History > 2011 > USA > Gun violence (I)

New Jersey Police Officer

Is Shot Dead

During an Encounter With a Pedestrian

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR and NATE SCHWEBER

A 27-year-old police officer in the central New Jersey township of Lakewood was shot in the head and killed Friday afternoon by a man he had stopped for routine questioning, the authorities said.

The officer, Christopher Matlosz, was driving his patrol car along August Drive in Lakewood about 4 p.m. when he pulled alongside a man in a black hoodie and began to ask him a question, Marlene Lynch Ford, the Ocean County prosecutor, said at a news conference Friday night.

A moment later, the man took a step back, pulled out a gun and fired three shots at Officer Matlosz at nearly point-blank range. The shooting happened so suddenly that Officer Matlosz did not even have time to draw his weapon, Ms. Ford said.

“That’s how quickly the whole thing occurred,” she said, calling the attack “an execution-style killing.”

“The officer was conducting a routine stop,” Ms. Ford said. “The exchange was not hostile, just a question-and-answer.”

As several people watched in horror, the gunman then turned around and ran into a wooded area, she said. A SWAT team and other Lakewood police officers descended on the scene, closing off streets throughout northeast Lakewood and opening an extensive manhunt for the shooter, who was still on the loose late Friday.

Officer Matlosz, who had been a police officer in Lakewood since August 2006, was engaged to be married and was still in his first week of working evenings for the department after having worked the overnight shift for several years. He was taken to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune and was pronounced dead at 4:57 p.m. His fiancée was there with him.

Ms. Ford said a number of people who witnessed the shooting immediately told the police what they saw and volunteered to help. They described the gunman as a stocky black man in his late teens or early 20s and about 5 feet 6 inches tall. He was said to have “puffy cheeks and sunken eyes” and was wearing pants that were riding so low that his gray boxer shorts were exposed, Ms. Ford said.

It was unclear what Officer Matlosz asked the man or what prompted him to open fire. But in an interview after the news conference, Ms. Ford said the gunman “might have been somebody that was known to him.”

The New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association announced a $40,000 reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest and conviction.

Lakewood, a town of over 70,000 near the Jersey Shore in Ocean County and home to one of the country’s largest yeshivas, has an annual murder figure that typically hovers in the low single digits. But the town has seen a rise in tension and bias crimes in recent years as its growing Orthodox Jewish population and smaller black and Hispanic communities have clashed.

Officer Matlosz, who lived in Manchester Township, grew up near Lakewood in Monmouth County, where he went to Howell High School and then obtained a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Brookdale Community College in 2003. On his MySpace profile, he described himself as a “loyal, honest, hardworking guy” who loved his job because he was “an adrenaline junkie.” He said he pictured himself retiring in two decades with a healthy pension and a lakeside home.

“I’ll be retired sitting on a lake with a jack n ginger, a rifle and a cigar,” he wrote.

Officer Matlosz was passionate about working out, carpentry and guns — one of his goals was to obtain a hunting license. He also described his grandfather — a former captain of the Elizabeth Fire Department — as one of his heroes, and he made it clear that he hoped to be like him some day.

“He flew in the Marines in the rotary bubble gunner in a B-25 bomber,” he wrote, “a man who everyone wanted to be around, and gave himself to everyone else.”

Besides his fiancée, Officer Matlosz is survived by a mother and brother, the authorities said.

The shooting was the second in the last two years to take a toll on the Lakewood Police Department. In September 2009, a gunman opened fire on a group of officers who burst into a home during a drug and gun raid about six miles from where Mr. Matlosz was killed. A patrolman was shot in the face and a lieutenant was hit in the foot; both survived. Two other officers who were shot were not seriously injured. The man who was caught and identified as the shooter, Jaime Gonzalez, was charged with attempted murder. He is awaiting trial.

    New Jersey Police Officer Is Shot Dead During an Encounter With a Pedestrian, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/nyregion/15cop.html

Helpless in the Face of Madness

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By BOB HERBERT

The second semester French class began a little after 9 on the morning of April 16, 2007. The weather that day was unusually cold for April. A light snow was falling.

One of the students, Colin Goddard, now 25, recalled what happened that morning in a new documentary film, “Living for 32.”

“We started hearing loud banging noises outside of our classroom,” he said. “The teacher went to the door to look into the hallway to see what was going on. ... As soon as she opened it, she shut it back again and said, ‘Everyone get underneath your desk and somebody call 911.’ I pulled out my phone and dialed 911, and I said, ‘We’re in Norris Hall. There’s a shooting going on.’ And as soon as I basically got that out, we saw bullets coming through the door.”

Norris Hall is one of the main academic buildings on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, known as Virginia Tech. The gunman was a crazed student named Seung-Hui Cho, who was armed with a pair of semiautomatic pistols. It was not the first class he had visited that day.

Goddard remembered being shot in his left knee and feeling the blood, warm, seeping down his leg. The gunmen apparently left the panicked classroom momentarily. But the sound of gunfire continued.

“And then,” Goddard said, “the bangs just got much louder again, and you could tell he was back in our room. This time he more methodically came down each of the rows, and he was still firing. At one point he was standing at my feet, and that’s when I was shot a second time, in my left hip. Then he shot me a third time, in my right shoulder, and it flipped my whole body around and exposed my right side. And I was shot a fourth time, in my right hip.”

In case we hadn’t noticed, a photo and a headline on the front page of The New York Times this week gave us some insight into just how sick our society has become. The photo showed 11-year-old Dallas Green weeping and using his left arm to wipe his eyes during the funeral for his sister, Christina-Taylor Green, who was 9 years old and was killed in the attack in Tucson that took the lives of five other people and left Representative Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded.

Beneath the photo was the headline: “Sadness Aside, No Shift Seen On Gun Laws.”

What is the matter with us? Are we really helpless in the face of the astounding toll that guns take on this society?

More than 30,000 people die from gunfire every year. Another 66,000 or so are wounded, which means that nearly 100,000 men, women and children are shot in the United States annually. Have we really become so impotent as a society, so pathetically fearful in the face of the extremists, that we can’t even take the most modest of steps to begin curbing this horror?

Where is the leadership? We know who’s on the side of the gun crazies. Where is the leadership on the side of sanity?

For starters, assault weapons should be banned. Their raison d’être is to kill the maximum number of people — people, not animals — in the shortest amount of time.

In “Living for 32,” the 32 refers to the 32 students and faculty members who were killed by Cho at Virginia Tech. Goddard, during a filmed visit to the site of the shooting, remembered that when the police showed up, they had to call out to the survivors inside the classroom for help in opening the door, which was blocked by bodies piled in front of it.

He said it was only when the police cried out, “Shooter down!” that he realized that Cho had killed himself. Then came the awful process of triage: “I remember hearing them walk up to people, saying, ‘This person’s yellow. This person’s red.’ And then I heard, ‘Black tag. Black tag. Black tag.’ And that’s when I realized that there were other students in here who didn’t make it.”

The professor, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, 49, was also killed.

The film, produced by Maria Cuomo Cole and directed by Kevin Breslin, chronicles Goddard’s recovery from his wounds, his return to Virginia Tech to get his degree, and his commitment to fight for stricter gun laws. He is now working with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Goddard does not want guns banned and has no desire to deny people their constitutional rights. But he believes there are sensible steps that could be taken that would make the U.S. a safer and better place, a place where college students and their professors do not have to worry about getting shot to death in the classroom.

    Helpless in the Face of Madness, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15herbert.html

Differences in Federal and State Systems Could Complicate Prosecution

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON and CHARLIE SAVAGE

TUCSON — The investigation into the bloody attack here last weekend is virtually certain to rank among the highest-profile criminal cases of the year, with as many as 250 federal law enforcement officials and dozens of sheriff’s deputies and detectives operating under blanket news media scrutiny. But the paradox is that it has also turned out to be among the simplest of cases to investigate, with the answers to most questions clear within hours.

Now, however, as the prosecution phase nears and both federal and state courts pursue the case, complications will inevitably appear — beginning with the vast number of potential witnesses, and further magnified by the sometimes sharply different requirements of the two court systems.

The complications extend to the rules of evidence. Arizona state and federal rules differ significantly on what defense attorneys are entitled to hear before trial, and the federal and state teams could also head toward very different outcomes as well if — as many legal experts expect — Jared L. Loughner’s lawyers mount an insanity defense. Arizona, unlike federal law, does not allow a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity. A defendant can only be found guilty, not guilty or guilty but insane.

“This is not a whodunit — it’s pretty straightforward,” said the Pima County attorney, Barbara LaWall, whose office is expected to file a state criminal case in the coming weeks against Mr. Loughner, 22, on top of the federal charges already filed. “It’s also very complicated.”

While the systems differ, the facts are clear-cut: Mr. Loughner, the accused gunman, was caught in the act in front of many witnesses; after a brief search for a man who turned out to be an innocent taxi driver, it became clear that there was no conspiracy; records showed that Mr. Loughner bought the gun legally; there were no interstate connections to explore, nor fugitives to hunt down; the suspect’s Internet postings and papers at his home provided a roadmap to his mental state and fixation on his apparent target, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was having an event in the shopping center parking lot where the shooting occurred.

There are human entanglements too. Ms. LaWall, in preparing to counter an insanity defense on the state side, said in an interview that she may get help, in a way, from one of the murder victims: John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, who had been a supervising prosecutor in the Pima County attorney’s office decades ago, when she joined it as a young prosecutor.

“I learned to defend against the insanity defense from John Roll,” she said.

The disconnect between the relative simplicity of the investigation and its extraordinary importance is also manifested in appearances.

After the attack, President Obama asked the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, to fly out to Tucson and personally oversee the effort. He did, and the news conference he gave on Sunday sent a calming message to the public that the government was in control of the matter.

But Mr. Mueller’s role was not to run the investigation. He flew back to Washington on Monday, then returned briefly to Tucson later in the week. And while he attended some briefings in Arizona as the inquiry unfolded, he also spent time visiting victims in the hospital.

Instead, the investigation has been primarily run by Nathan Thomas Gray, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Phoenix division, who has nearly three decades of law enforcement experience and a long history of important bureau positions. He is being helped by an assistant special agent in charge, Annette Bartlett, who runs the division’s branch office in Tucson.

At the F.B.I. offices here in a sixth-floor suite downtown, people are working at every available space, according to a description provided by two F.B.I. agents, all revolving around a glossy dark brown conference table that agents refer to as the main battle station, seating 18 to 20 people.

Phone lines and computer cables thread the room together, but there are also voluminous stacks of paper, neatly organized, extending to chairs along the walls. A projector illuminating the list of various leads to cover, referred to as the virtual command center, hangs overhead.

Judy Clarke, Mr. Loughner’s lawyer, did not return a phone call or e-mail requests for comment.

Even as the F.B.I. leads the investigation, however, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, five miles away in a low-rise complex hard between the County Fairgrounds and an industrial park, has become the main source of information about what has actually been uncovered. The discovery of a black bag on Thursday in a Tucson neighborhood by a man walking his dog illuminated the odd trajectory of news, evidence and turf that swirls around the case.

Investigators had been looking for the bag since being told by Mr. Loughner’s father that he had confronted his son about it on Saturday, before the shootings, and Jared Loughner ran into the desert carrying it. The recovery and detail about its contents, 9-millimeter ammunition — the caliber used in the attack — was the stuff of a sheriff’s press release. Later in the day a sheriff’s spokesman said the bag had been turned over to the F.B.I., which had not commented about it.

Federal officials say this dynamic is less the result of any culture clash than of differing rules: under Justice Department regulations, they have far less freedom to release information — even mug shots — than do local police operating under Arizona’s open-government laws.

Meanwhile, the investigative tempo and the number of agents performing tasks for it, officials say, has waxed and waned. It was a frenzy in the immediate aftermath, as agents fanned out to search Mr. Loughner’s house and car, interview witnesses at the hospital, research the gun, review surveillance tapes and find his associates.

Much of that work was completed in the first few days.

“The basic set of facts of what happened in the case, I think within 48 hours they had a really good handle on them,” said Special Agent Jason Pack, an F.B.I. spokesman. “They identified the second person they were looking for and had a pretty good idea that just one person was responsible for this particular act.”

As the week progressed, some technical work remained — notably, the laboratory reconstruction of the crime scene, and efforts to scour Mr. Loughner’s computer, using computer specialists, some of whom have been tapping in remotely from elsewhere in the country.

But a second major wave of investigative activity resulted from the other major remaining task: to speak with every person who crossed Mr. Loughner’s path, each of whom seemed to suggest several other leads to run down — a ballooning effort to make sure investigators did not miss anything important.

Already, agents have interviewed well over 100 people, with written reports then collated and compiled into the F.B.I.’s Operational Response and Investigative Online Network, or Orion, a computerized case management system that helps agents fit pieces into the larger puzzle.

But those volumes of interviews could in turn be a major wrinkle on the state side of the case because of what legal experts say are Arizona’s unusual procedural rules that allow defense attorneys to interview, before trial, every witness, except victims, that might be called to testify by the prosecution, including F.B.I. agents.

“Every single witness on the prosecution side is likely to be questioned, other than the victims,” said Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, who teaches criminal law and procedure at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law in Tucson.

Another variable that could enter the case — given the well-documented history of odd and disruptive, if not threatening, behavior by Mr. Loughner, especially at Pima Community College — is the question of his mental competency to stand trial.

And there again the state-federal wrinkle could emerge. Arizona, Professor Chin said, has a very sophisticated system designed to restore mental competency, often through medical treatment, so that people can continue through the criminal justice system. It was conceivable, he said, that that system could come into play even if a federal court found Mr. Loughner unable or unfit to proceed.

    Differences in Federal and State Systems Could Complicate Prosecution, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15investigate.html

The Tucson Witch Hunt

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLES M. BLOW

Tragedy in Tucson. Six Dead. Democratic congresswoman shot in the head at rally.

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.

But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof.

The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents.

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

    The Tucson Witch Hunt, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15blow.html

For Giffords, Tucson Roots Shaped Views

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and WILLIAM YARDLEY

TUCSON — Gabrielle Giffords grew up in an old house filled with old things at the edge of a city being remade by the new. While strip malls and subdivisions were rising everywhere else, her rambling brick residence was surrounded by 18 arid acres of cactuses and mesquite trees and decorated with Mexican art and Southwestern relics.

When she gave up her big-city dreams in New York to come home and run her family’s tire business, she passed on a new condominium or house in the suburbs, instead moving into an adobe duplex in an old neighborhood with shade trees, where crime might be higher but people knew who lived down the street.

And when Ms. Giffords, now a congresswoman, married an astronaut years later, she borrowed her Vera Wang wedding dress, served dinner on plates made of biodegradable sugar cane, had a cook make tortillas on the spot and invited fellow lawmakers to the working farm where she said her vows.

“The D.C. people were wearing high heels that would sink into the dirt,” said Ilana Addis, a friend from high school. “The Tucson people knew not to do that.”

And Ms. Giffords, very deliberately, is a Tucson person.

“If you live in a place and you stay there forever, you’re known as a good old Joe,” said John Hosmer, a former high school teacher of Ms. Giffords’s. “But if you leave, even for just a little while, and then come back, you kind of have a little piece of magic about you,” he said. “There’s something special about going away and coming back to your roots.”

Yet the city Ms. Giffords grew up in was changing rapidly, from the wide open desert town it had been when her grandfather — the son of a Lithuanian rabbi — sold retread tires to motorists in the 1950s, to the oasis for retirees, East Coast transplants and Mexican immigrants that made it a symbol of 1980s sprawl. Tucson was learning to compromise, and as Ms. Giffords moved into civic life and politics, so would she.

Over the past week, as the nation has followed her first tentative steps toward recovery from the would-be assassin’s bullet that ripped through her brain, Ms. Giffords, a Democrat, has become perhaps America’s best-known member of Congress. Her political views have come into the spotlight, too, setting off debate among outsiders about their seeming contradictions. But here in Tucson, it is clear how much her views have been shaped by this place.

From a culture that embraces independence, Ms. Giffords, 40, voted against Representative Nancy Pelosi in her symbolic quest to remain House speaker in the new Congress, instead casting a vote for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights leader. A fluent Spanish speaker with a Mexican half-brother, Ms. Giffords fought hard for legislation that would have granted citizenship to students who are illegal immigrants, but she also wants the tough border security favored by many in her Republican-leaning district.

She is a champion of solar energy, important to the Tucson economy. She opposes the death penalty, but backs gun rights. A victim of two home burglaries, she owns a 9-millimeter Glock.

“We are, in Tucson, a very diverse community in so many ways — socioeconomically, ethnically, religiously — and other parts of the state or region can be put into a box more easily than Tucson is,” said Bill Nugent, a close friend of Ms. Giffords’s. “Tucson, above all, has had to learn to compromise and to be compassionate and responsive to people, mostly because of their differences.”

“That is part of Gabby’s upbringing,” he said, adding, “She’s not going to take the strict party message.”

 

A Place to Start Over

Tucson is the kind of place where people come to reinvent themselves, and so it was with Ms. Giffords’s family. Her grandfather, the rabbi’s son, began life as Akiba Hornstein and moved here in the 1940s from New York. As Gif Giffords, a name he adopted to avoid anti-Semitism, he founded El Campo Tire and Service Centers.

He was an adventurer and a bit of a huckster; he and his wife, Ruth, once drove off to Panama in their 1957 stick-shift to promote Dunlop tires. He made a brief foray into politics, running unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the State Senate. But longtime residents here remember him mostly as a colorful character on radio and television in the 1950s, hawking his tires in spots that doubled as philosophical expositions.

“It’s a good, good evening,” was Mr. Giffords’s familiar greeting.

Decades later, as the company’s 27-year-old new president, Ms. Giffords carried on the tradition, starring in television commercials that perhaps not coincidentally gave her just the name recognition she needed as she prepared for her first run for political office. “She was a natural,” said Gina Brandt, the advertising executive who produced them.

Ms. Giffords grew up on North Soldier Trail outside the city center, in the Tanque Verde Valley, where cottonwood trees rise along a dry riverbed. There were no sidewalks, no corner stores, not even a next-door neighbor. She began mucking out horse stalls at age 8 in exchange for riding lessons, and eventually got a horse of her own. She named it Buck-Stretcher, the El Campo slogan.

“She loved her horse and her horseback riding, and that actually takes a lot of time,” said Cathy Nichols, a close high school friend. “She rode alone.”

In a city that was becoming increasingly transient, Ms. Giffords’s parents were fixtures. Her father, Spencer, raised as a practicing Jew, ran El Campo Tire and was elected to the Tanque Verde school board. Her mother, Gloria, a Christian Scientist originally from Kansas and nicknamed Jinx, is a painter and art conservator who worked on preserving Tucson’s historic Spanish art and missions.

They spent family vacations taking road trips across the border to Sonora, collecting art and books in tiny towns. (Ms. Giffords also has an older sister, Melissa, and an older half-brother, Alejandro, a son from her father’s first marriage, who lives in Mexico City but spent his high school years in Tucson with his father’s new family.)

“Her dad is this sort of bald, crotchety, crusty, tough-minded businessman, and her mom is artsy, chatty, constantly telling stories, talking, hugging,” said Jonathan Paton, a Republican who befriended Ms. Giffords after he ran against her and lost. “I think that Gabby in a lot of ways has those two personalities inside her. People who underestimate her — and I did — don’t see that tougher side that she gets from her dad.”

Even as a teenager, Ms. Giffords seemed destined for someplace bigger. Sharp and sure of herself, with a penchant for leather jackets and clunky Doc Marten shoes, she would sit in the front row of her Advanced Placement history class at University High School, an elite public school for gifted and talented students.

When Mr. Hosmer, the teacher, gave an incorrect date for the Treaty of Utrecht, she had no qualms about correcting him. “She was an 18-year-old girl who was really a 40-year-old woman,” he said. “She had a lot of internal self-confidence.”

She was not a student council type, though she did register to vote promptly at 18 — as a Republican, because it was her mother’s party. “She didn’t have strong feelings one way or the other,” Ms. Nichols said. (In the late 1990s, she switched her affiliation to Democrat.) She spent a high school semester in Spain, and chose Scripps College, a tiny, all-female institution in California.

As a double major in Latin American studies and sociology, Ms. Giffords pulled together the various strands of her life into her intellectual pursuits. Spurred by an interest of her mother’s, she spent a year after graduation as a Fulbright scholar in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, studying Mennonites.

“She was like an anthropologist in training,” Kim Welch, her Scripps thesis adviser, said.

After a brief stint in San Diego, Ms. Giffords left for Cornell University to pursue a graduate degree in regional planning — an endeavor partly motivated, said her close friend Ms. Nichols, by the growth and rapid expansion of her hometown. She cut a striking figure in snowy Ithaca, N.Y., in her Western garb and cowboy boots; when she was done, she landed in Manhattan as a consultant for Price Waterhouse.

“It seemed like the beginning of a grand and glittering adventure in the big city: posh apartments, pointy-toed shoes, and maybe even my first martini,” Ms. Giffords recalled in a 2009 commencement address to Scripps College. “But then an unexpected call came from my father.”

In failing health and eager to retire, Spencer Giffords wanted to keep El Campo Tire in the Giffords family. Ms. Giffords’s homecoming in 1996, which she has called “one of the most powerful transformations” in her life, had not been in her plans. But her friends are convinced that the tug of Tucson would eventually have brought her back.

“I think that she really did miss Tucson and sort of the horseback-riding, motorcycle-driving freedom that is out here in the West,” Mr. Paton said, adding, “There was probably a sense of relief about being able to go home.”

 

A New Direction

Ms. Giffords threw herself into the tire business and civic affairs. But Spencer Giffords did not get his wish; three years after his daughter took over, El Campo was sold, a victim of competition from big chains. The company Gif Giffords founded 50 years earlier was consolidated into a real estate concern.

By that time, Ms. Giffords already had designs on a new life, in politics.

She had “frustration with how things were working” in Arizona, Ms. Nichols said, on issues like health care and small business taxes.

Julia Liss, a Scripps professor, said, “She really was somebody who took life seriously; life was about doing things that mattered.”

She won a seat in the Legislature in 2000. Five years later, when she was a state senator, The Tucson Citizen’s business magazine named her its woman of the year. A relentless campaigner and prodigious fund-raiser, she greeted constituents with hugs instead of handshakes. Most people already knew her, or of her family.

“There’s still a very small town feel here,” said the magazine’s former editor, Teresa Truelsen. “Everybody thinks of her as their own.”

When she ran for Congress, to fill the seat of Jim Kolbe, a Republican who was retiring, in 2006, she began actively seeking Republican support. When she won, she kept on some of Mr. Kolbe’s staff. As Mr. Paton, her one-time Republican opponent, said, “She was very disciplined about meeting the people she needed to meet.”

The outreach came in handy; several prominent Republicans threw their weight behind Ms. Giffords during her tight race with a Tea Party-backed candidate last year, when she took criticism for supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul. Among them was John Wesley Miller, a longtime homebuilder who said his decision was based partly on Ms. Giffords’s pragmatic Western outlook.

“She’s a conservative with a conscience,” Mr. Miller said.

Her marriage in 2007 to Capt. Mark Kelly, an astronaut, created some intrigue, both here and in Washington. They met in 2003 on a trip to China (he was married and she was seeing someone) and Ms. Giffords was obviously smitten. A year later, he was divorced and they were dating. At their wedding, the huppah, the traditional Jewish canopy, was carried down a grassy aisle to the strains of a mariachi band.

“Gabby waited a long time to marry because she just never found the right guy,” said Marc Winkelman, one of the huppah carriers.

They have a long-distance marriage; Captain Kelly makes his home in Houston, where he has two daughters, while Ms. Giffords splits her time between Washington and Arizona. The result is what Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat and a close friend of Ms. Giffords’s, calls “a constant state of newlywed.”

On the night before she and 18 others were shot, 6 of them fatally, Ms. Giffords arrived here from Washington and was picked up at the airport by one of her closest friends, Raoul Erickson.

They stopped at her condominium, near her district office, decorated with the same kind of lively folk art — she once kept a motorcycle painted in Southwestern images — as her childhood home had been. Then Ms. Giffords suggested they go for an evening bicycle ride, as they often did. They rode 10 miles — Mr. Erickson objected at first, saying it was too cold, but Ms. Giffords persuaded him — with the congresswoman snapping their picture with a cellphone along the way.

“I know nothing about her politically,” said Mr. Erickson, who met Ms. Giffords in the 1990s, when he helped upgrade the computer system at the tire business, “but I know that when we’re out, she’ll stop and help anybody.”

When she first ran for Congress in 2006, opponents tried to cast Ms. Giffords as an outsider who had gone to college in California and lived in New York. The campaign responded by reminding voters that Ms. Giffords was a “third-generation Southern Arizonan,” and branding her as “an Arizona original.” Ms. Giffords appeared in a commercial on horseback, with the desert and mountains behind her.

“I love this place!” she declared from the saddle.

John Schwartz contributed reporting from New York, and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

    For Giffords, Tucson Roots Shaped Views, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15profile.html

Tucson Shootings Add to Glock’s Notoriety

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By ANDREW MARTIN

New York City police officers carry Glock pistols, and rappers wax eloquent about them. Movie stars brandish Glocks, too.

“Get yourself a Glock and lose that nickel-plated sissy pistol,” Tommy Lee Jones said in the 1998 movie “U.S. Marshals.”

When Saddam Hussein was captured in a hole in the ground in Iraq, soldiers found his Glock pistol inside. It was later presented to President George W. Bush, who displayed it in the Oval Office as a treasured souvenir.

Investigators say that on Nov. 30, Jared L. Loughner went to a Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson, Ariz., and bought a Glock 19, which sells for roughly $500. He is accused of using it during a rampage on Jan. 8 that left 6 people dead and 13 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, who also owns a Glock.

In the 25 years or so since the Glock company, based in Austria, began aggressively marketing firearms in this country, Glocks have become one of the best-selling pistols in America, even as the company’s management has been caught up in scandal.

The guns are popular with law enforcement, consumers and, apparently, some young men intent on massacre. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 at Virginia Tech University in 2007, and Steven Kazmierczak, who killed five at Northern Illinois University in 2008, were armed with Glocks.

Invented by an Austrian engineer named Gaston Glock in the early 1980s, the gun was introduced to the United States at a time when police officers were feeling outgunned by criminals and had begun transitioning from six-shot revolvers to semiautomatic pistols.

“He came out with a reliable product at a time when people were looking for just that sort of thing,” said Patrick Sweeney, author of the “Gun Digest Book of the Glock.” “At the time, law enforcement was almost untapped in terms of pistol sales. They had been using revolvers since the turn of the century. He leveraged that for all it was worth.”

But gun-control advocates blame Glock for glamorizing guns that are easy to conceal, powerful and hold more ammunition than the old revolvers.

“Enhanced lethality, that’s what we are talking about,” said Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center. “Lethality increases when you have larger bullets, more ammunition and the guns are easier to operate. That’s the contribution Glock and others have brought to America.”

Glock officials at its manufacturing facility in Smyrna, Ga., which is being expanded, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Because the company is privately held, sales figures were not available.

Records maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show that Glock has steadily increased production of pistols in the United States, to 70,532 in 2008, the last year records are available. By contrast, Smith & Wesson manufactured 261,115 pistols that year. But records showing how many guns Glock imports from Austria were not available.

Glock has also benefited from changes in the American gun market. As the number of hunters has declined, so have sales of guns traditionally used for hunting. Sales of military-style rifles have increased and so have sales of handguns, in part, some gun experts say, because more states have passed concealed-weapons laws. The Glock 33, for instance, is a subcompact pistol marketed as a “pocket rocket.”

When it was introduced, Glock guns had a radically different design and feel than other handguns. Made mostly of molded polymer, as opposed to metals, Glocks were lighter than other handguns and could carry more rounds. Glock fans praise their durability and many like their industrial look too, as compared with more traditional blue steel and wood-handled guns.

“When I placed the grip of a G-21 in my hand for the first time, I knew I had found something special,” wrote Mark Rogers, who writes a blog about guns, christiangunowner.com. “The gun was not flashy, but black, blocky and without pretense. There was no wasted buttons, bells or whistles.”

Lloyd Clouse, an Arkansas gun dealer, said Glocks had been an easy sell to law enforcement. “They operate under any conditions, I mean any conditions,” he said. “If an officer is in pursuit of someone, if he falls in a creek, in a mudhole, he gets up and his gun will fire.”

Even as Glock has become a dominant player in America’s handgun market, the company itself has faced scandal.

Several American executives for Glock, and the company’s outside legal counsel, have been indicted, accused of trying to embezzle money from the company. James R. Harper III was hired by Glock in 2000 to investigate suspected wrongdoing by Mr. Glock’s most trusted assistant, Charles Ewert; Mr. Harper brought on two others to help him, Jerry Chapman and Jeffrey Pombert.

According to a 2010 indictment, Mr. Harper and his associates conspired to steal about $3 million from Glock. Donald F. Samuel, a lawyer for Mr. Harper, said the three men denied any wrongdoing and were “vigorously” fighting the allegations.

The company’s onetime general counsel, Paul F. Jannuzzo, and another executive, Peter S. Manown, were indicted as well, accused of stealing from Glock. Mr. Manown pleaded guilty, but Mr. Jannuzzo fled. Mr. Jannuzzo is currently in jail in Amsterdam and fighting extradition, said John C. Butters, an assistant district attorney in Cobb County, Ga.

Earlier, in 1999, Mr. Glock was attacked in a garage in Luxembourg by a masked man with a mallet. Mr. Glock managed to fight him off, punching him in the eye and mouth, according to a 2003 article in Forbes magazine. It turns out that the assailant was hired by Mr. Ewert, Mr. Glock’s assistant. Both were convicted of attempted murder.

    Tucson Shootings Add to Glock’s Notoriety, NYT, 15.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/business/15glock.html

In an Online Game Forum, Tucson Suspect Lashed Out

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By SARAH WHEATON

Logs of Jared L. Loughner’s conversations with fellow players in an online game of strategy show a young man who has become frustrated by his inability to find a job, who views his early education as tantamount to slavery, and who has frequent run-ins with his college professors.

In the archives of such conversations from April to June, obtained from the administrators of the game, Earth Empires, Mr. Loughner, using the name “Dare,” rails against his “scam” of an education and about his job search.

“How many applications — is a lot?” he asked on May 15, lamenting that he had gone six months without a paycheck. “I’m thinking — 2 misdemeanors hurt. Don’t do Graffiti.”

Mr. Loughner, 22, wrote that he had been fired five times, including after he walked out of a job at a Red Robin restaurant because of a “mental breakdown.”

“Currently 67 applications,” he wrote in mid-June. “No interview.”

Mr. Loughner said he was being discriminated against.

“CAN’T HOLD TERMINATION AGAINST FUTURE EMPLOYEE!” he wrote, repeating the line more than 100 times in one May posting. And in early June, he wrote that he was filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about his last workplace.

The conversations, which had been accessible only to players with a password to a forum associated with Earth Empires game, will be made available to the public on Friday evening, the administrators said. They decided to post an edited log of the conversations after reports about them appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Players who knew Mr. Loughner outside of the forums brought the logs to the attention of other gamers over the weekend. The accounts by “Dare” of confrontations with professors match records that have been released by Pima Community College, which Mr. Loughner attended.

Mr. Loughner also refers to his education between kindergarten and the 12th grade as 15,000 hours of “unpaid work.”

“Is prison a close resemblance of high school?” he asked on May 15. “Relearning the English language. How many languages are there? Why am I a salve?” he continued, apparently meaning “slave.”

“The more I read Dare’s posts, the more I think he’s just drunk/high when he posts,” one player responded.

“I have no substance abuse problems currently,” Mr. Loughner replied. “Dude — I feel as if there is something wrong — ”

Another player added, “I think he seems like one of those people who avoids substance abuse because he is already strange.”

Mr. Loughner’s conversations took place among members of an “alliance” known as SancTuarY within Earth Empires, where players try to develop a country by teaming up with some competitors and undercutting others. Most are men between 20 and 40 years old, an administrator said.

Some of the SancTuarY alliance’s private forums are devoted to the business of dominating their online world. But players also vent, joke and share news and advice about final examinations and relationships. The language can be coarse, the political debates philosophical.

“This is like my social life,” Mr. Loughner wrote on May 15.

He uses the forums to talk about his course work, saying he had developed a “strong interest in logic.” On multiple occasions, he refers to an online grammar game for children that he is playing for a class.

He employs formal logical proofs to engage other players in debates about beating mentally disabled children to create more space in schools and about raping women. But, by his own account, Mr. Loughner ran into trouble when he tried to use similar proofs when meeting with a guidance counselor after being thrown out of a college mathematics course.

“Told her about a logical argument, but didn’t mention attending the logic class, that the logical argument was relevant. Told her about brainwashing a child and how that can change the view of mathematics,” he wrote on June 3. “I had to learn my abc’s and 123’s before entering college. Told her it was scam because of the possibility of failing the class.”

In the same conversation thread, Mr. Loughner writes, "The poetry teacher said i touched my self," repeating it three times.

    In an Online Game Forum, Tucson Suspect Lashed Out, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15game.html

Police Describe Busy Hours Before a Gunman’s Attack

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY, JO BECKER and SAM DOLNICK

TUCSON — Investigators revealed that Jared L. Loughner appeared to pull a frantic all-nighter last week to prepare for the shooting that killed six people, including a federal judge.

The judge, John M. Roll, was honored Friday at an emotional funeral Mass.

The night before the rampage, authorities say, Mr. Loughner, 22, dropped off at a drugstore a roll of 35-millimeter film containing images he had shot of himself posing with a Glock semiautomatic pistol while wearing a red G-string. The authorities said he picked up the film early on the day of the shooting at a Walgreens in the same strip mall where he would later open fire at a citizens’ forum held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona.

In some of the photos Mr. Loughner is holding the gun near his crotch, and in others, presumably taken in a mirror, he is holding the gun next to his buttocks, investigators said. It was not clear when the photos were taken.

Late Friday, Pima Community College released a video that it said Mr. Loughner made on Sept. 23. As the camera shook from his walking, the narrator on the video pointed out locations on the campus. “This is the school that I go to,” he said. “This is my genocide school, where I’m going to be homeless because of the school.”

According to the timeline the police have constructed of his movements, Mr. Loughner checked into a Motel 6 after midnight last Saturday. He returned to Walgreens to pick up the photos and make another purchase at 2:19 a.m. At 4:12 a.m., he posted a bulletin on his MySpace account titled “Goodbye friends” that contained one of the photographs on the roll of film — an image of the gun — investigators said.

Just after 6 a.m. he made another purchase at a Wal-Mart and at a Circle K convenience store. At 7:04, he tried to buy ammunition at one Wal-Mart. He left without completing his purchase and went to another Wal-Mart, where at 7:27 a.m. he bought bullets and a black diaper bag.

Shortly after that, he was stopped by an officer for running a red light. He returned home, where his father confronted him about what was in the diaper bag.

He fled on foot and went to the Circle K where a cab picked him up and took him to a Safeway supermarket. Sixteen minutes elapsed between the time he entered the Safeway and when he began shooting just outside the entrance.

The shooting injured 13, not 14, as was originally reported, a decrease a sheriff’s spokesman attributed on Friday to the initial confusion surrounding the attack.

Also, it emerged Friday that the F.B.I had video of the episode taken from the surveillance cameras of businesses in the shopping center, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to speak publicly because the investigation was continuing.

The investigator said the authorities were hoping the video would not have to be used at Mr. Loughner’s trial, because it would probably be painful for the families of the victims.

The suspected target of Mr. Loughner’s attack, Ms. Giffords, continued Friday to make significant medical progress, her doctors said.

“We couldn’t have hoped for any better improvement than we’re seeing right now, given the severity of her injury initially,” said Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center in Tucson. Still, doctors continued to express caution, saying that for now they would not upgrade Ms. Giffords from critical condition.

At the funeral for Judge Roll, colleagues spoke about how his death had left a gaping hole in Tucson’s legal community. His absence has also created a huge backlog of cases, prompting federal judges from across the country to offer to help with his workload, colleagues said.

“Right after the shooting, I had e-mails and phone calls from all over the country from people saying they wanted to pitch in,” Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said in an interview. “Judges from all over the country agreed to take 20 cases, 30 cases, to come over and sit to take up the burden.”

Emerging from Judge Roll’s funeral, lawyers who worked with him or appeared before him recalled his meticulous legal mind and fierce independence and integrity.

One of the most important cases on Judge Roll’s docket is a challenge to a state law that has been used to declare the Mexican-American studies program in the Tucson Unified School District as illegal. It was not immediately clear who would pick up that case.

Judge Roll was no stranger to difficult legal disputes. His 2009 decision to allow a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit to proceed against a rancher who rounded up Mexicans as they crossed his land led to death threats. Federal marshals put him and his family under protection for a month.

Among the officials attending the service Friday were politicians from both sides of the aisle, as well as jurists from around the country, including Loretta A. Preska, chief judge of the Southern District of New York.

“Judge Roll treated the cafeteria workers in his courthouse as well as he treated the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit,” she said.

However, to some of those who said goodbye to him Friday, Judge Roll was not a man in a dark robe. His grandchildren spoke of how he took them to Disneyland, taught them to swim and camped with them in the desert.

A neighbor, George Kriss, recalled how Judge Roll used to walk his two basset hounds in the morning. Mr. Kriss said he was surprised to discover that this basset-lover was on the bench. “I thought, ‘How can this man be a judge?’ He wasn’t mean enough,” Mr. Kriss said.

John Schwartz and Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting from New York.

    Police Describe Busy Hours Before a Gunman’s Attack, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15giffords.html

From Bloody Scene to E.R., Life-Saving Choices in Tucson

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By DENISE GRADY and JENNIFER MEDINA

TUCSON — The moment Tony Compagno stepped off his fire engine, frantic people spattered with blood began running up to direct him to gunshot victims.

Among the wounded was Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who had been shot in the head. Mr. Compagno was one of the first paramedics to reach the scene of the shooting rampage at a shopping center in Tucson last Saturday.

“Lots of people were laying on the ground,” said Mr. Compagno, from Fire Station 30 the in Northwest Fire/Rescue District of Tucson.

“The congresswoman, I could tell that she was still alive. People were giving a little girl CPR. My mind went away. I started counting, and then I thought, ‘What am I counting, injured or dead?’ ”

There were 19 victims. Mr. Compagno’s job was triage: to assess the severity of injuries and label victims so that ambulance crews would know whom to tend to first.

He realized instantly that there was no time to write labels. Ambulances and fire engines were roaring up.

The victims dropped where they stood, forming a row 20 or 30 feet long.

Mr. Compagno could see quickly that five were dead, seven were “immediates,” needing help right away, and the rest could wait.

The child receiving CPR was not responding, but Mr. Compagno was not about to write her off.

“The little girl, I counted her as an immediate,” he said.

Instead of using labels, he simply directed each rescue team to a victim.

The goal was to stabilize them and get them to the hospital as quickly as possible, because people with severe gunshot wounds need trauma surgeons.

The first two patients were ready to go even before the helicopters landed: Nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who had been receiving CPR, and Ms. Giffords were loaded into ambulances.

Ten patients were sent to the trauma center at the University of Arizona medical center. The first to arrive was Christina — still getting CPR, still not responding.

By normal standards, a gunshot victim who is unresponsive after 15 minutes of CPR has almost no hope of surviving and can be declared dead. Christina had already received 20 or 25 minutes, according to a report radioed in.

“This was a 9-year-old girl,” said Dr. Randall S. Friese, 46, a trauma surgeon. “Even though she had CPR beyond our guidelines, I decided to be aggressive.”

Dr. Friese said he could not be certain the radio report was correct. But he could not afford the minutes it would take to verify it.

“You decide, and you do,” he said. “It’s a personal decision, and I decided to be aggressive, just because she was 9.”

