,” she said. “Yes, our debates are full of passion, but we settle our political differences respectfully.”

She said she and her supporters would not change their rhetoric because of the shooting in Arizona.

“We will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults,” she said.

Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed Nevada Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, also issued a statement defending her rhetoric.

“Expanding the context of the attack to blame and to infringe upon the people’s Constitutional liberties is both dangerous and ignorant,” she said in the statement, according to news reports. “The irresponsible assignment of blame to me, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party movement by commentators and elected officials puts all who gather to redress grievances in danger.”

Ms. Angle said during the campaign that voters could pursue “Second Amendment remedies” if the political process did not work for them. In the wake of the Arizona shooting, those remarks have been criticized anew.

“Finger-pointing towards political figures is an audience-rating game and contradicts the facts as they are known – that the shooter was obsessed with his twisted plans long before the Tea Party movement began,” Ms. Angle said in her statement.

Ms. Palin’s video, which appeared to be professionally produced, is sure to intensify speculation that Ms. Palin is planning to run for president in 2012.

By taking on her critics directly, using language designed to grab headlines, Ms. Palin is likely to steal attention away from her potential presidential rivals, most of whom have issued more cautious statements.

Caution is not part of Ms. Palin’s political repertoire. She starts the video with the standard expressions of condolences to the victims of the shootings. But her demeanor quickly shifts into a more aggressive posture.

The video is laden with references that will appeal to her potential supporters. She talks about the country’s “foundational freedoms” and the intentions of the nation’s founders, and refers to former President Reagan.

And twice, she calls the United States “exceptional,” a dig at Mr. Obama, whom conservatives accuse of not believing in the concept of “American exceptionalism” because of his answer to a reporter’s question early in his presidency.

“Public discourse and debate isn’t a sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength,” she says. “It is part of why America is exceptional.”

    Palin Calls Criticism ‘Blood Libel’, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/palin-calls-criticism-blood-libel/

Why Politicians Need to Stay Out in the Open

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By PAUL E. KANJORSKI

Washington

THE shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords this weekend reminded me of another, similar event in 1954, when I was a page in the House of Representatives. While the House was in session, Puerto Rican nationalists burst into the gallery and shot five members of Congress assembled on the floor.

There were few security restrictions around the Capitol at the time; anyone who wanted to watch Congress in action was welcome to walk into the building and take a seat in the House or Senate public galleries. There were no metal detectors or even many Capitol Police officers. In fact, it was a congressman, James Van Zandt of Pennsylvania, who rushed from the House floor and tackled the assailants with the assistance of a gallery spectator.

Americans were shocked at the assault, but only minor security procedures were put in place afterward. Most people assumed the attack was an aberration committed by political extremists and unlikely to be repeated.

My fellow page and best friend Bill Emerson and I carried several of the wounded members off the House floor, and in the years that followed we often talked about what that searing experience had meant. We recognized that the Capitol building itself was a symbol of freedom around the world and was therefore an inviting target. But we concluded that working in the Capitol required the assumption of a certain amount of risk to one’s personal safety.

Three decades later we were both members of Congress — he as a Republican from Missouri, I as a Democrat from Pennsylvania — and we continued our debate about balancing members’ security with the imperative to remain accessible.

It wasn’t idle talk. During the run-up to the first Persian Gulf war there were threats from Middle Eastern terrorists against Congress, and the sergeant at arms tried to persuade Congress to install an iron fence around the Capitol and to encase the House gallery in bulletproof glass. We both strongly objected, and the plan was rejected.

Bill didn’t live to see 9/11, but I suspect he would have been as uneasy as I was to see barricades around the Capitol complex and complicated new procedures for visitors, who are no longer free to roam the halls without ID cards. Like most of my colleagues who witnessed the smoke rising from the Pentagon in 2001, I accepted that we had to adopt reasonable restrictions to protect our nation’s critical buildings.

Nevertheless, even in this post-9/11 world, the shooting of Ms. Giffords was especially shocking, because it was so personal. She was hunted down far from the symbolic halls of power while performing the most fundamental responsibility of her job, listening to her constituents.

As far as we know, her attacker had no grand political point; I doubt we will ever really understand his motives. What the shooting does tell us, however, is that it is impossible to eliminate the risks faced by elected officials when they interact with their constituents.

We all lose an element of freedom when security considerations distance public officials from the people. Therefore, it is incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation.

That is why the House speaker, John Boehner, spoke for everyone who has been in Congress when he said that an attack against one of us is an attack against all who serve. It is also an attack against all Americans.

More than 50 years ago, my friend Bill Emerson and I witnessed an unspeakably violent expression of a political message on the floor of the House, and we learned how easily political differences can degenerate into violence. At the same time, regardless of the political climate, there can never be freedom without risk.

Despite numerous threats, Ms. Giffords took that risk and welcomed her constituents at a grocery store in Tucson. She recognized, as we did, that accepting the risk of violence was part of the price of freedom.

Paul E. Kanjorski served in the House of Representatives from 1985 to 2011.

    Why Politicians Need to Stay Out in the Open, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11Kanjorski.html

After Attack, Focus in Washington on Civility and Security

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON – With the nation’s capital reeling from Saturday’s attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, in which an aide to the lawmaker and five constituents were killed both parties on Sunday began a wrenching process of soul-searching about the tone of political discourse and wondered aloud if a lack of civility had somehow contributed to the bloodshed in Tucson.

In many ways, the unprovoked shooting spree at a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a supermarket just north of Tucson, was a terrifying nightmare come to life for elected officials who frequently find themselves face-to-face in uncomfortable conversations with angry and, at times, aggressive constituents. Rank-and-file lawmakers typically do not travel with security, and local police often are unaware of or do not send officers to their events.

Stepping fully into his new role as the leader of the entire House of Representatives, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, held a rare bipartisan conference call with lawmakers on Sunday afternoon to discuss the Arizona situation and potential concerns about security.

Lawmakers were also scheduled to get a fuller security briefing on Wednesday from the United States Capitol Police, the House Sergeant at Arms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Boehner said..

And while the shooting suspect who is in federal custody in Arizona, Jared Lee Loughner, appeared to be mentally unstable, the quick conclusion by investigators that Ms. Giffords, a three-term Democrat, had been the intended victim of the rampage was enough to prompt lawmakers, including Mr. Boehner, to reflect on the inherent risks of public service and to express concerns that angry discourse could lead to violence.

“Public service is a high honor, but these tragic events remind us that all of us in our roles in service to our fellow citizens comes with a risk,” Mr. Boehner said in a Sunday morning appearance in his home town of West Chester, Ohio. “This inhuman act should not and will not deter us from our calling to represent our constituents and to fulfill our oaths of office. No act, no matter how heinous, must be allowed to stop us from our duty.”

