"The Mean-spiritedness of America"
Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves yesterday and told his listeners that Jared Lee Loughner enjoys the full support of the Democratic Party:
What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that...the Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. He's the latest in a never-ending parade of victims brought about by the unfairness of America, the bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia of America, the mean-spiritedness of America...this guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder - but something lesser. He's a victim. He's deranged and yet he's smiling, he's snickering at every one of us in the mugshot.
Speaking of victims, Sarah Palin emerged on Facebook to call herself the victim of a blood libel. A blood libel. (Although she will deservedly reap another whirlwind for her misuse of the term, it's fair to note that her writer probably picked it up from Glenn Reynolds' Wall Street Journal column on Monday--"So as the usual talking heads begin their 'have you no decency?' routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?").Seemingly oblivious to any possible irony, Palin quoted Ronald Reagan, who said that "It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."
Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They 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, 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.
Yesterday Arizona's state legislature rushed through legislation to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from exercising its Constitutional right to disrupt a funeral for a 9-year-old girl. "Such despicable acts of emotional terrorism will not be tolerated in the State of Arizona," said Jan Brewer, who not so long ago was demagoguing about headless bodies in the desert.Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Glocks are flying off the shelves all over the country.
One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to 263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a year ago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data.Handgun sales rose 65 percent to 395 in Ohio; 16 percent to 672 in California; 38 percent to 348 in Illinois; and 33 percent to 206 in New York, the FBI data show. Sales increased nationally about 5 percent, to 7,906 guns.
“'Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it’s close to home, people do tend to run out and buy something to protect their family,' said Don Gallardo, a manager at Arizona Shooter’s World in Phoenix."I feel safer already.