He tried a desperate last-ditch maneuver. Within about two minutes, he had cut open her chest, inserted a tube to fill her heart with blood and massaged the heart with his hand to try to start it beating again.

“I had her heart in my hand,” Dr. Friese said. “We filled it with blood. It still didn’t want to beat. So, it was over. We’re finished.”

At that moment, a resident stepped in to tell him a second patient had arrived, assigned to Trauma Room 5: Ms. Giffords. It was the first time Dr. Friese had heard that she was among the victims.

He told the resident assisting him to fill Christina’s heart and try once more to make it start beating again.

By the time he reached Room 5, the resident had tried, and failed. Christina was gone.

The team in Room 5 had already begun assessing Ms. Giffords when Dr. Friese arrived.

“I walked in and held her left hand, held it in both of my hands, and I thought to myself, ‘I need to communicate with her,’ ” he said. “I was uncertain if she would hear me, that she would process my words. It turned out later that she probably did. That was my reward. I leaned in close to her, and I said, ‘Ms. Giffords, you are in a hospital. We are going to take care of you.’ ”

He expected no response. Next, he asked her to squeeze his hand. She did. A few moments later he asked her again, and again she complied. It was cause for hope. But when he tried the same thing with her right hand, there was no response.

Because a brain injury can suddenly impair a person’s ability to breathe, Dr. Friese had a breathing tube inserted into her throat. Then he ordered a chest X-ray and a CT scan of her brain.

Dr. Martin E. Weinand, a neurosurgeon, was ready to operate, but Dr. Friese thought that the chief of neurosurgery, Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., who was supposed to have the day off, should also be involved.

“I called Lemole,” Dr. Friese said. “That would be a special thing for her. I wouldn’t have done that if it were a regular patient, because one neurosurgeon could do the operation. That to my mind was a political thing, and I wanted another neurosurgeon, particularly the chief neurosurgeon. I felt like I was doing a courtesy to the chief of neurosurgery letting him know the political aspect of what was going on.”

Ms. Giffords needed surgery immediately. She had skull fractures, dead brain tissue that had to be removed, and increasing pressure from swelling that could further damage her brain as it expanded and pressed against her skull. In addition, her eye sockets had fractures.

Dr. Lemole and Dr. Weinand studied the CT scans, tracked the path of the bullet and decided where to cut. The bullet had passed through her skull. Fortunately, it had not severed arteries or veins. The surgeons plucked out bits of broken skull and dead tissue, and removed part of her skull — less than half on one side — to avoid pressure from swelling. Also to relieve pressure, they expanded the opening that the bullet had made in the dura, the membrane covering the brain. The skull bone, fractured by the bullet, came off in pieces, which are being kept in a freezer and will be put back during reconstructive surgery, probably months away.

A bullet hits the skull like a meteor, Dr. Lemole said. Both start to break up, and shards of bone and metal can be driven into the brain.

“The old thinking was to chase after them and pull them out to reduce the chances of infection,” he said. “But we learned from the military that it can be worse to chase them” than to leave them there. Digging around in the brain can damage it further. In any case, he said, the heat of the bullet may have sterilized the embedded fragments.

“We certainly will watch for infection,” he said, adding that the greatest risk would be in the first two months.

A Strange Voice Summons

As Bill Hileman ended his Saturday morning workout, he saw a message on his cellphone from his wife’s number. But the voice belonged to somebody else.

“Bill, this is Nancy. I am with your wife. She was in an accident along with Christina Green,” the woman’s voice said, with urgency but not quite panic. “She asked me to call you and let you know that they will be taken to UMC hospital. And if you could, please notify the Greens that Christina will also be taken to the hospital. UMC hospital.”

She did not hang up right away and a garbled commotion went on for several seconds. Then, impossible to identify, a high-pitched voice pleaded for help.

Ms. Hileman had taken Christina, the daughter of a neighbor, to meet Ms. Giffords.

They must have had a fender bender, Mr. Hileman assumed. How serious could it be if his wife was aware enough to instruct a stranger to dial his number and urge him to call Christina’s parents? He rushed to the hospital.

He walked through the glass doors into the emergency room lobby just after 11 a.m., noticing people clustered around a television.

“I’m told Suzi Hileman is here,” he said to the woman at the front desk. But the hospital had not identified all the victims. Nobody could tell him anything about his wife.

Shots fired, several dead, the news said. This was not a car accident.

He knew that Safeway. He was certain it was where his wife had taken Christina to see Ms. Giffords — the event had been on her calendar for weeks.

“I’m frantic at this point,” Mr. Hileman said. “I am just jumping up and down, and I can’t get an answer.”

A woman who seemed to be in authority grabbed his wrist. She assured him she would find out what was happening. He still did not know if his wife was alive.

By 11:45, Christina’s mother, Roxanna Green, arrived. Her father came sometime later. The moment she identified herself, officials ushered her into a private room.

As Mr. Hileman watched this, he said, images of his wife bleeding crowded his mind, and he paced around the emergency room waiting room. Dozens more people began coming in. There were plenty of seats, but few sat down.

Furiously, the people in the room sent and received text messages. They spoke in hushed tones of fear. They exchanged somber, silent glances, aware that their fate was already somehow tied together, but each in a private shroud of misery. In the back corner, a young woman sobbed inconsolably. Her cries, Mr. Hileman recalled, were often the loudest sound in the room. He later learned she was Kelly O’Brien, the fiancée of Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide to Ms. Giffords who was killed.

Others gathered with families, but Mr. Hileman was alone, still uncertain of his wife’s fate. A social worker from the hospital approached and took his hand. She offered a prayer. The words almost did not matter.

“I am not a religious man,” he said. “But at that moment it was the right thing for Suzi.”

Then, words flashed across the television screen: Gabby Giffords dead.

The panic spread with a vicious wave. It somehow silenced the room, by then crowded with friends, local leaders and onlookers. It would be nearly an hour before they knew the report was wrong.

By then, hospital officials had ushered the family members of the victims into a private area in the cafeteria. Again, Mr. Hileman stood alone.

Mr. and Mrs. Green came into the room just minutes later. With one look at Mr. Green’s face, red with grief, Mr. Hileman knew what had happened to their daughter. A bear of a man, Mr. Green “looked like John Wayne collapsing,” Mr. Hileman said.

“My whole world changed,” Mr. Hileman said. “My whole world changed on the spot.”

A priest had just performed last rites for Christina.

Much Trauma, Some Luck

Dr. Peter Rhee, 49, the director of the trauma center at the hospital, was out running, listening to rap music, when a text message landed on his cellphone: 10 patients, multiple gunshot wounds, on the way to the hospital. University Medical Center is the only Level 1 trauma center in southern Arizona, meaning the only one that is accredited, with trauma specialists and operating rooms available around the clock to treat severe injuries.

Standing by the roadside, Dr. Rhee called in. Several trauma surgeons were already at the hospital, along with two groups of residents. Anesthesiologists and surgeons from other specialties were volunteering to pitch in. Since it was a Saturday, operating rooms were free.

“Much fortune occurred out of luck,” he said. “It was a sunny day, a Saturday, there was no rain or snow, it wasn’t 4 a.m. If it had been a Tuesday at 4 a.m., we would have had one surgeon there.”

Satisfied that things were under control, Dr. Rhee ran the three miles back home, showered and headed to the hospital.

By the time he arrived there, a stream of ambulances was coming in. A trauma surgeon waited in the ambulance bay to assess patients and assign them to rooms. Teams of doctors and nurses had quickly assembled in each of the center’s seven trauma rooms. Unidentified patients were given “trauma names”— like Agave, Bubble, Cactus, Deer, Egg or Falcon — for medical record-keeping, until their real names could be found.

“I am running the mass casualty, making personnel assignments,” Dr. Rhee said. “Somebody has to be in charge. I’m checking on the congresswoman in the operating room, looking at her brain. It looks viable to me. I’m making sure the anesthesiologist has blood, and the neurosurgeons have what they need.”

The new patients had a daunting array of injuries. Suzi Hileman came by helicopter, minutes behind Christina and Ms. Giffords. With gunshot wounds to her abdomen, chest and thigh, Ms. Hileman was one of the most vulnerable patients. Within 30 seconds of looking at her, Dr. Bellal Joseph, another trauma surgeon, knew she should go into the operating room.

Ms. Hileman was talking — frantically, distractedly, but speaking in a full voice. That meant her airways were clear, a good sign.

Dr. Joseph ignored what she was saying so he could stay focused. But he knew Ms. Hileman was in shock and petrified.

Ms. Hileman does not remember this. She told her husband her last memory was being in a helicopter, feeling humiliated when doctors began removing her clothes.

“The first thing I say to people is always the same,” Dr. Joseph said. “You are in the hospital. You are going to be fine. You have lots of people doing lots of things for you. This is normal; this is what we do. This is something we know.”

At least four more shooting victims were coming in, and it was unclear exactly what they would need. But the more quickly Ms. Hileman’s surgery could begin, the more quickly the trauma room could be cleared and cleaned for the next patient.

They placed intravenous lines in her arms and gave her a chest X-ray. There was no sign that any bullets remained in her body. An ultrasound showed no blood gathering around her heart, indicating no serious damage.

In the operating room the purpose was clear: “All we are trying to do is control the bleeding,” Dr. Joseph said. “We have to control the shock and basically stop her from dying.”

As he made a long incision down Ms. Hileman’s stomach, Dr. Joseph quickly saw that there was not much internal bleeding.

“That already, your heart rate goes from 130 to about 100,” he said. “That’s the thing about trauma, you never know what you are going to get dealt.”

Within moments, Dr. Joseph made a small incision to examine Ms. Hileman’s heart. There were no signs of damage. But there were six bullet holes in her chest, abdomen and legs. He followed the possible trajectories, making sure that he was not missing any damage. He ran his fingers down her intestines, making sure that there were no holes that could potentially cause bleeding or infection.

“I have held every piece of her organs in my own hands,” he said. “Her heart was in my hand, her spleen was is in my hand. Her liver was in my hand. There is no better scan that that.”

Hours later, Bill Hileman would see his wife for the first time, connected to a tangle of tubes. Hours after that, she would begin calling out for Christina.

Patients by Number

Dr. Rhee described additional patients, but could not name them because they had not given permission.

Patient 4 was shot in the leg, and had a cheek and neck wound that Dr. Rhee described as “scary.” But a CT scan revealed that the facial injury was not so bad, while the bullet to the leg had severed a major vein.

“I was taking care of Patient No. 5,” Dr. Rhee said. “It looked scary, like he would need the biggest surgery of all.”

A huge swelling near the man’s collarbone made it look as if a major artery had been damaged, an injury that would require an exceedingly difficult operation — one that Dr. Rhee said he loved to do. As it turned out, the artery was intact, but the patient’s neck and spinal cord were full of bone fragments, and he was lucky not to be paralyzed. In addition, he needed vascular surgery for another bullet wound, one that put him at risk of losing his leg.

Patient 6 was shot in the chest and leg, and needed transfusions. “He kept bleeding,” Dr. Rhee said. “I’m wondering if I have to take him to the operating room. But I know that if we can keep his blood pressure a little lower than usual, the bleeding could stop on its own.”

He kept his eye on Patient 6, while Patient 5 went to the operating room.

While patients were in surgery, Dr. Rhee called a quick huddle of all the doctors still in the trauma center, and they reviewed the list of patients, with each doctor calling out additional information for all the others to hear.

More patients were rolled in. One was shot in the ankle, and needed an orthopedic surgeon.

Another was “initially scary,” Dr. Rhee said. “She had two holes in her chest, she was shot in her wrist, and when we examined her we could feel a bullet in her back.”

The bullet had grazed one breast, entered the other and somehow swung around into her back, possibly hitting her intestines along the way. She needed laparoscopic surgery to find out if her intestines had been damaged; it turned out they had not.

“Relatively, we were lucky that day,” Dr. Rhee said

Within three hours, every patient was on the way to a hospital bed. The immediate trauma was over. Now, it was Dr. Rhee’s task to identify the patients’ families and tell them what happened during surgery.

He walked into the conference rooms in the cafeteria area and pulled aside family groups one at a time. For some patients, there were five people keeping vigil; others awaited news alone.

He began with basic questions to make sure the identity was correct. What is your family member’s name? What does he look like? How old is he?

“We have to be absolutely sure which patient is which, because a lot of patients can’t tell you their names,” Dr. Rhee said. “When you think you are telling them a particular piece of information, you can tell them something completely wrong. Sometimes a family member can come here thinking that they were shot, when they were actually at a movie or something else.”

Dr. Rhee made his way down the list quickly. This time, it was simpler, the patients he was talking about now were expected to do well. “This time it was fairly good news,” Dr. Rhee said. As he finished the list, he noticed one more family sitting on the benches.

Who are you? Dr. Rhee asked. They replied that they were the family of Gabe Zimmerman.

Dr. Rhee looked down his list.

“I don’t have this patient here, so that must be lucky for you,” he recalled telling them. “I think if I had you on my list, that would have meant you were shot and injured.”

“It didn’t dawn on me that they could have been killed in the field, and that’s indeed what happened,” Dr. Rhee said, who was once a Navy surgeon. “I gave them a false sense of hope at that stage, before they got the real news.”

Roughly an hour passed before the family knew what really happened.

Mr. Zimmerman, an aide to Ms. Giffords, had been pronounced dead at the scene.

A First Funeral

Dr. Friese does not remember seeing any of the patients come through the doors of the trauma center last Saturday — except for Christina.

Five days after the girl’s death, his secretary told him he was invited to Christina’s funeral. He did not ask from whom the invitation came. Was it from the family? Or did the nurses planning to share a bus to join the thousands of mourners seek him out? It did not matter. Without hesitating, he decided he would go.

There was no time for Dr. Friese to meet Mr. and Mrs. Green on Saturday. He was too busy attending to other patients, so it fell to a pediatric specialist to tell them the outcome. And he did not meet them Thursday either.

“I’m very glad that I didn’t meet her parents,” he said. “I think I would have had trouble. I would have had emotional ...”

His voice trailed off.

“I would have embarrassed myself,” he said. He closed his eyes for just a moment and sighed once more. “I usually don’t get upset.”

He add, “I don’t know why, it’s just tough.”

When he showed up at the funeral in his blue scrubs and his white surgeon’s jacket, police officers helped him move through the overflow crowd waiting outside the church. He was ushered right in.

It was the first time he had ever attended a patient’s funeral.

    From Bloody Scene to E.R., Life-Saving Choices in Tucson, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15medical.html

Doctors Call Giffords’s Progress Remarkable

January 14, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

TUCSON — As the funeral of another victim of last week’s shooting rampage was held here, Representative Gabrielle Giffords continued Friday to make significant medical progress, her doctors said.

“We’re very encouraged that she has continued to make all the right moves in the right direction,” said Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center here. “We couldn’t have hoped for any better improvement than we’re seeing right now given the severity of her injury initially.”

Last Saturday, Ms. Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was meeting with constituents in a Tucson parking lot when a gunman opened fire, killing 6 people and wounding 14, including Ms. Giffords. Among the dead were John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, and 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.

Christina’s funeral was held Thursday.

The funeral for Mr. Roll was held Friday and attended by Gov. Jan Brewer, Senator John McCain and other state and federal officials.

Four others wounded in the shooting remained at University Medical Center on Friday and were listed in fair condition. Authorities believe Ms. Giffords was the target of the attack.

Ms. Giffords’s doctors have said that she is now able to keep her eyes open for as long as 15 minutes and can move her legs and hands, although her right hand has only slight movement. There are no plans to immediately remove a breathing tube that has been left in place as a precautionary measure. The congresswoman, doctors said, is breathing on her own. Doctors said she could carry out more complex sequences of activity in response to commands and on her own.

Doctors have called Ms. Giffords’s progress “a major leap forward” but continued to express caution Friday, saying that for now, they would not upgrade Ms. Giffords, from critical condition.

Dr. Peter Rhee, head of trauma at the hospital, said in an interview Thursday that the team planned to bring an expert neuro-ophthalmologist and oculoplastic surgeon to help assess whether the injuries to the bones around Ms. Giffords’s eyes had damaged her vision.

“I believe one day she will be able to think,” Dr. Rhee said. “What she will be able to do physically, it is too early to say.”

In response to a reporter’s question Thursday about whether Ms. Giffords’s recovery might be considered miraculous, Dr. Lemole said: “Miracles happen every day, and in medicine, we like to attribute them to what we do or what others do around us. A lot of medicine is outside our control. We are wise to acknowledge miracles.”

Jared L. Loughner, 22, has been charged in federal court with shooting Ms. Giffords and four others who were federal employees. He is expected to face state prosecution for the rest of the victims.

On Thursday, Barbara LaWall, the Pima County attorney, said the state would have the authority to prosecute Mr. Loughner on its own, including murder charges for the killing of Judge Roll and for the attempted murder of Ms. Giffords.

Because Mr. Loughner is in federal custody, the ordinary deadline required under state law — 10 days from arrest to filing or dropping of charges — does not apply, so county prosecutors have ample time to draft a case, Ms. LaWall said.

She said a main concern at this point was logistics: whether it would be possible for the state and federal cases to proceed simultaneously, and how witnesses and the defendant would be transported for appearances.

Ms. LaWall said because of the deep trauma caused by the mass shooting, she wanted the process to be as smooth as possible for the victims and the families who would be called to testify.

The county sheriff’s office said on Thursday that it had recovered a black bag containing 9-millimeter ammunition that it thought might belong to the suspect. Mr. Loughner, according to the police, grabbed a similar bag out of one of his family’s vehicles on Saturday, hours before the shooting. The police said they were told by Randy Loughner, Mr. Loughner’s father, that when he confronted his son about what was inside, the younger Mr. Loughner ran into the desert carrying the bag.

A hiker found the bag while walking his dog Thursday in a wash in the desert near the Loughner home, the police said.

As authorities continued to investigate, Dr. Rhee said on Thursday that Ms. Giffords was now capable of a range of activities she had previously been unable to perform. “She is doing fairly specific things with her left hand,” he said. “In the morning, she is yawning. She is starting to rub her eyes, and she’ll spontaneously wake up.”

Dr. Lemole said Ms. Giffords could also “move both of her legs to command” and had communicated with family members by raising her left hand.

Dr. Lemole also said Ms. Giffords could sit up and that if someone told her, “Lift your legs up,” she would.

Ms. Giffords opened her eyes for the first time Wednesday shortly after a visit from President Obama and while several of her Congressional colleagues were in the hospital room. Mr. Obama relayed the news to the nation during his speech that evening.

Dr. Rhee said on Thursday that the right half of Ms. Giffords’s body had not recovered as quickly as the left, but that the right side was also “starting to make some very forward progress that we are happy about.”

Doctors described a regimen “of very aggressive physical therapy” undergone by Ms. Giffords on Thursday morning, which included dangling her legs over the side of the hospital bed, exercising her muscles and working on her balance.

“She is still holding her own. She is still following simple commands, and for me, that tells me that her higher brain center is working,” said Dr. Lemole.

Also on Thursday, NASA announced that it was appointing a backup leader for the space shuttle mission to be headed by Ms. Giffords’s husband, Mark E. Kelly. “Mark is still the commander” of the mission, scheduled for April, said Peggy Whitson, chief astronaut.

Naming Frederick W. Sturckow to the mission, she said, would allow the crew to continue training and Commander Kelly to “focus on his wife’s care.”

Marc Lacey reported from Tucson, and Timothy Williams from New York. Jo Becker, Kirk Johnson, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting from Tucson, and John Schwartz from New York.

    Doctors Call Giffords’s Progress Remarkable, NYT, 14.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15giffords.html

In Tucson Case, a Federal Judge Both ‘General and Traffic Cop’

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The judge named to preside over the federal trial of Jared L. Loughner is a no-nonsense jurist who will keep the proceedings moving and focused, colleagues said.

The judge, Larry Alan Burns of the Southern District of California in San Diego, was appointed on Wednesday by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over California, Arizona and other Western states.

Arizona’s federal judges were disqualified from taking the case because their colleague John M. Roll, who was the state’s chief federal judge, was killed in the shootings, and their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned,” Roslyn O. Silver, the district’s new chief judge, wrote in an order that was released on Wednesday.

Judge Kozinski said Judge Burns’s experience with federal death-penalty cases was an important consideration in his selection. Such cases are relatively rare, and the rules regarding them are arcane.

“We don’t have that many judges, it turns out, who have been involved in potential capital cases,” Judge Kozinski said in an interview. High-profile cases call for “a fairly strong judge who will keep control of the proceedings,” Judge Kozinski said, describing the ideal candidate as “a combination of a general and a traffic cop.”

Judge Burns, 56, has precisely that reputation, said Judge Irma E. Gonzalez, the chief judge of the Southern District of California. Appointed to the federal bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush, Judge Burns is best known for presiding in the trial of Congressman Randy Cunningham of California, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to charges that he accepted $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in return for a helping hand in obtaining government contracts.

In sentencing Mr. Cunningham to eight years and four months in prison, Judge Burns said, “You made a wrong turn and continued for three to five years.”

Judge Burns also presided over the prosecution and sentencing of a Mexican drug cartel leader, Javier Arellano Félix, on murder, drug-trafficking and racketeering charges, telling him that his name would “live in infamy.” Mr. Arellano Félix was sentenced to life in prison.

Judge Burns “is very, very up to date on the law,” Judge Gonzalez said, and “he is tough on setting time frames.”

His appointment suggests that the courts are anticipating that the trial will be moved on the grounds that Mr. Loughner will not be able to get an impartial jury in Tucson. Both Judge Burns and Mr. Loughner’s lead lawyer, Judy Clarke, live in San Diego.

Jim E. Lavine, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said in an interview that a change of location for the trial makes sense when “the venue is a victim” — that is, when a crime shakes a community to its core. The federal trial of the Oklahoma City bombers was held in Denver, he noted, because “the entire jury pool were victims of the onslaught in Oklahoma.”

Judge Burns has served as an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of California and as a deputy district attorney in San Diego County.

Much of Judge Burns’s career has been spent as a prosecutor, but Judge Kozinski scoffed at a question about whether he might be inclined to favor the prosecution. “My experience is that judges transcend what they were before they were judges,” he said.

The Pima County attorney, Barbara LaWall, said that whatever happens to Mr. Loughner in federal court, the state will still have power to prosecute on its own, including trying him for murder in Judge Roll’s death and attempted murder for the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who the authorities said was the target of an attempted assassination.

“We have jurisdiction over every case,” she said.

Ms. LaWall said that because of the deep trauma of the event, she wanted the process to be as smooth as possible for the victims and family members who would testify. Moving the federal case to Phoenix would be bad enough, she said, but a site even farther away would be “horrible” for the potentially long list of witnesses.

Kirk Johnson contributed reporting from Tucson, and Benjamin Weiser from New York.

    In Tucson Case, a Federal Judge Both ‘General and Traffic Cop’, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14judge.html

Tucson Pauses in Grief for the Youngest Victim

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DOLNICK and MARC LACEY

TUCSON — The first funeral in the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting rampage might turn out to be the most heart-wrenching.

Christina-Taylor Green, age 9, was wheeled from church in a child-size coffin to the mournful strain of bagpipes on Thursday, having become the focus for much of the grief that has enveloped this community — and the nation — since the shootings that left 6 dead and 14 injured.

Christina’s clear-eyed gaze, her enthusiasm — baseball, dance and student council were all passions — and the randomness in which she was killed made her death particularly devastating, for grown-ups, President Obama among them, and for her contemporaries.

As the president noted, she was attending the event at which she was shot because of a blossoming interest in politics and American democracy. “I want us to live up to her expectations,” Mr. Obama said at a memorial service for the victims Wednesday evening at the University of Arizona. “I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”

Christina’s Little League baseball team, the Pirates, will wear patches on its uniforms honoring Christina. The league is trying to get players across the country, from T-ball to the major leagues, to consider doing the same. Teams in California, Colorado and Florida have already bought patches.

Oro Valley, a Tucson suburb, is considering naming a baseball field where she played after her, city officials said.

The raw emotion was on display inside St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, where more than 1,500 mourners of all ages were packed in tight; and outside, where there were more mourners; and down the winding road, where hundreds more waited and watched; and across the city. Some dressed in white, others in baseball uniforms. Some wore angel wings. Others carried teddy bears or bouquets of flowers.

The funeral felt almost like a state affair, with rows of politicians, officers in dress uniforms and the bagpipes. It was the biggest service anyone in Tucson could remember.

Toward the end, her father, John Green, rose to speak. He looked out at the crowd. He swallowed. And then, in a scratchy, baritone voice he said her name, slowly: “Christina-Taylor Green.”

He described a girl who picked blackberries in the summer and went sledding in the winter. Most times, she was the one directing the other kids in their adventures. He told of her and her mother, Roxanna, dressing up “to the nines” and dancing around the house.

At one of the roadside memorials that have popped up around Tucson for Christina and the other victims, a somber Mary Palma and her two grandchildren, Isaac and Eva, stopped to pay their respects, and to grapple with the recent events. “It’s hard for kids to understand that something like this could happen, and it’s hard for me,” said Ms. Palma. “They didn’t know Christina, but they know her now. Everyone knows her.”

Christina was born on Sept. 11, 2001. A flag from the World Trade Center, brought to Tucson by representatives of the New York City Fire Department, flew outside the church for the funeral.

Mr. Green said his daughter’s birthday had given her an understanding of tragedy, and it sparked an interest in civic affairs that brought her to meet Representative Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday.

She had a younger brother, Dallas, and she loved to swim. She was the hero of Mailey Moser, the 5-year-old little sister of one of her baseball teammates. Mailey would wriggle from her mother’s grasp to sneak into the dugout and sit next to Christina.

At Christina’s school, Mesa Verde Elementary, where students have been holding difficult discussions about death this week, it was quieter than usual as many students, teachers and administrators left to spend the day at the funeral. Out front was a memorial with messages to Christina. There was a photograph of her hugging her friend Serenity, who wrote, “Christina remember this photo, it was our first sleepover.”

During lunch this week, Kayley Clark, 9, called her mother at home to say that she did not want to eat the school meal of turkey tacos. She has never done that before, her mother said. Getting dressed in the morning, she has been unusually picky about what colors to wear, as if the decision might be her last.

“You know that could have been your kid there outside the supermarket standing right where Christina was standing, when the shooting broke out,” said Leah Simmers, 30, a mother of three. “This hit close to home for every mother I know.”

And for every child, including her son, Dillon, 8, a second grader. “A girl like that should not be shot,” he said, noting that she was just a year older than he was.

Suzi Hileman, the neighbor who brought Christina to meet Ms. Giffords, is still at the hospital recovering from her gunshot wounds and struggling with feelings of guilt. As soon as Mrs. Hileman’s ventilator was removed for the first time Saturday night, she turned to her husband, Bill, and asked, “What about Christina?” In her foggy morphine haze, Mr. Hileman said, she has screamed out, “Christina! Christina!”

Baseball was in Christina’s blood. Her father is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers and her grandfather, Dallas Green, managed the 1980 World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies.

She was the only girl on the Pirates, the only one with shoulder-length hair peeking from the green and yellow cap. She brought a mix of playfulness and grit to the team. She spent a week negotiating the terms of a race in the outfield between the players and the coach: kids run forward, coach runs backward, winner gets ice cream. The kids won.

She climbed mesquite trees after practice. While playing second base during warm-ups on a hot desert day, she sang a pop song to herself, and quickly brought in the first baseman and right fielder into her chorus.

But she was a tough player, too. Once, with the bases loaded, she drove a hard line drive up the middle, bringing in two runs.

Another time, after a dispute at second base on whether the runner was out, she stepped in and settled things. And then there was the time when, after getting hit by a pitch, she had the option of taking the base or staying at bat. She stayed to hit — and she did, on the very next pitch.

During his eulogy, Mr. Green delivered a message, inspired by Christina’s life, to everyone who had been touched by her.

“Everybody’s going to be O.K.,” he said. “She would want that.”

Carli Brousseau, Jennifer Medina and Anissa Tanweer contributed reporting.

    Tucson Pauses in Grief for the Youngest Victim, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14funeral.html

Obama in Tucson: A Call for Healing

January 13, 2011
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Obama Calls Americans to a New Era of Civility” (front page, Jan. 13) and “As We Mourn” (editorial, Jan. 13):

Students years from now should read President Obama’s speech before thousands in Arizona for its wisdom.

He was psychologically astute; devoid of egotistical use of political leverage; practical in his references to gun safety and mental health; direct in professing ignorance about the gunman’s mental processes; authentic in his use of citizen heroes as models of sacrifice and generosity.

He was balanced in his call for a national return to mutual respect; tender and compelling in his words on behalf of the child victim and of children everywhere; graceful in uniting us to the holy, to each other and to our better angels; profoundly right in his appeal for humility.

Absolving in tone yet profoundly challenging, the president took the nation to the mountaintop. Wherever we return to the gutter, the fault will be not his, but ours. (Rev.)

Alfred M. Niese
Woolwich, Me., Jan. 13, 2011

•

To the Editor:

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Tucson, the American people were presented with two disparate views of the national conversation from the two major political parties. One was cynical and defensive, while the other was hopeful and conciliatory. Only one of these views is consistent with the goal of unifying this nation and driving it toward greater prosperity.

President Obama at the memorial service gave an impassioned speech that asked us to remember that we are all part of the same American family, while Sarah Palin issued an accusatory critique of the media that betrayed her own sense of perpetual victimhood (“Palin Joins Debate on Heated Speech With Words That Stir New Controversy,” news article, Jan. 13).

While Ms. Palin does not officially represent the Republican Party, she is generally acknowledged to be the front-runner to face President Obama in 2012. With the confluence of challenges that we face as a nation, it is clear that we need a president who can compromise while projecting a vision of hope and unity.

The differences in national visions in the face of this tragedy could not have been more stark, and the choice for our future could not be more obvious.

Thomas Pace
Salt Lake City, Jan. 13, 2011

•

To the Editor:

President Obama did more than salve our national wound. He set the bar for politicians, pundits and citizens to exhibit more mature, responsible and effective behavior to heal the ills of our country, of which there are many.

Nancy Oliveira
San Francisco, Jan. 13, 2011

•

To the Editor:

He tugged at our heartstrings and brought us to tears. He lifted our spirits and raised our hopes, and made us think about others rather than ourselves. For a few shining moments he brought us together, and called for the best that we have as Americans.

He applauded the heroes of that awful Saturday and shared their humble stories with the nation. He brought us the incredibly wonderful news about Representative Gabrielle Giffords, “Gabby,” opening her eyes for the first time. He mourned the death of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green and asked us to raise ourselves and our country to meet her expectations.

The president made us refocus on why we elected him, and why he is a transformational leader in a truly transformational time.

Henry A. Lowenstein
New York, Jan. 13, 2011

•

To the Editor:

To honor and respect the memory of those massacred in Tucson, President Obama and Congress should now show courage and focus on the issue of gun control, and, in particular, access to automatic weapons.

Stephen Hellmuth
Short Hills, N.J., Jan. 13, 2011

•

To the Editor:

The American public hasn’t fallen for the finger-pointing at the right. We aren’t fooled by those who are offended by nasty rhetoric, but only when it comes from the team they don’t like. Critics on the left deny charges of political opportunism in linking the Arizona horror to the map of targets on Sarah Palin’s Web site, but they wouldn’t have made a peep if the politician in the cross hairs had been a Republican.

Toxic political speech is either a danger all the time, or not at all.

Margaret McGirr
Greenwich, Conn., Jan. 13, 2011

•

To the Editor:

“An Assault on Everyone’s Safety” (editorial, Jan. 11) assumes that we can somehow collect information about people like Jared L. Loughner that would prevent them from acquiring guns. Such a step is both unworkable and discriminatory.

The burden of gathering uncorroborated reports of bizarre behavior, providing a forum for the reports to be challenged and disseminating the reports would become a nightmare. And who decides what behavior is sufficient to prompt a prohibition on the purchase of firearms?

There are very good reasons for preserving the confidentiality of medical information obtained from people in crisis. Giving every employee of a gun store access to the intimate details of a vulnerable person’s behavior contradicts all of these policies and would serve as a deterrent to seeking care. It would also discriminate against nonviolent people with mental illness.

Reducing the availability of guns to the general population is a more sensible strategy to reduce gun violence.

David L. Shern
President and C.E.O.
Mental Health America
Alexandria, Va., Jan. 12, 2011

    Obama in Tucson: A Call for Healing, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/l14arizona.html

Girl’s Death Hits Home for Obama

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — President Obama is not known for showing a surplus of emotion in public, but toward the end of his speech at the University of Arizona, he paused for 51 seconds and appeared to gather himself.

The audience was on its feet. Mr. Obama had just laid down a stark and powerful gauntlet, challenging the country to live up to the expectations of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, whose death on Saturday was an emotional punch to the gut for so many people across the country. Among them, apparently, is the president himself, whose younger daughter, Sasha, was born three months before Christina.

“I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it,” Mr. Obama had just said. “All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”

And then he stopped. After 10 seconds, he looked to his right. After 20 seconds, he took a deep breath. After 30 seconds, he started blinking. Then his jaw tightened. Finally, after 51 seconds of silence, he began to speak again, describing a book published after Sept. 11, 2001 — the day Christina was born — that included her picture and included simple wishes for a child’s life, including one inscription that read “I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

It was a stark moment for Mr. Obama, both as a president and as a father. This is a man who introduced himself to the nation with a memoir that explored how he was shaped by the absence of his own father, and it has been clear that he takes his role as a parent seriously.

On Wednesday evening, he made no explicit mention of either Sasha or her older sister, Malia. But they have been on his mind as he has grappled with how to respond to the shootings.

They have been on his wife’s mind, too. On Thursday, she posted an open letter on the White House Web site that said: “As parents, an event like this hits home especially hard. It makes our hearts ache for those who lost loved ones. It makes us want to hug our own families a little tighter. And it makes us think about what an event like this says about the world we live in — and the world in which our children will grow up.”

The president, friends said, was initially hesitant about calling Christina’s parents, Roxanna and John Green, after the shootings, saying that if it had happened to his daughters, he would not be capable of talking to anyone. He eventually did call the Greens, who buried their daughter on Thursday, and then met with them before his speech.

So on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama’s perspective as a parent came through, propelling him to what is likely to be remembered as the one of the most soaring moments of his presidency.

After two years in which his public appearances have often focused on policy and where he has seemed professorial, the president seemed to speak more from the heart and to connect with his nationwide audience on a more emotional level than at any time since his election. White House aides said that Mr. Obama, like many Americans, thought that Christina’s death was a heartbreak beyond description.

He wrote the bulk of his speech himself, and Mr. Obama was still making final touches aboard Air Force One on the way to Tucson.

Mr. Obama decided, they said, in much the way that he used the historic figures in a recent book that he wrote for Sasha and Malia, “Of Thee I Sing,” to illustrate traits such as courage and creativity, that he would use Christina to challenge Americans to live up to the ideals and expectations of children.

The president spoke eloquently of all six of the people who were killed on Saturday, summoning lighthearted remembrances gleaned from his conversations with their family members. He lauded the doctors who helped the wounded, singled out the two men who wrestled Jared L. Loughner, the man charged in the killings, to the ground, and praised the intern who tried to stem Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s bleeding.

But Christina provided the emotional underpinning.

“Here was a young girl who was becoming aware of our democracy,” Mr. Obama said. “She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model.

“She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often take for granted.”

    Girl’s Death Hits Home for Obama, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14obama.html

Among Women in Congress, a Bond of Friendship

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — Two arrived at Capitol Hill together, giddy and singled out as women to watch. Another congresswoman was a welcoming face who showed them the ropes in a place where there was not even a ladies’ room near the floor where they would vote.

Then there was the leader, a mother-hen type who made sure that some of the seats on the Armed Services Committee went to women, including the two new lawmakers. There was political plotting, and vacations by the lake. There was softball. There were double dates with their husbands, most recently with pizza.

The four were reunited in Arizona for a few moments on Wednesday night, as one of the women, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, flicked open an eye as the sound of her friends’ voices filled her hospital room.

“I think it was a combination, perhaps, of the unexpected but familiar that really prompted her to open her eyes and look around,” said Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., one of Ms. Giffords’s neurosurgeons, concerning what was apparently her reaction to the voices of her fellow lawmakers, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

While Ms. Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, has always had a good relationship with Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, her true Congressional women friends are Ms. Wasserman Schultz, who openly welcomed her, and Ms. Gillibrand, who was elected in 2006 with Ms. Giffords. When they met for their super-fast lunches and after-work drinks, they were often joined by Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, who was defeated last year.

“We met on our first day,” said Ms. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who later went on to the Senate. “Not that many young women who run for Congress get elected, so I gravitated to her right away. She is somebody who is very kind and very smart.”

They talked policy, they talked work days and they also talked about managing their lives.

“Like all working moms, we do our best,” Ms. Gillibrand said, which means avoiding cocktail parties between 5 and 7 p.m. (bath time) or early morning meetings (school drop-off). Their husbands got along, too, which made it easy to have the occasional dinner date when the four were in town together, like the one last week at Matchbox, a popular pizza place in Washington favored by Ms. Giffords’s husband, Mark E. Kelly, who is an astronaut.

“We enjoy being there for each other,” Ms. Gillibrand said, “So when Debbie and I were allowed to visit Gabby, it meant so much to us to encourage her and to tell her how much we love her and how she is inspiring the whole country right now.”

There is not a lot of downtime for members of Congress, but some of theirs is spent playing softball to raise money for young women with breast cancer. Ms. Wasserman Schultz is a co-captain for the House on a Congressional women’s softball team, and Ms. Gillibrand serves as a co-captain for the Senate side.

“I don’t think I’d be talking out of school if I told you Kirsten and I are pretty good, and Gabby, not so much,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “We have to really coax her to participate. Let’s just say she was in the process of skill building.”

Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, met Ms. Giffords through a legislative fellowship program, before the Arizona lawmaker came to Congress, and she campaigned for her in Tucson, eager to see her join the ranks. Ms. Giffords and Ms. Gillibrand were part of the “red to blue” Democratic Party strategy to get moderate Democrats to take over Republican districts.

Once Ms. Giffords got to Washington, she and Ms. Wasserman Schultz melded their families in leisure time, going to the last shuttle launching or vacationing in Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s home in New Hampshire. “We would go hiking, and our on our boat and cook dinners,” she said. “Mark’s children and my kids played together. It’s just really nice.”

In Congress, party is all, but gender can help. “There is a bond among the women in Congress that goes beyond party,” said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, who remembers that women from both parties had a shower for her when her son Cole was born three years ago.

“There are experiences and issues that bond us together, and we understand that we are still deep in the minority in terms of being women,” she said. “We often work together on things that are important to women and children and families, and there is a unique opportunity that we have, being women, to work on these issues together. I think we all recognize it’s still challenging to win a race for Congress, period, and as women, we share a goal of getting more women elected.”

That is not to say that the women were constantly engaged in identity politics.

Ms. Giffords gave Ms. Pelosi, the Democratic leader, a Christmas ornament one year that she has kept. But that did not stop Ms. Giffords from voting against Ms. Pelosi this month when she sought, successfully, to keep her party’s top post.

But the women’s bonds thrive in many ways. Even their softball team is bipartisan, unlike the Congressional men who play against each other by party. “That has given us a nice opportunity to bond across bipartisan lines,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “I think, in general, the women across the aisle are a bit more civil to each other. Maybe we will be the ones that lead by example.”

    Among Women in Congress, a Bond of Friendship, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14women.html

College’s Policy on Troubled Students Raises Questions

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By A. G. SULZBERGER and TRIP GABRIEL

TUCSON — Many people had a glimpse of the deep delusions and festering anger of Jared L. Loughner, but none seemed in a better position to connect the dots than officials at Pima Community College.

After the release of detailed reports the college kept of Mr. Loughner’s bizarre outbursts and violent Internet fantasies, the focus has turned to whether it did all it could to prevent his apparent descent into explosive violence.