The shooting attack has put Mr. Boehner and other elected leaders in a delicate position, at risk of being seen as politicizing the situation even as they must confront its inevitable political implications. And it comes at a delicate time, at the end of the week in which Republicans assumed control of the House, marking the conclusion of a contentious campaign season and the start of a new era of divided government in Washington.

For Democrats, the challenge is how to voice their suspicion that overheated rhetoric, especially from the right, is leading to threats and actual violence without being perceived as blaming Republicans for what may have been the act of a lone madman.

For Republicans, the challenge is to seem sympathetic but not defensive, especially given the contentious policy issues, particularly immigration and gun rights, that have been simmering in Ms. Giffords’s southeastern Arizona district and had led to previous threats against her as well as vandalism of her Tucson office shortly after the health care law was adopted last year.

Mr. Boehner, in his televised appearance on Sunday morning, said that he had ordered the flags over the House side of the Capitol flown at half staff in memory of Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, the director of community outreach for Ms. Giffords who was killed in the shooting. Mr. Boehner also reiterated that all legislative business this week, including a divisive vote to repeal the health care overhaul, had been postponed.

The Arizona shooting and the handwringing over political incivility, dominated the Sunday television talk shows, replacing the normally staid policy banter with footage of gunshot victims being rushed away on stretchers, of emergency helicopters taking flight, and people lighting candles and setting up floral displays at vigils in Tucson and Washington.

In a roundtable discussion with colleagues on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a friend of Ms. Giffords, said that Americans both inside and outside of government had a responsibility to temper the political discourse.

“It’s a moment for both parties in Congress together,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “We absolutely have to realize that we’re all in this for the same reason, to make America a better place.” She noted that House Democrats and Republicans would soon hold separate party “retreats” and urged that the two sides also meet together.

“I hope that the Democratic and Republican leadership will make a decision for us to have some kind of not-just-token unity event,” she said. “We should have an event where we spend some time together talking about how we can work better together and then we can move forward together and try to avoid tragedies like this.”

In the same roundtable discussion, Representative Raul Labrador, a freshman Republican from Idaho, who had Tea Party support, cautioned the host, David Gregory, about drawing connections between the anti-big government rhetoric of the fall campaign and inexplicable acts of violence.

“We have to be careful not to blame one side or the other because both sides are guilty of this,” Mr. Labrador said. “You have extremes on both sides. You have crazy people on both sides.”

In the same conversation, Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, found himself deflecting the suggestion that perhaps the shooting indicated a need for tighter gun control laws. “That’s the same basic Glock 9 millimeter that most, that many police agencies use,” Mr. Franks said. “So it’s not that the gun was evil but in the hands of an evil person. Maybe a police officer with the same gun could have prevented a lot of people from dying.”

Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, Democrat of Missouri, however, said the country was in a “dark place” and needed to take pause because things were getting dangerous. “We must in a democracy, have access to our constituents,” he said. “I think what we are seeing though is the public is being riled up to the point where those kind of events and opportunities for people to express their opinions to use are becoming a little volatile.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, went further in suggesting that Republicans commentators bore greater responsibility for increasingly incendiary rhetoric.

“Those of us in public life and the journalists who cover us should be thoughtful in response to this and try to bring down the rhetoric, which I’m afraid has become pervasive in our discussion of political issues,” Mr. Durbin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Then, in a clear jab at former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Tea Party groups, Mr. Durbin said, “The phrase ‘Don’t retreat; reload,’ putting crosshairs on congressional districts as targets, these sorts of things, I think, invite the kind of toxic rhetoric that can lead unstable people to believe this is an acceptable response.”

But Mr. Durbin also noted that some Republicans had spoken out forcefully against violence. “Let me salute the senior senator from Arizona, John McCain, whose statement yesterday was clear and unequivocal that we are not accepting this kind of conduct as being anywhere near the mainstream,” Mr. Durbin said.

The shooting incident also presented challenge and opportunity for President Obama who campaigned on a message of post-partisanship and promised after the Democrats’ defeat in the midterm elections last November, to do more to bring the parties together.

At the same time, he is the leader of Democrats who privately at least believe that some of the Tea Party and Republican rhetoric has gone too far, especially in last year’s health care debate.

The president moved quickly on Saturday to show his administration responding forcefully to events in Arizona, dispatching the director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III, to oversee the investigation. And on Sunday, Mr. Obama said he would delay a scheduled trip to a battery factory in upstate New York on Tuesday and would call for a nationwide moment of silence at 11 a.m. on Monday.

“I call on Americans to observe a moment of silence to honor the innocent victims of the senseless tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, including those still fighting for their lives,” Mr. Obama said. “It will be a time for us to come together as a nation in prayer or reflection, keeping the victims and their families closely at heart.” Aides said he would observe the moment with staff on the South Lawn of the White House.

Mr. Obama, having broader authority than Mr. Boehner, issued a proclamation calling for all flags to be flown at half staff in honor of the shooting victims.

Representative Wasserman Schultz urged her colleagues to choose their words carefully in the days ahead but cautioned that doing so might not protect against another attack like the one in Arizona. She also said tighter security was essential.

“Someone who is unhinged, someone who is mentally unstable, we don’t know – the slightest thing could set them off,” she said. “But we do have to make sure that among our responsibility is to be civil to each other.”

    After Attack, Focus in Washington on Civility and Security, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/politics/10capital.html

Tombstone Politics

January 9, 2011
10:47 pm
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

If it turns out that a poisonous variant of free speech is partially to blame for the shootings in Tucson, we will most certainly be struck by the fact that Gabrielle Giffords was seen last week in Congress, reading part of the Constitution that allows an American citizen to say just about anything.

But as Rep. Giffords herself also pointed out, in March when she was a target because of her vote on health care reform, free speech does have a cost.

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” said Giffords. “Crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences.”

Giffords had already felt a blunt edge of opponents’ rage — a window in her Tucson office was shattered after she voted to expand health care for other Americans.

The court filings late Sunday offered few clues on why a deranged man would open fire on a public servant meeting the public, killing six, gravely wounding Ms. Giffords. Was it because she was a Jew? A woman? A Democrat? A member of Congress? An advocate of health care? A face of government in a state where anti-government sentiment is the early bird special? All we know is that the 22-year-old man charged with the shootings, Jared Lee Loughner, wrote notes about a planned “assassination.”

So, from there, deductions must begin. One discussion goes to the first two amendments of the Constitution — a clause that guarantees even crazy people the right to say horrible things, and another one that seems to give those same crazy people the right to own a lethal weapon.

Neither amendment, of course, killed a 9-year-old girl or put a bullet through the head of that bright soul, Gabrielle Giffords. But both amendments, when abused, can have lethal consequences, as the congresswoman herself said so hauntingly in March. The sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, who is already under Tea Party attack for speaking his mind, had it mostly right when he said Arizona had become “the Tombstone of the United States.”

Tombstone, the town, is in Giffords’s southern Arizona district, an Old West burg where shootouts are staged, bodies fall into the street, and then everybody applauds and laughs it off. Tombstone politics is the place we’ve been living in for some time now, and our guns are loaded.

In my home state Washington, federal officials recently put away a 64-year-old man who threatened, in the most vile language, to kill Senator Patty Murray because she voted for health care reform. Imagine: kill her because she wanted to give fellow Americans a chance to get well. Why would a public policy change prompt a murder threat?

Prosecutors here in Washington State told me that the man convicted of making the threats was using language that, in some cases, came word-for-word from Glenn Beck, the Fox demagogue. Every afternoon Charles A. Wilson would sit in his living room and stuff his head with Beck, a man who spouts scary nonsense to millions. Of course, Beck didn’t make the threats or urge his followers to do so.

But it was Beck who said “the war is just beginning,” after the health care bill was passed. And it was Beck who re-introduced the paranoid and racist rants of a 1950s-era John Birch Society supporter, W. Cleon Skousen, who said a one-world government cabal was plotting a takeover.

It’s also worth one more mention of Sharron Angle, the Republican who was nearly elected Senator from Nevada. She agreed with a talk-radio host who suggested that “domestic enemies” — a code for treasonous agents, deserving of death — were working within the walls of Congress. And it was Angle who speculated on whether people frustrated with politicians would turn to “Second Amendment remedies,” which is not even code for assassination. It can only mean one thing.

The federal judge who was murdered on Saturday morning, John M. Roll, received numerous death threats to him and his family after an Arizona talk-radio station went after him because he dared to let a civil rights lawsuit against the state’s harsh immigration law proceed. He needed marshal protection from these rabid radio-inspired opponents of a free and functioning judiciary.

The good news is that already, in just a few days time, this kind of talk from Beck, Palin and Angle is now being seen for what it really is — something not to be touched by fair citizens or ambitious politicians. And the long-overdue revulsion is because such poisons — death threats in place of reasoned argument, fetishizing of guns, glib talk of “taking someone out” — were used so carelessly, as if they didn’t matter.

Well, they do matter. Even if the gunman’s motives are never truly known, the splattering of so much innocent blood on a Saturday morning gives a nation as fractious as ours a chance to think about what happens when words are used as weapons, and weapons are used in place of words.

    Tombstone Politics, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/tombstone-politics/

Climate of Hate

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening: the purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the G.O.P. establishment. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.

    Climate of Hate, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html

Shooting Casts a Harsh Spotlight on Arizona’s Unique Politics

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Arizona is not a world apart, but its political culture has often resided at a distance from much of the nation.

But after the fatal shooting of six that left Representative Gabrielle Giffords critically injured, Arizona has shifted from a place on the political fringe to symbol of a nation whose political discourse has lost its way.

The moment was crystallized by Clarence W. Dupnik, the Pima County sheriff, who, in a remarkable news conference on Saturday after the shooting, called his state “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

On Sunday, the state found itself increasingly on the defensive against notions that it is a hothouse of hateful language and violent proclivities. It was as if Arizona somehow created the setting for the shocking episode, even though there was no evidence to support the claim.

Arizona’s United States senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, moved quickly to defend their home state, denouncing before national audiences the man accused in the shooting, and, in Mr. Kyl’s case, suggesting that Sheriff Dupnik, a Democrat who was elected to office, had overreached. “I didn’t really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing last night,” Mr. Kyl said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

Other elected officials were pressed to explain why the assault might have taken place in their state. “Arizona’s the epicenter of a lot of division and a lot of hard politics,” Representative Raul M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “From the top to the bottom of not only our elected leadership, but community.”

In recent years, where much of the nation has seen intolerance, Arizona has cited security. What other Americans have viewed as outlandish, Arizona has interpreted as independence. It is one of the few states in America that would produce a politician like Ms. Giffords: a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, tough on border issues, and a Democrat passionate about the health care overhaul.

Its unusual mix of residents largely born and raised outside of the state, its three-way political divide — independents are as numerous as Republicans and Democrats — bifurcated urban and rural culture and strong pro-gun laws give the state an independent, and at times almost isolated, streak.

While the individual components of Arizona are shared by other states, the mix of the state’s border proximity, rapid growth and dire fiscal circumstances have combined in the last few years into a riveting and sometimes chilling theater of fiscal, political and cultural tensions.

The shooting comes soon after the passage of a strict anti-immigration measure that is being challenged by the federal government, the killing of a rancher that led to the law and the revelation that the state has stopped paying for some transplants for critically ill patients. There is also the state’s role as an early promoter of the effort during the 2010 Senate campaign to write the children of illegal immigrants out of the 14th Amendment provision that grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

“Just when we were starting to emerge from the P.R. trauma of the immigration law, and with the eyes of the nation upon us for the college football national championship all week for Monday night’s game, we offer up our state as the land of Oswalds,” said Jason Rose, a native Arizonan and a well-known political adviser in Phoenix. “This tragedy can’t help but curtail, at least for some time, Arizona’s role as a Wild West incubator.”

Talk radio, which has a long tradition in Arizona, has been particularly heated as the state has struggled with immigration. “You’ve got a lot going on in Arizona that feeds into the kind of discourse that some people think is creating a contentious climate in this country,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers magazine, which covers the industry. “I wouldn’t say that talk radio is more contentious or extreme or radical in Arizona, but they are just closer to the issues at hand. It’s a national story elsewhere; there, it’s a local story.”

Arizona has found itself in the position of self-defense against a critical nation before. Shortly after taking office in 1987, Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded the state holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a move that enraged state workers and caused a boycott of the state, which was the last to finally embrace the holiday.

“Arizona’s at the tip of the spear,” said Kelly Townsend, a co-founder of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party. “I think people are getting to the pressure point where they can’t restrain themselves anymore in expressing their feelings.

“I don’t mean restrain themselves in terms of violence, but calling names. It’s a reaction to all the pressures we’re facing. It’s not that anyone is trying to hurt anyone. It’s just that our budget is so incredibly stressed right now that we can’t afford to be paying for so many people coming into our state. There’s a lot of pressure on the backs of everyone, and so the anger and these kinds of statements are made underneath that pressure.”

While many states have nonrestrictive gun laws, Arizona’s zeal for weapons has often made headlines. It recently became one of just a few states with a law that allows people to carry concealed guns without a permit. Last summer, Ms. Giffords’s Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, had a campaign event in which voters were invited to “shoot a fully automatic M-16” with him to symbolize his assault on her campaign.