In September, Pima suspended Mr. Loughner and told him not to return without a psychologist’s letter certifying that he posed no danger. But it took no steps to mandate that he have a psychiatric evaluation, which in Arizona is easier than in many states.

Laura J. Waterman, the clinical director of the Southern Arizona Mental Health Corporation in Tucson, criticized Pima officials for not seeking an involuntary evaluation. “Where does it reach a level where you say this person shouldn’t be a part of any community and we have a responsibility to do something about that?” she said.

Dr. Waterman’s clinic, which offers walk-in psychiatric crisis care, is one of the agencies Pima refers students to when they need mental health services, including students who have been suspended like Mr. Loughner.

No record of Mr. Loughner’s seeking or receiving mental health care has surfaced.

“It is part of our practice to provide students with information of where they can go,” said Charlotte Fugett, an official at the college. “It’s their responsibility to find a practitioner.”

Pima, a low-cost commuter school with 68,400 students, is typical of community colleges in having no mental health center of its own. At residential colleges, the centers can make it easier to connect needy students to psychologists.

Paul Schwalbach, a college spokesman, said of Mr. Loughner, “His behavior, while clearly disturbing, was not a crime, and we dealt with it in a way that protected our students and our employees.”

Last year, Pima updated its policies for dealing with disturbed students, as did campuses across the country after several deadly shootings, including the killing of 32 at Virginia Tech.

The college created a team of senior officials to identify students who might pose a threat to themselves or others. They began meeting the same month that Mr. Loughner was suspended.

Paradoxically, suspending students like Mr. Loughner may push them over the edge by adding to their grievances and isolating them from people who could monitor them, said experts on campus violence.

Gene Deisinger, the director of threat management at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va., speaking in general about the dismissal of a disruptive student, said, “We should never treat that as a panacea that increases our safety.”

When Virginia Tech removes a threatening student or staff member — as it does about a dozen times a year — the campus police or sometimes a psychologist now monitor the person’s progress when it is practical and merited, Dr. Deisinger said.

Marisa Randazzo, co-author of a sweeping 2002 federal study of school violence after the Columbine shootings, said most gunmen experienced a personal loss before their outbursts. If a school expels a threatening student, she said, “you are now adding to the person’s losses, even if you’re within your legal rights to do so.”

“At the same time, you’re losing your own ability to keep an eye on their behavior or have a positive effect,” she said.

Mr. Loughner, 22, who has been accused of killing 6 people and wounding 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, at a Safeway store in Tucson on Saturday, did not return to his former campus or workplace for a shooting spree.

On the Northwest Campus where he took many of his classes from 2005-10, a group of students on break Wednesday debated how the college had handled him.

Moises Melgarejo, 18, said he wondered if the act of suspending Mr. Loughner had not left him precariously unrooted. “He wasn’t going to school, he wasn’t working, he was just sitting at home thinking whatever he was thinking,” he said.

Denise Hayes, president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, said Pima had done what most colleges would in placing the responsibility to get a mental health exam on the student, especially since, as the college says, it also delivered the ultimatum to Mr. Loughner’s parents, with whom he lived.

The nationwide adoption of campus threat teams like Pima’s — which typically meet once a week on large campuses, often below the radar of students — has been rapid since investigations of the Virginia Tech massacre showed that many people and departments had clear signs of the instability of the gunman, Seung Hui Cho, but no one connected the information.

Virginia and Illinois passed laws requiring colleges and universities to establish multidisciplinary threat-evaluation teams. Today, more than half of the country’s 4,500 colleges and universities “acknowledge the need and have formed some capacity” to assess student threats, said Steven Healy, a former Princeton University police chief, who leads training programs in threat assessment under a grant from the Justice Department. On Tuesday, he was leading a workshop for 70 educators in Phoenix, which he began with a moment of silence.

At Virginia Tech, the Threat Assessment Team — a national model, whose members include the dean of students; the director of counseling; a university lawyer; and Dr. Deisinger, a psychologist who also holds the title of deputy police chief — meets weekly, discussing 6 to 20 cases.

A campus Web site about the team answers a hypothetical question, “Can’t you just make people leave campus if they are a problem?” in this way: “When people remain part of the Virginia Tech community, on-campus resources are available to them, and campus administrators are in contact with them to provide support they might not have if they were removed.”

In Arizona, people can be sent involuntarily for a mental health exam after any concerned party applies for a court-ordered evaluation, which can lead to mandated treatment.

Stella Bay, the police chief for Pima, said the college could initiate an involuntary evaluation only if a student posed “an imminent danger.”

But that assertion seemed to reflect a misunderstanding of the state’s laws regarding involuntary evaluations. Dr. Waterman, of the Southern Arizona Mental Health Corporation, said a mandated evaluation required only some evidence of danger. “It’s a broader standard,” she said. “And it costs nothing to make a phone call and talk about it and consult with a professional.”

Since the weekend shootings, the number of petitions for mandated exams at Dr. Waterman’s clinic has increased, she said, presumably because of wide awareness of the issue now. In fact, Ms. Bay called in a case on Monday about a Pima student, Dr. Waterman said. The police brought the student right to a hospital to be evaluated.

A. G. Sulzberger reported from Tucson, and Trip Gabriel from New York.

    College’s Policy on Troubled Students Raises Questions, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14college.html

A Clamor for Gun Limits, but Few Expect Real Changes
 

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

TUCSON — The National Rifle Association has gone uncommonly dark since the weekend shootings here. A posting on its Web site expresses sympathies for the victims of the violence, and N.R.A. officials said they would have nothing to say until the funerals and memorial services were over.

In Washington, bills were being drafted to step up background checks, create no-gun zones around members of Congress and ban the big-volume magazines that allowed the Tucson gunman to shoot so many bullets so fast. Gun control advocates say they believe the shock of the attack has altered the political atmosphere, in no small part because one of the victims is a member of Congress.

“I really do believe that this time it could be different,” said Paul Helmke, executive director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Yet gun rights advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said Thursday that there was little chance the attack would produce significant new legislation or a change in a national culture that has long been accepting of guns. If anything, they said, lawmakers are less receptive than ever to new gun restrictions.

If the politically sophisticated N.R.A. has struck a quiet pose, the Crossroads of the West gun show will go on as planned this weekend at the Pima County Fairgrounds, 13 miles from the shooting site; another gun show is scheduled for the next weekend. “We had no hesitation about going ahead with the show so soon after the incident,” said Lois Chedsey, secretary to the Arizona Arms Association, a show sponsor. “Gun sales have been up since last Saturday”

An even bigger event in Las Vegas, the Shot Show — which bills itself as the country’s largest exhibition of guns and ammunition — is proceeding next week with a four-day run that fills two floors of convention space.

As an institution, Congress seems to celebrate gun ownership as much as many communities in Arizona, which may explain why efforts to enact gun control legislation have foundered. Many members of Congress own firearms, which they carry while riding around in farm trucks in their district or concealed behind a jacket in the streets, among constituents.

“I carry a gun because it is a personal preference and for my own personal safety,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, one of several lawmakers who carry a concealed weapon in their districts. (His is a Glock 23.) “It’s not for everybody. Not everyone should rush out because of what happened last week and start carrying, but I like it, and I do it.” Representative Gabrielle Giffords once said that she herself owned a Glock — the same firearm the man accused of shooting her is said to have used.

Democrats who favor more restrictive gun laws say they do not expect new legislation to be passed, especially now that Republicans control of the House and Democrats have lost seats in the Senate. “The Pledge to America is our plan,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, “and our immediate focus is on addressing the top priorities of the American people, creating jobs, cutting spending and reforming the way Congress works.”

And Democrats are hardly uniform in supporting tough gun laws as a matter of policy; as a matter of politics, Democrats in Congress have increasingly shied away from the issue.

Gun control advocates said that they hoped the circumstances of this attack — including the facts that the suspect obtained his weapon legally and that one of the victims was a member of Congress — would help their cause.

Josh Horowitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said, “People have really had it, and this whole magazine clip issue, and the mental health issue, is something that people can get their heads around.”

But lawmakers seeking even modest limits on gun rights seem almost resigned to failure. Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said in a telephone interview that since he proposed a bill this week that would outlaw having a firearm within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress, his office had received “100 calls an hour from people who think I am trying to take away their Second Amendment rights.”

“This kind of legislation is very difficult,” Mr. King said, noting there had been “no enthusiasm,” even among Democrats, for the renewal of the assault weapon ban of 1994 in 2004. “The fact is Congress has not done any gun legislation in years,” he said, adding, “Once you get out of the Northeast, guns are a part of daily life.”

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, who was elected in 1996 largely on a gun control platform after her husband was killed and son injured by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993, is careful with her language in describing her new bill, which would ban large-capacity ammunition magazines.

“This is not a gun control bill,” she said. “I like to use the word ‘gun safety bills.’ And this one just addresses the narrow issue of these clips.” Ms. McCarthy said she would try to appeal to members of the Senate and President Obama to push her legislation forward. “Listen, any kind of bill the N.R.A. is against is always a problem.”

Asked about prospects for new gun restrictions, Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, asserted, “I maintain that firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens makes communities safer, not less safe.”

The N.R.A. has kept such a low profile that its normally accessible executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, declined to comment. “At this time, anything other than prayers for the victims and their families would be inappropriate,” said Andrew Arulanandam, the director of public affairs. But gun advocates said the fact that the group was holding back reflected a calculation that the prospects of gun control legislation passing in Congress have not changed much.

But if the N.R.A. has kept a strategically low profile, other gun advocates have not. They said they were confident that as always happens, passions would subside and their argument — that Americans have a constitutional right to own guns — would carry the day.

Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners of America, said his organization and others were girding for at least a skirmish in Congress. “But I think after the November election it’s going to be very tough for Carolyn McCarthy and even the Peter Kings,” he said “Why should the government be in the business of telling us how we can defend ourselves?”

Mr. Pratt added: “These politicians need to remember that these rights aren’t given to us by them. They come from God. They are God-given rights. They can’t be infringed or limited in any way. What are they going to do: limit it two or three rounds. Having lots of ammunition is critical, especially if the police are not around and you need to be able to defend yourself against mobs.”

Dave Workman, senior editor of Gun Week, a publication of the Second Amendment Foundation, said the gun control lobby was trying to exploit the shootings. “The average gun owner,” he said, “is saying: ‘I didn’t fire any shots in Tucson. I just want to go hunting, or protect my family, and this is just going to create more paperwork and more headaches for me.’ ”

Last weekend’s attack is unlikely to change the habits of members of Congress who carry guns. In fact, some said that an armed civilian might have stopped the carnage in Tucson.

Representative Tom Graves, a Republican, “is a firm believer in Second Amendment rights, owns firearms and has a concealed weapon permit in Georgia,” said his spokesman, John Donnelly, “and he has no plans to change his normal routine other than to focus his prayers on the victims of the tragic attack in Tucson.”

Adam Nagourney reported from Tucson, and Jennifer Steinhauer from Washington. Ian Lovett contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

    A Clamor for Gun Limits, but Few Expect Real Changes, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/us/14guns.html

Tree of Failure

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS

President Obama gave a wonderful speech in Tucson on Wednesday night. He didn’t try to explain the rampage that occurred there. Instead, he used the occasion as a national Sabbath — as a chance to step out of the torrent of events and reflect. He did it with an uplifting spirit. He not only expressed the country’s sense of loss but also celebrated the lives of the victims and the possibility for renewal.

Of course, even a great speech won’t usher in a period of civility. Speeches about civility will be taken to heart most by those people whose good character renders them unnecessary. Meanwhile, those who are inclined to intellectual thuggery and partisan one-sidedness will temporarily resolve to do better but then slip back to old habits the next time their pride feels threatened.

Civility is a tree with deep roots, and without the roots, it can’t last. So what are those roots? They are failure, sin, weakness and ignorance.

Every sensible person involved in politics and public life knows that their work is laced with failure. Every column, every speech, every piece of legislation and every executive decision has its own humiliating shortcomings. There are always arguments you should have made better, implications you should have anticipated, other points of view you should have taken on board.

Moreover, even if you are at your best, your efforts will still be laced with failure. The truth is fragmentary and it’s impossible to capture all of it. There are competing goods that can never be fully reconciled. The world is more complicated than any human intelligence can comprehend.

But every sensible person in public life also feels redeemed by others. You may write a mediocre column or make a mediocre speech or propose a mediocre piece of legislation, but others argue with you, correct you and introduce elements you never thought of. Each of these efforts may also be flawed, but together, if the system is working well, they move things gradually forward.

Each individual step may be imbalanced, but in succession they make the social organism better.

As a result, every sensible person feels a sense of gratitude for this process. We all get to live lives better than we deserve because our individual shortcomings are transmuted into communal improvement. We find meaning — and can only find meaning — in the role we play in that larger social enterprise.

So this is where civility comes from — from a sense of personal modesty and from the ensuing gratitude for the political process. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation. They are useless without the conversation.

The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves. The nation’s founders had a modest but realistic opinion of themselves and of the voters. They erected all sorts of institutional and social restraints to protect Americans from themselves. They admired George Washington because of the way he kept himself in check.

But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness. Children are raised amid a chorus of applause. Politics has become less about institutional restraint and more about giving voters whatever they want at that second. Joe DiMaggio didn’t ostentatiously admire his own home runs, but now athletes routinely celebrate themselves as part of the self-branding process.

So, of course, you get narcissists who believe they or members of their party possess direct access to the truth. Of course you get people who prefer monologue to dialogue. Of course you get people who detest politics because it frustrates their ability to get 100 percent of what they want. Of course you get people who gravitate toward the like-minded and loathe their political opponents. They feel no need for balance and correction.

Beneath all the other things that have contributed to polarization and the loss of civility, the most important is this: The roots of modesty have been carved away.

President Obama’s speech in Tucson was a good step, but there will have to be a bipartisan project like comprehensive tax reform to get people conversing again. Most of all, there will have to be a return to modesty.

In a famous passage, Reinhold Niebuhr put it best: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

    Tree of Failure, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14brooks.html

A Tale of Two Moralities

January 13, 2011
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN

On Wednesday, President Obama called on Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Those were beautiful words; they spoke to our desire for reconciliation.

But the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice.

And the real challenge we face is not how to resolve our differences — something that won’t happen any time soon — but how to keep the expression of those differences within bounds.

What are the differences I’m talking about?

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

There’s no middle ground between these views. One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose.

This deep divide in American political morality — for that’s what it amounts to — is a relatively recent development. Commentators who pine for the days of civility and bipartisanship are, whether they realize it or not, pining for the days when the Republican Party accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state, and was even willing to contemplate expanding it. As many analysts have noted, the Obama health reform — whose passage was met with vandalism and death threats against members of Congress — was modeled on Republican plans from the 1990s.

But that was then. Today’s G.O.P. sees much of what the modern federal government does as illegitimate; today’s Democratic Party does not. When people talk about partisan differences, they often seem to be implying that these differences are petty, matters that could be resolved with a bit of good will. But what we’re talking about here is a fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government.

Regular readers know which side of that divide I’m on. In future columns I will no doubt spend a lot of time pointing out the hypocrisy and logical fallacies of the “I earned it and I have the right to keep it” crowd. And I’ll also have a lot to say about how far we really are from being a society of equal opportunity, in which success depends solely on one’s own efforts.

But the question for now is what we can agree on given this deep national divide.

In a way, politics as a whole now resembles the longstanding politics of abortion — a subject that puts fundamental values at odds, in which each side believes that the other side is morally in the wrong. Almost 38 years have passed since Roe v. Wade, and this dispute is no closer to resolution.

Yet we have, for the most part, managed to agree on certain ground rules in the abortion controversy: it’s acceptable to express your opinion and to criticize the other side, but it’s not acceptable either to engage in violence or to encourage others to do so.

What we need now is an extension of those ground rules to the wider national debate.

Right now, each side in that debate passionately believes that the other side is wrong. And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years.

It’s not enough to appeal to the better angels of our nature. We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.

    A Tale of Two Moralities, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14krugman.html

Praise for Obama, From the Right and Left

January 13, 2011
9:32 am
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

10:39 a.m. | Updated

Reaction to President Obama’s speech at the memorial service in Arizona on Wednesday night has been almost uniformly positive, even from some of his sharpest critics.

Some conservative bloggers took shots at Mr. Obama, saying the event — at a basketball arena with thousands of college students in the crowd — came off more like a pep rally than a memorial service.

But aside from that, most of the conversation on cable television, Web sites and Twitter has been about Mr. Obama getting the tone right.

Here is a sampling of the reaction:

Glenn Beck, Fox News host: He praised Mr. Obama for condemning a rush-to-judgment about the causes of the shooting, saying: “Last night, the president said what he should have said on Saturday. A leader says that on Day 1. But it is truly better late than never. This is probably the best speech he has ever given, and with all sincerity, thank you Mr. President, for becoming the president of the United States of America last night.

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist, on Fox News: He called it a “remarkable display of oratory and of oratorical skill, both in terms of the tone and the content.” He added: “You could only conclude that he did exactly what he had to do in a difficult environment.”

Pat Buchanan, former Republican speechwriter, on MSNBC: “I thought it was splendid.”

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist: “His speech at the memorial service for the victims of Saturday’s massacre seemed not to come from a speechwriter’s pen, but from the heart.”

Marc Thiessen, former George Bush speechwriter, in The Washington Post: He credited the president for taking on the civility debate directly. “This was unexpected. It was courageous. It was genuine. And the president deserves credit for saying it.”

Jim Geraghty of the National Review, on Twitter: “Obama has never been more presidential than he was tonight.”

John Weaver, former political adviser to Senator John McCain of Arizona, on Facebook: “The president had exactly the right tone and was pitch perfect for the nation last night. And, when juxtaposed against . . . well, you know who… ahem….”

Mark Salter, the former speechwriter and senior adviser for Mr. McCain, in an email: “It was excellent in tone, message and delivery.”

Joe Scarborough, MSNBC host and former Republican member of Congress: “If the slings and arrows come today, and they will, it will only serve to diminish” those who criticize the president.

Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, on ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “I thought it was excellent. I thought he did exactly what a leader should do at a moment like this.”

Techno, a reader, on Conservatives4Palin.com: “There is no way in getting around it: Obama is coarse and crude and has no class. He is a lout. Why everyone misses it is because he is considered an elitist and urbane. He’s like a dance student that signs up for dance lessons and can’t help himself from stepping on the toes of the instructor every second step.”

John Podhoretz, columnist for the New York Post: “If there is one thing we expect from occasions of national mourning, it is, at the very least, a modicum of gravity. That gravity was present in the president’s speech from first to last — especially in the pitch-perfect response to the disgusting national political debate over the past couple of days.”

    Praise for Obama, From the Right and Left, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/praise-for-obama-from-the-right-and-left/

Obama and Palin, a Tale of Two Speeches

January 13, 2011
7:35 am
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SHEAR

Wednesday was bookended by two remarkable — and remarkably different — political performances that demonstrated the vast expanse of America’s political landscape.

The day opened at 5 a.m. with Sarah Palin, whose seven-and-a-half minute video statement captured with precision the bubbling anger and resentment that is an undercurrent of the national conversation about our public discourse.

It ended with President Obama, whose plea for civility, love and compassion — for us to all be not just better citizens but better people — exposed for the first time the emotions of a leader who has spent two years staying cool and controlled for a nation beset by difficult times.

The tone of the two speeches could not have been more different. The venues were a world apart — the smallness of a rectangular video on a computer screen and the vastness of an echo-filled basketball arena.

And they both served as a reminder of the political clash to come when the 2012 presidential campaign gets underway in earnest next year.

Whether Ms. Palin chooses to challenge Mr. Obama or not, her video reflected the urgent feelings of her supporters. And Mr. Obama’s speech, delivered amid sorrow, offered a fresh glimpse of the candidate who used hope as the tool to inspire his.

Ms. Palin’s decision to post the video on the internet Wednesday morning all but invited comparisons to the president’s previously announced appearance at the memorial service for those slain in Arizona.

And her choice of words — most notably the accusation that her critics were guilty of “blood libel” for the things they have said about her — made it impossible to ignore the video as merely another statement from a politician.

“We will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness 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.

Like Mr. Obama, Ms. Palin offered heartfelt sympathies for those who were injured or killed by the gunman in Tucson. Her “heart broke,” she said, just as Mr. Obama later noted that “our hearts are broken.”

“No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn for the victims’ families as we express our sympathy,” Ms. Palin said, looking directly into the camera.

But the purpose of Ms. Palin’s video was clearly to send a different, more sharp-edged message. Just 1 minute and 32 seconds into her talk, Ms. Palin shifted gears, saying she had become puzzled and saddened by the accusations leveled against her and others by “journalists and pundits.”

Disciplined and sophisticatedly produced, the video ended with Ms. Palin’s resolve. “We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate,” she said. “We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy.”

That message, in truth, was not so different from the one that Mr. Obama delivered 15 hours later in front of more than 14,000 people at the McKale Memorial Center.

“They believed, and I believe, we can be better,” the president said, referring to the victims of Saturday’s shooting. And, like Ms. Palin, he rejected as far too simplistic the idea that political speech, however harsh, was directly responsible for the tragedy.

“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s 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 the challenges of our nation, in a way that would make them proud,” he said.

But what could not have been more different was the tone. Where Ms. Palin was direct and forceful, Mr. Obama was soft and restrained. Where Ms. Palin was accusatory, Mr. Obama appeared to go out of his way to avoid pointing fingers or assigning blame. Where she stressed the importance of fighting for our different beliefs, he emphasized our need for unity, referring to the “American family — 300 million strong.”

For the president, it was at least the fourth time he has presided as the country’s mourner-in-chief. He delivered the eulogies at Senator Edward Kennedy’s funeral and at the memorial for miners who died in West Virginia. And he spoke to the nation after the shootings at an Army base Texas.

But this time, he appeared more affected by the trauma of the deaths. And none more so than when he was talking about the death of Christina Green, a 9-year-old girl not much older than Mr. Obama’s youngest daughter.

“I want us to live up to her expectations,” he said, his voice rising. “I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”

Eyes glistening, the president was forced to take a long pause to compose himself.

He talked about the “process of aligning our actions with our values” and that what really matters in life “is how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of others better.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers had suggested earlier in the day that the president might avoid all mention of the swirling controversy — made even more intense by Ms. Palin’s video — over the nation’s heated rhetoric.

But he did not, in the end, duck the issue.

Instead, Mr. Obama echoed the calls for greater civility and fresh reflection about the nature of public discourse. But he did so while urging all sides to abandon what he called “the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.”

He is likely to be disappointed. Even as he spoke, Twitter messages and emails flew across the internet, with one side assailing the other. And Ms. Palin will likely find little hope in the barrage of criticism that greeted her video.

Unless — or until — Ms. Palin runs for president and wins the Republican nomination, there are not likely to be many single days in which the two very different politicians are on display in such dramatic ways.

Wednesday was one.

    Obama and Palin, a Tale of Two Speeches, NYT, 13.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/obama-and-palin-a-tale-of-two-speeches/

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 Brings It Home

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By GAIL COLLINS

Maybe President Obama was saving the magic for a time when we really needed it.

We’ve been complaining for two years about the lack of music and passion in his big speeches. But if he’d moved the country when he was talking about health care or bailing out the auto industry, perhaps his words wouldn’t have been as powerful as they were when he was trying to lift the country up after the tragedy in Tucson.

“Our hearts are broken, and yet our hearts also have reason for fullness,” he said, in a call to action that finally moved the nation’s focus forward.

The days after the shootings had a depressing political rhythm. There was the call for civility, followed by the rapidly escalating rhetoric over whose fault the incivility was, which climbed ever upward until Wednesday when you had a congressman from Texas claiming that the F.B.I. was hiding information on the gunman’s political beliefs because the truth would embarrass the White House.

For me, Obama’s best moment came when he warned that “what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.” In his honor, I am not saying a word about Sarah Palin’s video.

But, politically, there’s a challenge about where we go from here. You can’t expect the Republican majority in Congress to give up on killing the health care reform law, although it might be a nice step if the leadership urged its members to stop saying that God wants to see repeal.

The president, who was going for great, universal themes, didn’t make any suggestions.

Let me offer one really, really modest one. Congress should have an actual debate about Representative Carolyn McCarthy’s bill to reduce gun violence.

You will notice I just said have a debate. And the bill does not even control guns. It simply bans the sale of the special bullet clip that allowed the Tucson gunman to shoot 20 people without reloading.

McCarthy’s husband was killed and her son permanently injured when a gunman using a pistol with a similar — but less powerful — kind of clip opened fire on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993. “That’s why I came to Congress,” she said on Wednesday. But so far she has collected co-sponsors only from the same small band of members who always support this kind of legislation.

Members of Congress are so terrified of the political power of the National Rifle Association that the Democrats, when they were in power, declined even to give McCarthy’s bill a hearing. This is the chance for the Republicans to prove that they’re braver.

All John Boehner, the speaker of the House, has to do is say that in the wake of the Tucson tragedy he wants to demonstrate that Congress is open to a serious and mature discussion of ways that it might have been avoided, or mitigated.

That might include proposals to better identify people with potentially violent mental illnesses. And it certainly would also have to involve a conversation over a technology that can turn a pistol into the equivalent of a somewhat slow-moving machine gun.

McCarthy’s bill might not have saved Representative Gabrielle Giffords from being shot. But it has to be worth talking about whether it could have saved some of her constituents.

So far, most of the proposals from members of Congress for practical action to reduce gun violence have been directed at protecting themselves. Representative Peter King of New York introduced a bill to ban anyone from carrying a gun in the vicinity of a federal official. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois suggested reversing a recent cut in members’ office budgets and tacking on another 10 percent increase to pay for improved security. Representative Dan Burton of Indiana urged enclosing the House gallery in Plexiglas. And two members vowed to carry their pistols with them when they go about the people’s business back in their districts.

Following the president’s lead, I would argue that Congress has the capacity for higher purpose.

“I believe we can be better,” he said. “Those who died here — those who saved lives here — they help me believe. 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.”

In that light, I believe members of Congress can have a hearing and a civilized debate on a bill that is modest and relevant but that is opposed by a hyperpowerful lobbying group that scares the daylight out of them.

Maybe they could do it just to prove it to themselves that they can.

Just a thought.

    Obama Brings It Home, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13collins.html

Why Not Regulate Guns as Seriously as Toys?

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Jared Loughner was considered too mentally unstable to attend community college. He was rejected by the Army. Yet buy a Glock handgun and a 33-round magazine? No problem.

To protect the public, we regulate cars and toys, medicines and mutual funds. So, simply as a public health matter, shouldn’t we take steps to reduce the toll from our domestic arms industry?

Look, I’m an Oregon farm boy who was given a .22 rifle for my 12th birthday. I still shoot occasionally when visiting the family farm, and I understand one appeal of guns: they’re fun.

It’s also true that city slickers sometimes exaggerate the risk of any one gun. The authors of Freakonomics noted that a home with a swimming pool is considerably more dangerous for small children than a home with a gun. They said that 1 child drowns annually for every 11,000 residential pools, but 1 child is shot dead for every 1 million-plus guns.

All that said, guns are far more deadly in America, not least because there are so many of them. There are about 85 guns per 100 people in the United States, and we are particularly awash in handguns.

(The only country I’ve seen that is more armed than America is Yemen. Near the town of Sadah, I dropped by a gun market where I was offered grenade launchers, machine guns, antitank mines, and even an anti-aircraft weapon. Yep, an N.R.A. dream! No pesky regulators. Just terrorism and a minor civil war.)

Just since the killings in Tucson, another 320 or so Americans have been killed by guns — anonymously, with barely a whisker of attention. By tomorrow it’ll be 400 deaths. Every day, about 80 people die from guns, and several times as many are injured.

Handgun sales in Arizona soared by 60 percent on Monday, according to Bloomberg News, as buyers sought to beat any beefing up of gun laws. People also often buy guns in hopes of being safer. But the evidence is overwhelming that firearms actually endanger those who own them. One scholar, John Lott Jr., published a book suggesting that more guns lead to less crime, but many studies have now debunked that finding (although it’s also true that a boom in concealed weapons didn’t lead to the bloodbath that liberals had forecast).

A careful article forthcoming in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by David Hemenway, a Harvard professor who wrote a brilliant book a few years ago reframing the gun debate as a public health challenge, makes clear that a gun in the home makes you much more likely to be shot — by accident, by suicide or by homicide.

The chances that a gun will be used to deter a home invasion are unbelievably remote, and dialing 911 is more effective in reducing injury than brandishing a weapon, the journal article says. But it adds that American children are 11 times more likely to die in a gun accident than in other developed countries, because of the prevalence of guns.

Likewise, suicide rates are higher in states with more guns, simply because there are more gun suicides. Other kinds of suicide rates are no higher. And because most homicides in the home are by family members or acquaintances — not by an intruder — the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of a gun murder in that home.

So what can be done? I asked Professor Hemenway how he would oversee a public health approach to reducing gun deaths and injuries. He suggested:

• Limit gun purchases to one per month per person, to reduce gun trafficking. And just as the government has cracked down on retailers who sell cigarettes to minors, get tough on gun dealers who sell to traffickers.

• Push for more gun safes, and make serial numbers harder to erase.

• Improve background checks and follow Canada in requiring a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun. And ban oversize magazines, such as the 33-bullet magazine allegedly used in Tucson. If the shooter had had to reload after firing 10 bullets, he might have been tackled earlier. And invest in new technologies such as “smart guns,” which can be fired only when near a separate wristband or after a fingerprint scan.

We can also learn from Australia, which in 1996 banned assault weapons and began buying back 650,000 of them. The impact is controversial and has sometimes been distorted. But the Journal of Public Health Policy notes that after the ban, the firearm suicide rate dropped by half in Australia over the next seven years, and the firearm homicide rate was almost halved.

Congress on Wednesday echoed with speeches honoring those shot in Tucson. That’s great — but hollow. The best memorial would be to regulate firearms every bit as seriously as we regulate automobiles or toys.

    Why Not Regulate Guns as Seriously as Toys?, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13kristof.html

As We Mourn

January 12, 2011
The New York Times

It is a president’s responsibility to salve a national wound. President Obama did that on Wednesday evening at the memorial service in Tucson for the six people who died in last weekend’s terrible shooting. It was one of his most powerful and uplifting speeches.

Mr. Obama called on ideological campaigners to stop vilifying their opponents. The only way to move forward after such a tragedy, he said, is to cast aside “point-scoring and pettiness.” He rightly focused primarily on the lives of those who died and the heroism of those who tried to stop the shooter and save the victims. He urged prayers for the 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the target of the rampage. Their stories needed to be told, their lives celebrated and mourned.

It was important that Mr. Obama transcend the debate about whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents. The president’s role in Tucson was to comfort and honor, and instill hope.

This horrific event, he said, should be a turning point for everyone — “not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation.”

He also said that after a senseless tragedy it is natural to try to impose some meaning. Wisely, he did not try. But he was right to warn that any proposals to reduce this kind of bloodshed will remain out of reach if political discourse remains deeply polarized. Two of those essential proposals, we believe, are gun safety laws and improvement to the mental health system, and it was heartening to hear the president bring them up.

Mr. Obama noted that several of Saturday’s victims were struck down as they performed public service. Ms. Giffords was engaging in the most fundamental act of a representative: meeting with her constituents to hear their concerns. Gabriel Zimmerman, her murdered aide, had set up the “Congress on Your Corner” event. John Roll, the murdered federal judge who lived nearby, came into the line of fire while thanking Ms. Giffords for helping to ease his court’s crowded legal calendar.

Many of the other victims were performing one of citizenship’s most basic duties: listening to and questioning one of their political representatives. Christina Taylor Green, the 9-year-old student council president who was killed, was brought there by a neighbor because of her interest in politics.

The president’s words were an important contrast to the ugliness that continues to swirl in some parts of the country. The accusation by Sarah Palin that “journalists and pundits” had committed a “blood libel” when they raised questions about overheated rhetoric was especially disturbing, given the grave meaning of that phrase in the history of the Jewish people.

Earlier in the day, the speaker of the House, John Boehner, and the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, issued their own, very welcome, calls to rise above partisanship. It is in that arena where Wednesday’s high-minded pledges will be tested most.

Mr. Obama said that it must be possible for Americans to question each other’s ideas without questioning their love of country. We hope all of America’s leaders, and all Americans, will take that to heart.

    As We Mourn, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13thu1.html

Flashbacks and Lingering Questions for Survivors

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DOLNICK

TUCSON — Randy Gardner had stopped by Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s community event on Saturday to thank her for supporting the health care overhaul when he heard the “boom, pop, pop, pop” and the cries of the wounded. Ducking for cover, he found the scene more than terrifying. He found it unbelievably familiar.

Mr. Gardner, 60, had survived a shooting once before. On May 4, 1970, he was a student at Kent State University when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fired on students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four people. He was in the crowd that day and ran for his life, 75 yards, before diving to the ground.

It was a landmark event for the country, but for Mr. Gardner it was a personal tragedy that stole a young woman from his English class, Allison Krause. And Saturday’s killings, which left him with a bullet through the right foot, took him right back.

“These types of experiences,” he said, “you change.”

Three of the survivors had very different reasons for attending Ms. Giffords’s “Congress on Your Corner” event on Saturday, but they were each caught in the storm of bullets just the same.

Mr. Gardner tortures himself with questions about why he did not do more to save others.

J. Eric Fuller, a former limousine driver, has tried calming himself by writing out the Declaration of Independence, memorized during a difficult summer 30 years ago.

Bill D. Badger, a retired Army colonel, saw television footage of sleeping travelers in a snowy airport and broke down, flashing back to the memory of bodies after Saturday’s shooting rampage.

They sit at odds on the political spectrum — Mr. Badger is a lifelong Republican, Mr. Fuller a liberal, and Mr. Gardner a solid Democrat — but these three men, with fresh wounds and wincing limps, now share the same challenges of adjusting to life as survivors: flashbacks, panic attacks, and midnight questions about justice, courage and luck.

“When you’re six feet away from a 9-year-old girl and you live and they don’t,” Mr. Gardner said, “it’s hard.”

Of the 14 people who were wounded, 6 remain hospitalized, including Ms. Giffords.

Mr. Gardner, who left Portland, Ore., for Tucson in 2005, escaped by running to the parking lot in a crouch, hiding behind cars and taking refuge in a Walgreen’s. He said he felt “a heaviness” as his right tennis shoe slowly filled with blood. He was released from the hospital on Sunday with a large bandage and crutches.

He keeps thinking about a conversation he had in line with a thoughtful, grandmotherly woman named Phyllis. Phyllis Schneck, 79, was killed, he learned later.

“Night is hard — the quietness, and the ruminating about it,” he said inside his home, on a sleepy cul-de-sac ringed by mountains. “I had that feeling of sadness and guilt that, you know, I should have done more, why didn’t I help out more,” he said.

“Everyone wants to have that John Wayne moment, but. ...”

Mr. Gardner worked for decades as a mental health counselor, so the troubling signs investigators have uncovered about the man charged in the shootings, Jared L. Loughner, seem sadly familiar. Mr. Gardner sees large gaps in the country’s mental health system that leave “a lot of lone wolves leading very unhappy lives.”

But he also understands the challenges that he is likely to face as he struggles with survivor’s guilt.

He said he planned to go to a memorial service for the dead Wednesday night, though he typically avoids those kinds of events. “I hate the word ‘closure,’ but they can help with bringing people together,” he said.

For Mr. Gardner, like many others in Tucson, the area’s divisive political culture that saw Ms. Gifford, a Democrat, struggle to victory last year forms the backdrop to the shooting. He considers himself more liberal than Ms. Giffords, but he respected her for standing up to Republicans on issues like immigration, and especially health care.

“I was going to tell her to be strong, that her vote meant something to a lot of people and there was no reason to waver,” he said.

Mr. Fuller, the limousine driver, also supported Ms. Giffords but he went to see her for different reasons.

He became interested in politics only recently, and fell hard for liberal causes. He sends e-mail blasts denouncing “Replundercans.”

On Saturday, he stopped by Ms. Giffords’s event after his weekly tennis game expecting to see protesters, whom he had seen at previous Giffords events.

“I wanted to give her a boost and to protect her from the Tea Party crime syndicate and to shout them down,” he said. “I can make a lot of noise.”

There were no protesters, but he got into a heated argument with another person waiting to meet Ms. Giffords. An aide to Ms. Giffords, Gabriel Zimmerman, quickly stepped in to break them up. Mr. Zimmerman was killed in the shootings.

Mr. Fuller was shot in the left knee, and a bullet grazed his back. He was released from the hospital on Monday, but he has struggled to adjust to a life that feels inalterably different.

The night after the shooting, he could not fall asleep. He found himself drawn to the words of the Declaration of Independence, which he memorized while he was unemployed and living in a trailer in Boise, Idaho, in 1980.

The language soothed him that night. But he still has flashes of anger.

“Recognizing his existence is a waste,” he said of Mr. Loughner. “I don’t like his face.”

Unlike the others, Mr. Badger, the retired colonel and lifelong Republican, disagreed with many of Ms. Giffords’s beliefs.

Mr. Badger stopped by Ms. Giffords’s event after visiting a local car show — his 1973 white Jaguar would have wowed the place, he thought — planning to grill her on her support for what he calls “Obamacare.”

As he was chatting with people in line about the gorgeous weather, the shooting began. A bullet grazed his head, leaving him bleeding. When the shots ended, he was one of several people who pushed the gunman, pinning him to the ground.

He describes the encounter with militarylike precision: he hit the gunman with his right hand, and then held down the gunman’s left arm.

He is less vivid talking about his own psychological state after the attack. He dismissed questions about therapy, saying that he is “mentally sound.” He will attend memorial ceremonies to show respect for the victims.

But anguish has sneaked up. He spent only a few hours at the hospital receiving stitches for his wound; he thought he was coping. But then he saw television video of an airport where people were sleeping on the floor awaiting delayed flights. He thought of the crumpled bodies he had seen.

“I just wasn’t ready for that shock,” he said. “I just broke down.”

The survivors and the victims families will struggle in their own ways for years to come, said Carol Gaxiola, director of Homicide Survivors, a Tucson-based victims advocacy group.

Ms. Gaxiola, whose own daughter, Jasmine, was killed 11 years ago, said she had spoken with families of all six of the dead.

“Your entire sense of safety has been totally invaded and violated,” she said. “It’s like riding a wild wave of emotions — it’s up and down and very little respite.”

Of course, the survivors constantly remind themselves how lucky they are. The families of the dead are struggling with far deeper pain.

Ross Zimmerman, the father of the Giffords aide who was killed, said he spent the first day in shock, barely able to speak. He cannot sleep through the night, and often wakes up in tears.

“What kind of went through my mind was now, maybe, I’ve just got to wait out the rest of my life until I die,” he said in an interview.

Slowly, he has begun to heal himself by speaking with friends and family about his son. But he said part of his method of coping has been facing the stark truth.

“Gabe’s dead; he’s not coming back,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it, damn it.”

Kassie Bracken contributed reporting from Tucson.

    Flashbacks and Lingering Questions for Survivors, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13survivors.html

Surgeon and Sudden Celebrity, and Trying to Balance the Roles

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

TUCSON — Dr. Peter Rhee steps before a bank of television cameras each morning to tell the world the latest on the progress of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He uses phrases like “101 percent chance of survival” and seems to take a certain pride in saying that medically, “bullets are easy, car crashes are hard.”

Officially, he is the chief of trauma at University Medical Center here. But he has become the public face of the hospital where Ms. Giffords and five other survivors of Saturday’s shooting rampage are slowly recovering. He has taken on the role with gusto, acting as a booster for both the hospital and for Tucson itself.