The state also allows for weapons in bars, which is unusual. Last year, an unsuccessful candidate for Congress, Pamela Gorman, ran on a pro-gun platform; a campaign video depicted her firing off rounds several times.

Arizona may now stand at a crossroad, in which the state’s more moderate, independent political factions begin to seize the state’s political discourse, in the spirit of Barry Goldwater and the pre-2008 Mr. McCain, or becomes all the more polarized. But, said Mr. Rose, who at one point was a spokesman for J. D. Hayworth, the former radio host who challenged Mr. McCain in the primary last year, “Either way, a giant collision is about to occur.”

Reporting was contributed by Sharon Otterman, Sarah Wheaton and Kate Zernike.

    Shooting Casts a Harsh Spotlight on Arizona’s Unique Politics, NYT, 9.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10arizona.html

In the Shock of the Moment, the Politicking Stops ... Until It Doesn’t

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON — Aides to Sarah Palin angrily rejected suggestions that she had some responsibility for the angry political climate that served as a backdrop to the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Some Democrats said Ms. Palin should at a minimum apologize for political tactics like putting out a map that placed cross hairs on Ms. Giffords’ district. They said she should think about what contribution she might have made to fomenting antigovernment sentiment.

A day after the shooting of Ms. Giffords and 19 other people in Arizona focused the nation’s attention on the heat of its political culture, Republicans and Democrats began the delicate task of navigating a tragedy that has the potential to alter the political landscape.

Leaders in both parties sought Sunday to project a nonpartisan civility, with President Obama, whose advisers were weighing the possibility of a national address, calling for a national moment of silence and the House speaker, John A. Boehner, replacing a contentious health care debate on Wednesday with a bipartisan security briefing for lawmakers.

Yet beneath that public sense of comity was a subtle round of jockeying — on cable news, blogs, Twitter and even Ms. Palin’s Facebook page — as both sides sought to gain the high ground and deal with the risks and challenges presented by the shootings.

Some Democrats and liberal activists wondered aloud whether heated Republican and conservative attacks against Democrats and the government over the past two years had contributed to a climate in which the gunman found a target in a member of Congress.

Republicans, at times indignant, focused blame on the apparent psychological problems of the suspect, Jared L. Loughner, and suggested that liberals were trying to politicize a personal tragedy. As much as anyone, Ms. Palin emerged as a fulcrum for the debate, once again personifying a broader cultural and ideological divide.

Former Representative Chris Carney of Pennsylvania, whose district, like Ms. Giffords’s, was on list of 20 Congressional districts that Ms. Palin’s political operation marked with cross hairs, was quoted in The Times Tribune of Scranton as saying, “It would be very useful if she came out and, if not apologize, say that she was wrong in putting that sort of logo on people’s districts.”

He was echoing Ms. Giffords’s own comments from around the time the list came out, when she said there could be “consequences” to political appeals that use symbolism like gun sights.

“I don’t understand how anybody can be held responsible for somebody who is completely mentally unstable like this,” an adviser to Ms. Palin, Rebecca Mansour, said in an interview with a conservative radio host, Tammy Bruce. Responding to accusatory messages on the Web, Ms. Mansour added: “People actually accuse Governor Palin of this. It’s appalling — appalling. I can’t actually express how disgusting that is.”

Ms. Mansour said that the cross hairs, in fact, were not meant to be an allusion to guns, and agreed with her interviewer’s reference to them as “surveyors symbols.” Aides to Ms. Palin did not respond to interview requests on Sunday.

The Arizona rampage upended the opening agenda for the 112th Congress, particularly efforts by the new Republican majority to repeal the new health care law.

“This inhuman act should not, and will not, deter us from our calling to represent our constituents and to fulfill our oaths of office,” said Mr. Boehner, who presided over a unity conference call with hundreds of Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Sunday. “No act, no matter how heinous, must be allowed to stop us from our duties.”

The president ordered that flags be flown at half-staff and called for a national moment of silence at 11 a.m. Monday, which aides said he would observe from the White House South Lawn. He canceled an economic trip to New York on Tuesday.

Mr. Obama was considering delivering a speech about the greater context surrounding the shooting, but advisers said it was premature to do so until Ms. Giffords’s condition stabilized and more became known about the gunman’s motives.

The shooting could also become a theme of the State of the Union address.

The subtext for the political discussion was the new balance of power in Washington, and how the shootings might play into Democratic efforts to regain initiative — and Republican efforts to keep it — after their losses in November. Both sides emerged from the weekend cognizant of the ways in which a politically charged act of violence, whatever the actual motives or mental state of the gunman, can recalibrate the national dialogue.

Mr. Obama did not speak about the shootings on Sunday, but the attack offered a moment for the president to rise above partisan politics.

Some Democrats were urging him to look back to recent history, when President Bill Clinton seized the political high ground after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, placing blame on the growing antigovernment sentiment. (Marking the 15th anniversary of those attacks this past April, Mr. Clinton said the return of the sentiment in recent years, combined with the ability to spread it faster via the Internet, was threatening to set the stage for a new round of violence.)

Yet openly seeking political advantage in tragedy is a delicate business and can backfire, as some of Mr. Clinton’s aides suggested. “The only way you gain political advantage is by doing absolutely nothing to take advantage — and not have a lot of people backgrounding about how clever your political strategy is,” said Michael D. McCurry, who was Mr. Clinton’s press secretary at the time of the Oklahoma bombing.

    In the Shock of the Moment, the Politicking Stops ... Until It Doesn’t, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/politics/10politics.html

Office Staff for Giffords Is ‘a Family’

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Many Congressional staffs are close, but those who work for Representative Gabrielle Giffords in her Tucson office seem especially close.

They socialize outside work. They recently held a holiday party at a staff member’s home in Tucson. Everyone, including Ms. Giffords, came and exchanged gifts, with a twist — no gift could be store-bought; each had to come from the giver’s home. That was in keeping with what C. J. Karamargin, a spokesman for Ms. Giffords, called her penchant for frugality.

“We consider ourselves a family,” Mr. Karamargin said. “Not just a team, but a family.”

That family was wrenched apart Saturday when a gunman killed 6 people and wounded 14 others in Tucson. The bullets killed one member of Ms. Giffords’s staff, hurt two others and gravely wounded her.

Gabriel M. Zimmerman, her director of community outreach, was among those killed. Pamela Simon, her outreach coordinator, and Ronald Barber, her district director, were among the wounded. They were hospitalized but were expected to recover.

All of them worked for Ms. Giffords since she first went to Congress in January 2007. They formed what Mr. Karamargin said was a loyal corps of devoted aides who shared Ms. Giffords’s passion for solving constituents’ problems.