“I know everyone in the country thinks World War III is going on in Arizona, but it’s probably still the nicest place I can think of to live,” he told reporters the other day. “To be honest with you, it can be pretty boring for a trauma surgeon sometimes.”

As he watched the news Saturday night, he said, he cringed at his appearance. His wife, a former intensive care nurse, suggested that he try to look more relaxed. When he smiled at the next morning’s briefing, several colleagues objected.

“They said the community’s not ready for it and that it wasn’t appropriate,” Dr. Rhee, 49, said in an interview on Wednesday at the hospital. “But I’ve found when you do something really well, 95 percent of people like it, 3 people really like it and 2 people hate you for it.”

And while Dr. Rhee has charmed reporters, others have found his comments abrasive. On Wednesday, he said, he received an e-mail from a stranger calling him “pompous.” Dr. Rhee declined to specify the objection, but he said that he responded with an apology.

For more than two decades, Dr. Rhee worked as a surgeon for the Navy, primarily attending to officers in the Marine Corps. He spent months at a time in Iraq and Afghanistan, working with minimal resources much of the time.

He grew up in a small Pennsylvania town south of Pittsburgh and later attended the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He met his wife, Emily, as he was completing his residency at the University of California, Irvine. They now live in North Tucson, a few miles from the site of the shooting, with their children, Michael, 16, and Anna, 10.

He came to Tucson in 2007 after running a training program for military doctors at the University of Southern California. After years of traveling to war zones, he said, he owed it to his family to settle in a quiet place.

“This is a piece of cake,” he said. “They gave me an office. They pay me a lot of money. I have the supplies I need.”

At times, he strays from medical talk in favor of comic relief. When a reporter asked if it would have made a difference if the bullet had entered Ms. Giffords’s brain through the back rather than the front, he deadpanned: “Well, we can try it on you and see.”

And when a group of television camera operators asked about reports that Ms. Giffords had flashed a peace sign, he scoffed. No, he said, she simply held up two fingers on command. Then he held up his middle finger and said: “If she went like this, you’d have a story.”

Things have not always gone smoothly. Hospital officials had to correct his statement that the congresswoman was in a medically induced coma; they said she had been sedated.

Dr. Rhee sometimes describes himself with detached, almost clinical precision.

“I don’t think I am naturally a nice person,” he said. “When you are in battle you don’t have time for a discussion. Whether it is right or wrong, you have to listen to what I say. When I go into a trauma bay, time slows down and I am very clear and calm and focused.”

“I am not a very good husband or father,” he said. “I sleep at home one out of every three nights. I work 120 hours a week.”

Then, with a flash of bravado, he added: “I am very good at what I do.”

Dr. Rhee has talked about having to distance himself from the emotions that followed the shootings. But he has displayed flashes of feeling, saying on Tuesday, for example, that he was angry that the other shooting victims had been ignored by the news media, which has focused on Ms. Giffords.

“How would you feel if it was your father who had lied on top of your mother to protect her?” he said, referring to Dorwin and Mavy Stoddard, who were shot Saturday. Mr. Stoddard died; Ms. Stoddard was wounded.

On Wednesday, Dr. Rhee’s wife brought their two children to a nearby hotel for their first visit with their father since Saturday.

Michelle Ziemba, the director of the hospital’s trauma center, said Dr. Rhee can infuriate his more sensitive colleagues.

“In the battlefield, if someone says go left, you go left; there’s no discussion,” she said, but medical professionals are not used to such an approach. “Sometimes feelings get hurt, and I go in and say, ‘Listen it’s not personal.’ ”

Lawrence K. Altman in Washington and Ford Burkhart in Tucson also contributed reporting.

    Surgeon and Sudden Celebrity, and Trying to Balance the Roles, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13rhee.html

Pelosi on Hand When Giffords Opens Eyes

January 12, 2011
10:28 pm
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

11:12 p.m. | Updated TUCSON— Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, was in Gabrielle Giffords‘ hospital room when she opened her eyes for the first time since being shot in the head last Saturday, Obama administration and congressional aides said.

Mrs. Pelosi, along with two other Democrats, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, were in the room, shortly after President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama finished their visit to the hospital, before a memorial service to honor the victims of the shooting.

Mr. Obama broke the news during his remarks at the service, in an announcement that propelled the crowd of 14,000 at the University of Arizona into a standing ovation and sustained applause. Looking at Ms. Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, seated in the front row, Mr. Obama said that Mr. Kelly had given him permission to tell the crowd that a few minutes after the Obamas left Ms. Giffords, “Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.”

“She knows we are here,” Mr. Obama said. “She knows we love her, and she knows we are rooting for her.”

Ms. Gillibrand issued a statement later saying: “We had been telling her that she was inspiring the country with her courage and that we couldn’t wait to take her out to pizza and a weekend away. Then after she heard our voices and the encouragement of Mark and her parents, she struggled briefly and opened her eyes for the very first time. It was a miracle to witness.”

    Pelosi on Hand When Giffords Opens Eyes, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/pelosi-on-hand-when-giffords-opens-eyes/

‘Creepy,’ ‘Very Hostile’: A College Recorded Its Fears

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY and SERGE F. KOVALESKI

TUCSON — Officials at Pima Community College, where Jared L. Loughner was a student, believed that he might be mentally ill or under the influence of drugs after a series of bizarre classroom disruptions in which he unnerved instructors and fellow students, including one occasion when he insisted that the number 6 was actually the number 18, according to internal reports from the college.

In 51 pages of confidential police documents released by the college on Wednesday, various instructors, students and others described Mr. Loughner as “creepy,” “very hostile,” “suspicious” and someone who had a “dark personality.”

He sang to himself in the library. He spoke out of turn. And in an act the college finally decided merited his suspension, he made a bizarre posting on YouTube linking the college to genocide and the torture of students.

“This is my genocide school,” the narrator on the video said, describing the college as “one of the biggest scams in America.” “We are examining the torture of students,” the narrator said.

The documents offer vivid firsthand accounts of Mr. Loughner’s contacts with law enforcement officials in the months leading up to the shootings, and will inevitably be studied closely for answers to whether the college did everything it could have, and should have, with him.

The college overhauled its procedures for dealing with disruptive students last year. As part of a revision to the code of conduct, it introduced a Student Behavior Assessment Committee, a three-member team that includes the assistant vice chancellor for student development, the chief or deputy chief of the campus police and a clinical psychologist from outside the college.

The team meets as needed to respond to students who have acted violently or threatened violence, or who may pose a threat to themselves or others. It came into existence in September, the same month Mr. Loughner was suspended following the five disruptive incidents reported to campus police.

A campus official involved in setting up the behavior committee, Charlotte Fugett, president of one of the college’s five campuses, would not say whether the committee heard Mr. Loughner’s case.

Many acquaintances and friends and fellow students at the college have talked about his outbursts and inappropriate behavior. The reports describe how Mr. Loughner behaved when confronted or questioned about his actions, and the images and perceptions that officers from the college’s Department of Public Safety recorded show a mixture of behaviors, by turns odd, belligerent or silent and removed, sometimes all in the same encounter.

A campus officer wrote in one report in September, six days before Mr. Loughner was suspended, that he and a fellow officer thought “there might be a mental health concern involved with Loughner.”

In October, the college has said, it sent Mr. Loughner a letter stating that before he could return to class, he would need to present a letter from a mental health professional certifying he was not a threat.

One report offers details of the evening of Sept. 29, when two officers drove to the Loughner home to deliver the letter about Mr. Loughner’s suspension. A friend of Mr. Loughner’s said this week that he thought leaving Pima might have been a serious psychological blow to Mr. Loughner, and the security report suggests a clear apprehension by the officers as well — they requested that two backup officers be posted in the neighborhood.

The officers were invited into the garage by Randy Loughner, the student’s father.

“While inside the garage I spoke with Jared who held a constant trance of staring as I narrated the past events that had transpired,” the reporting officer wrote.

After almost an hour, Jared Loughner broke his silence.

“I realize now that this is all a scam,” he said, according to the report.

Aubrey Conover, advanced program manager for Pima Community College Northwest, in a report prepared the day he was suspended, recounted a conversation with Mr. Loughner after the police were called to deal with him when he disrupted a biology class on Sept. 23. He had been repeatedly asking for full credit on an assignment he turned in late.

At one point, Mr. Loughner said he had paid for his classes illegally, according to Mr. Conover, and when pressed he said, “I did not pay with gold and silver.” Mr. Conover said that throughout the meeting, “Jared held himself very rigidly and smiled overtly at inappropriate times.”

After an incident in February 2010 in which Mr. Loughner blurted out in a poetry class that dynamite ought to be attached to babies, a campus police officer wrote, “I suggested they keep an eye on him and call us if anything else developed that concerned them.”

Mr. Loughner explained the remark matter-of-factly. “He said that the class had been talking about abortion, which made him think of death, which made him think of suicide bombers, which made him think of babies as suicide bombers,” wrote Mr. Conover.

After a discussion, Mr. Conover said, Mr. Loughner said he would not say anything in class. Mr. Conover said that he continued to act bizarre but that there had been no further interruptions.

On another occasion, Mr. Loughner told a biology teacher that it did not matter what he put down on his test because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the First Amendment enabled him to write whatever he wanted.

As for his remark that he did not have to go along with his instructor’s view that the number 6 was actually the number 6, a counselor, Delisa Sidall, wrote: “I reminded him that a complaint was made that he was disruptive in class and he said, ‘I was not disruptive, I was only asking questions that related to math.’

“I asked him to tell me the question he asked? He said, ‘My instructor said he called a number 6 and I said I call it 18.’ He also asked the instructor to explain, ‘How can you deny math instead of accept it?’ ”

Over all, there were seven contacts between Mr. Loughner and campus police in seven months, including two in one week. He clearly was on the radar screen of the authorities, though the documents suggest that they were uncertain how much of a threat he might be, or unclear on how to respond to him.

Mr. Loughner’s grades were redacted in the reports released by the college but they showed that he took a wide array of coursework, including public speaking, sign language, Bible studies and yoga.

Even in his gym classes, there were problems. In May, the police were called by Mr. Loughner’s Pilates instructor, Patricia Curry, who said she felt intimidated after a confrontation over the B grade she wanted to give him. She said he had become “very hostile” upon learning about her intention. “She spoke with him outside the classroom and felt it might become physical,” the police report said.

Ms. Curry told the police she would not feel comfortable teaching Mr. Loughner without an officer in the area, and the officers stayed to keep watch over the Pilates class until the class ended.

The documents show that the campus police served him with a notice of suspension after officers discovered the YouTube video. Although the narrator’s face was obscured in the video, officers said that based on their previous encounters with Mr. Loughner they recognized his voice.

In a sign of how seriously the college took the video, the campus police sought a county grand jury subpoena for the YouTube records of someone identified as “2PLOY.”

Marc Lacey reported from Tucson, and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York. Contributing reporting were Trip Gabriel in New York, and Adam Nagourney, Sam Dolnick, Kirk Johnson, Jo Becker and Rich Oppel in Tucson.

    ‘Creepy,’ ‘Very Hostile’: A College Recorded Its Fears, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13college.html

After Tucson, Emotions Run High

January 12, 2011
The New York Times

To the Editor:

As a lifelong Democrat in Pima County, Arizona, I was heartened and touched by Senator John McCain’s and Speaker John A. Boehner’s responses to our local tragedy. Their compassion and understanding gave me hope that divisive political rhetoric would diminish.

Sadly, I am very discouraged by the defensiveness of other Republicans. Responding to violence with more heated rhetoric, like Sarah Palin’s, indicates a cluelessness that defies comprehension.

Instead of worrying about what people might be implying about them and insisting that they are not to blame, I suggest that these people think about my congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, lying in the hospital with nearly half of her skull removed.

Cheryl Lockhart
Tucson, Jan. 12, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Re “Palin Calls Criticism ‘Blood Libel’ ” (The Caucus, The New York Times on the Web, Jan. 12):

None of the outrageous comments by Sarah Palin have been more disturbing to me than her use of “blood libel” to describe media reports blaming overheated political rhetoric for the tragedy in Tucson.

I doubt that Ms. Palin has any understanding of the significance of the phrase, or why it is laden with emotion for Jews. Nevertheless, it represents a new low in American political rhetoric.

The media should be uncompromising in condemning this for what it is: a blatant attempt to stir up hate, bigotry and mindless passion at a time when there is a need for balance, reason and self-reflection.

George Dargo
Brookline, Mass., Jan. 12, 2011

•

To the Editor:

At least three important elements were missing from Sarah Palin’s statement on Wednesday about the Arizona shootings: compassion, introspection and self-criticism — three qualities that might help a potentially great leader achieve her potential.

Charles Kaufmann
Portland, Me., Jan. 12, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Re “Not Just for Lawmakers” (editorial, Jan. 12): Representative Peter King’s proposal to prohibit the carrying of a firearm within 1,000 feet of a high-ranking government official is sensible. But as government should first and foremost protect its citizens, I would just request that he add my name to the list of those who would be protected from the gun-wielding.

Louis Klarevas
New York, Jan. 12, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Re “The Politicized Mind,” by David Brooks (column, Jan. 11):

The real issue is not whether inflammatory political rhetoric caused the Tucson shooting. It’s the fact that so many people initially assumed that it did.

People’s initial belief that the shooter was motivated by political hostility demonstrates that there is a pervasive sense in America that our politics have degenerated into hatred and risk boiling over into violence. It’s as if the events of the weekend showed us how scared and unnerved we really are.

Carrie Abels
Montpelier, Vt., Jan. 11, 2011

•

To the Editor:

I disagree with the premise that attackers almost never telegraph their intentions ahead of time (“Real Threats Are Said to Rarely Give Warning,” news article, Jan. 12).

Reports that Jared L. Loughner’s bizarre behaviors were known to law enforcement, schoolmates, friends and, perhaps, his family should have raised a red flag that some form of intervention was appropriate before the attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

I almost never had a child abuse case in Family Court that did not involve antecedents such as excessive absences from school, violence in the home or prior contacts with child welfare officials. Similarly, federal crimes are rarely spontaneous and may well be predictable, if not always preventable.

The challenge lies in connecting the dots and implementing appropriate measures before tragedy occurs, including raising public awareness about how to identify dangerous behaviors.

Richard M. Berman
New York, Jan. 12, 2011

The writer is a federal district court judge and former family court judge.

    After Tucson, Emotions Run High, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/l13arizona.html

A Few Reflections on Obama’s Speech in Tucson

January 12, 2011
11:25 pm
The New York Times
By NATE SILVER

President Obama’s speech in Tucson tonight seems to have won nearly universal praise. I suspect it will be remembered as one of his best moments, almost regardless of what else takes place during the remainder of his presidency.

As I’ve mentioned before, this was the first tragedy of this kind that happened in the Twitter Age. From almost the first moment that word about the massacre broke, people had all sorts of theories — often expressed in no more than 140 characters — about the shooter and his motivations.

Some of the theories — such as those that tried to place Jared L. Loughner somewhere on the traditional left-right political spectrum — ran the risk of being presumptuous on the basis of what we knew at the time. And indeed, as more has become known about Mr. Loughner, some of them do not seem to be well supported by the evidence.

Still, nobody seemed to have been chastened much. Instead, after Sarah Palin’s videotaped statement — I would recommend The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin for a judicious take on the particulars of it — the discourse about the tragedy almost seemed to be lapsing into self-parody.

The cynic in me wants to say that, in this context, this was a relatively easy speech for Mr. Obama to deliver (in a political sense rather than an emotional one). Nobody seemed to be playing the role of the adult in the room or moving us toward closure, which provided Mr. Obama with an opportunity to do so. Mr. Obama played that role very well tonight, although I suspect that almost all of his predecessors would have done the same.

At the same time, Mr. Obama’s decision to focus in some detail on the victims of the tragedy — not just Gabrielle Giffords but the others, and not just in a perfunctory way but in one that seemed heartfelt — showed a lot of dexterity for the emotional contours of the moment. And at times, his speech showed an intellectual dexterity as well. This passage, in which Mr. Obama refocused the discussion about civil discourse without trivializing the tragedy, struck me as especially strong:

And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, 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.

I’m going to avoid speculating for now on the political implications of the speech, except to say that much of what takes place during a president’s term, and much of what ultimately affects public perception about whether it was a success or a failure, stems from unplanned contingencies that are ultimately outside of his control. But certain types of contingencies suit the temperaments of certain types of presidents especially well, and this seems to have been one such case for President Obama.

    A Few Reflections on Obama’s Speech in Tucson, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/a-few-reflections-on-obamas-speech-in-tucson/

Facing Challenge, Obama Returns to Unity Theme

January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TUCSON — When President Obama took the stage here Wednesday to address a community — and a nation — traumatized by Saturday’s killings, it invited comparisons to President George W. Bush’s speech to the nation after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the memorial service President Bill Clinton led after the bombing of a federal office building killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995.

But Mr. Obama’s appearance presented a deeper challenge, reflecting the tenor of his times. Unlike those tragedies — which, at least initially, united a mournful country and quieted partisan divisions — this one has, in the days since the killings, had the opposite effect, inflaming the divide.

It was a political reality Mr. Obama seemed to recognize the moment he took the stage. And it was one he seemed determine to address, with language that recalled a central part of Mr. Obama’s appeal as a presidential candidate in 2008.

He called for an end to partisan recriminations, and a unity that has seemed increasingly elusive as each day has brought more harsh condemnations from the left and the right, starting here in Arizona but rippling across the nation. “What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another,” he said. “That we cannot do. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility.”

While some on the left sought to link the killing to the Tea Party movement or to heated speech from prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin, Mr. Obama pointedly noted that there was no way to know why the gunman opened fire, killing 6 people and injuring 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

“For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack,” he said. “None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”

On a day when Ms. Palin posted a video accusing commentators of committing “blood libel” by suggesting her commentary had enabled the crime, Mr. Obama — speaking at times like a political leader, at times like a preacher — urged his audience and the nation to avoid recriminations, to “honor the fallen” by moving forward and by “making sure we align our values with our actions.”

“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, 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 in a way that wounds,” Mr. Obama said.

When it comes to being emotive, Mr. Obama may never match Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush. His voice sometimes wavered, but he is not the kind of leader whose eyes tear up at public events. Yet these are tougher times and he was, here and across the country, speaking to a tougher audience.

Even as it began, some conservative commentators were posting comments criticizing the memorial service for being overly partisan and more like a pep rally, and there were some boos in the hall when Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, spoke. Those reactions would have been hard to imagine, say, in the days after the Oklahoma City bombing.

“Last time there was uniform revulsion,” said Don Baer, who was the chief speechwriter in the White House for Mr. Clinton in 1995 and helped write Mr. Clinton’s speech. “This time, in the interest of condemning vitriol, all sides have become vitriolic. In some ways the country is more in need of a unifying voice that says, ‘Enough already.’ ”

Mr. Baer said that made the demands on Mr. Obama different than those on Mr. Clinton, and made Mr. Obama’s return to the language of his campaign — the call for an end to partisan rancor — so logical.

“The best message for President Obama,” Mr. Baer said, “is the one that brought him to national attention from the start: That there is not a red America or a blue America but a United States of America.”

The speeches Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton gave were seen as turning points in their presidencies. Wednesday night’s event seemed less about Mr. Obama’s presidency and more about the state of this country. His calls during the campaign for an end to brutal partisanship appeared to carry little weight these past two years in Washington. There is no way to know if his similar call on Wednesday, under tragic circumstances, will have more traction.

    Facing Challenge, Obama Returns to Unity Theme, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13assess.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

Obama’s Remarks in Tucson

January 12, 2011
The New York Times

Following is a text of President Obama’s prepared address on Wednesday to honor those killed and wounded in a shooting on Jan. 8, as released by the White House.

To the families of those we've lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

the holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns to our nation's capital. Gabby called it "Congress on Your Corner" – just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.

That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman's bullets. And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too represented what is best in America.

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. A graduate of this university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain twenty years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and rose to become Arizona's chief federal judge. His colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit. He was on his way back from attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to his Representative. John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three sons, and his five grandchildren.

George and Dorothy Morris – "Dot" to her friends – were high school sweethearts who got married and had two daughters. They did everything together, traveling the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year honeymoon. Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their Congresswoman had to say. When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to shield his wife. Both were shot. Dot passed away.

A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow. But in the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 2 year-old great-granddaughter. A gifted quilter, she'd often work under her favorite tree, or sometimes sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered. A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.

Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together – about seventy years ago. They moved apart and started their own respective families, but after both were widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy's daughters put it, "be boyfriend and girlfriend again." When they weren't out on the road in their motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ. A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent his spare time fixing up the church along with their dog, Tux. His final act of selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.

Everything Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion – but his true passion was people. As Gabby's outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits they had earned, that veterans got the medals and care they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks. He died doing what he loved – talking with people and seeing how he could help. Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next year.

And then there is nine year-old Christina Taylor Green. Christina was an A student, a dancer, a gymnast, and a swimmer. She often proclaimed that she wanted to be the first woman to play in the major leagues, and as the only girl on her Little League team, no one put it past her. She showed an appreciation for life uncommon for a girl her age, and would remind her mother, "We are so blessed. We have the best life." And she'd pay those blessings back by participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.

Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing. Our hearts are broken – and yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness.

Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday. I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak. And I can tell you this – she knows we're here and she knows we love her and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey.

And our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others. We are grateful for Daniel Hernandez, a volunteer in Gabby's office who ran through the chaos to minister to his boss, tending to her wounds to keep her alive. We are grateful for the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload. We are grateful for a petite 61 year-old, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer's ammunition, undoubtedly saving some lives. And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and emergency medics who worked wonders to heal those who'd been hurt.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned – as it was on Saturday morning.

Their actions, their selflessness, also pose a challenge to each of us. It raises the question of what, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we've seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But 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 – 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.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that's what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected. We're shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we've shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions – that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires. For those who were harmed, those who were killed – they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong. We may not have known them personally, but we surely see ourselves in them. In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis – she's our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America's fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost. 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.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, 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. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other's ideas without questioning each other's love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe. 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. 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.

That's what I believe, in part because that's what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation's future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called "Faces of Hope." On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child's life. "I hope you help those in need," read one. "I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles."

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we've lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.

    Obama’s Remarks in Tucson, NYT, 12.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/politics/13obama-text.html

Mental Illness, Guns and Toxic Speech

January 11, 2011
The New York Times

To the Editor:

I disagree with the narrow way that David Brooks presents the Arizona shootings in “The Politicized Mind” (column, Jan. 11).

The suspect, Jared L. Loughner, seems to be a disturbed individual, but all societies have mentally unstable citizens, and yet the United States has a high rate of these killing sprees; Columbine, Fort Hood and Virginia Tech come to mind. These mass killings do not happen with such frequency in any other developed country. There must be unique contributing factors beyond the mere presence of mentally ill members in American society.

I can think of at least three:

¶The easy, unfettered access to guns.

¶The difficulty of obtaining health care for the mentally ill.

¶The toxic and inflammatory political rhetoric in this country.

It is incredible to me that it is easier to buy a semiautomatic pistol than to operate a car in the United States. There is great irony that Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s support for the law to provide health care for more Americans like Mr. Loughner inspired vitriolic opposition. All societies have their share of Loughners, but only the United States has the unique environment and lack of support systems that cause them to act out at a higher rate and with such devastating consequences.

Chris Librie
Racine, Wis., Jan. 11, 2011

•

To the Editor:

I take exception to David Brooks’s efforts to separate the climate of political hate from the shooting rampage in Tucson. If Jared L. Loughner had staged his rampage at his workplace, or in his neighborhood or in some other place devoid of political implications, Mr. Brooks would be right — another senseless mass killing by a man in need of treatment in a country in need of better gun control.

But Mr. Loughner was not, as Mr. Brooks contends, “locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it.” Mr. Loughner, even if mentally disturbed, chose his venue — a political gathering — and chose his victim, a Democratic congresswoman.

Furthermore, he made these choices in an atmosphere fired by hate speech, much of it explicitly directed at Democrats. Mr. Brooks is correct that we don’t know whether the Tea Party or Sarah Palin’s targeting of Gabrielle Giffords using cross hairs played any explicit role in influencing Mr. Loughner’s choice of victim, but his heinous act, however irrational, was inescapably political.

Mary-Lou Weisman
Westport, Conn., Jan. 11, 2011

•

To the Editor:

David Brooks accuses me, among others, of “political opportunism.” No, Mr. Brooks. I said that “words have consequences,” and that to place public figures in cross hairs is to invite violence.

That isn’t political opportunism, nor does it represent, as you claim, “vicious charges.” That is a fact. Few doubt that inflammatory rhetoric has prompted mass violence in the past.

Gary Hart
Kittredge, Colo., Jan. 11, 2011

The writer was a Democratic senator from Colorado from 1975 to 1987.

•

To the Editor:

The explanation on your opinion pages for the Tucson shooting seems to divide along liberal and conservative lines. While liberal columnists like Paul Krugman (“Climate of Hate,” Jan. 10) emphasize the current political environment that they contend encourages outrage and violence, conservatives, like David Brooks, point out that the suspect is mentally ill and answers mainly to the voices in his own head. Both offer interpretations that confirm their and their readers’ worldview.

Is it not possible that they are both correct?

Edward Abrahams
Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Jan. 11, 2011

•

To the Editor:

In “A Turning Point in the Discourse, but in Which Direction?” (Political Times column, Jan. 9), Matt Bai seems to equate the vitriol arising from powerful conservative forces (Sarah Palin, Fox News, the Tea Party movement) with a comment posted on the progressive Daily Kos blog, where a constituent declared Representative Gabrielle Giffords “dead to me” after she voted against Nancy Pelosi for minority leader.

It’s not just that the latter hardly commands public attention to the degree of the former, but Mr. Bai has misconstrued the Kos comment. To be “dead to me” is an expression used by some observant Jews to separate themselves from, for example, a child who has married outside the faith (and Ms. Giffords is Jewish). It has nothing to do with wanting to see a life ended, and is hardly comparable to Sharron Angle’s “Second Amendment remedies.”

Steven Volk
Oberlin, Ohio, Jan. 9, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Re “An Assault on Everyone’s Safety” (editorial, Jan. 11): The attack in Tucson was the latest in a losing battle for gun control. There’s no hope for any discussion in this country. Innocents were shot, security will increase and we’ll never agree about Sarah Palin.

I believe in the right to bear arms, but not for deranged individuals. The National Rifle Association is making it difficult for mayors across the country to crack down on illegal handguns. When any attack occurs, it’s used as a reason for everyone to go out and buy a gun.

I don’t believe that sanity can prevail when it’s easier to pull out a Glock 19 than it is to pull the lever of a voting machine. As a registered Republican who believes in tougher gun laws, I know there’s room for individuals to think outside their party’s dogma. The death of another child changes things a bit, don’t you think?

Howard Jay Meyer
Brooklyn, Jan. 11, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Members of Congress will rant, rave and pontificate about the Tucson massacre, then do absolutely nothing meaningful about gun control, waiting for the next massacre to pick up on the ranting, raving and pontificating.

Sam Salem
Akron, Ohio, Jan. 11, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Re “At Victim’s School, Shock, Sorrow and Nightmares” (news article, Jan. 11):

If any good can come out of the senseless shootings in Tucson, perhaps it can be to put a human face on the breadth of the tragedy.

Maybe the loss of Christina Green, a 9-year-old girl brought to a Safeway to witness democracy in action, can provide the impetus for legislators cowed by the National Rifle Association to finally remove semiautomatic weapons from our store shelves and cupboards.

If such legislation needs a human face, we can call it Christina’s Law.

Mark Rosen
New Paltz, N.Y., Jan. 11, 2011

    Mental Illness, Guns and Toxic Speech, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/l12arizona.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/

For Boehner, Rampage Imposes Its Own Agenda

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner expected to spend his first celebratory weeks as the new leader of the House showcasing his party’s differences with the Democrats.

But the shooting rampage in Arizona upended those plans. Now Mr. Boehner is being called on to play a far less partisan role, leading Republicans and Democrats alike through a difficult period.

How he performs will not only be crucial in shaping his national image, but also could frame his relations with his own party and with the Democratic minority. He also faces the challenge of holding on to the political initiative that the Republicans had won in the midterm elections.

Mr. Boehner, other House leaders and their aides are moving cautiously and have not said how soon normal Congressional business will resume, though it is likely that some semblance of routine will be restored next week.

Aware that a crisis can play out politically in unforeseen ways, House officials say decisions are being made day to day, and depend on factors like the medical condition of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other shooting victims, and on the national mood.

It is a difficult test in the early going for the new speaker, who remains largely unfamiliar to most Americans.

As the House prepares to consider a resolution on Wednesday condemning the shootings — which left 6 people dead and 14 injured — Mr. Boehner’s allies say he is playing from strength: he has been calling for more civility in the House for some time and has never cast himself as a take-no-prisoners partisan warrior in the style of former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

“John Boehner is very well equipped both by personality and by actions and past experience to handle this job,” said Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California.

Since he learned of the shootings on Saturday afternoon while at home in Ohio, Mr. Boehner has urged colleagues to rally together on behalf of Ms. Giffords and the other victims, and to demonstrate that Congress cannot be cowed by such actions.

His response has drawn praise from Democrats.

“He has said the right things and set the right tone,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a member of the Democratic leadership. “I think he has acted swiftly, effectively and responsibly.”

Other Democrats say they will judge Mr. Boehner more by whether he allows the House to slide back into the confrontational politics that have been typical in recent years, but absent in the days since the shootings.

Before the attack, the highest priority of House Republicans was their drive to repeal the health care overhaul passed last year. The repeal effort had led to some of the divisive discourse that is now under scrutiny.

After news of the shootings reached Washington, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, quickly moved to postpone a vote on overturning the health care law, which had been scheduled for Wednesday.

Mr. Boehner made it clear on Tuesday that Congress would soon get back to work.

“Recent events have reminded us of the imperfect nature of our representative democracy, but also how much we cherish the ideal that our government exists to serve the people,” Mr. Boehner said in the letter he sent to President Obama inviting him to deliver the State of the Union address on Jan. 25. Even after the shootings, the speaker wrote, Congress has an “obligation to carry out their will and provide solutions to keep moving our nation forward.”

Democrats and others are watching to see whether Mr. Boehner issues a call to change the tone in the House.

Advisers suggest that Mr. Boehner, who is scheduled to host a joint prayer service on Wednesday with Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat he replaced as speaker, is more inclined to lead by example. Republicans also expect the idea of a more reasoned politics to be a theme at a party retreat in Baltimore this week.

Mr. Boehner comes to the matter as a less polarizing figure than many other well-known Republicans.

“He is no Sarah Palin,” said John Feehery, a lobbyist who was a spokesman for a former Republican speaker, J. Dennis Hastert. “He has a steady hand, and he is providing the right touch.”

The shootings, while causing Mr. Boehner to reshuffle his overall plans, provide him with the opportunity to unify a chamber rent by partisanship and now reeling from violence.

In remarks in a conference call on Sunday, Mr. Boehner told his colleagues that the House had a chance to show its best side at one of its worst moments.

“This is a time for the House to lock arms,” he said.

David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.

    For Boehner, Rampage Imposes Its Own Agenda, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/politics/12boehner.html

First Comes Fear

January 11, 2011
9:09 pm
The New York Times
By ROBERT WRIGHT

People on the left and right have been wrestling over the legacy of Jared Loughner, arguing about whether his shooting spree proves that the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks of the world are fomenting violence. But it’s not as if this is the only data point we have. Here’s another one:

Six months ago, police in California pulled over a truck that turned out to contain a rifle, a handgun, a shotgun and body armor. Police learned from the driver — sometime after he opened fire on them — that he was heading for San Francisco, where he planned to kill people at the Tides Foundation. You’ve probably never heard of the Tides Foundation — unless you watch Glenn Beck, who had mentioned it more than two dozen times in the preceding six months, depicting it as part of a communist plot to “infiltrate” our society and seize control of big business.

Note the parallel with Loughner’s case. Loughner was convinced that a conspiracy was afoot — a conspiracy by the government to control our thoughts (via grammar, in his bizarre worldview). So he decided to kill one of the conspirators.

It’s not clear where Loughner got his conspiracy theory. The leading contender is a self-styled “king of Hawaii” who harbors, along with his beliefs about government mind control, a conviction that the world will end next year. But it doesn’t matter who Loughner got the idea from or whether you consider it left wing or right wing. The point is that Americans who wildly depict other Americans as dark conspirators, as the enemy, are in fact increasing the chances, however marginally, that those Americans will be attacked.

In that sense, the emphasis the left is placing on violent rhetoric and imagery is probably misplaced. Sure, calls to violence, explicit or implicit, can have effect. But the more incendiary theme in current discourse is the consignment of Americans to the category of alien, of insidious other. Once Glenn Beck had sufficiently demonized people at the Tides Foundation, actually advocating the violence wasn’t necessary.

By the same token, Palin’s much-discussed cross-hairs map probably isn’t as dangerous as her claim that “socialists” are trying to create “death panels.” If you convince enough people that an enemy of the American way is setting up a system that could kill them, the violent hatred will take care of itself.

When left and right contend over the meaning of incidents like this, the sanity of the perpetrator becomes a big issue. Back when Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood, the right emphasized how sane he was and the left how crazy he was. The idea was that if Hasan was sane, then he could be viewed as a coherent expression of the Jihadist ideology that some on the right say is rampant in America. In the case of Loughner, the right was quick to emphasize that he was not sane and therefore couldn’t be a coherent expression of right-wing ideology. Then, as his ideology started looking more like a left-right jumble, and his weirdness got better documented, a left-right consensus on his craziness emerged.

My own view is that if you decide to go kill a bunch of innocent people, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re not a picture of mental health. But that doesn’t sever the link between you and the people who inspired you, or insulate them from responsibility. Glenn Beck knows that there are lots of unbalanced people out there, and that his message reaches some of them.

This doesn’t make him morally culpable for the way these people react to things he says that are true. It doesn’t even make him responsible for the things he says that are false but that he sincerely believes are true. But it does make him responsible for things he says that are false and concocted to mislead gullible people.

I guess it’s possible that Beck actually believes his hyper-theatrically delivered nonsense. (And I guess it’s possible that professional wrestling isn’t fake.) But in that case the responsibility just moves to Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, its owner. Why are they giving a megaphone to someone who believes crazy stuff?

The magic formula of Palin and Beck — fear sells — knows no ideology. When Jon Stewart closed his Washington “rally to restore sanity” with a video montage of fear mongers, he commendably included some on the left — notably the sometimes over-the-top Keith Olbermann. The heads of MSNBC have just as much of an obligation to help keep America sane as the heads of Fox News have.

To be sure, at this political moment there is — by my left-wing lights, at least — more crazy fear-mongering and demonization on the right than on the left. But that asymmetry is transient.

What’s not transient, unfortunately, is the technological trend that drives much of this. It isn’t just that people can now build a cocoon of cable channels and Web sites that insulates them from inconvenient facts. It’s also that this cocoon insulates them from other Americans — including the groups of Americans who, inside the cocoon, are being depicted as evil aliens. It’s easy to buy into the demonization of people you never communicate with, and whose views you never see depicted by anyone other than their adversaries.

In this environment, any entrepreneurial fear monger can use technology to build a following. You don’t have to be the king of Hawaii to start calling yourself the king of Hawaii and convince a Jared Loughner that there’s a conspiracy afoot.

So I’m not sure how much good it would do if you could get a Glenn Beck to clean up his act. With such a vast ecosystem of fear mongers, his vacated niche might be filled before long. But I think Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch owe it to America to at least do the experiment.

Postscript: Encouragingly, Roger Ailes said in the wake of the Tucson shooting that “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually.” So stay tuned. Also encouragingly, two journalists from liberal and conservative magazines — the American Prospect and National Review — had an extremely civil discussion about the Tucson shooting, about 24 hours after it happened, on my Web site Bloggingheads.tv.

    First Comes Fear, NYT, 1.11.2011, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/before-hatred-comes-fear/

Police Say They Visited Tucson Suspect’s Home Even Before Rampage

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By JO BECKER, KIRK JOHNSON and SERGE F. KOVALESKI

This article is by Jo Becker, Kirk Johnson and Serge F. Kovaleski.

TUCSON — The police were sent to the home where Jared L. Loughner lived with his family on more than one occasion before the attack here on Saturday that left a congresswoman fighting for her life and six others dead, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday.

A spokesman, Jason Ogan, said the details of the calls were being reviewed by legal counsel and would be released as soon as the review was complete. He said he did not know what the calls were about — they could possibly have been minor, even trivial matters — or whether they involved Jared Loughner or another member of the household.

A friend of Mr. Loughner’s also said in an interview on Tuesday that Mr. Loughner, 22, was skilled with a gun — as early as high school — and had talked about a philosophy of fostering chaos.

The news of police involvement with the Loughners suggests that county sheriff’s deputies were at least familiar with the family, even if the reason for their visits was unclear as of Tuesday night.

The account by Mr. Loughner’s friend, a rare extended interview with someone close to Mr. Loughner in recent years, added some details to the emerging portrait of the suspect and his family.

“He was a nihilist and loves causing chaos, and that is probably why he did the shooting, along with the fact he was sick in the head,” said Zane Gutierrez, 21, who was living in a trailer outside Tucson and met Mr. Loughner sometimes to shoot at cans for target practice.

The Loughner family released a statement on Tuesday, its first since the attacks, expressing — in a six-line document handed to reporters outside their house — sorrow for the losses experienced by the victims and their families.

“It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday,” the statement said. “There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there were, so we could make you feel better.”

The new details from Mr. Gutierrez about Mr. Loughner — including his philosophy of anarchy and his expertise with a handgun, suggest that the earliest signs of behavior that may have ultimately led to the attacks started several years ago.

Mr. Gutierrez said his friend had become obsessed with the meaning of dreams and their importance. He talked about reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s book “The Will To Power” and embraced ideas about the corrosive, destructive effects of nihilism — a belief in nothing. And every day, his friend said, Mr. Loughner would get up and write in his dream journal, recording the world he experienced in sleep and its possible meanings.

“Jared felt nothing existed but his subconscious,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “The dream world was what was real to Jared, not the day-to-day of our lives.”

And that dream world, his friend said, could be downright strange.

“He would ask me constantly, ‘Do you see that blue tree over there?’ He would admit to seeing the sky as orange and the grass as blue,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “Normal people don’t talk about that stuff.”

He added that Mr. Loughner “used the word hollow to describe how fake the real world was to him.”

As his behavior grew more puzzling to his friends, he was getting better with a pistol. Starting in high school, Mr. Loughner honed his marksmanship with a 9-millimeter pistol, the same caliber weapon used in the attack Saturday, until he became proficient at handling the weapon and firing it quickly.

“If he had a gun pointed at me, there is nothing I could do because he would make it count,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “He was quick.”

He also said that Mr. Loughner had increasing trouble interacting in social settings — during one party, for instance, Mr. Loughner retreated upstairs alone to a room and was found reading a dictionary.

Jared Loughner’s retreat — whether into the desert with his gun, or into the recesses of his dreams — coincided with a broader retreat by the Loughner family that left them increasingly isolated from their community, neighbors said.

His father, Randy, once more of a presence in their mostly working-class neighborhood in northwest Tucson as he went off to work as a carpet-layer and pool-deck installer, became a silent and often sullen presence.

One neighbor, George Gayan, who said he had known the family for 30 years, described a kind of a gradual “pulling back” by the family.

“People do this for different reasons,” said Mr. Gayan, 82. “I don’t know why.”

Some years ago, Randy Loughner built a wall to shield the side porch of the family’s home. Because of his often bellicose attitude, neighbors sometimes kept their distance.

Leslie Cooper owns the house next door, where her son and his family live. She recounted a time when her grandchildren would not chase after a ball that landed in the Loughners’ backyard.