And they enjoyed one another’s company. The entire staff attended Ms. Giffords’s wedding in 2007. They recently went bowling together. Mr. Zimmerman, 30, had a background in social work. He was engaged to a nurse, first worked for Ms. Giffords as a local field organizer and was promoted to work in community outreach.

He organized the event at which the shooting occurred. It was intended to give constituents a chance to question Ms. Giffords and seek help for their problems.

Ms. Giffords’s Congressional office had a good track record for resolving cases, according to Daniel Graver, a former legislative aide to her. He attributed the results to Ms. Giffords herself but also to Mr. Zimmerman’s management of her casework.

“In the office, he was a tireless champion for people who really needed help. He would always make time to sit down and talk to anyone, old people or those in need,” Mr. Graver said. “He was great with really difficult people, with people who were angry and upset; he was a peacemaker.”

When Mr. Zimmerman was shot, he was asking constituents how Ms. Giffords’s office could help them.

Mr. Barber, 65, the district director, was standing next to Ms. Giffords and was shot at least twice.

A grandfather, he had retired from his job as an administrator for the State Department of Economic Security when he signed up for Ms. Giffords’s first House race in 2006. He worked with people with disabilities and was usually the first one in the office in the morning and the last to leave at night.

One of the first things he said when he joined the staff was, “It’s important for all of us to celebrate each other’s successes,” Mr. Karamargin said.

Ms. Simon, who is in her early 60s, worked part time for Ms. Giffords, had been a public school teacher and is active in her church. She loves chocolate and is the keeper of the snacks in the office. Most recently, she helped organize Ms. Giffords’s thousands of holiday cards for troops, sent from local children to Arizonans who were stationed overseas or at the local veterans’ hospital.

Staff members who worked in Ms. Giffords’s Washington office headed to Tucson, and they all met on Sunday. “The unspeakably tragic news about Gabe has solidified the bonds between us,” Mr. Karamargin said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 10, 2011

An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to C. J. Karamargin as Ms. Karamargin.

    Office Staff for Giffords Is ‘a Family’, NYT, 9.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10staff.html

Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and KATE ZERNIKE

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.

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.

    Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics, NYT, 8.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09capital.html

A Turning Point in the Discourse, but in Which Direction?

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By MATT BAI

WASHINGTON — Within minutes of the first reports Saturday that Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and a score of people with her had been shot in Tucson, pages began disappearing from the Web. One was Sarah Palin’s infamous “cross hairs” map from last year, which showed a series of contested Congressional districts, including Ms. Giffords’s, with gun targets trained on them. Another was from Daily Kos, the liberal blog, where one of the congresswoman’s apparently liberal constituents declared her “dead to me” after Ms. Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi in House leadership elections last week.

Odds are pretty good that neither of these — nor any other isolated bit of imagery — had much to do with the shooting in Tucson. But scrubbing them from the Internet couldn’t erase all evidence of the rhetorical recklessness that permeates our political moment. The question is whether Saturday’s shooting marks the logical end point of such a moment — or rather the beginning of a terrifying new one.

Modern America has endured such moments before. The intense ideological clashes of the 1960s, which centered on Communism and civil rights and Vietnam, were marked by a series of assassinations that changed the course of American history, carried out against a televised backdrop of urban riots and self-immolating war protesters. During the culture wars of the 1990s, fought over issues like gun rights and abortion, right-wing extremists killed 168 people in Oklahoma City and terrorized hundreds of others in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park and at abortion clinics in the South.

What’s different about this moment is the emergence of a political culture — on blogs and Twitter and cable television — that so loudly and readily reinforces the dark visions of political extremists, often for profit or political gain. It wasn’t clear Saturday whether the alleged shooter in Tucson was motivated by any real political philosophy or by voices in his head, or perhaps by both. But it’s hard not to think he was at least partly influenced by a debate that often seems to conflate philosophical disagreement with some kind of political Armageddon.

The problem here doesn’t lie with the activists like most of those who populate the Tea Parties, ordinary citizens who are doing what citizens are supposed to do — engaging in a conversation about the direction of the country. Rather, the problem would seem to rest with the political leaders who pander to the margins of the margins, employing whatever words seem likely to win them contributions or TV time, with little regard for the consequences.

Consider the comments of Sharron Angle, the Tea Party favorite who unsuccessfully ran against Harry Reid for the Senate in Nevada last year. She talked about “domestic enemies” in the Congress and said, “I hope we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies.” Then there’s Rick Barber, a Republican who lost his primary in a Congressional race in Alabama, but not before airing an ad in which someone dressed as George Washington listened to an attack on the Obama agenda and gravely proclaimed, “Gather your armies.”

In fact, much of the message among Republicans last year, as they sought to exploit the Tea Party phenomenon, centered — like the Tea Party moniker itself — on this imagery of armed revolution. Popular spokespeople like Ms. Palin routinely drop words like “tyranny” and “socialism” when describing the president and his allies, as if blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms.

It’s not that such leaders are necessarily trying to incite violence or hysteria; in fact, they’re not. It’s more that they are so caught up in a culture of hyperbole, so amused with their own verbal flourishes and the ensuing applause, that — like the bloggers and TV hosts to which they cater — they seem to lose their hold on the power of words.

On Saturday, for instance, Michael Steele, the Republican Party chairman, was among the first to issue a statement saying he was “shocked and horrified” by the Arizona shooting, and no doubt he was. But it was Mr. Steele who, last March, said he hoped to send Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the “firing line.”

Mr. Steele didn’t mean this the way it sounded, of course; he was talking about “firing” in the pink slip sense of the word. But his carelessly constructed, made-for-television rhetoric reinforced the dominant imagery of the moment — a portrayal of 21st-century Washington as being like 18th-century Lexington and Concord, an occupied country on the verge of armed rebellion.

Contrast that with one of John McCain’s finer moments as a presidential candidate in 2008, when a woman at a Minnesota town hall meeting asserted that Mr. Obama was a closeted Arab. “No, ma’am, he’s not,” Mr. McCain quickly replied, taking back the microphone. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with.” Mr. McCain was harking back to a different moment in American politics, in which such disagreements could be intense without becoming existential clashes in which the freedom of the country was at stake.

None of this began last year, or even with Mr. Obama or with the Tea Party; there were constant intimations during George W. Bush’s presidency that he was a modern Hitler or the devious designer of an attack on the World Trade Center, a man whose very existence threatened the most cherished American ideals.

The more pressing question, though, is where this all ends — whether we will begin to re-evaluate the piercing pitch of our political debate in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, or whether we are hurtling unstoppably into a frightening period more like the late 1960s.

The country labors still to recover from the memories of Dealey Plaza and the Ambassador Hotel, of Memphis and Birmingham and Watts. Tucson will either be the tragedy that brought us back from the brink, or the first in a series of gruesome memories to come.