“They had to buy a new one,” said Ms. Cooper, who was told of the incident by her son. “I’d tell my son, those are not normal people over there — there’s a reason why they stick to themselves,” she said, adding that she had warned him to steer clear of Randy Loughner.

“I said, be careful around that guy — don’t get him angry,” she added.

Other people in the neighborhood, though, said they saw glimpses of compassion in the Loughner family, and an ability to reach out to others, sometimes unexpectedly.

Richard Mckinley, 41, whose mother lives down the street from the Loughners, said his mother appreciated how Randy and Amy Loughner were among the first people to visit when her husband died two years ago.

“They were some of the first people to pay respects,” he said.

In contrast to the reputation of his father, Jared Loughner’s mother, Amy, is considered pleasant but reserved by those who know her.

She commuted about an hour each day to her job managing Agua Caliente Park, an area of spring-fed ponds surrounded by giant palm trees in the desert on the outskirts of Tucson. The impeccably maintained park was quiet Tuesday, but for the chirping of the dozens of species of birds that call it home and the occasional crunch of a birder’s hiking boots along the trails.

Donna DeHaan, a former board member of the nonprofit group that helps support the park, said Ms. Loughner was a reliable manager with a good background in environmental issues. Ms. DeHaan said she never spoke about her family but was always pleasant, if a tad quiet and shy.

Mr. Gutierrez said he sensed very little communication within the family when he was among them.

“Every time I met his parents they were kind of quiet and estranged,” he said. Jared Loughner did not complain about his parents, Mr. Gutierrez said, and seemed to simply accept the lack of interaction as a fact of life.

“Jared really did not talk to his parents or talk about them,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “I felt they were not really good reaching out and he was not good at reaching out to his parents.”

After his arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia in 2007, Mr. Loughner was ordered to attend a diversion program run by the county attorney’s office. The chief deputy county attorney, Amelia Craig Cramer, said the program is intended for first-time offenders who have no history of violence or serious mental illness.

Mr. Loughner was referred to an approved drug education program, and completed the required sessions in 30 days.

But the program is primarily educational, Ms. Cramer said, focused on “the dangers of drugs and the dangers of substance abuse,” rather than the kind of in-depth counseling that friends, including Mr. Gutierrez, strongly felt that Mr. Loughner needed.

“It got worse over time,” Mr. Gutierrez said. He said he stopped talking to Mr. Loughner last March, when their interactions grew increasingly unpredictable and troubling.

“He would call me at 2 a.m. and asked, ‘Are you hanging out in front of my house, stalking me?’ He started to get really paranoid, and said he did not want to see us anymore and did not trust us,” Mr. Gutierrez said, referring to himself and another friend. “He thought we were plotting to kill him or steal his car.”

Jo Becker and Kirk Johnson reported from Tucson, and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York. William Gordon Ferguson and Anissa Tanweer contributed reporting from Tucson, and Dan Frosch from Denver. Jack Begg contributed research.

    Police Say They Visited Tucson Suspect’s Home Even Before Rampage, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/12loughner.html

Legal Strategy Could Hinge on Mental Assessment

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER

The disturbing photograph of Jared L. Loughner that was released after his arrest, as well as the writings and statements attributed to him, seemed to point to a man with a mental disorder.

Even if that is found to be true, the lawyers for Mr. Loughner, the 22-year-old college dropout who has been charged in the Tucson shootings, may find it difficult to mount a successful insanity defense.

The rules regarding such a legal strategy were tightened over the years in the wake of the verdict for John W. Hinckley Jr., who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. The insanity argument is now seldom successful, legal experts said.

What is more likely, they say, is that Mr. Loughner’s lawyers will use any mental health problems they find to stave off the death penalty, if he should go to trial and be convicted.

His lawyer, Judy Clarke, is likely to begin a far-ranging investigation of his life and family history, going back several generations to learn as much as possible about his origins, the environment in which he grew up and how he has functioned in society, said David I. Bruck, who worked with Ms. Clarke in the defense of Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons in 1994 and who received a life sentence.

Ms. Clarke “will present a case which is focused, grounded in the facts, thorough and heartfelt,” said Mr. Bruck, a veteran death-penalty lawyer and a professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. “She won’t try to sell what she wouldn’t buy. She’s going to find this man’s story, and once she’s found it, she’s going to be confident about telling it to a jury.”

But just where Ms. Clarke will tell that story — and before how many juries — is unclear.

The defense could ask that Mr. Loughner’s case be moved from Arizona out of concern that potential jurors might be influenced by news accounts.

Mr. Loughner (pronounced LOF-ner) may also have to be defended in separate trials brought by federal and state prosecutors, who are both likely to seek the death penalty.

The federal government has charged Mr. Loughner in the killings of two federal employees — Judge John M. Roll, the chief federal judge for Arizona, and Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide to Representative Gabrielle Giffords — and the Pima County attorney, Barbara LaWall, has said she will “pursue charges on behalf of the nonfederal victims.”

Her office has been researching the issue of whether it can proceed at the same time as the federal prosecutors, or whether the state’s case will have to wait until the United States attorney’s office has finished its work.

“I think initially there’ll be some confusion as to who’s going to go first, and how fast they are going to go,” said Rory Little, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who teaches at the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

“I would guess that you’re having some pretty intense discussions now between the federal government and the state side, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see the case divided up,” he said.

Either way, federal and state prosecutors would have two opportunities to seek the death penalty against Mr. Loughner if they chose to do so. That occurred in the case stemming from the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, including infants and children in a day care center. One defendant, Timothy J. McVeigh, received the death penalty at his federal trial, but a second, Terry L. Nichols, did not.

Mr. Nichols was tried again, on state charges, in McAlester, Okla. He was again spared execution.

Beth A. Wilkinson, a member of the federal prosecution team in the Oklahoma City case, said of the Tucson shootings: “In a crime like this, it’s also very important to recognize the state’s interest in prosecuting murder and attempted murder of their citizens. The vast majority of murder cases are prosecuted by state authorities.”

Neither the Justice Department nor the Pima County attorney’s office have said if it would pursue the death penalty against Mr. Loughner.

One of Ms. Clarke’s critical early steps will be to argue against any federal death-penalty case through a written submission and in meetings with federal prosecutors in Arizona and with the Justice Department’s Capital Case Committee in Washington. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will have the final say.

Aitan D. Goelman, who also was involved in the federal prosecution of the Oklahoma City case, said he doubted that an effort to block a death-penalty prosecution would prevail. “These kinds of cases are essentially the reason we have the federal death penalty,” he said.

The federal complaint against Mr. Loughner charges him with the murders of Judge Roll and Mr. Zimmerman, along with the attempted murders of Ms. Giffords, who was struck in the head but survived, and of two of her staff members, Pamela Simon and Ronald Barber, who were both wounded and were expected to recover.

One complication is that Mr. Loughner’s lawyers can only pursue the insanity defense if the defendant approves, said Stephen J. Morse, a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.

“It cannot be imposed on a defendant over his objection,” Professor Morse said.

He said that lawyers in federal court tend to regard the insanity plea as “a defense of last resort, because juries are skeptical of claims that a defendant was not responsible for his actions.”

Still, he said, given early accounts of the evidence that has surfaced in the Tucson case — that Mr. Loughner appears to have carefully planned his attack on Ms. Giffords — his only chance might be to invoke such a defense.

“Based on the early information,” Professor Morse said, “I would be surprised if he didn’t, because he seems to have no other defense as far as I can tell.”

Marc Lacey contributed reporting from Tucson.

    Legal Strategy Could Hinge on Mental Assessment, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/12legal.html

Not Just for Lawmakers

January 11, 2011
The New York Times

Representative Peter King, a Republican of Long Island, has proposed a bill that would prohibit the carrying of a gun within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress or other high-profile government official. That’s a worthy notion, so far as it goes. But how about going a step further and prohibiting the carrying of a semiautomatic weapon around 9-year-old girls? Or 79-year-old women? Or any of the other victims who were shot down in the Tucson parking lot on Saturday?

Members of Congress are understandably worried about their own safety in the wake of the shooting rampage that was centered around Representative Gabrielle Giffords. It makes sense for the Capitol Police to work more closely with local law enforcement agencies to enhance security at lawmakers’ public events. But some of the ideas being proposed would have the effect of further distancing lawmakers from the people they represent — and elevate their safety above the 100,000 Americans who are shot or killed with a gun every year.

Representative James Clyburn, a Democrat of South Carolina, said that lawmakers should no longer be treated like everyone else at airport security checkpoints, though that inconvenience seems to have nothing to do with the shooting. Representative Robert Brady, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, has proposed making it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening violence against all federal officials, an idea dangerously full of potential First Amendment violations. Representative Dan Burton, a Republican of Indiana, even wants to enclose the public gallery above the House chamber in Plexiglas. These ideas are unlikely to make lawmakers or the public any safer. But if members are concerned that some of the 283 million guns now in the hands of American civilians might one day be turned on them — and they should be — there are many things they can do.

They can follow the advice given on Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, along with 10 other mayors, and begin restoring the nation’s gun control laws to sanity — for the protection of everyone. The most obvious first steps are to ban the extended-round magazines used in the Arizona shooting and tighten a nearly useless system of background checks.

They also can ensure that federal and state financing for outreach to the mentally ill is increased, not cut, in the budget battles to come. Jared Loughner, the man accused of the Arizona shootings, apparently received no mental health treatment, even though officials at his college were very concerned about his mental state.

Instead of hiding, lawmakers must reach out to their constituents and help calm a troubled political environment without fear or self-absorbed overreaction.

    Not Just for Lawmakers, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12wed2.html

Threats to Lawmakers Rarely Lead to Charges

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — In September 2009, a Veterans Affairs caseworker reported that a man had threatened to kill Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, and Representative Ciro Rodriguez, a Democrat, both of Texas, for failing to help him in a dispute over his retirement benefits.

In June 2009, a man called an aide to Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, and said that if she held a town hall meeting on immigration or nuclear energy — or if he saw her on the street — he would attack her.

And in May 2009, Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, was in a parking lot in his district when a man driving by shouted that the lawmaker had blood on his hands over the Iraq war, had a bulls-eye on his head and was going to die.

The result in all three cases was the same: federal prosecutors declined to charge the men because they apparently had no intention of carrying out the threats, Federal Bureau of Investigation files show.

As the F.B.I. investigates the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, a review of hundreds of cases involving threats to lawmakers from 2000 to 2009 demonstrates just how hard it is to discern the real threats from mere bluster.

So far, no reports have emerged that Ms. Giffords’s assailant ever directly communicated a threat to her or her staff. In fact, studies of assaults on public figures have found that attackers have almost never telegraphed their intentions to their targets or to the authorities ahead of time. That suggests that the threats to lawmakers are likely being made by people other than those they most need to worry about.

“The hunters are those that do not directly threaten,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine who consults with the F.B.I.

Law enforcement officials said that the authorities must take threats seriously and make sure there is no real peril. In most instances, lawmakers report incidents to the United States Capitol Police’s threat assessment division, which refers some to the F.B.I. for further investigation.

In a small number of cases, officials have concluded that the threats were serious enough to have the person committed to a mental institution — potentially disrupting later problems — or to pursue lesser charges. But most of the time, investigators have concluded that little actual risk of an attack existed.

A review of the documents shows that some common patterns emerge. Some cases involve mentally or emotionally disturbed people who make threats but appear to lack any intent or capacity to cause harm. Sometimes they had temporarily stopped taking psychiatric medications at the time of the threat, making it hard to establish any criminal intent.

In 2008, for example, an Idaho man sent a letter to William Sali, then a Republican representative, saying that if the congressman did not help stop a city from invoking eminent domain to take a church’s property for use by a hospital, he would “blow the hospital to hell and the city too.”

The man told the F.B.I. he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had been having “medication issues” when he wrote the letter. He said he had no intention of committing any violent acts. Because he was not believed to be “a viable threat,” the case was closed.

Another common category consists of people who vented in an overheated way.

In February 2008, for example, an Alabama man sent an e-mail to a government agency threatening Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican then campaigning for president. The man, who owned several guns, later admitted sending the e-mail, saying he “was drunk when I wrote that one” and was upset at Mr. McCain for “not campaigning in Alabama as a Republican should be.” He apologized and promised to send no more threats.

And in June 2008, the F.B.I. investigated a man who sent a vulgar fax to Representative Louise M. Slaughter of New York that she viewed as threatening. He told the F.B.I. he had not intended to threaten her — and noted that he has “suffered three strokes, uses a cane to walk, and neither has the ability nor intention of physically harming Congresswoman Slaughter.”

The case was closed without charges. In an interview, Ms. Slaughter said that even if such investigations often did not result in prosecutions, she was relieved that the authorities saw them through — and at times stepped in to provide extra protection.

“There are a lot of people in the United States that have just abject hate for the government,” she said. “And we are part of it. And if we really are going to make a major difference here in addressing this problem, we have to convince citizens of the United States that this government is not their enemy.”

While attackers almost never telegraph their intentions ahead of time, they do often show signs of fixation on public figures against whom they harbor grievances — real or imagined — and often tell a friend or a relative that they might attack them, forensic psychologists say.

Richard A. Falkenrath, former deputy commissioner of counter-terrorism of the New York Police Department, said the files demonstrated the complexity of the authorities face in protecting public officials,.

“It is really hard,” Mr. Falkenrath said. “The vast majority of threats don’t amount to anything other than that — threats. It is that small few that keep you up at night and result in what we had in Arizona.”

    Threats to Lawmakers Rarely Lead to Charges, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/12security.html

When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By JOANNE B. FREEMAN


New Haven

THE announcement that Representatives Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Jason Chaffetz of Utah are planning to wear guns in their home districts has surprised many, but in fact the United States has had armed congressmen before. In the rough-and-tumble Congress of the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, politicians regularly wore weapons on the House and Senate floors, and sometimes used them.

During one 1836 melee in the House, a witness observed representatives with “pistols in hand.” In a committee hearing that same year, one House member became so enraged at the testimony of a witness that he reached for his gun; when the terrified witness refused to return, he was brought before the House on a charge of contempt.

Perhaps most dramatic of all, during a debate in 1850, Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi pulled a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. (Someone eventually took it from his hand.) Foote had decided in advance that if he felt threatened, he would grab his gun and run for the aisle in the hope that stray shots wouldn’t hit bystanders.

Most famously, in 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor so brutally that Sumner had to be virtually carried from the chamber — and did not retake his seat for three years. Clearly, wielded with brute force, a cane could be a potent weapon.

By the 1850s, violence was common in Washington. Not long after Sumner’s caning, a magazine told the story of a Michigan judge who traveled by train to the nation’s capital: “As he entered the main hall of the depot, he saw a man engaged in caning another ferociously, all over the room. ‘When I saw this,’ says the judge, ‘I knew I was in Washington.’”

In Congress, violence was often deployed strategically. Representatives and senators who were willing to back up their words with their weapons had an advantage, particularly in the debate over slavery. Generally speaking, Northerners were least likely to be armed, and thus most likely to back down. Congressional bullies pressed their advantage, using threats and violence to steer debate, silence opposition and influence votes.

In 1842, Representative Thomas Arnold of Tennessee, a member of the Whig Party, learned the hard way that these bullies meant business. After he reprimanded a pro-slavery member of his own party, two Southern Democrats stalked toward him, at least one of whom was armed with a bowie knife — a 6- to 12-inch blade often worn strapped to the back. Calling Arnold a “damned coward,” his angry colleagues threatened to cut his throat “from ear to ear.” But Arnold wasn’t a man to back down. Ten years earlier, he had subdued an armed assassin on the Capitol steps.

As alarming as these outbursts were, until the 1840s, reporters played them down, in part to avoid becoming embroiled in fights themselves. (A good many reporters received beatings from outraged congressmen; one nearly had his finger bitten off.) So Americans knew relatively little of congressional violence.

That changed with the arrival of the telegraph. Congressmen suddenly had to confront the threat — or temptation — of “instant” nationwide publicity. As Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire reminded his colleagues within minutes of the Foote-Benton clash, reports were “already traveling with lightning speed over the telegraph wires to the remotest borders of the Republic.” He added, “It is not impossible that even now it may have been rumored in the city of St. Louis that several senators are dead and weltering in their blood on the floor of the Senate.”

Violence was news, and news could spawn violence. Something had to be done, but what? To many, the answer was obvious: watch your words. As one onlooker wrote to the speaker of the House shortly after Sumner’s caning, “gentlemen” who took part in the debate over slavery should “scrupulously avoid the utterance of unnecessarily harsh language.” There was no other way to prevent the “almost murderous feeling” that could lead to “demonstrations upon the floor, which in the present state of excitement, would almost certainly lead to a general melee and perhaps a dozen deaths in the twinkling of an eye.”

Unfortunately, such admonitions had little effect. The violence in Congress continued to build until the outbreak of the Civil War.

Today, in the wake of an episode of violence against a member of Congress, we’re again lamenting the state of political rhetoric, now spread faster than ever via Twitter, Web sites, text messaging and e-mail. Once again, politicians are considering bearing arms — not to use against one another, but potentially against an angry public.

And once again we’re reminded that words matter. Communication is the heart and soul of American democratic governance, but there hasn’t been much fruitful discourse of late — among members of Congress, between the people and their representatives or in the public sphere. We need to get better at communicating not only quickly, but civilly.

Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of history at Yale, is at work on a book about violence in Congress.

    When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12freeman.html

Obama Speech to Focus on Serving Country

January 11, 2011
6:50 pm
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER AND JEFF ZELENY

President Obama will focus his speech at a memorial service in Tucson on Wednesday evening on the victims of the attack and on the idea of service to the country, avoiding any overt commentary on the debate over violence and the nation’s political culture.

Instead, Mr. Obama, who was still working with his speechwriters on his remarks on Tuesday, will call for unity among Americans, while trying to honor the victims, including their service to government, as an example to all Americans. He will share the anecdotes about the victims that he has learned during private phone calls to the families, aides said.

By staying above the partisan fray, Mr. Obama is adopting a model that is very close to what President Bill Clinton did 16 years ago, when Mr. Clinton was faced with responding to the Oklahoma City bombing at a similar point in his presidency. On April 23, 1995, four days after Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Mr. Clinton traveled to Oklahoma City, where he told grieving family members at a memorial service that “those who trouble their own house will inherit the wind.”

It was a widely praised address that helped reinvigorate his presidency just months after a midterm drubbing. Against the backdrop of a partisan debate over the role and size of government, Mr. Clinton paid tribute to federal workers in a relatively brief speech that did not wade directly into politics.

Tucson is not Oklahoma City— Jared L. Loughner allegedly killed six people outside the Safeway on Saturday, not 168, and injured 15, not 450. But when Mr. Obama walks onto the basketball court at the University of Arizona at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night, he will be facing both a challenge, to find the words and the tone that a horrified country will find comforting, and an opportunity, to appear as a leader first instead of a politician.

“The president needs to go to the highest ground here and really be a source of comfort and inspiration to the whole country,” said John Podesta, the head of the Center for American Progress, a policy group that has deep ties to the Democratic Party. “He should, as much as possible, personally stay away from anything that could possibly be accused of politics.”

White House officials were clearly aware of the potential traps. David Axelrod, a senior advisor who oversees all major speeches delivered by the president, said Tuesday that it would be wrong to view the speech through a political prism.

“His interests in going, his role in going is in response to a tremendous trauma for that community and the whole American community,” Mr. Axelrod said. “That’s his mindset as he goes.”

Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, added: “The president thought it was important to visit the Tucson community since this tragedy touched everyone there as well as throughout the entire country in some way.”

Mr. Obama, Mr. Shapiro said, “believes that right now, the main thing we should be doing is offering our thoughts and prayers to those who’ve been impacted and making sure that we’re joining together and pulling together as a country.”

Mr. Obama’s speech in Arizona will mark the third time since taking office two years ago that he will lead the country in mourning after a national tragedy. He eulogized the 13 soldiers who were gunned down in November 2009 at Fort Hood, Tex., and five months later he traveled to West Virginia to remember the lives of the 29 men killed in the nation’s worst coal mining disaster in four decades.

In both cases, the president recounted personal anecdotes about those who lost their lives, even as he tried to draw broader lessons about the tragedy. But he did not, particularly in the case of the Fort Hood speech, directly address an array of haunting questions about the shooter.

In each instance, Mr. Obama also used the occasion to draw upon his faith, which an official said he will do again in Arizona.

    Obama Speech to Focus on Serving Country, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/obama-speech-to-focus-on-serving-country/

Governor Strives to Restore Arizona’s Reputation

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TUCSON — Gov. Jan Brewer had intended to use her speech at the Convention Center here on Tuesday to talk about the severe budget shortfall that Arizona faces, after two years in which she had been identified with a series of contentious issues, particularly immigration.

But no. “Today is not a day for politics or policy,” Ms. Brewer said. For a fleet eight minutes, Ms. Brewer, looking sober and saddened, paid tribute to those who were killed and injured in a mass shooting on Saturday — and also offered something of a defense of a state whose reputation has been under a cloud.

“I want to speak to you about the Arizona I know, the place we saw again even on such an awful Saturday,” she said. “It is a place of service, a place of heroes, a place with a bruised, battered heart that I know will get past this hideous moment.”

Her remarks, a downstate reprise of the official State of the State address she gave to lawmakers in Phoenix on Monday, illustrate the challenges Ms. Brewer faces. She is eagerly trying to defend a state whose reputation has been battered in recent years, particularly since the massacre here on Saturday.

But fairly or not, Arizona’s image has been forged in part because of Ms. Brewer herself, who has been identified with the tough law aimed at illegal immigrants, budget cuts that include denying aid to people who need life-saving transplants and laws permitting people to take concealed guns into bars and banning the teaching of ethnic studies in public schools.

“She faces some real challenges where the image of Arizona is concerned,” said Nathan Sproul, a Republican consultant here. “I think this is the darkest time for Arizona, per the way the nation looks at us, since when we repealed the Martin Luther King holiday in the 1980s. That took Arizona a decade to overcome. I think this presents Arizona with the strongest challenge since then.”

Even some of Ms. Brewer’s associates said they were hopeful that the governor and her allies in the Legislature would move away from initiatives that they said could further damage the state’s image, in particular allowing guns in schools.

“I think the governor can, should — I’ve talked to her a couple of times in the last 72 hours — talk about all the positive things that we have going on in our state, and how our state should not be judged by the worst people in our state,” said Grant Woods, a former state attorney general who was the chairman of Ms. Brewer’s campaign last year and publicly broke with her on the immigration law.

Mr. Woods added: “I would hope that the governor and the Legislature would see this as an appropriate time to take a break from some of those divisive issues. Those are the sort of things that cause emotions to run high. One thing leads to another.”

Ms. Brewer’s advisers said she was aware of the challenges and had been trying to burnish her public profile since she was elected in November, after filling the vacancy created when Gov. Janet Napolitano was appointed secretary of homeland security.

Ms. Brewer’s remarks here Tuesday, including a moment of prayer the left some in the audience crying, were devoid of any mention of the divisive topics that she has been so identified with. After her remarks, she went to the hospital to visit Representative Gabrielle Giffords and other victims of the shooting.

“She has become a very popular figure in this state,” said Chuck Coughlin, Ms. Brewer’s political consultant.

Her speech was warmly received. “It was more for the unity of the state,” said Dan Miller, 44, who attended the speech. “She talked about this tragedy and pulling together whether you’re a Democrat or Republican.”

The question now is whether Ms. Brewer can be an effective advocate for Arizona at a time of a tragedy that would challenge even the most poised chief executive. At a number of points in her campaign, Ms. Brewer seemed unsteady and uncertain. In a debate, she fell silent for nearly 10 seconds, as she apparently struggled to figure out what to say.

There will be obvious contrasts with President Obama, when he appears here Wednesday night. The two have strikingly different positions on everything from immigration to gun control. She was one of the first governors to file a lawsuit seeking to invalidate Mr. Obama’s health care law.

“I’m not sure she brings the best skills to that task,” said Don Bivens, the state Democratic leader. But Mr. Bivens made clear that he was not criticizing her, adding: “How many of us bring those sort of skills to respond to a massacre?”

More of an obstacle might be some of the incendiary remarks she has made as governor, such as claiming, without foundation, that headless bodies had been found in the desert. She made that statement in signing the bill that gave the police wide authority to demand proof of citizenship from people suspected of being illegal immigrants.

“She really did get caught up in a lot of this rhetoric that we are now concerned about as it relates to Gabby,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University.

Clayton Norman contributed reporting.

    Governor Strives to Restore Arizona’s Reputation, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/12brewer.html

Ailes Tells Fox Anchors to ‘Tone it Down’

January 11, 2011
9:02 am
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, on Monday embraced the idea of a more civil public discourse in the wake of the shootings in Arizona.

In an interview with the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, which was posted on his Web site, Mr. Ailes said that his network would try to cool the heated rhetoric.

“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” Mr. Ailes said. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.”

Fox News is often accused by critics of crossing the line with hosts like Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

But Mr. Ailes accused liberals of using the same overheated rhetoric, and he defended Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, for a map that depicted cross hairs over the district of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was one of the 20 people shot on Saturday.

“We looked at the Internet and the first thing we found in 2007, the Democrat Party had a targeted map with targets on it for the Palin district,” Mr. Ailes said. “These maps have been used for for years that I know of. I have two pictures of myself with a bull’s-eye on my head.”

He added, “Both sides are wrong, but they both do it.”

    Ailes Tells Fox Anchors to ‘Tone it Down’, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/ailes-to-fox-anchors-tone-it-down/

House Resolution to Reaffirm ‘Democratic Principles’

January 11, 2011
1:27 pm
The New York Times
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

With all of Capitol Hill’s legislative business postponed in response to the shooting rampage in Arizona, the House will reconvene on Wednesday to approve a resolution honoring the dead and the wounded, praising the bravery of those who responded to the attack and reaffirming “the bedrock principle of American democracy and representative government” — the right to peaceable assembly enshrined in the First Amendment.

The resolution is being offered by the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, and it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific attack with occurred at the ‘Congress on Your Corner’ event hosted by Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz.”

The proposed resolution offers condolences to the families of the dead, and “expresses hope for the rapid and complete recovery of those wounded.”

But the most powerful language in the resolution is the reaffirmation of the Democratic principles that in many ways were as much a target of the gunman as Ms. Giffords, her staff members and her constituents.

The resolution noted that it was Ms. Giffords, a Democrat, who read the First Amendment during the opening week of the 112th Congress, including “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” And the resolution states that the House “stands firm in its belief in a democracy in which all can participate and in which intimidation and threats of violence cannot silence the voices of any American.”

The resolution also “honors the service and leadership of Representative Gabrielle Giffords” and stated that when the House adjourns on Wednesday it “shall do so out of respect for the victims of this attack.”

Aides to Mr. Boehner said the resolution was developed in consultation with leaders of both parties in the House and also with aides to Ms. Giffords.

    House Resolution to Reaffirm ‘Democratic Principles’, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/house-resolution-to-reaffirm-democratic-principles/

Doctors Say Giffords Is Able to Breathe on Her Own

January 11, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY

TUSCON —Gabrielle Giffords has shown no increase in brain swelling and is now able to breath on her own, doctors said at a news conference Tuesday morning, but they said they planned to keep the wounded congresswoman on a ventilator as a precaution.

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center, said Ms. Giffords remained in stable condition on Tuesday. She was hospitalized after being struck in the head with a gunshot fired at point-blank range while she was talking with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. Six people were killed in the shooting incident and 14 more were injured, including the Ms. Giffords, the apparent main target of the attack.

“I am happy to say that she is holding her own,” Dr. Lemole said. “She is able to generate her own breath.”

Doctors have removed nearly half of Ms. Giffords’s skull to prevent swelling from damaging her brain. “This the phase of the care where so much of it is up to her,” he said. “She is going to take her recovery at her own pace.”

Relatives of some others wounded in the shooting appeared at the hopsital news conference along with Dr. Lemole. They said that though their family members continue to recover from the physical wounds they received, the emotional scarring would probably take far longer to heal.

Bill Hileman, whose wife Susan Hileman was shot three times, said that when he visited her bedside, she asked him, “What about Christina?” Ms. Hileman had been holding hands outside the supermarket with the Hilemans’ nine-year-old neighbor, Christina Greene, when the shots rang out; the girl was also hit and later died of her wounds.

Mr. Hileman said that though his wife had been in a morphine-induced haze, she was clearly devastated when he told her that the girl had died. “We’re going to have that as an ongoing issue that we’ll be dealing with,” Mr. Hileman said about his wife’s feelings of guilt. Ms. Hileman had invited Christina to accompany her to the event at the supermarket that morning because of the girl’s interest in politics.

Memorial services were scheduled for Tuesday evening at two Tucson churches for victims of the shooting. President Obama and his wife are expected to attend another memorial service on Wednesday.

Jared L. Loughner, the man arrested at the scene on Saturday and accused of firing the shots, was led into a federal courtroom in Phoenix on Monday, his head shaved bare and his hands and feet in restraints. In the hearing, he agreed not to contest his continued imprisonment, but offered no hint of how he would respond to the federal murder and attempted murder charges that have already been filed against him, concerning the five victims who were federal employees.

“Yes, I am Jared Lee Loughner,” he told Magistrate Judge Lawrence O. Anderson, staring blankly ahead with his lawyer, Judy Clarke, a veteran public defender, at his side. The defendant, a 22-year-old college dropout, was wide-eyed and had a wound to his right temple. At the defense table, his eyes darted back and forth and his mouth curled up at one point into a quick smile.

Ms. Clarke signaled that she intended to push for the case to be handled by an out-of-state judge, since one of the victims her client is accused of killing was Judge John M. Roll of Federal District Court in Tucson. Already, all the federal judges in Tucson have recused themselves. As some of Judge Roll’s friends and colleagues looked on, Ms. Clarke said she had “great concern” about any Arizona judges or prosecutors handling the case.

Mr. Loughner (pronounced LOF-ner) faces two federal murder charges and three attempted murder charges in an attack that prosecutors described as an attempt to assassinate Rep. Giffords, Democrat of Arizona.

Mr. Loughner, dressed in beige prison garb, a white T-shirt and blue slip-on shoes, agreed not to challenge his continued detention without bail after Wallace H. Kleindienst, a federal prosecutor, labeled him a danger and a flight risk. That prompted the judge to quickly rule, based on the serious charges, that Mr. Loughner was “a danger to the community” and ought to be held without bail.

“Good luck to you, Mr. Loughner,” Judge Anderson said as the defendant, who could face the death penalty if convicted, received a pat on the back from Ms. Clarke and was led away by security officers.

An outpouring of grief has been on display around the country. In Washington, President Obama stood with his wife, their heads bowed, overlooking the South Lawn of the White House at 11 a.m. as a single bell tolled to honor the wounded and the dead. On the steps of the East Front of the Capitol, hundreds of Congressional aides gathered to observe the moment.

“Obviously all of us are still grieving and in shock from the tragedy that took place,” Mr. Obama said in the Oval Office, where he was meeting on Monday with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

“Gabby Giffords and others are still fighting to recover,” said Mr. Obama, who is planning a trip to Tucson on Wednesday to meet with victims and their families and offer his first extensive public remarks since the shooting. “Families are still absorbing the enormity of their losses.” At the start of the State Legislature’s session in Phoenix on Monday, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, decided to scrap the traditional annual address laying out her legislative agenda and instead honor the dead and call upon people across the state to pray.

“Arizona is in pain, yes,” Ms. Brewer said. “Our grief is profound. We are yet in the first hours of our sorrow, but we have not been brought down. We will never be brought down.” Meanwhile, new details emerged about the suspect’s actions before the shooting, which was carried out with a Glock 19, a medium-size, 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his record expunged on a 2007 drug paraphernalia charge. Although he did not need to bother — he had completed a diversion program so the charge was never actually on his record — the incident stuck in the mind of Judge José Luis Castillo of Pima County Consolidated Justice Court.

It was unusual, for one thing, the judge said, that anyone knew how to go about filling out such forms. And the judge’s review of the court record showed that Mr. Loughner had completed the diversion program in 2007 in almost record time and had been very polite, with nothing to indicate the kind of behavior that was to come.

“It definitely crossed my mind,” the judge said, that Mr. Loughner was making the request only because he was worried that the drug paraphernalia charge would prevent him from buying a weapon.

Kim Janes, manager of the Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, said in an interview that Mr. Loughner volunteered at the facility in January and February last year as a dog walker. In his application, Mr. Loughner wrote that he was interested in volunteering at the center for “community service, fun, reference and experience.” But after about two months, Mr. Janes said, even though Mr. Loughner had been told not to walk any dogs in an area of the kennel where parvovirus had been detected, he did not appear to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

“He did not seem to understand why this was important and how deadly the virus could be for dogs. He never really acknowledged our concerns,” Mr. Janes said. “We were concerned about him not following the rules that the supervisor had passed on to him and we told him not to return until he was willing to abide by our rules.” That was the last the center saw of him.

In his application, filled out in late November 2009, Mr. Loughner said he was a student at Pima Community College with an intended major in liberal arts, Mr. Janes said.

He also said in his application that he had worked for an Eddie Bauer store in Tucson from October 2008 to November 2009.

Over all, Mr. Janes said, referring to Saturday’s shooting, “It is very disconcerting that someone who showed compassion for innocent animals would do what he did to human beings.” Even before Mr. Loughner’s court appearance, the prosecutor in Pima County, where the rampage took place, vowed to pursue state murder charges against him as well.

In addition to the judge and the congresswoman, three Congressional aides were shot, including one who died. Four bystanders were also killed and 11 others were injured, prompting Barbara LaWall, the Pima County attorney, to vow that she would “definitely pursue charges on behalf of the nonfederal victims.” County lawyers were still researching whether state and federal cases could proceed concurrently or whether her office would wait until federal prosecutors had finished their case. The state has no deadline, Ms. LaWall said, to bring the matter before a grand jury because Mr. Loughner is in federal custody, not in state custody.

“This is not just a professional matter for me but a personal one since I knew many of these victims,” she said.


Reporting was contributed by Ford Burkhart, Ron Nixon and Anissa Tanweer from Tucson, and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York.

    Doctors Say Giffords Is Able to Breathe on Her Own, NYT, 11.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/12giffords.html

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

Sweet Home Arizona

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By AURELIE SHEEHAN

Tucson

I SPENT early Saturday morning writing a short story set in Tucson. I’ve lived here for a decade, but it’s only recently that I’ve felt I can claim the place as a subject. The impetus for writing about it hasn’t been love so much as anxiety, a sense that it’s in danger somehow — on many fronts.

That feeling of danger hit hard when I slouched out of my office to get another cup of coffee and my husband, mid-chat, looked up from his computer to tell me Representative Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, as had several other people. At a Safeway, of all places.

We stared at the local news Web site, trying to understand this new reality. A headline for an earlier article describing a lesser calamity still dominated the page: “BB Gun Killed 80 Bats Found Under East-Side Bridge, G & F Concludes,” with a picture of a frail bat clinging to an embankment. To the right of this, the stark words of a breaking news bulletin: Gabrielle Giffords, 40, shot point-blank in the head.

Our 11-year-old daughter came out of her bedroom. She was wrapped in her fuzzy blanket, ready to listen to Taylor Swift or play Fruit Ninja on her iPod. Instead she listened to her mother tell of the shooting of our congresswoman and, as the news came in, the killing of her aide, a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl (who, like our daughter, had served on her student council) and three elderly citizens. She watched her mother cry.

My daughter knew Gabby Giffords as a politician, as someone we’d supported in the last election. We talk a lot about politics at our house, and she’s an attentive listener, fierce about what she thinks is wrong and right. But her response that morning wasn’t politically motivated, nor was ours. It was the shock of violence, the fear and anger and sorrow that comes from hearing about deaths close to home.

We know that Safeway; we know the bakery where people ran to safety. The shopping center is both pleasant and mundane: an adobe and brick building with the Santa Catalina Mountains rising up behind it, a sleepy, easy place to get groceries or a muffin on a weekend morning. Given a modest shift in circumstance, we might have been there.

Earlier, over breakfast, my husband and I had shaken our heads to see our adopted city as the dateline of an article on the front page of The Times under the headline “Citing Brainwashing, Arizona Declares a Latino Class Illegal.” Arizona has been in the national news a lot lately, and never for the right reasons. Now, as we senselessly hit refresh on our computers, we felt more than ever caught in a place where the tenor of America’s political discourse was spinning out of control. The state felt as if it was closing in on us.

Over the weekend, that slowly changed.

Saturday night we had signed on to go to a benefit concert for a small organization that develops music programs for at-risk children in the Southwest. It was organized by a talented 12-year-old boy who took guitar lessons alongside our daughter, and we had been looking forward to it. Now no one really wanted to go — we were all too beaten down by the day. But we went anyway, to support the young guitarist and the nonprofit group.

We sat down in the school auditorium, restless, a little ill at ease, scattered in our thoughts. About 200 people were there. The lights went down and, after a weirdly protracted pause, Brad Richter, the nonprofit’s co-founder, took the stage.

He talked quietly about what had happened that morning. He had played guitar at Gabrielle Giffords’s wedding, in 2007. And that evening he played an original composition for us, something she had requested he play then: “Elation,” the song was called. The feeling of community in the room was palpable, and if elation was beyond our reach, we were at least consoled.

The next night, my daughter and I stopped in front of Ms. Giffords’s office on the corner of Pima and Swan. Hundreds of candles and flowers, many teddy bears, peace signs, handwritten notes and a dreamcatcher — vast, radiant displays of support and hope — were arrayed at our feet. A TV newscaster was putting on lip balm, readying for another round of pronouncements. A group of college students huddled in their hoodies, awkward and silent and sad, and a lone young woman sat by the edge, in prayer.

It’s been a tough couple of years here since the presidential election, and our friendships with some Republicans have grown strained. In the wake of this attack, I don’t know if we will be able to talk to each other more now, if we will reach out across the political divide, or if the sides will become further entrenched, if this is the harbinger of more divisiveness.

But experiencing the steadfast and determined ways so many people of this city are trying to keep it together, trying to reach out and make this a better place — Gabrielle Giffords being one of them — has made me understand how much this flawed, complex desert town means to me, how much it feels like home.

Aurelie Sheehan is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Arizona and the author of “History Lesson for Girls,” a novel.

    Sweet Home Arizona, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11sheehan.html

A Flood Tide of Murder

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By BOB HERBERT

By all means, condemn the hateful rhetoric that has poured so much poison into our political discourse. The crazies don’t kill in a vacuum, and the vilest of our political leaders and commentators deserve to be called to account for their demagoguery and the danger that comes with it. But that’s the easy part.

If we want to reverse the flood tide of killing in this country, we’ll have to do a hell of a lot more than bad-mouth a few sorry politicians and lame-brained talking heads. We need to face up to the fact that this is an insanely violent society. The vitriol that has become an integral part of our political rhetoric, most egregiously from the right, is just one of the myriad contributing factors in a society saturated in blood.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed. That figure includes suicides and accidental deaths. But homicides, deliberate killings, are a perennial scourge, and not just with guns.

Excluding the people killed in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 150,000 Americans have been murdered since the beginning of the 21st century. This endlessly proliferating parade of death, which does not spare women or children, ought to make our knees go weak. But we never even notice most of the killings. Homicide is white noise in this society.

The overwhelming majority of the people who claim to be so outraged by last weekend’s shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others — six of them fatally — will take absolutely no steps, none whatsoever, to prevent a similar tragedy in the future. And similar tragedies are coming as surely as the sun makes its daily appearance over the eastern horizon because this is an American ritual: the mowing down of the innocents.

On Saturday, the victims happened to be a respected congresswoman, a 9-year-old girl, a federal judge and a number of others gathered at the kind of civic event that is supposed to define a successful democracy. But there are endless horror stories. In April 2007, 32 students and faculty members at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute were shot to death and 17 others were wounded by a student armed with a pair of semiautomatic weapons.

On a cold, rainy afternoon in Pittsburgh in 2009, I came upon a gray-haired woman shivering on a stone step in a residential neighborhood. “I’m the grandmother of the kid that killed those cops,” she whispered. Three police officers had been shot and killed by her 22-year-old grandson, who was armed with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle.

I remember having lunch with Marian Wright Edelman, the president of the Children’s Defense Fund, a few days after the Virginia Tech tragedy. She shook her head at the senseless loss of so many students and teachers, then told me: “We’re losing eight children and teenagers a day to gun violence. As far as young people are concerned, we lose the equivalent of the massacre at Virginia Tech about every four days.”

If we were serious, if we really wanted to cut down on the killings, we’d have to do two things. We’d have to radically restrict the availability of guns while at the same time beginning the very hard work of trying to change a culture that glorifies and embraces violence as entertainment, and views violence as an appropriate and effective response to the things that bother us.

Ordinary citizens interested in a more sane and civilized society would have to insist that their elected representatives take meaningful steps to stem the violence. And they would have to demand, as well, that the government bring an end to the wars overseas, with their terrible human toll, because the wars are part of the same crippling pathology.

Without those very tough steps, the murder of the innocents by the tens of thousands will most assuredly continue.

I wouldn’t hold my breath. The Gabrielle Giffords story is big for the time being, but so were Columbine and Oklahoma City. And so was the anti-white killing spree of John Muhammad and Lee Malvo that took 10 lives in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., in October 2002. But no amount of killing has prompted any real remedial action.

For whatever reasons, neither the public nor the politicians seem to really care how many Americans are murdered — unless it’s in a terror attack by foreigners. The two most common responses to violence in the U.S. are to ignore it or be entertained by it. The horror prompted by the attack in Tucson on Saturday will pass. The outrage will fade. The murders will continue.

    A Flood Tide of Murder, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11herbert.html

The Politicized Mind

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS

Before he allegedly went off on his shooting rampage in Tucson, Jared Loughner listed some of his favorite books on his YouTube page. These included: “Animal Farm,” “Brave New World,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Through the Looking Glass” and “The Communist Manifesto.” Many of these books share a common theme: individuals trying to control their own thoughts and government or some other force trying to take that control away.

Loughner also made a series of videos. These, too, suggest that he was struggling to control his own mind. Just before his killing spree, Loughner made one called “My Final Thoughts.” In it he writes about different levels of consciousness and dreaming. He tries to build a rigid structure to organize his thinking. He uses the word “currency” as a metaphor for an inner language to make sense of the world.

“You create and distribute your new currency, listener?” the video asks. “You don’t allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?”

All of this evidence, which is easily accessible on the Internet, points to the possibility that Loughner may be suffering from a mental illness like schizophrenia. The vast majority of schizophrenics are not violent, and those that receive treatment are not violent. But as Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a research psychiatrist, writes in his book, “The Insanity Offense,” about 1 percent of the seriously mentally ill (or about 40,000 individuals) are violent. They account for about half the rampage murders in the United States.

Other themes from Loughner’s life fit the rampage-killer profile. He saw himself in world historical terms. He appeared to have a poor sense of his own illness (part of a condition known as anosognosia). He had increasingly frequent run-ins with the police. In short, the evidence before us suggests that Loughner was locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it.

Yet the early coverage and commentary of the Tucson massacre suppressed this evidence. The coverage and commentary shifted to an entirely different explanation: Loughner unleashed his rampage because he was incited by the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party, the anti-immigrant movement and Sarah Palin.

Mainstream news organizations linked the attack to an offensive target map issued by Sarah Palin’s political action committee. The Huffington Post erupted, with former Senator Gary Hart flatly stating that the killings were the result of angry political rhetoric. Keith Olbermann demanded a Palin repudiation and the founder of the Daily Kos wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was fostered by a political climate of hate.

These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.

The good news is that there were a few skeptics, even during the height of the mania: Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast, James Fallows of The Atlantic and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic. The other good news is that the mainstream media usually recovers from its hysterias and tries belatedly to get the story right.

If the evidence continues as it has, the obvious questions are these: How can we more aggressively treat mentally ill people who are becoming increasingly disruptive? How can we prevent them from getting guns? Do we need to make involuntary treatment easier for authorities to invoke?

Torrey’s book describes a nation that has been unable to come up with a humane mental health policy — one that protects the ill from their own demons and society from their rare but deadly outbursts. The other problem is this: contemporary punditry lives in the world of superficial tactics and interests. It is unprepared when an event opens the door to a deeper realm of disorder, cruelty and horror.

    The Politicized Mind, NYT, 19.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11brooks.html

An Assault on Everyone’s Safety

January 10, 2011
The New York Times

The Glock 19 is a semiautomatic pistol so reliable that it is used by thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world, including the New York Police Department, to protect the police and the public. On Saturday, in Tucson, it became an instrument of carnage for two preventable reasons: It had an oversize ammunition clip that was once restricted by federal law and still should be; and it was fired by a disturbed man who should never have been able to purchase it legally.

The ludicrously thin membrane that now passes for gun control in this country almost certainly made the Tucson tragedy worse. Members of Congress are legitimately concerned about their own safety now, but they should be no less worried about the effect of their inaction on the safety of all Americans.

As lawmakers in Washington engage this week in moments of silence and tributes to Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other casualties, they should realize that they have the power to reduce the number of these sorts of horrors, and their lethality.

To do so, they will need to stand up to the National Rifle Association and its allies, whose lobbying power continues to grow despite the visceral evidence that the groups have made the country a far more dangerous place. Having won a Supreme Court ruling establishing a right to keep a firearm in the home, the gun lobby is striving for new heights of lunacy, waging a campaign to legalize the possession of a gun in schools, bars, parks, offices, and churches, even by teenagers.

It reflexively opposes even mild, sensible restrictions — but if there is any reason left in this debate, the latest mass shooting should force a retreat. Is there anyone, even the most die-hard gun lobbyist, who wants to argue that a disturbed man should be able to easily and legally buy a Glock to shoot a congresswoman, a judge, a 9-year-old girl?

One of the first things Congress can do is to take up a bill proposed by Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat of Long Island, that would ban the extended ammunition clip used by the Arizona shooter, Jared Loughner. A Glock 19 usually holds 15 bullets. Mr. Loughner used an oversize clip allowing him to fire as many as 33 bullets before pausing to reload. It was at that point that he was tackled and restrained.

Between 1994 and 2004, it was illegal to manufacture or import the extended clips as part of the ban on assault weapons. But the ban was never renewed because of the fierce opposition of the N.R.A. At least six states, including California and New York, ban extended clips, which serve absolutely no legitimate purpose outside of military or law enforcement use. At a minimum, that ban should be extended nationwide, and should prohibit possession, not just manufacture.

The gun itself was purchased by Mr. Loughner at a sporting goods store that followed the bare-minimum federal background check, which only flags felons, people found to be a danger to themselves or others, or those under a restraining order.

Mr. Loughner was rejected by the military for failing a drug test, and had five run-ins with the Pima Community College police before being suspended for disruptive activity. Why can’t Congress require a background check — without loopholes for gun shows or private sales — that would detect this sort of history? If the military didn’t want someone like Mr. Loughner to be given a firearm, neither should the public at large.

At least two members of Congress say they will start to carry weapons to district meetings, the worst possible response. If lawmakers want to enhance their safety, and that of their constituents, they should recognize that the true public menace is the well-dressed gun lobbyist hanging out just outside their chamber door.

    An Assault on Everyone’s Safety, NYT, 10.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11tue1.html

At Victim’s School, Shock, Sorrow and Nightmares

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

TUCSON — For the children at Mesa Verde Elementary School, the questions are endless. First, they asked, again and again, why would a stranger kill Christina Green, who had attended school here since kindergarten? Then, some asked quietly, would that man come back to try to shoot them, too? And is it still safe to go to the supermarket?

As classes at Mesa Verde resumed for the first time since the shooting on Saturday that killed six people, including 9-year-old Christina, the school grappled with how to talk about the tragedy with the young students here. Many of them have never known anyone who has died. Now, one of their own had been killed — a loss that was difficult for many adults to deal with.

In the two nights since the shooting, nightmares had already interrupted sleep for many of the children — images of puppies suddenly dying, mothers crossing invisible lines and abruptly disappearing, or somebody coming to kidnap their friends in the middle of the day. The impact was raw and deep. Some children screamed and sobbed inconsolably, while others were stoic, promising their mothers that, yes, they understood, and, no, they did not need to talk.

They brought their stuffed owls and friendship bracelets and flowerpots as offerings for the growing memorial to Christina that lined the fence at the school. And her third-grade classmates hugged one another tightly in the yard before classes began.

“Are you sure you’re O.K.?” one asked a group of friends. “My mom said it’s O.K. to be sad.”

Kayley Clark, a classmate who had been friends with Christina for years, said, “I just feel shocked and very, very sad. She was very, very smart and very, very nice. She was such a fun person, and I really wish she could come back.”

Many students were already chattering about ways they could honor Christina. Could they name a local park in her memory? Or perhaps a baseball field, a tribute to the game she loved? Could they try to be more helpful to other students, as they had seen her do?

As parents escorted their children to class just after dawn, a few said they were worried about what their children would hear about the attacks, but many more said they felt a sense of relief that somebody else could help their children grieve.

And parents were mourning not only the death of a bright and popular young student, but also a sense of innocence for their children.

Tamara Clark, Kayley’s mother, said that when she told her daughter that Christina was the young girl killed on Saturday, she immediately burst into tears. Then, there was silence. Hours later came the anger “in a way I have never seen,” Ms. Clark said.

“She would say over and over that she hated the guy who did it,” Ms. Clark said. “ ‘Hate’ is a word I never really heard her use before.”

With fewer than 400 students at the school, nearly every child had at least seen Christina on the playground or at student council or with a tutoring program where she volunteered.

A team of psychologists arrived at the school early Monday, preparing to stay all week. Teachers began the day by telling students that the school was “like one big family, and we are all here to support each other in this time.” With that, students were encouraged to share memories of Christina in class.

“They told them it’s fine to be happy when you think about Christina and it’s fine to feel sad,” said Christine Parrish, whose 8- and 9-year-old daughters had known Christina for most of their lives.

School officials were trying to make the day stick to a normal schedule, although the circumstances were anything but.

“This is a multifaceted tragedy for this community,” said Vicki Balentine, the superintendent of the Amphitheater Public Schools district. “We want to give them space to do whatever we need to be supportive. And at the same time, we have to move forward.”

One class gathered in the schoolyard and held hands in a circle for the national moment of silence, as a car stereo blasted the sound of a single bell. The scheduled Family Library Night on Monday was replaced with a support gathering for families.

For many parents and more than a few students, there are the persistent thoughts of “what if?”

“There’s no reason we couldn’t have been there at that time, too,” said Betty Ordonez, whose granddaughter, Jordan Zepeda, is also in third grade at Mesa Verde. “That was the first thing I thought when I heard about it — where are my babies?”

Jordan said, “Now, I feel scared, just very scared.”

Ms. Balentine said the students seemed to be doing as well as could be expected, adding, “Children are remarkably resilient.”

Indeed, one of the most cogent messages (complete with misspellings) on the growing memorial came in a letter from Rachel Cooper-Blackmore, a fifth grader.

“Christina you will be missed by everyone,” it began, each “i” dotted with a heart. “I am so sorry for your family and I hope in their hearts you can guide them on the right pathway of live because yours was taken short.”

    At Victim’s School, Shock, Sorrow and Nightmares, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11schools.html

Congress Weighs Enhanced Security Plan

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON, CHARLIE SAVAGE and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

This article is by Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage and Jennifer Steinhauer.

WASHINGTON — House lawmakers are considering adopting an enhanced security system that would ease the way for members of Congress to get more comprehensive protection at public appearances in their home districts.

Under the bipartisan proposal, the Capitol Police, which is charged with protecting lawmakers, would formalize its relationship with local police and sheriffs’ departments around the United States and jointly develop more standardized plans to deal with varying threat levels for town meetings or other public events, House officials said. Lawmakers could then ask the local police to execute the plans for certain events, a step now taken only on an ad hoc basis.

“The current system is based on reaction to a potential threat,” said Jamie Fleet, the Democratic staff director for the Committee on House Administration, which oversees security matters. “The new system will be more formalized — sitting down and planning a town hall or a ‘Congress in Your Corner’ event, changing the thinking of staff and lawmakers to ‘Am I doing this safely?’ ”

The answer to that question is a delicate one for members of Congress, who say they do not want to insulate themselves from constituents but also increasingly acknowledge anxiety about the volatile political climate. While security at the Capitol has intensified since the Sept. 11 attacks, there has been no comparative effort to increase protection of lawmakers outside Washington, particularly when they are at public events.

Even before the Arizona shooting on Saturday, which wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and left six people dead, reported threats against lawmakers had been on the rise, jumping in the Senate alone to 49 incidents last year from about 30 each in 2008 and 2009, according to the Senate sergeant-at-arms. On Friday, for example, a Colorado man was arrested for threatening to set a fire around the office of Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado.

Increased security measures will be discussed at a Wednesday briefing about the Arizona attack for members of Congress. Law enforcement experts cautioned, though, that identifying threats that could prove difficult and that providing security for lawmakers at thousands of events every year might be impractical.

Some members of Congress said they were not sure if the attack should motivate any major security changes, pointing out that the last comparable event was in 1978, when a House member from California was killed.

“If we put every senator and congressman behind a thick brick wall and make them completely safe, we wouldn’t have the democracy we have today,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Capitol Police. “So there has to be a balance.”

Mr. Schumer, who spoke at a senior center in New Rochelle on Monday after police officers did a sweep with a German shepherd and inspected cars in the parking lot, said the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms had been meeting with the chief of the Capitol Police to discuss whether any upgrades to security procedures or levels were necessary. But they have not yet made a proposal, he said.

Representative Dan Lungren, a California Republican who leads the House committee that oversees security, and Mr. Fleet, the Democratic House aide, agreed that the Capitol Police and local law enforcement authorities could never provide complete protection to lawmakers as they travel around the United States. But they said that if there was a more standardized system for requesting security at a district event, lawmakers would be more likely to take advantage of the service.

“You can have some reliance on a document of what they ought to do and members will get over any reluctance they might have,” Mr. Lungren said in an interview.

Currently, lawmakers are invited to contact the Capitol Police or sergeant-at-arms if they have been threatened, and the Capitol Police have a special threat assessment unit that evaluates security measures at a lawmaker’s office and recommends steps to improve it.

The Capitol Police force, which has about 1,600 officers, sometimes sends officers to districts with lawmakers. Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who just left the House, had a federal protective team with him last year after he received threats apparently related to his position on the health care overhaul. One came from a former Army officer, who was charged after saying he would “paint the Mackinac Bridge red” with the congressman’s blood.

Mr. Lungren said he routinely had a uniformed police officer with him at town-hall-style meetings.

But most members do not regularly request such protection. The glass on the front door to Ms. Giffords’s district office was smashed last March after the vote on the health care legislation, either after being hit with an object or some kind of pellet gun. But Ms. Giffords continued to go to public events without security.

“We were never so concerned about security that we ever canceled an event that I can recall in four years,” her spokesman, C.J. Karamargin, said Monday. “She has always prided herself on her openness and accessibility.”

But some lawmakers said the Arizona shooting should change attitudes in Congress.

“I think it needs to be a wake-up call for members who have treated security in a cavalier — their own personal security in a cavalier way,” Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, said on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “When I have town hall meetings, which I have regularly, and increasingly even, even very open public meetings, there are always officers present.”

    Congress Weighs Enhanced Security Plan, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11security.html

The Weapon and the Laws

The Glock 19, the handgun model used in Saturday’s mass shooting,

is used by law enforcement agencies across the country, including the New York Police Department.

It is shorter than the “standard” size Glock 17 by half an inch, making it easier to conceal.

The gunman was using a 33-round magazine,

which is banned in six states and the District of Columbia, but not in Arizona,

which has among the most permissive gun laws.

NYT

Published: January 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/10/us/guns-graphic.html

In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By JO BECKER and MICHAEL LUO

TUCSON — “I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.”

The quip, by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was made in an interview last year with The New York Times, when tensions were running high in her district. It speaks not only to her ability to defend herself but also to the passionate gun culture in Arizona, which crosses political lines and is notable for its fierceness, even in the West.

Indeed, the federal judge who was killed on Saturday in the shootings here, John M. Roll, had his wife and many people who worked with him take lessons at the Marksman Pistol Institute, an indoor range downtown. One of the doctors who operated on Ms. Giffords after the shooting rampage was a member of the Pima Pistol Club, an outdoor range where federal and local law enforcement personnel were practicing on Monday.

Arizona’s gun laws stand out as among the most permissive in the country. Last year, Arizona became only the third state that does not require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state also enacted another measure that allowed workers to take their guns to work, even if their workplaces banned firearms, as long as they kept them in their locked vehicles.

In 2009, a law went into effect allowing people with concealed-weapons permits to take their guns into restaurants and bars.

It is unclear whether the attack on Saturday will do anything to shift attitudes about guns in this state. But at the federal level, gun control advocates have quickly zeroed in on the “high-capacity” ammunition magazine used by the suspect, Jared L. Loughner.

Gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds were banned under the federal assault weapons ban until the statute expired at the end of 2004. Today, just six states and the District of Columbia limit the sale of such magazines.

The magazine of Mr. Loughner’s semiautomatic pistol held more than 30 rounds when, law enforcement officials say, he opened fire on a crowd outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday.

It was only when he stopped to reload that bystanders were able to tackle him.

“The reason he was able to be tackled was he had to pause to reload,” said Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that works to change gun laws and the gun industry. “The problem is, he didn’t have to pause to reload until he’d already expended 30 rounds.”

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, is preparing legislation to prohibit high-capacity magazines and could introduce a measure as early as this week, said Shams Tarek, a spokesman.

Mr. Tarek said Ms. McCarthy’s office had been in talks with the staff of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, about working together on the issue. “We’re trying to come up with something that’s reasonable, that has a chance to go somewhere,” Mr. Tarek said.

Public support for stricter gun control, however, has dropped significantly over the last couple of decades, and there is little evidence to suggest that mass shootings change opinions.

In a Gallup poll conducted in October, just 44 percent of Americans said the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made stricter, matching Gallup’s record low on the question set in 2009. The 1999 Columbine and 2007 Virginia Tech shootings appear to have had little, if any, effect on these views.

In Arizona, the liberalization of gun laws has accelerated over the last two years, after Jan Brewer, a Republican, succeeded Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, as governor in 2009, putting Republicans in control of both the Legislature and the governor’s office.

In the last two weeks, two bills were introduced relating to the right to carry guns on college campuses, one allowing professors to carry concealed weapons and one allowing anybody who can legally carry a gun to do so.

“Here in Arizona, it’s very difficult to change the culture,” said Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety. “But we’re going to try.”

Federal laws bar anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun. Administrators at Pima Community College banned Mr. Loughner from the school last year because they had concerns about his mental well-being, but the episode would not have risen to the level in which it would have shown up on a computerized background check, or legally barred him from buying a gun, legal experts said.

Similarly, federal law prohibits “unlawful” drug users and “addicts” from buying guns, based on recent convictions, or multiple arrests over the past five years. Mr. Loughner was arrested in 2007 for possession of drug paraphernalia; he successfully competed a court diversion program, which resulted in the charge’s being dropped from his record. He failed a drug test when trying to enlist in the Army in 2008, Pentagon officials said. But, it does not appear that any of this would have been enough to bar him from buying a gun, at least in Arizona.

A handful of other states, like New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts, where more extensive investigations of individuals seeking gun licenses are conducted, might have picked up some of these issues, said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

Mr. Loughner legally bought his Glock 19, the same type of 9 millimeter pistol that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman used, on Nov. 30 at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson, according to law enforcement officials. Not long before the shooting on Saturday, Mr. Loughner went to a Wal-Mart in the city to buy gun ammunition, but left the store before the sales person came back with the bullets, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the criminal investigation.

The individual said that Mr. Loughner then bought the ammunition he had sought at another Wal-Mart in Tucson.

F.B.I. agents visited local gun ranges here on Monday, trying to reconstruct his movements after he bought his gun. At the Marksman Pistol Institute, an agent entered shortly before noon, questioning the owner over the dulled popping sounds of gunfire.

The owner, Barbara O’Connell, had already checked the logs. Mr. Loughner had not been there, according to her paperwork, and no one recalled seeing him. The story was the same at another outdoor range.

Most people at the ranges said that, if anything, the shooting would cause more people to carry guns as a means of self-defense, rather than cause a retrenchment in the form of stricter laws.

“The criminals are going to have guns, so why should we as law-abiding citizens be punished for what a criminal does?” said Ms. O’Connell.

Ms. O’Connell lamented the death of Judge Roll, who was well known at the range: “He knew how to shoot, but he’d just been to church, and he probably didn’t have his gun.”

Serge Kovaleski and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting from New York.

    In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11guns.html

Shooting Suspect Was Calm During Cab Ride to Supermarket, His Driver Reports

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON and ANISSA TANWEER

TUCSON — Jared L. Loughner wanted change back from a $20 bill that he used to pay for a taxi ride to a Safeway store here, according to the manager of the taxi company.

His demeanor was so unremarkable that the driver thought nothing of walking into the store with Mr. Loughner to get change, and did not know that a shooting rampage occurred at the scene until many hours later.

“No red flags went up,” said Joe Acosta, the general manager of the taxi company, AAA Full Transportation. “The customer got his change, our driver got his fare and left, and that’s it.”

That account of the taxi ride provides small but telling new details on what preceded the shooting.

It might suggest, for example, that Mr. Loughner, 22, planned or hoped to escape, and would need the money, after what police said was a deliberate attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Or it could be one more element of his unsettled mental state on the morning of the attack — that getting his change was somehow important before, as police say, he opened fire with a 9 millimeter Glock pistol at a constituents meeting.

Mr. Acosta said the driver, John Marino, who was questioned by the F.B.I. and Pima County sheriff’s officers at the taxi company on Sunday morning, was not taken into custody and has declined to speak to any reporters.

“He was like, ‘I really don’t need this,’ ” Mr. Acosta said.

Mr. Loughner’s state of mind, in the weeks and months before the shootings and perhaps especially on Saturday morning itself, has emerged as a major subtext of the investigation here, as the authorities try to understand his motive and mental state.

But the environment of Tucson — the light traffic on a Saturday morning, and the volume of taxi calls — perhaps played a role as well in what, according to Mr. Acosta’s secondhand account, seemed at the time to be nothing more than a young man’s calm ride to the grocery store.

“Since the volume wasn’t that heavy on Saturday, he was picked up moments after the call was placed,” Mr. Acosta said. “And a few minutes later he was at the Safeway.”

The driver, Mr. Acosta added, “treated it like it was a normal run — nothing out of the ordinary.”

Mr. Acosta said that Mr. Marino noticed sirens coming in the opposite direction as he was heading to pick up his next fare on Saturday morning, but thought nothing of it until the next day, when security camera images showing him walking into the store with Mr. Loughner became part of the police investigation.

    Shooting Suspect Was Calm During Cab Ride to Supermarket, His Driver Reports, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11taxi.html

Obama Avoiding Fingerpointing

January 10, 2011
5:03 pm
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

President Obama is, so far, keeping his distance from the debate over whether vitriolic political discourse contributed to the attack in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 14 people, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

During remarks at the White House on Monday with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Mr. Obama said he is mourning the victims and trying to offer solace. “Right now, the main thing we’re doing is to offer our thoughts and prayers to those who’ve been impacted, making sure that we’re joining together and pulling together as a country,” Mr. Obama told reporters. His aides said he has been making phone calls to the families of those killed in the Arizona attack.

Mr. Obama said there will likely be a memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shooting sometime soon, but he didn’t say when. He is expected to speak at a service on Friday for Richard Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan who died last month.

During his remarks at the White House on Monday, Mr. Obama steered clear of the political finger-pointing that has been underway in Washington since Jared Lee Loughner, 22, was arrested in the shooting rampage in Tucson on Saturday.

The president and First Lady Michelle Obama led a moment of silence at 11 a.m., during which they gathered alongside White House staff members to remember the people killed and wounded in Arizona. This is only the second time in his presidency that Mr. Obama has assumed the role of comforter-to-the-country. The first was In November 2009, when 13 people were shot and killed at Fort Hood, Tex.

Besides calling the family members, Mr. Obama has also made a round of calls to congressional leaders.

    Obama Avoiding Fingerpointing, NYT, 1.10.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/obama-avoiding-fingerpointing/

Palin, Amid Criticism, Stays in Electronic Comfort Zone

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE

Under criticism that her political rhetoric had helped create a climate for political violence, Sarah Palin addressed the issue in trademark fashion: via e-mail to the conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

“Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence,” Ms. Palin wrote to Mr. Beck in an e-mail that he read Monday on his radio program.

Mr. Beck said he received the message over the weekend, when Ms. Palin and her aides were otherwise ignoring requests for comment about the Tucson shootings from members of the mainstream news media.

Such unconventional political communication has served Ms. Palin well in the past two years.

By managing her image almost exclusively through Twitter, Facebook, a reality television show and appearances on Fox News, Ms. Palin has managed to become both ubiquitous and insulated, and to emerge as one of the most formidable Republicans considering a presidential run next year.

But on Monday, she and her aides were facing questions about whether the strategy that had served her so well since she resigned as Alaska’s governor 18 months ago was the right one to counter the criticism that she had helped encourage a potentially dangerous strain of antigovernment sentiment.

Her brief bursts of communication on the Internet — encouraging supporters with phrases like “Don’t retreat, reload!” — have kept her band of devotees behind her.

Ms. Palin’s close circle of advisers and supporters asserted that bringing her name up in connection with the Tucson shooting was unfair, and that she should be able to ignore it as liberals try to score political points or as the news media try to provoke controversy.

“I’m just waiting for the D.C. media to link Sarah Palin to birds, crabs and fish dropping dead around the planet because she has an outdoor reality show and enjoys hunting, because the two are about as connected,” said Nick Ayers, the departing executive director of the Republican Governors Association, who has at times given Ms. Palin advice. “Whether you love her or you don’t, no normal American thinks we should view this tragedy through the lens of her next political move, nor will they.”

But even some Republicans sympathetic to Ms. Palin suggested that she needed to find a more substantive and nuanced means of addressing the criticism to avert any risk to her political standing and to maintain control of her political narrative.

Though there is no evidence that the person charged in the shootings, Jared L. Loughner, was a fan or a follower of Ms. Palin, critics immediately noted that she had released a fund-raising appeal in March using rifle cross hairs to mark the districts where she hoped to defeat a Democrat. One of them represented the district of Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona.

Ms. Giffords’s expressions of concern at the time, in an interview on MSNBC in which she said the graphic could have dangerous “consequences,” were frequently repeated over the weekend.

In an interview Monday with reporters at The New York Times, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, considered another contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, defended Ms. Palin, if only to a point. “There’s no indication at present that those cross hairs, Fox News, any particular commentator or show or set of remarks or person was a motivating factor in his thoughts,” Mr. Pawlenty said of Mr. Loughner.

When asked if he would have produced a similar map, Mr. Pawlenty said, “I wouldn’t have done it.”

Ms. Palin’s associates were on the defensive about the map almost immediately after the shootings. One suggested that the cross hairs were actually surveyor’s marks; others noted that the police had found evidence suggesting that Mr. Loughner was obsessed with Ms. Giffords long before Ms. Palin put any kind of target on her.

Other supporters argued that Ms. Palin was hardly the first person to use violent metaphors in speaking about politics, pointing to Barack Obama’s statement during the 2008 presidential campaign that said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” None of Ms. Palin’s top aides responded to requests for comment.

Ms. Palin has made an art of joking, using Twitter or simply talking her way out of other potentially damaging situations. When she was called out for having crib notes on her hand during a question-and-answer session last year, she laughed it off and began showing other audiences writing on her hand that read “Hi, Mom.” Predictions that her resignation in 2009 would spell her doom never panned out.

And as she continues to seriously weigh a decision to run in 2012, her potential rivals still view her as formidable. “She’s a force of nature,” Mr. Pawlenty said during the interview at The Times.

But other Republicans said that if she was serious about becoming president, the shootings in Tucson might require Ms. Palin to step out of the political comfort zone she has defined for herself, whether she viewed the current criticism of her as fair or not.

The task may be all the more pressing given that polls, too, suggest that Ms. Palin has to pass the kind of “political character” test that a moment like this can present. In a Gallup poll of Republicans this month, Ms. Palin had the highest name recognition of the party’s potential presidential contenders, but also the highest percentage of Republicans with a strongly unfavorable opinion of her.

Ari Fleischer, who served as White House spokesman for President George W. Bush, said Ms. Palin had to address the shootings with more than a Facebook post, though he said he would advise her to wait a few days as the political dust settled.

“At a time like this,” Mr. Fleischer said, “what the nation wants more than anything else is for people to rise above the nonsense and the politics and to be gracious. There’s nothing like letting people see your heart, your emotion. Facebook and Twitter don’t convey emotion.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Palin, Amid Criticism, Stays in Electronic Comfort Zone, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/politics/11palin.html

A Defender Who’s No Stranger

to High-Profile Cases

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

The capital-defense lawyer who will represent Jared L. Loughner in the shootings in Tucson, Judy Clarke, is a well-known public defender who gets life sentences in cases that often begin with emotional calls for the death penalty.

Ms. Clarke has helped a number of infamous defendants avoid death sentences, including Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Robert Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her toddlers.

Over a legal career of more than 30 years, Ms. Clarke has become perhaps the best-known federal public defender in the country, with a reputation for taking on cases that seem impossible.

“She has stood up to the plate in the kinds of cases that bring the greatest disdain from the public,” said Gerald H. Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer who has known her for years.

Ms. Clarke has an aversion to the news media and an unassuming courtroom style that masks an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law. Her low-key style and pageboy haircut can make her seem at first to be a junior member of the legal team.

But lawyers who have worked with her say she is a master strategist in death-penalty cases.

“She is known for being the criminal defense lawyers’ criminal defense lawyer,” said Norman L. Reimer, the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

In recent years, Ms. Clarke has been in private practice in San Diego with her husband, Thomas H. Speedy Rice, a law professor, but has continued to take public-defender assignments.

Ms. Clarke did not respond to requests for comment, but friends said she would be drawn to the Tucson case. She is an opponent of the death penalty, they said, not only as a political position but also because of her experiences delving into the tangled stories of her clients.

“Judy would probably say if the public saw everything she sees, it would look at the client or the case differently,” said David I. Bruck, a veteran death-penalty lawyer and a professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., who has known Ms. Clarke since law school.

Mr. Bruck brought her in to work with him in defending Ms. Smith in the drowning case in the mid-1990s. Ms. Clarke’s approach often turns death-penalty defendants into confidants who must trust her with their lives. But it does not necessarily win friends outside of the courthouse.

After Ms. Clarke arrived from the West Coast to take on the Smith case, the South Carolina Legislature passed a law banning the future appointment of public defenders from out of state in capital cases.

After Ms. Clarke completed Ms. Smith’s case, she returned to the state the $82,944 fee that the trial judge had approved for her work, saying it was needed for the defense of other indigent people facing charges.

Ms. Clarke grew up in Asheville, N.C., in a conservative Republican family. She has said her parents tried to foster independent thinking. That came to the fore in the 1990s, when her mother, Patsy Clarke, helped lead a campaign to unseat Jesse Helms, the longtime Republican senator.

Mr. Helms had infuriated the family by telling the Clarkes in a letter that a brother of Judy’s, Mark Clarke, who had died of AIDS at 31, had “played Russian roulette in his sexual activity.”

Quin Denvir, a public defender who handled the Unabomber case with Ms. Clarke, said she had worked carefully to avoid a capital sentence, though Mr. Kaczynski ultimately turned against his lawyers. “She has a great sense,” Mr. Denvir said, “of how to put a case together to go for life instead of death.”

Toby Lyles contributed research.

    A Defender Who’s No Stranger to High-Profile Cases, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11defender.html

Shooting Suspect Waives Bail

and Is Ruled ‘a Danger’

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY

PHOENIX — Jared L. Loughner, his head shaved bare and his hands and feet in restraints, was led Monday into a federal courtroom, where he agreed not to contest his continued imprisonment but offered no hint of how he would respond to the murder and attempted murder charges linking him to the Tucson shootings that left six dead and 14 injured.

“Yes, I am Jared Lee Loughner,” he told Magistrate Judge Lawrence O. Anderson, staring blankly ahead with his lawyer, Judy Clarke, a veteran public defender, at his side. The defendant, a 22-year-old college dropout, was wide-eyed and had a wound to his right temple. At the defense table, his eyes darted back and forth and his mouth curled up at one point into a quick smile.

Ms. Clarke signaled that she intended to push for the case to be handled by an out-of-state judge, since one of the victims her client is accused of killing was Judge John M. Roll of Federal District Court in Tucson. Already, all the federal judges in Tucson have recused themselves. As some of Judge Roll’s friends and colleagues looked on, Ms. Clarke said she had “great concern” about any Arizona judges or prosecutors handling the case.

Mr. Loughner (pronounced LOF-ner) faces two federal murder charges and three attempted murder charges in an attack that prosecutors described as an attempt to assassinate Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, who was struck in the head by a single bullet but survived.

Mr. Loughner, dressed in beige prison garb, a white T-shirt and blue slip-on shoes, agreed not to challenge his continued detention without bail after Wallace H. Kleindienst, a federal prosecutor, labeled him a danger and a flight risk. That prompted the judge to quickly rule, based on the serious charges, that Mr. Loughner was “a danger to the community” and ought to be held without bail.

“Good luck to you, Mr. Loughner,” Judge Anderson said as the defendant, who could face the death penalty if convicted, received a pat on the back from Ms. Clarke and was led away by security officers.

Ms. Giffords remained in critical condition on Monday after surviving a single gunshot to the head fired at point-blank range at a gathering Saturday morning with constituents outside a supermarket in Tucson.

Doctors said they were increasingly optimistic because Ms. Giffords continued to follow simple commands and there had been no additional swelling in her brain. Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center in Tucson, cautioned that swelling in cases like this could last days.

“At this stage in the game, no change is good,” Dr. Lemole said.

Doctors removed nearly half of Ms. Giffords’s skull to prevent damage to her brain caused by swelling. While she has remained under sedation, hospital officials corrected earlier statements that she had been in a medically induced coma.

An outpouring of grief has been on display around the country. In Washington, President Obama stood with his wife, their heads bowed, overlooking the South Lawn of the White House at 11 a.m. as a single bell tolled to honor the wounded and the dead. On the steps of the East Front of the Capitol, hundreds of Congressional aides gathered to observe the moment.

“Obviously all of us are still grieving and in shock from the tragedy that took place,” Mr. Obama said in the Oval Office, where he was meeting on Monday with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

“Gabby Giffords and others are still fighting to recover,” said Mr. Obama, who is planning a trip to Tucson on Wednesday to meet with victims and their families and offer his first extensive public remarks since the shooting. “Families are still absorbing the enormity of their losses.”

At the start of the State Legislature’s session in Phoenix on Monday, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, decided to scrap the traditional annual address laying out her legislative agenda and instead honor the dead and call upon people across the state to pray.

“Arizona is in pain, yes,” Ms. Brewer said. “Our grief is profound. We are yet in the first hours of our sorrow, but we have not been brought down. We will never be brought down.”

Meanwhile, new details emerged about the suspect’s actions before the shooting, which was carried out with a Glock 19, a medium-size, 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his record expunged on a 2007 drug paraphernalia charge. Although he did not need to bother — he had completed a diversion program so the charge was never actually on his record — the incident stuck in the mind of Judge José Luis Castillo of Pima County Consolidated Justice Court.

It was unusual, for one thing, the judge said, that anyone knew how to go about filling out such forms. And the judge’s review of the court record showed that Mr. Loughner had completed the diversion program in 2007 in almost record time and had been very polite, with nothing to indicate the kind of behavior that was to come.

“It definitely crossed my mind,” the judge said, that Mr. Loughner was making the request only because he was worried that the drug paraphernalia charge would prevent him from buying a weapon.

Kim Janes, manager of the Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, said in an interview that Mr. Loughner volunteered at the facility in January and February last year as a dog walker. In his application, Mr. Loughner wrote that he was interested in volunteering at the center for “community service, fun, reference and experience.”

But after about two months, Mr. Janes said, even though Mr. Loughner had been told not to walk any dogs in an area of the kennel where parvovirus had been detected, he did not appear to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

“He did not seem to understand why this was important and how deadly the virus could be for dogs. He never really acknowledged our concerns,” Mr. Janes said. “We were concerned about him not following the rules that the supervisor had passed on to him and we told him not to return until he was willing to abide by our rules.”

That was the last the center saw of him.

In his application, filled out in late November 2009, Mr. Loughner said he was a student at Pima Community College with an intended major in liberal arts, Mr. Janes said.

He also said in his application that he had worked for an Eddie Bauer store in Tucson from October 2008 to November 2009.

Over all, Mr. Janes said, referring to Saturday’s shooting, “It is very disconcerting that someone who showed compassion for innocent animals would do what he did to human beings.”

Even before Mr. Loughner’s court appearance, the prosecutor in Pima County, where the rampage took place, vowed to pursue state murder charges against him as well.

In addition to the judge and the congresswoman, three Congressional aides were shot, including one who died. Four bystanders were also killed and 11 others were injured, prompting Barbara LaWall, the Pima County attorney, to vow that she would “definitely pursue charges on behalf of the nonfederal victims.”

County lawyers were still researching whether state and federal cases could proceed concurrently or whether her office would wait until federal prosecutors had finished their case. The state has no deadline, Ms. LaWall said, to bring the matter before a grand jury because Mr. Loughner is in federal custody, not in state custody.

“This is not just a professional matter for me but a personal one since I knew many of these victims,” she said.

Reporting was contributed by Ford Burkhart, Ron Nixon and Anissa Tanweer from Tucson, and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York.

    Shooting Suspect Waives Bail and Is Ruled ‘a Danger’, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11giffords.html

In Giffords’s District, a Long History of Tension

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DOLNICK, KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and ADAM NAGOURNEY

This article was reported by Sam Dolnick, Katharine Q. Seelye and Adam Nagourney and written by Mr. Nagourney.

TUCSON — Representative Gabrielle Giffords was distressed when the glass front door of her district office here was shattered by a kick or a pellet gun last March, an act of vandalism that took place hours after she joined Democrats in passing President Obama’s health care bill. “Things have really gotten spun up,” she told a television interviewer the next day.

But tensions have long run high in the Eighth Congressional District of Arizona, a classic swing district that shares a 114-mile border with Mexico. Protesters chained themselves to the desks of Ms. Giffords’s Republican predecessor, Jim Kolbe, 12 years ago. And over the past year, Ms. Giffords struggled in a brutal re-election campaign during which her opponent appeared in a Web advertisement holding an assault weapon. The district has become a caldron of divisions over government spending, immigration, health care and Barack Obama.

Today, the Eighth District stands apart as one of the most emotionally and politically polarized in the nation.

The rampage on Saturday that left six dead and Ms. Giffords gravely wounded may prove to be an isolated act of violence by a mentally disturbed man. The suspect attended at least one of Ms. Giffords’s town meetings before the event Saturday.

Still, the shootings came after a disconcerting run of episodes in this district of mountains and desert, raising temperatures here in a way that some that some of Ms. Giffords’s friends argue fed an atmosphere that might encourage violence.

Several of them pointed back to the smashed door of her district headquarters at 1661 North Swan Street last March as a turning point; a time when a cloud of unease settled over Ms. Giffords and her staff.

She and aides began expressing worry about what they saw as an escalation of threats after a year of brutal town hall meetings over health care. They began to take precautions. “When we did a swing through the district, we began telling the police what we are doing: We let them know where we were going to be,” said Rodd McLeod, her campaign manager.