    A Turning Point in the Discourse, but in Which Direction?, 8.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09bai.html

A Passionate Politician and a Friend to Colleagues, Bikers and Lost Mayors

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — Unusual is a relative term in American political life, but Representative Gabrielle Giffords fits the bill: avid equestrian and motorcycle enthusiast, repository of arcane health care data, successful Democrat elected three times in a Republican Congressional district, French horn player and wife of an astronaut.

Ms. Giffords, who was shot and critically wounded while meeting with constituents in her district in southern Arizona on Saturday, is widely admired and liked in her state and the nation’s capital for more than her political smarts. Friends and associates describe her as the first person to arrange a party for a departing colleague, the one who will walk you across the Capitol complex to make sure you know your way, the person whom even former political opponents call a friend.

Politically, Ms. Giffords, 40, is as passionate as she is independent. She is a longtime proponent of gun rights and tough border security — she once put out a news release ahead of President Obama announcing an increase of troops at the border. She also sided with motorcycle riders who favor state legislation to ride helmet-free, as she does.

But she was equally ardent in her support of the health care overhaul last year, and once told a reporter she was prepared to lose her seat to defend it. A comer in Arizona, where she was born and grew up, Ms. Giffords was widely considered as a strong future candidate for statewide office in a state where Democrats ride uphill.

“We once got into a conversation about the meaning of life,” said Tom Zoellner, a friend of Ms. Giffords’s and volunteer on two of her campaigns. “And she had sort of made an existential decision that life was about helping other people, that life was about public service, and she was going to arrange her life around that idea.”

But it is her personality, more than her politics, that has attracted her many fans.

“When something bad happened to you, she is the first person that would show up and talk to you about it,” said Jonathan Paton, a former Arizona state senator whom Ms. Giffords defeated in 2000. Mr. Paton later won in another district, becoming her colleague.

“We would tease each other all of the time, her being a Democrat and me a Republican,” he said. “I remember when I won my primary the first time, she called to congratulate me. Let’s put it this way: you’ve got to be a pretty kind person if the person you once ran against and beat is as emotionally distraught as I am now.”

The mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, recalled seeing Ms. Giffords on Capitol Hill one day, when he was wandering aimlessly in the snow. “I was lost,” Mr. Gordon said. “She had only been there a year herself, and she grabbed me, despite the fact she was going to her office, and took me across the street to where I needed to go. Taking a lost mayor from another city that isn’t even in your district is not something many people would do.”

Ms. Giffords was born in Tucson, graduated from Cornell University and Scripps College and worked in both economic development and her family’s tire and automotive business before entering politics.

She served in the Arizona Legislature from 2001 through 2005. After serving in the Arizona House of Representatives, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona State Senate.

Tapped by her party in 2006 to run for the House of Representatives, Ms. Giffords, helped by her connections within her district and a weak Republican opponent, prevailed, becoming the state’s first Jewish congresswoman and the third woman ever to represent Arizona.

“It’s a conservative district, but she is probably one of the few people who could have won it,” said Jim Pederson, the former head of the Arizona Democratic Party. “She is an extremely hard-working person, a very able fund-raiser. Most of all it’s her personality. She is constantly on the phone. I get an average of a call every 10 days from her. Now I supported her and contributed to her campaign, but I do that with a lot of candidates. Not a lot of people who have that kind of loyalty and follow-through.”

Ms. Giffords, who was known around the Hill as Gabby, was far more likely to be found locked in a room with a book on solar energy — another one of her pet issues — than at one of the local watering holes.

Mr. Zoellner said he once left a six-pack of beer in her Washington refrigerator with a note, “Use only in case of emergency,” and found it, unmoved, two years later when he borrowed the place.

In 2007, she married a Navy captain, Mark E. Kelly, making her the only member of Congress with an active-duty spouse.

The two met in China, as young leaders selected by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and have spent much of their relationship apart, due to their respective professional lives. Mr. Kelly has been an astronaut since 1996.

“The longest amount of time we’ve spent together is probably a couple of weeks at a stretch,” Mr. Kelly told The New York Times in an article that talked about their wedding. “We won’t always live this way, but this is how we started. It’s what we’ve always done. It teaches you not to sweat the small stuff.”

    A Passionate Politician and a Friend to Colleagues, Bikers and Lost Mayors, NYT, 8.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09profileweb.html

Amid Shock, Recalling Judge’s Life of Service

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, was fatally wounded in the attack near Tucson on Saturday that killed five others and wounded 19 people, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

“We’re all in kind of a state of shock here,” said Richard H. Weare, the clerk of the Federal District Court for Arizona, after hearing from the Federal Marshals Service, which confirmed the death.

President Obama praised Judge Roll as a jurist “who has served America’s legal system for almost 40 years.”

Judge Roll was appointed by the first President George Bush in 1991 and has been chief judge since 2006. His district is part of the sprawling Ninth Circuit, which covers federal courts throughout the West. He served as a state judge and as an assistant United States attorney for Arizona before he was appointed him to the federal bench.

The chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Alex Kozinski, described Judge Roll as a tireless advocate for his district: “Of all the chief judges of the circuit, I must say he was always the hardest working — always looking out for his district. He’ll be a great loss to his family, but he’ll also be a great loss to the federal judiciary.”

He said Judge Roll was a good friend who sought increased federal resources for his district, which had seen a surge in felony cases related to drugs and crime along the border with Mexico.

Judge Roll was no stranger to the risks of public service. He and his wife were provided protection by the Federal Marshals Service in 2009 in connection with a case in which a group of Mexicans sued an Arizona rancher for $32 million. They accused the rancher of civil right abuses for stopping people at gunpoint as they crossed his land and then turning them over to the Border Patrol.

After Judge Roll ruled that the case could go forward, he received death threats. Judge Roll told The Arizona Republic that the situation was “unnerving and invasive.”

When several of those making the threats were identified, he declined to press charges at the recommendation of the Marshals Service.

“I have a very strong belief that there is nothing wrong with criticizing a judicial decision,” he said. “But when it comes to threats, that is an entirely different matter.”

John McCarthy Roll was born in Pittsburgh and graduated from the University of Arizona in 1969 and the university’s law school in 1972. He is survived by his wife, Maureen, three sons and five grandchildren.

Killings of federal judges are rare. The last to be murdered in office was Judge Robert Vance, who was killed by a mail bomb at his home in Mountain Brook, Ala., in 1989.

On Dec. 21, Judge Roll sent an e-mail to Judge Kozinski with an attached letter from Ms. Giffords and another member of Congress from Arizona, Ed Pastor, a Democrat. The two members of Congress encouraged the Ninth Circuit to “declare a judicial emergency” to help cope with the increased workload by extending deadlines under the speedy trial act. In the e-mail, Judge Roll wrote that the Congressional letter was “unsolicited but very much appreciated.”

Judge Kozinski speculated — “just a guess,” he said — that Judge Roll might have gone to the event on Saturday to thank Ms. Giffords for the letter. “And he gets killed for it.”

Judge Kozinski added, “If it can happen to him, it can happen to any of us.”

In a statement, John G. Roberts Jr., the chief justice of the United States, said: ”We in the judiciary have suffered the terrible loss of one of our own. Judge John Roll was a wise jurist who selflessly served Arizona and the nation with great distinction.”

Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who lives in Arizona, said she was devastated by the news. “It is a horrible event, and heartbreaking,” she said. “The judge was just wonderful.”

“It sounds like something that might happen in some place like Afghanistan,” she said. “It shouldn’t happen in Tucson, Ariz., or anyplace else in the United States.”

    Amid Shock, Recalling Judge’s Life of Service, NYT, 8.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/09judge.html

Arizona Suspect’s Recent Acts Offer Hints of Alienation

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON, CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — Jared Lee Loughner had become increasingly erratic in recent months, so much so that others around him began to worry.

He had posted on his Myspace page at some point a photograph of a United States history textbook, on top of which he had placed a handgun. He prepared a series of Internet videos filled with rambling statements on topics including the gold standard, mind control and SWAT teams. And he had started to act oddly during his classes at Pima Community College, causing unease among other students.

That behavior, along with a disturbing video, prompted school administrators to call in Mr. Loughner’s parents and tell them that their son had been suspended and would have to get a mental health evaluation to return to college. Instead, he dropped out in October, a spokesman for the college said.

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.”

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

Neighbors of Mr. Loughner in Orangewood Estates, a middle-class subdivision of single-family homes north of Tucson, said that he lived with his parents, Amy and Randy Loughner, and that they did not believe he had siblings. Two neighbors said they saw the family come and go but knew little about them.

A series of short videos posted on the Internet, apparently by Mr. Loughner, consist of changing blocs of text that are largely rambling and incoherent. Many take the form of stating a premise and then a logical conclusion that would follow from it.

They speak of being a “conscience dreamer”; becoming a treasurer of a new currency; controlling “English grammar structure”; mentioned brainwashing and suggested that he believed he had powers of mind control.

“In conclusion, my ambition — is for informing literate dreamers about a new currency; in a few days, you know I’m conscience dreaming!” he wrote in one video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 15.

Still, some strands of recognizable political thought are woven among the more incoherent writings. Another video, for example, says debts should only be paid in currency that is backed by gold and silver.

One of his videos also suggests that he may have applied to join the Army at a recruiting station in Phoenix. It says he received a miniature Bible before taking tests there, and that he did not write a belief on his application form, so a recruiter wrote “none.”

Army officials said Saturday night that he had tried to enlist but had been rejected for military service. Privacy rules prevented them from disclosing the reason.

Paul Schwalbach, the spokesman for the Pima Community College, said one video that Mr. Loughner had prepared was considered particularly troubling by campus administrators, motivating them to suspend Mr. Loughner in September.

College “police and other officials viewed it and found it very disturbing,” he said. After he was suspended, Mr. Loughner and his parents met with administrators, who said he would require a mental health clearance if he wanted to return to college. It could not be learned on Saturday whether Mr. Loughner ever saw a psychiatrist or other professional or was diagnosed with a mental illness.

But the rambling, disconnected writings and videos he has left on the Web are consistent with the delusions produced by a psychotic illness like schizophrenia, which develops most often in the teens or 20s.

Among other complaints, Mr. Loughner’s social networking pages suggest that he had grievances against Pima Community College, that he felt cheated in some way.

“If I’m not receiving the purchase from a payment then I’m a victim of fraud,” he wrote, referencing the school, in one of his many confusing phrases posted in his videos.

His YouTube page also listed a series of favorite books. Some were novels about political dystopias — including “Animal Farm” by George Orwell and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. Others were about falling into fantasy worlds — like “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll.

In one extended Internet posting, Mr. Loughner suggested that the government was trying to trick him, or take advantage of him, although he never explained exactly what caused these concerns.

He also prepared a video that he called “My Final Thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner!”

“All humans are in need of sleep. Jared Loughner is a human. Hence, Jared Loughner is in need of sleep,” he wrote. He also briefly discusses terrorism.

“If I define terrorist then a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon. I define terrorist,” he wrote. “If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is ad hominem. You call me a terrorist.”

As recently as Saturday, he posted a message on his Myspace account hinting that he was going away.

“Goodbye,” he wrote at about 5 a.m. Saturday. “Dear friends . . . Please don’t be mad at me.”

    Arizona Suspect’s Recent Acts Offer Hints of Alienation, NYT, 8.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09shooter.html

In Attack’s Wake, Political Repercussions

January 8, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

TUCSON — Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 18 others were shot Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents.

Six of the victims died, among them John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl, the Pima County sheriff, Clarence W. Dupnik, said.

Ms. Giffords, 40, whom the authorities called the target of the attack, was said to be in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons. Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said that she had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

President Obama, speaking at the White House, confirmed that a suspect was in custody and said that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, was on his way to Arizona to oversee the investigation.

Investigators identified the gunman as Jared Lee Loughner, 22, and said that he was refusing to cooperate with the authorities and had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Mr. Loughner was in custody with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday night, the Pima Country sheriff’s office said.

Mr. Loughner had exhibited increasingly strange behavior in recent months, including ominous Internet postings — at least one showing a gun — and a series of videos in which he made disjointed statements on topics like the gold standard and mind control.

Pima Community College said he had been suspended for conduct violations and withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police.

The authorities were seen entering the Loughner family house about five miles from the shooting scene. Investigators said they were looking for a possible accomplice, believed to be in his 50s.

The shootings raised questions about potential political motives, and Sheriff Dupnik blamed the toxic political environment in Arizona. There were immediate national reverberations as Democrats denounced the fierce partisan atmosphere in Ms. Gifford’s district and top Republicans quickly condemned the violence.

Mark Kimble, an aide to Ms. Giffords, said the shooting occurred about 10 a.m. in a small area between an American flag and an Arizona flag. He said that he went into the store for coffee, and that as he came out the gunman started firing.

Ms. Giffords had been talking to a couple about Medicare and reimbursements, and Judge Roll had just walked up to her and shouted “Hi,” when the gunman, wearing sunglasses and perhaps a hood of some sort, approached and shot the judge, Mr. Kimble said. “Everyone hit the ground,” he said. “It was so shocking.”