And Ms. Giffords made no secret at that time of saying she owned a handgun.

“She was extremely concerned about it,” said Thomas Warne, a friend and fund-raiser. “She was concerned about various threats that the office had received: they were general threats on the office itself, on her life.”

There have been no arrests related to the attack on her district office, said Sgt. Diana Lopez of the Tucson Police Department. It came after months in which Ms. Giffords, like other Democrats, found herself being battered at loud town hall meetings on health care. At one of her public meetings on health care, a man with a gun showed up. “There was a sense, even in ’09, that there was a real anger in the district,” Mr. McLeod said.

And in an interview with MSNBC the day after the attack, Ms. Giffords said: “We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the last several months. Our office corner has become a place where the Tea Party movement congregates and the rhetoric is incredibly heated, not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.”

Last summer, Ms. Giffords found herself challenged by Jesse Kelly, a Republican candidate with Tea Party backing, who assailed Ms. Giffords on health care and immigration. He held a “targeting victory” fund-raiser in which he invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him. This was playing out against a backdrop of a souring national economy and rising unhappiness with Democrats everywhere.

Mr. Kelly, who won the nomination after defeating a moderate Republican, offered tough-worded attacks on the establishment and Ms. Giffords. “These people who think they are better than us, they look down on us every single day and tell us what kind of health care to buy,” he said at a rally in October. “And if you dare to stand up to the government they call us a mob. We’re about to show them what a mob looks like.”

Despite all the vitriol, advisers to Ms. Giffords concluded in a post-election review of the race that one of the main reasons she won was likely a steady series of positive biographical advertisements she ran over the summer; for the most part she avoided attacking her opponent. “People want their representatives to work together in a bipartisan way to get things done,” she said at one event.

Mr. Kelly received no financial support from the National Republican Congressional Committee. But outside groups focused on the race and invested more than $450,000 in television commercials against Ms. Giffords. The Republican primary did not take place until Aug. 24, giving her several months to command the airwaves in Tucson before her opponent was known.

The $3.4 million that Ms. Giffords raised was more than any other Congressional candidate in Arizona. In the heat of the campaign last fall, Republican officials expressed exasperation at the strength of her candidacy, often referring to Ms. Giffords as one of the smartest and strongest Democratic incumbents in the country.

The race — one of the most dramatic in the country — was so close it took three days to call it.

Ms. Giffords won a third term, but with just 49 percent of the vote, compared with 55 percent last time.

Representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat from the neighboring Seventh District, said he was taken aback by the level of animosity in her district.

“We commiserated about the tone of the campaign and talked about how ugly it was and how angry people were,” he said in an interview. “Philosophically, she is more moderate and more centrist than me, and I couldn’t understand that level of ire and that level of hatred against someone who is trying to accommodate and find common ground.”

Given its locale and its demographic mix, the Eighth District long offered a stage for a combustible mix of issues that have torn apart other parts of the country. But the divisions seemed particularly searing here. Because of efforts to more aggressively close California’s border with Mexico, Arizona has seen a surge of illegal immigration that has heightened tensions. “There was no question there were more and more illegal immigrants coming in,” said Mr. Kolbe, who had held her seat. “They were flooding in.”

Ms. Giffords was seeking re-election at a time when Arizona passed a tough law aimed at illegal immigrants, which Ms. Giffords opposed, and as the state faced a threatened boycott from parts of the nation for passing a law that many people saw as intolerant.

“Immigration, that’s the ingredient that makes Arizona unique in a very twisted way,” Mr. Grijalva said.

The 9,057-square-mile district is about 20 percent Hispanic. Given Arizona’s strong brand of conservatism, it is notably centrist, though it leans Republican. Located in the southeastern corner of the state, it includes the Sonoran Desert and old frontier towns like Tombstone, as well as the high-tech corridors of Tucson and more liberal voters around the University of Arizona.

“She represents a very diverse area, from suburban soccer moms and pretty fervent Democrats at one end to the conservative ranchers on the border on the other end,” said State Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Phoenix who was born and raised about a mile from the Tucson supermarket where Ms. Giffords was shot.

The Eighth is one of many fast-growing areas of the Southwest, with the population up about 14 percent from 2000 to 2007. Much of the growth comes from people moving here from the Midwest, which partly accounts for its moderation. The district has two military installations and many military-industrial manufacturing companies

John McCain won Ms. Giffords’s district in 2008, but the congresswoman went on to vote in favor of three cornerstones of Mr. Obama’s presidency: the economic stimulus program, the health care legislation and cap and trade legislation, according to David Wasserman, who studies House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Her re-election last year was in part a testimony to her personal popularity as well as her ability to present herself as a moderate. In one sign of her refusal to be lumped with liberals in Congress, she voted against Nancy Pelosi to become the Democratic leader in the new Congress. But it also reflected what was, for her, a bit of luck in facing an opponent with such strong ties to the Tea Party, which complicated his effort to attract Democratic independent voters.

Her campaign aides said Ms. Giffords said the political tension was hardly comfortable. “That was a little disorienting for her,” said Michael McNulty, who was her campaign chairman, adding: “there would be a thousand people screaming about it and having at her one after another after another.” Mr. Warne said the situation worsened as the economy deteriorated. “We could feel a lot of things building up and a lot of animosity due to the economy,” he said.

Whether all that had anything to do with what happened here on Saturday is another matter. Randy Graf, a former Republican state legislator who lost to Ms. Giffords in the 2006 Congressional race, said he did not believe the problems that have riven his district played any role in what happened.

“People are trying to rationalize an irrational event and in the process of doing that they’re blaming the blameless,” he said. “The blame is being aimed at everything from the past campaign to the Tea Party when it should rest, by all reports, on the shooter himself.”

Sam Dolnick and Adam Nagourney reported from Tucson, and Katharine Q. Seelye from New York. Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from New York.

    In Giffords’s District, a Long History of Tension, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11district.html

Obama Leads Nation in Moment of Silence

January 10, 2011
11:20 am
The New York Times
By DAVID HERSZENHORN

President Obama led the nation in a moment of silence on Monday, standing somberly with his wife, Michelle, their heads bowed, overlooking the South Lawn of the White House.

Mr. and Mrs. Obama stepped outside the White House and with the toll of a single bell by a Marine guard, silence fell in Washington and across the nation.

On the steps of the East Front of the Capitol, hundreds of Congressional aides, gathered to mark the moment honoring the victims of the shooting in Arizona. The dead included a member of their own ranks, Gabriel Zimmerman, the director of community outreach for Ms. Giffords, who had been organizing the sort of constituent event that many staff members have attended themselves without much concern about public safety.

Most lawmakers remained in their home states and districts.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, observed the moment of silence with students at Martha Layne Collins High School in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Mr. McConnell told the students “violence has no place in the Democratic process, and this heinous crime will not deter any of us from carrying out our duties.”

    Obama Leads Nation in Moment of Silence, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/obama-leads-nation-in-moment-of-silence/

Evidence Points to Methodical Planning

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY

TUCSON — As President Obama led the nation in a moment of silence Monday, Jared L. Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old college dropout, was set to appear before a magistrate judge in Phoenix to face federal charges in connection with a shooting rampage on Saturday morning that left six people dead and 14 wounded, including a member of Congress.

Evidence seized from Mr. Loughner’s home, about five miles from the shooting, indicated that he had planned to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, according to documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix.

Special Agent Tony M. Taylor Jr. of the F.B.I. said in an affidavit that an envelope found in a safe in the home bore these handwritten words: “I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and “Giffords.”

Ms. Giffords remained in critical condition and under sedation on Monday after surviving, against the odds, a single gunshot to the head fired at point-blank range. Her doctors were cautiously optimistic that she would survive, and said on Sunday that they had removed nearly half of her skull to prevent damage to her brain caused by swelling from the wound. Ms. Giffords was responding to simple commands, said Darci Slaten, a spokeswoman for University Medical Center in Tucson. Hospital officials also corrected earlier statements that she had been placed in a medically-induced coma.

An outpouring of grief was on display all over Tucson since the attack on Saturday, where friends of the many victims joined complete strangers in lighting candles and offering tear-filled prayers. President Obama stood somberly with his wife, their heads bowed, overlooking the South Lawn of the White House at 11 a.m. Eastern time, as a single bell tolled to honor the wounded and the dead. On the steps of the East Front of the Capitol, hundreds of Congressional aides gathered to mark the moment. On Sunday, Mr. Obama ordered the flag flown at half-staff through Jan. 14 at the White House and all public buildings.

Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., traveled to Tucson to oversee the shooting investigation at Mr. Obama’s request. He said on Sunday that agents were trying intensively to determine “why someone would commit such a heinous act and whether anyone else was involved.” Mr. Mueller added that discussions were under way to increase security for all members of Congress.

Capitol security agencies are planning to join the F.B.I. on Wednesday in a security briefing for members of Congress. Already, the United States Marshals Service has increased protection for federal judges in Arizona.

Investigators here focused their attention on Mr. Loughner, whom they accused of methodically planning the shootings, which occurred outside a supermarket. The court documents said Mr. Loughner bought the semiautomatic Glock pistol used in the shooting at Sportsman’s Warehouse, which sells hunting and fishing gear, on Nov. 30 in Tucson.

The gun was legally purchased, officials said, prompting criticism of the state’s gun laws, which allow the carrying of concealed weapons. Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, a critic of what he calls loose gun restrictions, bluntly labeled Arizona “Tombstone.”

The documents also indicated that the suspect had previous contact with the congresswoman. Also found in the safe at Mr. Loughner’s home was a letter from Ms. Giffords thanking him for attending a 2007 “Congress on Your Corner” event, like the one she was holding Saturday morning when she was shot.

Along with being accused of trying to kill Ms. Giffords, Mr. Loughner was charged with the killing and attempted killing of four government employees: John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, who was killed; Gabriel Zimmerman, a Congressional aide, who was also killed; and Pamela Simon and Ron Barber, aides who were wounded. Mr. Loughner could face the death penalty if convicted.

The indictment against Mr. Loughner indicated that the authorities had surveillance video, which was not released, that captured events outside the supermarket. Outside lawyers said the footage would probably be saved for court. The authorities did release 911 tapes of the minutes after the shooting, at 10:11 a.m. Saturday, in which caller after caller, many out of breath, dialed in to report shots fired, many shots, and people falling, too many to count.

Mr. Mueller said additional state charges might be filed, and he did not rule out the filing of terrorism charges.

Mr. Loughner has refused to cooperate with investigators and has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the Pima County sheriff’s office said.

Judy Clarke, a federal public defender who has handled major cases, has been appointed to represent Mr. Loughner, CNN reported. Ms. Clarke has defended Theodore J. Kaczynski, who was convicted in the Unabomber attacks, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the Al Qaeda operative.

Early Sunday, the authorities released a photograph taken from the surveillance video of a possible accomplice in the shooting. But the man later contacted sheriff’s deputies, who determined that he was a taxi driver who had taken the suspect to the mall where the shooting took place and then entered the supermarket with him when he did not have change for the $14 fare.

Seasoned trauma surgeons, used to seeing patients in distress, were shaken by the scale of the shootings.

“I never thought I would experience something like this in my own backyard,” said Dr. Peter M. Rhee, chief of trauma surgery at the University Medical Center, who has experience on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq and who likened what happened in Tucson to the mass shootings in those places.

Doctors treating Ms. Giffords said she had been able to respond to simple commands, an encouraging sign.

At a news conference at the hospital, surgeons said she was the only one of the victims to remain in critical care at the hospital. They said she was lucky to be alive but would not speculate about the degree of her recovery, which they said could take months or longer.

“Over all, this is about as good as it’s going to get,” Dr. Rhee said. “When you get shot in the head and a bullet goes through your brain, the chances of you living are very small, and the chances of you waking up and actually following commands is even much smaller than that.”

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the chief of neurosurgery, who operated on Ms. Giffords, said the bullet traveled through the left side of her brain “from back to front.” It did not cross from one side of the brain to the other, he said, nor did it pass through some critical areas that would further diminish her chances of recovery.

Officials said the attack could have been even more devastating had several victims not overwhelmed the suspect as he tried to reload his gun. A bystander, Patricia Maisch, who was waiting to meet Ms. Giffords, grabbed the gun’s magazine as the gunman dropped it while trying to reload after firing 31 rounds, officials said. Two men, Roger Salzgeber and Bill D. Badger, then overwhelmed the gunman, and another man, Joseph Zamudio, restrained his flailing legs.

In addition to Judge Roll, 63, and Mr. Zimmerman, 30, who was the director of community outreach for Ms. Giffords, the others who died were identified as Christina Green, 9; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79.

The new House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, denounced the attack in an early Sunday appearance in West Chester, his hometown, and said it was a reminder that public service “comes with a risk.”

Mr. Boehner urged people to pray for Ms. Giffords and the other victims and told his House colleagues to persevere in fulfilling their oath of office. “This inhuman act should not and will not deter us,” he said. “No act, no matter how heinous, must be allowed to stop us.”

He also said the normal business of the House for the coming week had been postponed “so that we can take necessary action regarding yesterday’s events.” That business had included a vote to repeal the health care overhaul.

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, which he had attended, 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.

As the investigation intensified on Sunday, the police were still at the scene of the shooting, a suburban shopping center known as La Toscana Village. Investigators have described the evidence collection as a monumental task given the large number of bullets fired and victims hit.

All of the cars in the parking lot were scrutinized in search of a vehicle the gunman might have driven to the scene. Then the taxi driver stepped forward to help explain how the suspect had arrived.

Nobody knew for sure what compelled the gunman. 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.

Reporting for the Arizona shooting coverage was contributed by David M. Herszenhorn, Emmarie Huetteman, Janie Lorber, Thom Shanker, Michael D. Shear and Ashley Southall from Washington; Jo Becker, Lisa M. Button, Ford Burkhart, Renee Schafer Horton, Devlin Houser, Ron Nixon, Nancy Sharkey, Anissa Tanweer and Roxana Vasquez from Tucson; Joe Sharkey from Sierra Vista, Ariz.; Joseph Berger, Catrin Einhorn, Anahad O’Connor, Sharon Otterman, Mosi Secret, Sarah Wheaton and Kate Zernike from New York; and Kitty Bennett from St. Petersburg, Fla.

    Evidence Points to Methodical Planning, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11giffords.html

Talk Radio Hosts in Arizona Reject Blame in Shooting

January 10, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DOLNICK and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

TUCSON — During Tucson’s first rush hour since a weekend shooting left six people dead and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, talk radio hosts pushed back against arguments that their heated political rhetoric had played a role in the tragedy.

Phone calls poured in to stations across the AM dial to denounce Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who said at a news conference over the weekend that Arizona had become “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry” and that local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul-searching.” “I would say that his comments have incited stupidity around the world,” said Garret Lewis, host of The Morning Ritual on 790 AM. “People have the image now that we’re a bunch of racist bigots and there are shootouts in the streets. Again he has absolutely no proof that any of this is true.”

Steve, a caller on the Jon Justice Show on 104.1 FM, said Mr. Dupnik’s statements “showed him for the buffoon he is.” Later, a called named Lee called the sheriff “a blithering idiot.” Caller after caller came up with their own colorful descriptions.

In the incredulous language of the AM dial, Mr. Justice defended his show, and dismissed the notion that Arizona’s heated political culture served as the backdrop to the shooting or an inspiration for the suspect, Jared L. Loughner.

“This is a crazy person!” he said. “Politics is out the window — you’re a nutbag! No amount of controlling talk radio is going to change that!”

“People need to go and point fingers,” he said. “It’s unfortunate but some people do. They have to find somebody to demonize.”

Some callers however made it clear that they believed the state’s conservative-leaning radio hosts bore responsibility.

“You ought to be ashamed,” said a caller named Dale to Mr. Justice’s program. “You are part of the problem.”

Mr. Justice, his voice cracking, responded: “There’s nothing I have said on this radio station that could have inspired” this guy.

A caller who identified himself as Rick told the host Mike Gallagher of KKNT, 960 AM, in Phoenix that “individuals like yourself instill fear” in people.

“Was Jared Loughner a Mike Gallagher listener?” the host asked. “You’re dishonest, Rick.”

On Wake Up Tucson on 1030 AM, the hosts said their political conversations were more reasoned than inflammatory.

“When we take an issue on, we really, really understand where we’re going,” said Joe Higgins.

“Ninety-nine percent of the stuff that we’ve ever talked about, we’re dead on,” said his partner, Chris DeSimone. “We’re constantly doing our homework.”

On the Morning Ritual, it was barely light outside when Mr. Lewis began knocking down arguments that after the shooting, gun control laws should be tightened. “We can’t always depend on the police, the sheriff’s department or anyone else to protect us,” he said. “At some point, we have to do it ourselves.”

Most callers to the shows agreed with the hosts and defended their right to speak.

“I don’t know what you did wrong,” said a caller to Mr. Justice’s show named John. “Keep the freedom of speech going.”

Sam Dolnick reported from Tucson, and Timothy Williams from New York.

    Talk Radio Hosts in Arizona Reject Blame in Shooting, NYT, 10.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11radio.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

United in Horror

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By ROSS DOUTHAT

When John F. Kennedy visited Dallas in November of 1963, Texas was awash in right-wing anger — over perceived cold-war betrayals, over desegregation, over the perfidies of liberalism in general. Adlai Stevenson, then ambassador to the U.N., had been spit on during his visit to the city earlier that fall. The week of Kennedy’s arrival, leaflets circulated in Dallas bearing the president’s photograph and the words “Wanted For Treason.”

But Lee Harvey Oswald was not a right-winger, not a John Bircher, not a segregationist. Instead, he was a Marxist of sorts (albeit one disillusioned by his experiences in Soviet Russia), an activist on behalf of Castro’s Cuba, and a man whose previous plot had been aimed at a far-right ex-general named Edwin Walker. The anti-Kennedy excesses of Texas conservatives were real enough, but the president’s assassin acted on a far more obscure set of motivations.

Nine years after Kennedy was killed, George Wallace embarked on his second campaign for the presidency. This was the early 1970s, the high tide of far-left violence — the era of the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army — and Wallace’s race-baiting politics made him an obvious target for protests. On his final, fateful day of campaigning, he faced a barrage of coins, oranges, rocks and tomatoes, amid shouts of “remember Selma!” and “Hitler for vice president!”

But Arthur Bremer, who shot Wallace that afternoon, paralyzing him from the waist down, had only a tenuous connection to left-wing politics. He didn’t care much about Wallace’s views on race: he just wanted to assassinate somebody (Richard Nixon had been his original target), as “a statement of my manhood for the world to see.”

It’s possible that Jared Lee Loughner, the young man behind Saturday’s rampage in Tucson, will have a more direct connection to partisan politics than an earlier generation’s gunmen did. Indeed, many observers seem to be taking a kind of comfort from that possibility: there’s been a rush to declare this tragedy a teachable moment — an opportunity for people to cool their rhetoric, abandon their anger, and renounce the kind of martial imagery that inspired Sarah Palin’s PAC to place a target over Gabrielle Giffords’s district just months before Loughner gunned down the Arizona congresswoman.

But chances are that Loughner’s motives will prove as irreducibly complex as those of most of his predecessors in assassination. Violence in American politics tends to bubble up from a world that’s far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue — a murky landscape where worldviews get cobbled together from a host of baroque conspiracy theories, and where the line between ideological extremism and mental illness gets blurry fast.

This is the world that gave us Oswald and Bremer. More recently, it’s given us figures like James W. von Brunn, the neo-Nazi who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in 2009, and James Lee, who took hostages at the Discovery Channel last summer to express his displeasure over population growth. These are figures better analyzed by novelists than pundits: as Walter Kirn put it Saturday, they’re “self-anointed knights templar of the collective shadow realm, not secular political actors in extremis.”

This won’t stop partisans from making hay out of Saturday’s tragedy, of course. The Democratic operative who was quoted in Politico saying that his party needs “to deftly pin this on the Tea Partiers” was just stating the obvious: after a political season rife with overheated rhetoric from conservative “revolutionaries,” the attempted murder of a Democratic congresswoman is a potential gift to liberalism.

But if overheated rhetoric and martial imagery really led inexorably to murder, then both parties would belong in the dock. (It took conservative bloggers about five minutes to come up with Democratic campaign materials that employed targets and crosshairs against Republican politicians.) When our politicians and media loudmouths act like fools and zealots, they should be held responsible for being fools and zealots. They shouldn’t be held responsible for the darkness that always waits to swallow up the unstable and the lost.

We should remember, too, that there are places where mainstream political movements really are responsible for violence against their rivals. (Last week’s assassination of a Pakistani politician who dared to defend a Christian is a stark reminder of what that sort of world can look like.) Not so in America: From the Republican leadership to the Tea Party grass roots, all of Gabrielle Giffords’s political opponents were united in horror at the weekend’s events. There is no faction in American politics that actually wants its opponents dead.

That may seem like a small blessing, amid so much tragedy and loss. But it is a blessing worth remembering nonetheless.

    United in Horror, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10douthat.html

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

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/

A Right to Bear Glocks?

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By GAIL COLLINS

In 2009, Gabrielle Giffords was holding a “Congress on Your Corner” meeting at a Safeway supermarket in her district when a protester, who was waving a sign that said “Don’t Tread on Me,” waved a little too strenuously. The pistol he was carrying under his armpit fell out of his holster.

“It bounced. That concerned me,” Rudy Ruiz, the father of one of Giffords’s college interns at the time, told me then. He had been at the event and had gotten a larger vision than he had anticipated of what a career in politics entailed. “I just thought, ‘What would happen if it had gone off? Could my daughter have gotten hurt?’ ”

Giffords brushed off the incident. “When you represent a district — the home of the O.K. Corral and Tombstone, the town too tough to die — nothing’s a surprise,” she said. At the time, it struck me as an interesting attempt to meld crisis control with a promotion of local tourist attractions.

Now, of course, the district has lost more people in a shooting in a shopping center parking lot than died at the gunfight of the O.K. Corral, and the story of the dropped pistol has a tragically different cast.

In soft-pedaling that 2009 encounter, Giffords was doing a balancing act that she’d perfected during her political career as a rather progressive Democrat in a increasingly conservative state. She was the spunky Western girl with a populist agenda mixed with down-home values, one of which was opposition to gun control. But those protesters had been following her around for a while. Her staff members were clearly scared for her, and they put me in touch with Ruiz, who told me the story.

Back then, the amazing thing about the incident in the supermarket parking lot was that the guy with a handgun in his armpit was not arrested. Since then, Arizona has completely eliminated the whole concept of requiring a concealed weapon permit. Last year, it got 2 points out of a possible 100 in the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence state score card, avoiding a zero only because its Legislature has not — so far — voted to force colleges to let people bring their guns on campuses.

Today, the amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it.

If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.

But we might not have lost a federal judge, a 76-year-old church volunteer, two elderly women, Giffords’s 30-year-old constituent services director and a 9-year-old girl who had recently been elected to the student council at her school and went to the event because she wanted to see how democracy worked.

Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is “not suited for hunting or personal protection,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. “What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.”

America has a long, terrible history of political assassinations and attempts at political assassination. What we did not have until now is a history of attempted political assassination that took the lives of a large number of innocent bystanders. The difference is not about the Second Amendment. It’s about a technology the founding fathers could never have imagined.

“If this was the modern equivalent of what Sirhan Sirhan used to shoot Robert Kennedy or Arthur Bremer used to shoot George Wallace, you’d be talking about one or two victims,” said Helmke.

Giffords represents a pragmatic, interest-balancing form of politics that’s out of fashion. But, in that spirit, we should be able to find a way to accommodate the strong desire in many parts of the country for easy access to firearms with sane regulation of the kinds of weapons that make it easiest for crazy people to create mass slaughter. Most politicians won’t talk about it because they’re afraid of the N.R.A., whose agenda is driven by the people who sell guns and want the right to sell as many as possible.

Doesn’t it seem like the least we can do?

    A Right to Bear Glocks?, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10collins.html

Federal Charges Cite Assassination Plan

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY

TUCSON — Prosecutors charged Jared L. Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old college dropout, with five federal counts on Sunday, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, in connection with a shooting rampage on Saturday morning that left six people dead and 14 wounded.

Evidence seized from Mr. Loughner’s home, about five miles from the shooting, indicated that he had planned to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, according to documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix.

Special Agent Tony M. Taylor Jr. of the F.B.I. said in an affidavit that an envelope found in a safe in the home bore these handwritten words: “I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and “Giffords.”

Mr. Loughner, who is believed to have acted alone, is in federal custody and is scheduled to make his first court appearance before a magistrate judge in Phoenix on Monday.

Ms. Giffords was in critical condition after surviving, against the odds, a single gunshot wound to the head at point-blank range. Her doctors were cautiously optimistic that she would survive, and said on Sunday that they had removed nearly half of her skull to prevent damage from the swelling of her brain.

An outpouring of grief was on display all over Tucson, where friends of the many victims joined complete strangers in lighting candles and offering tear-filled prayers. From the back of the temple Ms. Giffords attends, Naomi Present, the distraught daughter of a rabbi, cried out on Sunday morning, “Why, why, why, why?”

Many across America were asking the same thing, and the state found itself on the defensive, with its top lawmakers asserting that Arizona was not a hothouse of ugly rhetoric. President Obama called on Americans to observe a moment of silence at 11 a.m. Monday in honor of the wounded and dead.

Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., traveled to Tucson to oversee the shooting investigation at Mr. Obama’s request. He said an intensive investigation was seeking to determine “why someone would commit such a heinous act and whether anyone else was involved.” Mr. Mueller added that discussions were under way to increase security for all members of Congress.

Capitol security agencies are planning to join the F.B.I. on Wednesday in a security briefing for members of Congress. Already, the United States Marshals Service has increased protection for federal judges in Arizona.

Investigators here focused their attention on Mr. Loughner, whom they accused of methodically planning the shootings, which occurred outside a supermarket. The court documents said Mr. Loughner bought the semiautomatic Glock pistol used in the shooting at Sportsman’s Warehouse, which sells hunting and fishing gear, on Nov. 30 in Tucson.

The gun was legally purchased, officials said, prompting criticism of the state’s gun laws, which allow the carrying of concealed weapons. Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, a critic of what he calls loose gun restrictions, bluntly labeled Arizona “Tombstone.”

The documents also indicated that the suspect had previous contact with the congresswoman. Also found in the safe at Mr. Loughner’s home was a letter from Ms. Giffords thanking him for attending a 2007 “Congress on Your Corner” event, like the one she was holding Saturday morning when she was shot.

Along with being accused of trying to kill Ms. Giffords, Mr. Loughner was charged with the killing and attempted killing of four government employees: John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, who was killed; Gabriel Zimmerman, a Congressional aide, who was also killed; and Pamela Simon and Ron Barber, aides who were wounded. Mr. Loughner could face the death penalty if convicted.

The indictment against Mr. Loughner indicated that the authorities had surveillance video, which was not released, that captured events outside the supermarket. Outside lawyers said the footage would probably be saved for court. The authorities did release 911 tapes of the minutes after the shooting, at 10:11 a.m. Saturday, in which caller after caller, many out of breath, dialed in to report shots fired, many shots, and people falling, too many to count.

Mr. Mueller said additional state charges might be filed, and he did not rule out the filing of terrorism charges.

Mr. Loughner has refused to cooperate with investigators and has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the Pima County sheriff’s office said.

Judy Clarke, a federal public defender who has handled major cases, has been appointed to represent Mr. Loughner, CNN reported. Ms. Clarke has defended Theodore J. Kaczynski, who was convicted in the Unabomber attacks, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the Qaeda operative.

Early Sunday, the authorities released a photograph taken from the surveillance video of a possible accomplice in the shooting. But the man later contacted sheriff’s deputies, who determined that he was a taxi driver who had taken the suspect to the mall where the shooting took place and then entered the supermarket with him when he did not have change for the $14 fare.

Seasoned trauma surgeons, used to seeing patients in distress, were shaken by the scale of the shootings.

“I never thought I would experience something like this in my own backyard,” said Dr. Peter M. Rhee, chief of trauma surgery at the University Medical Center, who has experience on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq and who likened what happened in Tucson to the mass shootings in those places.

Doctors treating Ms. Giffords said she had been able to respond to simple commands, an encouraging sign.

At a news conference at the hospital, surgeons said she was the only one of the victims to remain in critical care at the hospital. They said she was lucky to be alive but would not speculate about the degree of her recovery, which they said could take months or longer.

“Over all, this is about as good as it’s going to get,” Dr. Rhee said. “When you get shot in the head and a bullet goes through your brain, the chances of you living are very small, and the chances of you waking up and actually following commands is even much smaller than that.”

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the chief of neurosurgery, who operated on Ms. Giffords, said the bullet traveled through the left side of her brain “from back to front.” It did not cross from one side of the brain to the other, he said, nor did it pass through some critical areas that would further diminish her chances of recovery.

Officials said the attack could have been even more devastating had several victims not overwhelmed the suspect as he tried to reload his gun. A bystander, Patricia Maisch, who was waiting to meet Ms. Giffords, grabbed the gun’s magazine as the gunman dropped it while trying to reload after firing 31 rounds, officials said. Two men, Roger Salzgeber and Bill D. Badger, then overwhelmed the gunman, and another man, Joseph Zamudio, restrained his flailing legs.

In addition to Judge Roll, 63, and Mr. Zimmerman, 30, who was the director of community outreach for Ms. Giffords, the others who died were identified as Christina Green, 9; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79.

The new House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, denounced the attack in an early Sunday appearance in West Chester, his hometown, and said it was a reminder that public service “comes with a risk.”

Mr. Boehner urged people to pray for Ms. Giffords and the other victims and told his House colleagues to persevere in fulfilling their oath of office. “This inhuman act should not and will not deter us,” he said. “No act, no matter how heinous, must be allowed to stop us.”

He also said the normal business of the House for the coming week had been postponed “so that we can take necessary action regarding yesterday’s events.” That business had included a vote to repeal the health care overhaul.

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, which he had attended, 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.

As the investigation intensified on Sunday, the police were still at the scene of the shooting, a suburban shopping center known at La Toscana Village. Investigators have described the evidence collection as a monumental task given the large number of bullets fired and victims hit.

All of the cars in the parking lot were scrutinized in search of a vehicle the gunman might have driven to the scene. Then the taxi driver stepped forward to help explain how the suspect had arrived.

Nobody knew for sure what compelled the gunman. 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.

Reporting for the Arizona shooting coverage was contributed by David M. Herszenhorn, Emmarie Huetteman, Janie Lorber, Thom Shanker, Michael D. Shear and Ashley Southall from Washington; Jo Becker, Lisa M. Button, Ford Burkhart, Renee Schafer Horton, Devlin Houser, Ron Nixon, Nancy Sharkey, Anissa Tanweer and Roxana Vasquez from Tucson; Joe Sharkey from Sierra Vista, Ariz.; Catrin Einhorn, J. David Goodman, Anahad O’Connor, Sharon Otterman, Mosi Secret, Sarah Wheaton and Kate Zernike from New York; and Kitty Bennett from St. Petersburg, Fla.

    Federal Charges Cite Assassination Plan, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/politics/10giffords.html

Arizona Shootings: Shock and Outrage

January 9, 2011
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Congresswoman Is Shot in Rampage Near Tucson” (front page, Jan. 9):

I read with deep shock, horror and sorrow of the massacre in Arizona on Saturday and write to express my outrage at this barbaric event and my condolences to the victims.

There are, tragically, extremists among us who seek to divide, polarize and destroy our nation by fomenting just this kind of violence, which runs contrary to the cherished principles of democracy upon which our great nation was founded.

Our country does have many problems needing solutions, but violence will not resolve them.

We must do all that we can to work together as fellow citizens of a democracy and civilly debate these polarizing issues (like immigration reform) until we resolve them, instead of resorting to violence, which will consume and destroy us all.

Michael Pravica
Henderson, Nev., Jan. 9, 2011

•

To the Editor:

I live in Phoenix. I cannot begin to describe how distraught I am over the shootings in Tucson. I have been saying for months that someone in Arizona will get hurt, or killed ... and now it has happened.

The level of vitriol and hate in Arizona political discourse is high, beyond imagining. Recent events in this state have made me ashamed — from the tough new immigration law to taking people off transplant lists, and now this.

Words do matter. Take the rhetoric down a notch!

Karin Cummings
Phoenix, Jan. 9, 2011

•

To the Editor:

Let’s use what happened in Arizona as at least a start to quiet down the vitriol that has taken hold in American politics. Let the gunshots sound the alarm across this nation that being antigovernment is not being pro-American. Finally, let’s remove the crosshairs of political violence directed at any American or community.

Phillip V. Kenny
Colorado Springs, Jan. 9, 2011

•

To the Editor:

As those in mainstream politics and media who engage in the politics of division and vitriol rush to condemn the political violence in Arizona, we must condemn those very same individuals. Each, in some measure, bears a share of responsibility for what happened.

You cannot stir the caldron of division and hate without consequences. None engaged in divisive, caustic politics will ever admit his or her part in feeding anger in politics, but let us pray that each, in his or her own dark hours of night, learns to temper the viciousness, lower the rhetorical gun sights and bring our democracy back to dialogue and compromise that lead our nation forward.

Tom Debley
Oakland, Calif., Jan. 9, 2011

•

To the Editor:

At the same time as “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics” (front page, Jan. 9), it should put new focus on gun use against people in this country.

Sean Palfrey
Cataumet, Mass., Jan. 9, 2011

•

To the Editor:

American politics has sown the anger and unreasoning vitriol, and now it reaps the sorrow-filled harvest.

Peter Ryan

Vancouver, British Columbia

Jan. 9, 2011

    Arizona Shootings: Shock and Outrage, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/l10arizona.html

After Shooting, Fresh Look at Protecting Lawmakers

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and ASHLEY PARKER

WASHINGTON — Threats and abuse from constituents have always been part of the job when it comes to Congressional life, along with regular encounters with troubled individuals who see their local lawmaker as a convenient outlet for their grievances.

Now, in the aftermath of the Arizona shootings, lawmakers and those responsible for their safety are confronting the issue of how to gauge the risks posed by people they might have shrugged off in the past while maintaining open channels to the public.

“In each district you represent your share of unstable people,” Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, said Sunday as he and other House members pulled for the recovery of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and struggled with how to respond to the shootings. “Now you are aware that they do show up at your town hall meetings and maybe they are not all harmless.”

While representatives of the United States Capitol Police and the office of the House sergeant-at-arms told lawmakers that the attack on Ms. Giffords was not part of a wider threat, they are urging them to review their security arrangements, make contact with local law enforcement officials and name a staff member as liaison with law enforcement.

On Wednesday, the Capitol security agencies are to join the F.B.I. in conducting a joint security briefing for Republicans and Democrats, who acknowledge new worries about their safety — and that of their families and staff members.

“It obviously shook all of us,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, who said the shootings might make him more likely to carry his gun, as he is legally allowed to do in Utah. “It hits close to home.”

Lawmakers also live the most public of lives and, like Ms. Giffords, heavily promote their local events to encourage people to attend. They say that they cannot retreat behind police escorts and security barriers.

“I know that I am considered to be a bit more confrontational and outspoken,” said Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, “and I’ve lived with that all of my life, that my political philosophy and my willingness to speak up and speak out kind of creates risk and some danger. I accept that as part of my job.”

Though the attack in Arizona went far beyond confrontations lawmakers had at town hall-style meetings in the summer of 2009 and other recent clashes with the public, the common perception among Congressional veterans is that the current political climate is as bad as they can recall.

“I don’t think I have seen a period of time when there was more anger and incivility manifested than in the last two years,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House and a veteran of more than 40 years in government.

Whether threats have measurably increased is difficult to gauge because the Capitol Police, the primary agency for protecting lawmakers, declined to answer questions about the volume of incidents.

“We do investigate threats against members of Congress and, when necessary, work with other law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels,” Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said in an e-mail to The New York Times. “The statistics that we maintain internally for threat-assessment purposes are not shared for security reasons.”

Last year, charges were filed against a man accused of threatening to kill Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, over her support of the health care law, and another man was arrested for making threatening and harassing phone calls to Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, over the same piece of legislation. The Tucson office of Ms. Giffords was among those vandalized during the health care fight.

An official with the F.B.I. said the Capitol Police occasionally referred information about threats to the bureau when they had particular elements that made them seem “actionable.” Often, it involves ambiguous remarks or a tone in a communication to a lawmaker’s office that can be read as threatening.

F.B.I. investigators try to determine whether the sender intended for it to be read that way and whether there is anything else in his or her background that would elevate concerns. “We take everything seriously,” the official said. “If something comes to our attention, we’re going to resolve it one way or the other.”

After the shootings, lawmakers said some security improvements might need to be made, from working more closely with the local police when holding public meetings or, in an idea raised by Mr. Chaffetz, perhaps giving the United States Marshals Service some role in Congressional protection.

Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who had a unruly health care town meeting in Austin in the summer of 2009, said he had found that the presence of a local police officer at a public event often helped keep people under control. “We just cannot let this stop what is at the heart of being a representative,” he said about the shootings.

With 535 members of Congress, the costs of individual protection are considered prohibitive, and many lawmakers say they would not want a strong police presence anyway.

Representative Robert A. Brady, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said Sunday that he intended to introduce legislation that would extend to members of Congress the federal law criminalizing threats to the president. “If people engage in this, they need to know that it is criminal and it’s going to be a criminal offense,” he said.

Other lawmakers said members of Congress needed to be prudent in their security arrangements but be careful to not go too far.

“You’re not a kamikaze pilot, but you can’t be hiding under the desk or putting on a disguise every time you go out, especially when you’re meeting the public,” said Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey. “And my job is meeting the public.”

    After Shooting, Fresh Look at Protecting Lawmakers, NYT, 9.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/politics/10security.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

At Giffords’s Synagogue, Prayers for Recovery

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By SAM DOLNICK

TUCSON — They spilled into the aisles and the corridor, past the extra rows of folding chairs and the congregants packed into the synagogue’s corners.

“Why, why, why, why?” Naomi Present, the daughter of the rabbi, cried out from the back.

More than 100 people crowded into a special healing service Sunday morning for Representative Gabrielle Giffords at Congregation Chaverim, where she was married three years ago, for a tearful ceremony. Ms. Giffords’s rabbi, friends and admirers gathered to pray for a swift recovery and to honor a woman many described as an inspiration.

If the shooting in Tucson on Saturday of 20 people, including Ms. Giffords, shook the entire nation, it hit this city’s Jewish community especially hard, most of all those who belong to Ms. Gifford’s small Reform temple, hidden among tall cactuses on a quiet suburban street.

Ms. Giffords is the first Jewish congresswoman from Arizona, a point of pride for many at Congregation Chaverim. She did not attend services every week and rediscovered her Jewish faith only about a decade ago. But she is described as a dedicated member of the temple whose work and compassion embody the best of Jewish practice.

“My Jewish heritage has really instilled in me the importance of education and caring for the community,” she said in a 2006 interview with The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.

She called a 2001 visit to Israel a turning point in her life that set off a fresh interest in Judaism. Her faith has never become a major issue in her political campaigns, which, most recently, focused on her opposition to Arizona’s hard-line immigration law and her support of President Obama’s health care overhaul.

Some Jewish supporters said Sunday that they admired her more for her political courage than for her religion. “That she is part of the Jewish community is an added bonus,” said Ellen Shenkarow, who attended the Sunday service.

“When I volunteered at her campaign,” Ms. Shenkarow continued, “there were people from all denominations, including a guy dressed in drag.”

Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, the leader of Congregation Chaverim, has been Ms. Giffords’s friend and spiritual adviser.

“In Jewish practice, we have an idea of repairing the world,” Rabbi Aaron said. Ms. Giffords, she added, “was very active in doing that work and being a pursuer of justice.”

From the temple’s bimah on Sunday, Rabbi Aaron tried to console her congregation with songs and testaments to the strength of “Gabby,” as she is known.