The United States Capitol Police, which is investigating the attack, cautioned lawmakers “to take reasonable and prudent precautions regarding their personal security.”

Because of the shootings, House Republicans postponed all legislation to be considered on the floor this week, including a vote to repeal the health care overhaul. The House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, said lawmakers needed to “take whatever actions may be necessary in light of today’s tragedy.”

Speaking of Ms. Giffords’s condition, Dr. Rhee said at a news conference, “I can tell you at this time, I am very optimistic about her recovery.” He added, “We cannot tell what kind of recovery, but I’m as optimistic as it can get in this kind of situation.”

Ms. Giffords remained unconscious on Saturday night, said her spokesman, C. J. Karamargin.

Several aides to Ms. Giffords were wounded, and her director of community outreach, Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was among those killed. The girl who died was identified as Christina Green, a third grader. The others killed were Dorothy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79.

Ms. Giffords, who represents the Eighth District, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, has been an outspoken critic of the state’s tough immigration law, which is focused on identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants, and she had come under criticism for her vote in favor of the health care law.

Friends said she had received threats over the years. Judge Roll had been involved in immigration cases and had received death threats.

The police said Ms. Giffords’s district office was evacuated late Saturday after a suspicious package was found. Officers later cleared the scene.

Ms. Giffords, widely known as Gabby, had been speaking to constituents in a store alcove under a large white banner bearing her name when a man surged forward and began firing. He tried to escape but was tackled by a bystander and taken into custody by the police. The event, called “Congress on Your Corner,” was outside a Safeway supermarket northwest of Tucson and was the first opportunity for constituents to meet with Ms. Giffords since she was sworn in for a third term on Wednesday.

Ms. Giffords was part of the Democratic class of 2006 that swept Democrats into the majority in the House. She narrowly won re-election in November, while many fellow Democrats were toppled and the House turned to Republican control.

“I saw the congresswoman talking to two people, and then this man suddenly came up and shot her in the head and then shot other people,” said Dr. Steven Rayle, a witness to the shootings. “I think it was a semiautomatic, and he must have got off 20 rounds.”

Dr. Rayle said that Ms. Giffords slumped to the ground and that staff members immediately rushed to her aid. “A staffer had his arm around her, and she was leaning against the window of the Safeway,” the doctor said. “He had a jacket or towel on her head.”

At least one of the other shooting victims helped Ms. Giffords, witnesses said.

Television broadcasts showed a chaotic scene outside a normally tranquil suburban shopping spot as emergency workers rushed to carry the wounded away in stretchers. Some of the victims were taken from the site by helicopter, three of which had arrived.

Law enforcement officials said that the congresswoman had received numerous threats.

Congressional leaders of both parties issued statements throughout the day expressing outrage at the shooting as well as concern and prayers for Ms. Giffords and her family.

The new House speaker, John A. Boehner, said: “I am horrified by the senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and members of her staff. 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.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, issued one of the strongest statements, saying: “I am horrified by the violent attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people by a wicked person who has no sense of justice or compassion. I pray for Gabby and the other victims, and for the repose of the souls of the dead and comfort for their families.”

He added, “Whoever did this, whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race.”

Ms. Giffords is a centrist Democrat who won re-election in part by stressing her strong support for gun rights and for tougher immigration controls, including tighter border security, even though she opposed the controversial Arizona law.

Last March, after the final approval of the Democrats’ health care law, which Ms. Giffords supported, the windows of her office in Tucson were broken or shot out in an act of vandalism. Similar acts were reported by other members of Congress.

In August 2009, when there were demonstrations against the health care measure across the nation, a protester who showed up to meet Ms. Giffords at a supermarket event similar to Saturday’s was removed by the police when the pistol he had holstered under his armpit fell and bounced on the floor.

In an interview at the Capitol this week, Ms. Giffords said she was excited to count herself among the Democrats who joined the new Republican majority in reading the Constitution aloud from the House floor. She said she was particularly pleased with being assigned the reading of the First Amendment.

“I wanted to be here,” she said. “I think it’s important. Reflecting on the Constitution in a bipartisan way is a good way to start the year.”

As a Democrat, Ms. Giffords is something of anomaly in Arizona and in her district, which has traditionally tilted Republican. Last year, she barely squeaked to victory over a Republican challenger, Jesse Kelly. But she had clearly heard the message that constituents were dissatisfied with Democratic leaders in Washington.

At the Capitol last week, Ms. Giffords refused to support the outgoing Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, in her symbolic contest with the Republican, Mr. Boehner of Ohio. Instead, she cast her vote for Representative John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and hero of the civil rights movement.

“It’s not surprising that today Gabby was doing what she always does: listening to the hopes and concerns of her neighbors,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference Saturday, calling her a “friend of mine” and an “extraordinary public servant.” “I know Gabby is as tough as they come,” he said. “Obviously, our hearts go out to the family members of those who have been slain.” “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and we’re going to get through this,” he said.

The shooting mobilized officials at the White House and throughout the highest levels of government, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department.

Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, who in 2007 officiated at the wedding of Ms. Giffords and the astronaut Mark E. Kelly, and leads Congregation Chaverim in Tucson, said the congresswoman had never expressed any concern about her safety. “No fear. I’ve only seen the bravest possible, most intelligent young congresswoman,” Rabbi Aaron said. “I feel like this is really one of those proverbial — seemingly something coming out of nowhere.”

At Ms. Giffords’s district office, a group of about 50 people formed a prayer circle. Chris Cole, a Tucson police officer whose neighborhood beat includes the district office, said of the shooting, “This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Tucson.”

Behind the office, in the parking lot, campaign volunteers stood around a car with the door open, listening to a live radio broadcast of a hospital news conference updating the congresswoman’s condition. A cheer went up when it was announced that she was still alive.

The volunteers included Kelly Canady and her mother, Patricia Canady, both longtime campaign workers. Patricia Canedy had worked for Ms. Giffords since she served in the State Senate while Kelly, her daughter, moved to Tucson 13 years ago and was active in last year’s campaign and in the health care debate.

“She’s one of those people who remembers you. She always spoke to me by my first name,” Kelly Canady said. “She loved everybody. She was very easy to talk to. She was one of the main reasons I will stay involved in politics.”

Marc Lacey reported from Tucson, and David M. Herszenhorn from Washington. Reporting for the Arizona shooting coverage was contributed by Emmarie Huetteman, Janie Lorber, Michael D. Shear and Ashley Southall from Washington; Lisa M. Button, Ford Burkhart, Devlin Houser, Ron Nixon, Nancy Sharkey and Joe Sharkey from Tucson; J. David Goodman and Sarah Wheaton from New York; and Kitty Bennett from Tampa, Fla.

    In Attack’s Wake, Political Repercussions, NYT, 8.1.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html