The congregants put their arms around one another’s shoulders, swaying back and forth in song. “She made such a difference in our Tucson community,” Rabbi Aaron said. She asked the congregation to hold her “radiant smile” in their minds.

“With her brilliance of mind,” she said later, “she comes to help solve the problems that hover over all our lives.”

Bryan Kaplan, who helps resettle refugees in the Tuscon area, said Ms. Giffords would write a personal letter thanking every employer who hired one.

His contact in her office, Gabriel Zimmerman, was killed in the shooting, Mr. Kaplan noted, fighting back tears, and a second staff member working with refugees, Pamela Simon, was shot.

Ms. Giffords, a member of Hadassah, the Jewish women’s organization, has said that her religion helped her become a leader.

“If you want something done, your best bet is to ask a Jewish woman to do it,” she said in a 2006 interview. Jewish women, she continued, “have an ability to cut through all the reasons why something should, shouldn’t or can’t be done, and pull people together to be successful.”

    At Giffords’s Synagogue, Prayers for Recovery, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10religious.html

Treating an Injured Brain Is a Long, Uncertain Process

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

WASHINGTON — The bullet that a gunman fired into Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s head on Saturday morning in Arizona went straight through the left side of her brain, entering the back of her skull and exiting the front.

Trauma surgeons spent two hours on Saturday following an often-performed drill developed from extensive experience treating gunshot wounds in foreign wars and violence in American homes and streets. On Saturday, that drill really began outside a supermarket, with paramedics performing triage to determine the seriousness of the wounds in each of the 20 gunshot victims.

Ms. Giffords, 40, was taken to the University Medical Center in Tucson, where, 38 minutes after arrival, she was whisked to an operating room. She did not speak at the hospital.

As part of the two-hour operation, her surgeons said on Sunday, they removed debris from the gunshot, a small amount of dead brain tissue and nearly half of Ms. Giffords’s skull to prevent swelling that could transmit increased pressure to cause more extensive and permanent brain damage. The doctors preserved the skull bone for later replanting.

Since surgery, they have used short-acting drugs to put Ms. Giffords in a medical coma that they lift periodically to check on her neurological responses.

They said early signs made them cautiously optimistic that Ms. Giffords would survive the devastating wound.

“Things are going very well, and we are all very happy at this stage,” Dr. Peter Rhee, the director of medical trauma at the hospital, said at a news conference.

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the hospital’s chief of neurosurgery, was more cautious. “Brain swelling is the biggest threat now,” Dr. Lemole said, “because it can take a turn for the worse at any time.”

Such swelling often peaks in about four or five days, then begins to disappear.

The doctors said that it was far too early to know how much long-term functional brain damage, if any, Ms. Giffords would suffer. They also say they will carefully monitor her over the next few days as she faces a number of potential complications, like infections, that can hamper her recovery. Full rehabilitation could take months to years. Long-term complications could include seizures.

The optimism expressed Sunday was based on Ms. Giffords’s ability to communicate by responding nonverbally to the doctors’ simple commands, like squeezing a hand, wiggling toes and holding up two fingers. The tests are part of a standard neurological examination after head injuries. In Ms. Giffords’s case, the doctors were encouraged because the simple tests showed that she could hear and respond appropriately, indicating that key brain circuits were working.

“If she’s following commands, that’s great and a very big step toward recovery,” Dr. Eugene S. Flamm, chairman of neurosurgery at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said in an interview. Dr. Flamm is not involved in Ms. Giffords’s treatment.

Functional neurological recovery from a gunshot wound depends on a number of factors, including the specific area of the brain that is injured, the number of bullets, their trajectory and velocity, and luck.

Ms. Giffords was shot once in the head, according to Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz., and the doctors who treated her said that tests showed the bullet did not cross the geometric center line dividing the brain’s left and right hemispheres.

“That’s very good because bullets that affect both hemispheres have a much higher mortality because the swelling affects both sides,” said Dr. Flamm, who has treated many gunshot wounds in his career, including 25 years at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, 11 years as chief of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and 11 years at Montefiore.

In traversing the left side of Ms. Giffords’s brain, the bullet went through what is the dominant side in about 85 percent of people, whether they are right- or left-handed, Dr. Flamm explained.

“It sounds simple to raise fingers and squeeze hands,” he said, “but the ability to do it is a very good sign in a brain-injured patient because it shows that the dominant hemisphere was not knocked out.”

The doctors in Tucson did not cite the bullet’s trajectory — that is, whether it entered at the top of the back of the skull and exited at a lower point or whether it went straight through.

If the bullet went through the visual area in the occipital part of the back of the brain, it could affect the right side of Ms. Giffords’s peripheral vision, Dr. Flamm said, adding, “It is hard to piece that together without more information.” Ms. Giffords is unable to speak because she is connected to a ventilator and unable to open her eyes, which doctors have covered with patches.

It is usually several weeks before doctors can fully evaluate cognitive function in a patient who has suffered a gunshot wound to the brain, and the body has a significant capacity to compensate for serious injuries.

Although Ms. Giffords’s ability to follow commands is encouraging, her doctors said that it would take several weeks to know what her recovery would be. That is a caveat that Dr. Flamm well understands. “I can understand the impatience of wanting to know it now,” he said. “But even if I wanted to know and examined her myself, I wouldn’t be able to answer that question at this stage.”

    Treating an Injured Brain Is a Long, Uncertain Process NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/health/10medical.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

Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona

January 9, 2011
The New York Times


She read the First Amendment on the House floor — including the guarantee of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” — and then flew home to Arizona to put those words into practice. But when Gabrielle Giffords tried to meet with her constituents in a Tucson parking lot on Saturday, she came face to face with an environment wholly at odds with that constitutional ideal, and she nearly paid for it with her life.

Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting Ms. Giffords, killing a federal judge and five other people, and wounding 13 others, appears to be mentally ill. His paranoid Internet ravings about government mind control place him well beyond usual ideological categories.

But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare.

Last spring, Capitol security officials said threats against members of Congress had tripled over the previous year, almost all from opponents of health care reform. An effigy of Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Maryland Democrat, was hung from a gallows outside his district office. Ms. Giffords’s district office door was smashed after the health vote, possibly by a bullet.

The federal judge who was killed, John Roll, had received hundreds of menacing phone calls and death threats, especially after he allowed a case to proceed against a rancher accused of assaulting 16 Mexicans as they tried to cross his land. This rage, stirred by talk-radio hosts, required marshals to give the judge and his family 24-hour protection for a month. Around the nation, threats to federal judges have soared for a decade.

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

That whirlwind has touched down most forcefully in Arizona, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described after the shooting as the capital of “the anger, the hatred and the bigotry that goes on in this country.” Anti-immigrant sentiment in the state, firmly opposed by Ms. Giffords, has reached the point where Latino studies programs that advocate ethnic solidarity have actually been made illegal.

Its gun laws are among the most lenient, allowing even a disturbed man like Mr. Loughner to buy a pistol and carry it concealed without a special permit. That was before the Tucson rampage. Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments.

    Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10mon1.html

Suspect’s Odd Behavior Caused Growing Alarm

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON, SERGE F. KOVALESKI, DAN FROSCH and ERIC LIPTON

TUCSON — In a community college classroom here last June, on the first day of the term, the instructor in Jared L. Loughner’s basic algebra class, Ben McGahee, posed what he thought was a simple arithmetic question to his students. He was not prepared for the explosive response.

“How can you deny math instead of accepting it?” Mr. Loughner asked, after blurting out a random number, according to Mr. McGahee.

Mr. McGahee, for one, was disturbed enough by the experience to complain to school authorities, who as early as last June were apparently concerned enough themselves to have a campus officer visit the classroom. And what Mr. McGahee described as a pattern of behavior by Mr. Loughner, marked by hysterical laughter, bizarre non sequiturs and aggressive outbursts, only continued.

“I was getting concerned about the safety of the students and the school,” said Mr. McGahee, who took to glancing out of the corner of his eye when he was writing on the board for fear that Mr. Loughner might do something. “I was afraid he was going to pull out a weapon.”

A student in the class, Lynda Sorenson, 52, wrote an e-mail to a friend expressing her concerns.

“We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I’m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit,” Ms. Sorenson wrote in an e-mail in June that was forwarded Sunday to The New York Times.

“The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”

Mr. Loughner’s behavior grew so troubling that he was told he could no longer attend the school, and he appeared, given his various Internet postings, to find a sense of community in some of the more paranoid corners of the Internet.

Mr. Loughner seems at some point to have crossed a border. From being a young man whom acquaintances described as odd, he became the sole suspect in the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona’s Eighth District. The police say he bought a 9-millimeter Glock handgun in November, and devised a plan to kill the congresswoman.

Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, who has taken charge of the investigation here, said at a news conference that possible links to extremist groups would be a continued focus.

“The ubiquitous nature of the Internet means that not only threats but also hate speech and other inciteful speech is much more readily available to individuals than quite clearly it was 8 or 10 or 15 years ago,” Mr. Mueller said. “That absolutely presents a challenge for us, particularly when it results in what would be lone wolves or lone offenders undertaking attacks.”

The words echoed comments by Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who said Saturday at a news conference that “unbalanced people” could be affected by the vitriol, anger and hatred of antigovernment rhetoric.

Mr. Loughner’s friends and acquaintances said he was left isolated by his increasingly erratic behavior, apparently exacerbated by drug use. A military official said Sunday that Mr. Loughner had failed a drug screening when he tried to enlist in the Army.

Lydian Ali, a classmate at Pima Community College, said, “He would laugh a lot at inappropriate times, and a lot of the comments he made had no relevance to the discussion topic.”

Mr. Ali, 26, continued: “He presented a poem to the class that he’d written called ‘Meathead’ that was mostly just about him going to the gym to work out. But it included a line about touching himself in the shower while thinking about girls. He was very enthusiastic when he read the poem out loud.”

At the Y.M.C.A. where Mr. Loughner worked out, he would ask the staff strange questions, like how often they disinfected the bathroom doors. Once he asked an employee how he felt “about the government taking over.” Another time, he sat in the men’s room for 30 minutes, leaving front-desk staff members to wonder what he was doing. When he emerged, he asked what year it was.

“One day it would be a tie-dye shirt, and the next he’d be dressed like a rapper, with a beanie and everything,” said a trainer at the Y.M.C.A., Ben Lujan. “It was almost like he was trying to be different people.”

The exact role of politics in Mr. Loughner’s life — or whether he had a specific political perspective at all — is harder to pin down. Investigators will have to wrestle with the difficult question of whether Mr. Loughner’s parroting the views of extremist groups was somehow more a cause of the shootings or simply a symptom of a troubled life.

Mr. McGahee, the algebra instructor, said that after he went to school officials to complain about Mr. Loughner, he was told by a counselor that Mr. Loughner had caused problems in other classes and had “extreme political views.”

But one classmate, Steven Cates, said he had tried on occasion to engage Mr. Loughner in political discussions, with no luck. He instead liked to talk about philosophy, or logic or literature, Mr. Cates said. He added that one topic that Mr. Loughner seemed to be obsessed with was the American dollar.

“He had talked about not liking the currency,” Mr. Cates said. “And he wished that the U.S. would change to a different currency because our currency is worthless.”

Some people who study right-wing militia groups and those who align themselves with the so-called Patriot movement said Mr. Loughner’s comments on subjects like the American currency and the Constitution, which he posted online in various video clips, were strikingly similar in language and tone to the voices of the Internet’s more paranoid, extremist corners.

In the text on one of the videos, for example, Mr. Loughner states, “No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver.” He also argues that “the current government officials are in power for their currency” and he uses his videos to display text about becoming a treasurer of “a new money system.”

The position, for instance, that currency not backed by a gold or silver standard is worthless is a hallmark of the far right and the militia movement, said Mark Potok, who directs research on hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“That idea is linked closely to the belief among militia supporters that the Federal Reserve is a completely private entity engaged in ripping off the American people,” Mr. Potok said.

But Mr. Loughner also posits in his Web postings the idea that the government is seeking to control people through rules and structure of grammar and language.

This is similar to the position of David Wynn Miller, 62, a former tool-and-die welder from Milwaukee who describes himself as a “Plenipotentiary-judge” seeking to correct, through a mathematical formula, what he sees as the erroneous and manipulative use of grammar and language worldwide. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers Mr. Miller a conspiracy theorist, some of whose positions have been adopted by militias in general.

“The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar,” Mr. Loughner said in a video. He also defiantly asserted, “You control your English grammar structure.”

Mr. Miller, in an interview, said the argument sounded familiar. “He’s probably been on my Web site, which has been up for about 11 years,” Mr. Miller said. “The government does control the schools, and the schools determine the grammar and language we use. And then it is all reinforced by newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and everything we do in society.”

Law enforcement officials said they suspected that Mr. Loughner might also have been influenced by things like American Renaissance, a conservative magazine that describes itself as “America’s premiere publication of racial-realist thought.”

“We think that white Americans have an entirely legitimate reason to want to remain a majority in the United States because when a neighborhood or a school or an organization changes in demographics and becomes majority black or Hispanic, it is no longer the same institution or neighborhood,” said Jared Taylor, its editor.

He added, “It may be shocking to hear something stated so bluntly.”

Mr. Taylor said that his organization had searched its subscriber list going back 20 years, as well as lists of those who had attended the group’s conferences since 1994, but that there was no record of a Mr. Loughner.

But even as Mr. Loughner was exploring the outer boundaries of extremist philosophy, his life at school, which some acquaintances said was very important to him, was unraveling.

Through the fall, administrators at Pima Community College became increasingly concerned as reports involving Mr. Loughner, like that day in algebra class, continued to come in.

Most of the reports, according to Paul Schwalbach, a college spokesman, were about how Mr. Loughner was “acting out” in disruptive or inappropriate ways. By last fall, officials at the college had learned about an Internet video that Mr. Loughner had prepared citing Pima College and claiming that it was in some way illegal or unconstitutional.

The college had its lawyers review the video and decided at that point to take action, drafting a letter suspending Mr. Loughner, which was delivered to his parents’ home in northwest Tucson by two police officers on Sept. 29.

At a meeting in early October at the college’s northwest campus, where he attended classes, Mr. Loughner said he would withdraw. Three days later, the college sent him a letter telling him that if he wanted to return, he would need to undergo a mental health evaluation. “After this event, there was no further college contact with Loughner,” the college said in a statement.

Mr. Cates, the former classmate, said he thought that leaving Pima was probably a major blow to Mr. Loughner.

“He was really into school. He really loved the acquisition of knowledge. He was all about that,” Mr. Cates said. “It would make sense that losing that outlet would be a negative thing for him psychologically.”

But this was just the latest in a series of blows. Mr. Loughner also tried to enlist in the Army in 2008, but failed a drug-screening test, Pentagon officials confirmed.

Some people who knew, or at least glimpsed, Mr. Loughner’s life at home with his parents, Randy and Amy Loughner, said they found the family inscrutable sometimes, and downright unpleasant at other times, especially the behavior of Randy Loughner.

“Sometimes our trash would be out, and he would come up and yell that the trash stinks,” said a next-door neighbor, Anthony Woods, 19. “He’s very aggressive.”

Mrs. Loughner has worked for the city’s Parks Department for many years, Tucson officials confirmed. Mr. Loughner’s employment, if any, was not known. Mr. Woods and his father, Stephen, 46, said they rarely saw the older Mr. Loughner go anywhere.

No one was home, or came to the door, at the Loughners’ house on Sunday morning. The house itself was mostly obscured by a tree and a huge intertwined cactus in the front.

Kylie Smith, who said she had known Mr. Loughner since elementary school, said she was struggling to reconcile her memories of the boy she knew with the portrait that the police and investigators were painting.

“It just seems so out of character for the Jared I grew up with,” Ms. Smith said.

    Suspect’s Odd Behavior Caused Growing Alarm, nYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10shooter.html

A Single, Terrifying Moment: Shots Fired, a Scuffle and Some Luck

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TUCSON — Patricia Maisch was waiting in line to get a picture with her congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, when gunfire erupted. Blood was spilling onto the pavement in an atmosphere of panic and pandemonium. The gunman was walking towards her, shooting people along the way. “I thought I was next,” she said.

His ammunition spent, the assailant stopped to reload, the authorities said, inserting a 31-round clip into the chamber of his Glock semiautomatic pistol before raising the gun again.

And in what was perhaps the only fortunate event of the day, the spring on the second clip failed. Two other men in the crowd lunged at the gunman and tackled him to the ground, and Ms. Maisch, responding to shouts from the crowd, grabbed the empty gun clip.

For some, though, the fortunate moment came a few seconds too late.

Judge John M. Roll had stopped by the mall for a cup of coffee and a moment with a member of Congress to talk about overcrowded courts. Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old student council president, was on hand for a real-life civics lesson: “Congress on Your Corner,” as Ms. Giffords called her constituent events. And Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, an aide to Ms. Giffords who was engaged to be married, was helping to line up the Saturday morning crowd, a familiar assignment.

It was the first official stop of her schedule, and Ms. Giffords had been on time Saturday morning. She and an aide parked an S.U.V. in the orderly parking lot of La Toscana Village, a mall about eight miles north of downtown Tucson. She posted a message on her Twitter account: “My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now.”

Ms. Giffords walked over to the sidewalk in front of the Safeway, where an American flag and an Arizona flag marked the area where she was to stand as she spoke one on one with constituents for the next 90 minutes. Standing, smiling and jaunty, she began the discussions that have been a part of her political repertory since she was elected to Congress in 2006.

At that moment, Jared L. Loughner, 22, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and sunglasses, approached one of Ms. Giffords’s aides, Alex Villec, and said he wanted time with his congresswoman. Mr. Villec, one of about five staff members there, asked him to stand at the back of a line of 20 people waiting their turn with Ms. Giffords. At first Mr. Loughner complied, Mr. Villec recalled Sunday.

Fatal Barrage

But a moment later, he said, Mr. Loughner was back, walking swiftly past him, eyes steeled, heading for the table where Ms. Giffords was speaking. He raised his arm and opened fire.

For what seemed like minutes, but was probably no more than 15 seconds, witnesses said, Mr. Loughner kept up his fatal barrage, dancing up and down excitedly, turning from Ms. Giffords before firing, apparently indiscriminately, at her constituents, staff and passers-by.

Within moments — in a crash of violence that sent terrified onlookers running for cover and screaming for help with a blitz of 911 calls that overloaded emergency circuits — Ms. Giffords had collapsed on the ground, blood pouring from her head.

“There was multiple people shot,” one anxious caller said. “It looked like a guy had a semiautomatic pistol,” another said. “He went in and just started firing and he ran.” Callers were frantic, eager to be helpful. “Are you sending lots of ambulances?” one woman asked.

Judge Roll, Mr. Zimmerman and young Christina were dead or dying, three of the six who would die this day. And 14 others were injured, many seriously. A team of medics and firefighters, dispatched from a fire station five minutes away, swept through the carnage and performed a bloody triage, leaving behind Judge Roll and at least four others who were definitely dead and sending the most gravely wounded, Ms. Giffords at the head of that list, to local hospitals in a march of ambulances and helicopters.

In the 11 minutes between the start of “Congress on Your Corner,” and the first 911 call to the sheriff’s office, at 10:11 a.m, there were moments of heroism, charity and just plain luck that might have avoided even greater carnage, as became clear Sunday when survivors shared stories of those harrowing moments.

As soon as Mr. Loughner had been wrestled to the ground, Daniel Hernandez, a 20-year-old intern who worked for Ms. Giffords’s past two campaigns and called her a friend, ran toward her after hearing the gunshots, fearing that she had been the target. Mr. Hernandez said he saw blood coming from her head and knew her situation was grave.

The first medical personnel arrived on the scene at 10:16 a.m., the sheriff’s office said. Initially, though, the victims and the witnesses were on their own.

“I worked at hospitals, so I knew basic triage and basic first aid,” Mr. Hernandez said in an interview. Ms. Giffords was in danger of choking on her own blood, he said, so he pulled her into an upright position. He then used his hand to stem the bleeding until some Safeway employees gave him some clean butcher smocks.

“Once the emergency services had arrived, I tried to attend to her emotional needs,” he said. “I tried to let her know that she was still there by holding her hand, making sure she knew that she was going to be all right.”

She could not speak, Mr. Hernandez said. “She was still alert,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she knew what was going on.”

Police spent hours over the weekend searching for a second potential suspect — who turned out to be the cabdriver who had taken Mr. Loughner to the site and who had followed him because Mr. Loughner did not have proper change for the trip.

Familiar Format

La Toscana Village is a middle-class mall on the southeast corner of Oracle and Ina Roads, anchored by a Walgreens and a Safeway. It is evidence of Tucson’s sprawl, but also of the striking beauty of this corner of Arizona: ringed by mountains that were covered in a slight mist on this crisp Saturday morning. By Sunday, the lot was a sea of yellow police tape and police cars.

It was a familiar spot to Ms. Giffords, who is married to an astronaut and known as Gabby by friends and some of her constituents. This was the third time, her press secretary said, that she had held a “Congress on Your Corner” here over the past four years — the event on Saturday was the first since returning to Arizona from the opening of the new Congress. It was supposed to go until 11:30 a.m., though they often went late if there were people who wanted more of her time.

Given the political pulls here — and the difficulty of being a Democrat in Arizona these days — these sessions could be uncomfortable, and Ms. Giffords had faced tough questions for her support of President Obama’s health care plan, and her opposition to Arizona’s tough measure aimed at illegal immigrants.

At the moment that Mr. Loughner rushed to the front of the line, she was talking to two constituents concerned about Medicare cuts. Ms. Giffords did not have security, not unusual for a relatively low-profile member of Congress.

If this site was familiar to Ms. Giffords, the format, as it turns out, was familiar to Mr. Loughner as well. The authorities said Sunday that a search of a safe at his home turned up evidence that he attended one of these “Congress on Your Corner” events in 2007 in the Foothills Malls in Tucson. Locked in the safe was a letter from Ms. Giffords, dated Oct. 30, 2007, and on her Congressional stationery, thanking Mr. Loughner for having attended. (It is typical, at these kind of events, for staff members to take the names and addresses of those who speak to the member of Congress, and follow up with a letter of thanks or to answer questions.)

The authorities also found in that safe an indication that Mr. Loughner might have been thinking ahead even after that meeting. Inside was an envelope with the words “I planned ahead” and “my assassination” over what appeared to be Mr. Loughner’s signature, according to an affidavit filed with the federal indictment of Mr. Loughner on Sunday.

A few days after Thanksgiving last year, Mr. Loughner turned up at the Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson and bought a Glock semiautomatic gun, with serial number PWL 699. The authorities said it was the only weapon he bought there that day; it was, according to the F.B.I., the gun used in the shooting on Sunday.

At 5 a.m. on Saturday, Mr. Loughner wrote a message on his MySpace page: “Goodbye. Dear friends... Please don’t be mad at me.”

A Confusion of Events

Judge Roll, who was the chief judge of the United States District Court in Arizona, had received a telephone call Friday informing him of Ms. Giffords’s visit the next day. After picking up a cup of coffee, he went over to where she was standing in hopes of talking to her about overcrowding in federal courts. While waiting for his moment to speak, he told one of her aides of his appreciation of her efforts so far, the authorities said.

That moment did not come. Just as Judge Roll was saying, “Hi,” to the congresswoman, the gunman loomed from her left and began firing. By some accounts — and there were, understandably, jumbled recollections of those moments — Judge Roll was hit first; in others, it was Ms. Giffords. In any event, the gunman fired first at the people standing eight feet or so in front of the supermarket window before turning around and firing into the crowd.

“He was pretty stoic,” said Mr. Villec, the intern who spoke to the gunman just before the episode. “He didn’t talk much. He walked past me without looking at me. I saw from my peripheral vision that he had raised his arm and started shooting.

“I have not been around a lot of gunfire,” he added. “I acted out of instinct, and I booked it. I ran 100 yards to the Bank of America.”

Another staff member who was there, Mark Kimble, said he fell to the sidewalk as soon as he heard the shot, and scrambled behind a concrete post.

“He stepped toward Gabby, and when he was about four feet from her, he fired at her head,” Mr. Kimble said. “Then he started shooting at the people, maybe a few dozen, waiting to talk to her. He kept shooting as he walked away.”

As the second magazine he inserted into the gun failed, two men later identified by the sheriff as Roger Salzgeber and Bill D. Badger pulled him to the ground.

It was clear to the paramedics that Ms. Giffords was, other than the 9-year-old, the worst of the injured. A bullet had entered the back lower left section of her head and cut clear across the brain, before exiting; this is the part of the brain that controls movement on the right side of the body, as well as speech and comprehension.

They took her to the hospital where she was given a CAT scan, standard procedure from which surgeons assessed the scope of the damage and began an operation that lasted about two hours. Doctors said she was in the operating room within 38 minutes after she arrived.

Mr. Hernandez said that the last time he saw Ms. Giffords was when she left the ambulance heading for surgery. The authorities kept him behind for questioning and took his clothes, which were soaked with her blood, for evidence. He said that while waiting he heard, on television, that she had died in the operating room, one of a number of false media reports that day.

“I wasn’t surprised, knowing Gabby, that she was still fighting for her life,” he said. “She is a very strong woman.”

    A Single, Terrifying Moment: Shots Fired, a Scuffle and Some Luck, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10reconstruct.html

A Sheriff Who’s Ready to Express His Opinions

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

TUCSON — Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik has never shied away from making his views known — sometimes loudly.

When Arizona passed its controversial strict immigration law last year, he repeatedly referred to it as stupid and racist. When he spoke before a United States Senate hearing on immigration in the spring of 2009, he did not hesitate to make it clear that he believed that schools should check the immigration status of all of their students.

“It’s wrong for the taxpayers in this country to spend the millions and millions and millions of dollars that we do catering” to illegal immigrants,” Sheriff Dupnik said.

So when he made it clear over the weekend that he believed that divisive political language had contributed to Saturday’s shootings, few here were surprised. Those who have worked with him for years said his comments were simply the latest example of him saying precisely what he thinks.

“This is a man who has always spoken his mind, regardless of who agrees with him at the time — and more often than not he’s ahead of popular sentiment,” said Chuck Huckleberry, the chief administrator for Pima County, who has worked with Sheriff Dupnik for nearly 20 years. “He’s not the kind of man who spends a lot of time thinking about what is popular, and that’s what makes him so effective.”

At the same time, his supporters said, Sheriff Dupnik has never been one to fan political fires. After his comments about schools incensed several political leaders, the issue quickly and quietly died down, in part because Sheriff Dupnik did not repeat his remarks.

“We both agreed that everything had become much more hateful over the last several years and we didn’t want to contribute to that,” said Eva Dong, a local school board member who criticized the sheriff at the time. “We had a lot of violent talk, and we didn’t want to contribute to that. We figured we could show that we could have different opinions and leave it at that.”

Sheriff Dupnik, who entered law enforcement five decades ago, was recruited from the Tucson Police Department in 1977 to work as a top officer to advise the sheriff at the time. Since being elected sheriff in 1980, he has won re-election eight times — an achievement for any county official, and one that is more remarkable since he is a Democrat in a largely conservative part of the country.

Most describe him as a conservative Democrat, not all that different from Representative Gabrielle Giffords, for whom he appeared in a campaign commercial in 2008.

Sheriff Dupnik has been widely praised by local leaders for avoiding political grandstanding, but he certainly does not shy from the spotlight. As he stood next to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, at a news conference on Sunday, he did not appear the least bit uncomfortable.

At one point, Sheriff Dupnik cut off questions to Mr. Mueller, saying that other officials were still available to speak.

Asked whether Arizona’s rather soft gun laws had contributed to the attack, Sheriff Dupnik replied, “I have never been a proponent of letting everyone in this state carry guns under almost any situation, and that’s almost where we are.”

Senator John Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS that Sheriff Dupnik’s comments about the state of politics were out of line.

“I didn’t really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing,” Mr. Kyl said. “It was speculation, and I don’t think we should rush to speculate.”

    A Sheriff Who’s Ready to Express His Opinions, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10sheriff.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

Giffords Called Responsive After Attack

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

TUCSON — Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who was gravely wounded in a shooting rampage, remained in critical condition on Sunday but has been able to respond to simple commands, and her doctors described themselves as “cautiously optimistic” about her recovery.

At a news conference at University Medical Center, the congresswoman’s doctors said that she was the only one of the victims of Saturday’s shooting to remain in critical care at the hospital. They said that she was lucky to be alive but would not speculate about the degree of her recovery, which they said could take months or longer.

“Overall this is about as good as it’s going to get,” said Dr. Peter Rhee, the chief of trauma surgery at University Medical Center, where Ms. Giffords was brought by helicopter from the shooting scene outside a supermarket north of Tucson. “When you get shot in the head and a bullet goes through your brain, the chances of you living are very small and the chances of you waking up and actually following commands is even much smaller than that.”

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the chief of neurosurgery, who operated on Ms. Giffords, said that the bullet had traveled through the entire left side of her brain “from back to front” but said that it had not crossed from one side of the brain to the other, nor did it pass through some critical areas that would further diminish her chances of recovery.

The doctors said Ms. Giffords, 40, was in a medically induced coma but that they had awoken her several times to check her responsiveness. While the doctors described themselves as extremely pleased with the progress of her treatment, they cautioned that it was too soon to make any predictions. “This is very early in our course,” Dr. Rhee said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, what her deficits will be in the future or anything like that.”

The doctors said that brain swelling and other complications still posed large risks in the days ahead.

Darci Slaten, a spokeswoman for the medical center, said the congresswoman’s husband, the astronaut Mark E. Kelly, was with her, as were her parents and two stepchildren. As the doctors provided the update on Sunday, law enforcement authorities tried to piece together what prompted a troubled young man to go on a shooting rampage here that killed six people, including a federal judge, and wounded Ms. Giffords and 13 others. The authorities called for the public’s help in finding a possible accomplice who was still at large.

Officials said the attack could have been more devastating had not one of the victims tried to stop the suspect as he tried to replace the spent magazine on his weapon. The police did not identify the woman, who was among those shot by the gunman.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, who traveled from Washington to oversee the shooting investigation at President Obama’s request, said that he expected the first charges to be filed against the gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, on Sunday afternoon.

Among those killed were John M. Roll, 63, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, and Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, who was the director of community outreach for Ms. Giffords. The others who died were identified as Christina Green, 9; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79. Mr. Mueller, at a news conference, said he expected Mr. Loughner to be charged with assault in the shooting of Ms. Giffords and with the murder of Judge Roll. Two bystanders tackled Mr. Loughner at the shooting scene and held him until he was arrested.

Law enforcement officials on Sunday morning released a photograph of a second man being sought as a possible accomplice.

The photograph, released by the Pima County Sheriff’s office and taken from a surveillance video camera at the shopping complex, showed a man in his 40’s or 50’s wearing a blue jacket and jeans. The authorities said he may be connected to Mr. Loughner and they appealed for help in identifying and locating him.

Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the sheriff, said witnesses told authorities they had seen him with Mr. Loughner at the scene.

The new House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, in an early Sunday appearance in his hometown of West Chester, decried the attack and said it was a reminder that public service “comes with a risk.” Mr. Boehner urged prayers for Ms. Giffords and the other victims and also told his House colleagues to persevere in fulfilling their oath of office. “This inhuman act should not and will not deter us. No act, no matter how heinous,” he said, “must be allowed to stop us.”

He also said the normal business of the House for the coming week has been postponed “so that we can take necessary action regarding yesterday’s events.” That business had included a vote to repeal the health care overhaul.

Mr. Loughner, who was in custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday night, refused to cooperate with investigators and had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the 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.

As the investigation intensified on Sunday, police were still at the scene of the shooting, a shopping center known at La Toscana Village, in the pre-dawn darkness. Investigators have described the evidence collection as a painstaking task given the large number of bullets fired and victims hit.

All of the cars in the parking lot have also been scrutinized in search of the shooter’s car, but so far no vehicle linked to the suspect has been found. The authorities were seen on Saturday entering the Loughner family house about five miles from the shooting scene.

The shootings raised questions about potential political motives, and Sheriff Clarence W. 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.

Dr. Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said that Ms. Giffords had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

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.”

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 C. J. Karamargin, her spokesman.

Several aides to Ms. Giffords were wounded. 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 expressing outrage at the shooting as well as concern and prayers for Ms. Giffords and her family.

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 last 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 Mr. 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. Joseph Berger contributed reporting from New York. Other reporting 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.

    Giffords Called Responsive After Attack, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/politics/10giffords.html

9-Year-Old Victim Was a 9/11 Baby, a ‘Face of Hope’

January 9, 2011
The New York Times
By JOSEPH BERGER

Christina Green was on the student council of her elementary school, so on Saturday her mother’s friend thought she might enjoy seeing government in action — the local congresswoman meeting with constituents outside a supermarket near Christina’s home.

“I allowed her to go, thinking it would be an innocent thing,” said the girl’s mother, Roxanna Green.

It did not turn out that way. A gunman shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords, leaving her unconscious and in critical condition, and his fusillade killed six others, including Christina, a 9-year-old who loved animals and volunteered at a children’s charity.

She was special from birth because she was born on Sept. 11, 2001, and she was proud of it, her mother said, because it lent a grace note of hope to that terrible day.

“It was an emotional time for everyone in the family, but Christina’s birth was a happy event and made the day bittersweet,” her mother said in a telephone interview from their Tucson home.

Indeed, Christina, who was born when the family was living in West Grove, Pennsylvania, was one of the 50 “Faces of Hope” representing babies from 50 states who were born on 9/11. Their images were printed in a book, with some of the proceeds used to raise money for a 9/11 charity.

“From the very beginning, she was an amazing child,” her mother said. “She was very bright, very mature, off the charts. She was the brightest thing that happened that day.”

Her mother, who grew up as Roxanna Segalini in the Bronx and Scarsdale, N.Y., is a registered nurse by training, and has been a stay-at-home mom shepherding Christina and her 11-year-old brother, Dallas. Christina’s father, John Green, is a supervising scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. Her grandfather, Dallas Green, managed the Philadelphia Phillies to the 1980 World Series championship and also managed the Yankees and Mets.

Christina was an A student and was interested in politics, so her mother accepted the offer by her friend Susan Hileman to take Christina to the congresswoman’s town hall meeting. John Green told the Arizona Star-News that Christina was such a good speaker, “I could have easily seen her as a politician.”

But Christina also seems to have inherited her family’s baseball genes. She was on the Little League baseball team, its only girl, her mother said.

“She was an athlete, a good dancer, a good gymnast, a good swimmer,” her mother said. “She belonged to Kids Helping Kids charity and tried to help children less fortunate.”

Christina, a slender girl with brownish blonde hair, brown eyes and a gentle smile, also sang in the choir at St. Odilia Roman Catholic Church. At home she took care of pet geckos, but loved frolicking with the dogs and cats of neighbors and friends. In the big-dreams way of children, she told her mother she wanted to be a veterinarian and study at an eastern school like New York University.

“She was cute as a button,” her mother said. “I could never imagine this was going to happen.”

In an interview she gave to Fox News, Mrs. Green said learned that Christina was injured and at the University Medical Center in Tucson in a call from her friend’s husband.

“I just assumed there was a car accident,” Mrs. Green said. “I asked him what had happened, if there was a car accident, and he had no idea. So then, of course, I started getting real upset. I grabbed my son and called my husband — he wasn’t at home — and we all just rushed over there.

“We waited for a while and then the surgeon and people from the ICU unit came in and police officers and other people, and they told us the bad news. She had a bullet hole to the chest, and they tried to save her but she just couldn’t make it. It was really, really bad.”

Mrs. Green said she hoped that Christina’s death would bring not only justice in the jailing of her attacker but also a national awareness of the cost of a venomous political dialogue.

“I think there’s been a lot of hatred going on and it needs to stop,” she said.

    9-Year-Old Victim Was a 9/11 Baby, a ‘Face of Hope’, NYT, 9.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10green.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

Omaha Principal Die

After Shooting

January 5, 2011
Filed at 12:13 a.m. EST on January 06, 2011
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The son of a police detective opened fire at a Nebraska high school Wednesday, fatally wounding the assistant principal and forcing panicked students to take cover in the kitchen of the building just as they returned from holiday break.

The gunman, who had attended the school for no more than two months, also wounded the principal before fleeing from the scene and fatally shooting himself in his car about a mile away.

Authorities declined to speculate about why the suspect, identified as 17-year-old Robert Butler Jr., targeted the administrators.

Vice Principal Vicki Kaspar, 58, died at a hospital hours after the shooting, police said. Principal Curtis Case, 45, was listed in stable condition.

"I can't think of a nicer person. I can't see how anyone would be cross with her," John Manna, who lives two blocks from the school, said of Kaspar earlier Wednesday. Manna said he knew Kaspar because his older son graduated from high school with her son in 1996.

Jessica Liberator, a sophomore at Millard South High School, said she was in the cafeteria when another administrator "rushed in to tell everybody to get in the back of the kitchen."

She said she started to cry when students heard a knock on the kitchen door and a cafeteria worker yelled for everybody to get down. It was a false alarm. Nobody came in.

She huddled with Brittany Brase, another sophomore. Asked whether they were best friends, Brase said, "No, not really." But, she added: "She's my best friend now. These things bring you together."

Butler had transferred in November from a high school in Lincoln, about 50 miles southwest of Omaha.

In a rambling Facebook post filled with expletives, Butler warned Wednesday that people would hear about the "evil" things he did and said the school drove him to violence.

He wrote that the Omaha school was worse than his previous one, and that the new city had changed him. He apologized and said he wanted people to remember him for who he was before affecting "the lives of the families I ruined." The post ended with "goodbye."

A former classmate of Butler's from Lincoln confirmed the Facebook post to The Associated Press and provided AP with a copy of it.

Conner Gerner said he remembered Butler as being energetic, fun and outgoing. Gerner said Butler sometimes got in trouble for speaking out too much in class, but he did not seem angry.

Butler's stepgrandfather, Robert Uribe, said the news still seemed unreal to him Wednesday evening and didn't seem to fit with the polite teen he knew.

"I have no idea what led to this," said Uribe, who last saw Butler about a month ago. Uribe said nothing appeared to be wrong at that time.

Lincoln school officials declined to provide details about Butler's student record. But Lincoln Southwest High School Principal Rob Slauson said Butler was involved in few, if any, activities before transferring to the new school.

"I think it's safe to say that in the yearbook, there was one picture of Robert Butler, and that was his school picture," Slauson said.

Police Chief Alex Hayes provided no details on the weapon Butler used or how he obtained it. Butler's father is a detective for the Omaha Police Department. Investigators were interviewing the seven-year veteran to learn more about what may have led to the shooting.

Authorities first received reports of the shooting around 12:50 p.m. The school was immediately locked down, but within two hours, students were being released in groups.

When the first group of students emerged, parents began applauding. Some of the students smiled, raised their hands in the air and flashed a V for victory sign.

Crystal Losole, whose son and a nephew are juniors at the school, said she got a call from her son when he was hiding in the kitchen.

Hugging him later and weeping, Losole said when she learned of the shooting, "My knees kind of buckled."

Her son, Skyler Marion, said he was in the cafeteria when Assistant Principal Brad Millard loudly announced that there was "a code red" and that everybody needed to evacuate.

At first, nobody believed Millard, Skyler said. But when Millard's face turned white, students knew it was no joke.

The shooting news jolted the suburban neighborhood in west Omaha where the principal lives.

"I'm really sad," said Judy Robison, who lives six houses away from the Case family. "There's been shootings downtown, but we're really pretty insulated out here."

The school on the west side of Omaha has about 2,100 students.

___

Associated Press writers Nelson Lampe, Eric Olson, Margery Beck, Melanie Welte, Ryan Foley and Michael Crumb contributed to this report.

Omaha Principal Dies After Shooting, NYT, 5.1.20111, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/01/05/us/AP-US-School-Shooting-Omaha.html