'Left Wing Pothead' Stalked Giffords Since 2007

I realize the left is very slow on the draw, but in 2007 nobody outside of Alaska knew who Sarah Palin was and the Tea Party never came to formation until the spring of 2009. Of course they cannot control themselves so they lashed out in their typical unhinged fashion Saturday afternoon.

But since we really don't know a thing about Loughner's motivations, the chattering-class conversation quickly came to center in the hours after the event on the notion that he had emerged like an evil Golem from the clay of the "violent rhetoric" of the political discussions of the last few years.

This led to some moments of comic interest, as when Keith Olbermann, apparently having forgotten his 15-minute rants against George W. Bush for destroying democracy, demanded an end to incendiary rhetoric in politics.

The novelist Ayelet Waldman asked me on Twitter to inform her of the occasions on which I had denounced violent rhetoric only an hour after she had demanded of the House speaker, "Crying yet, you sc--bag?" and referred to the "evil political hackery of the RNC." She is, she wrote, "a Jew with a sense of history," though evidently that sense of history lasts approximately the time it takes to write a tweet.

Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, the most important figure in the leftist blogosphere, made himself notorious in 2004 for greeting the murder of four private contractors by Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah with the words "screw them." He greeted the news of Saturday's massacre with the words "F---ing American Taliban," echoing the title of his own recent book.

Olbermann, it should be noted, also enjoys telling people to kill themselves.

Yet as we discover more about the nutty liberal Jared Lee Loughner, the tone shifts to the rather mundane calls for toning down the rhetoric, as if it's the rights that has been unhinged all these years. We've had nothing but lunatic hatred directed at Bush, Cheney and Palin for ten years now, but all of a sudden after an online day of rage from the left, it's our side that needs to tone it down.

Sure. It'll be interesting watching the mental contortions of the leftwing haters now that we know more about Loughner.

He had her in his cross hairs for years.

The crackpot gunman charged in the frenzied ambush of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday had stashed handwritten messages in his basement safe bearing the chilling words: "Gifford," "My assassination" and "I planned ahead," authorities said yesterday.

Accused killer Jared Lee Loughner, 22, signed at least one of the pieces of paper, which he put in a single envelope and placed in the safe at his parents' modest one-story home in the northwest section of the city, according to charges filed yesterday in federal court in Phoenix.

Also inside the safe was a letter on Giffords' congressional stationery thanking Loughner for attending one of her "Congress on your Corner" events at a mall in Tucson in 2007.

Loughner had asked Giffords at the event, "What is government if words have no meaning?" according to two friends from high school.

A former classmate, Caitie Parker -- who has called the suspect "left wing" and "a pothead" -- tweeted that after that event, Loughner said he thought Giffords was "stupid" and "unintelligent."

That mall event was the same type Loughner invaded Saturday, when he shot Giffords point-blank in the head and killed six others, authorities said.

The same year that Loughner attended the event with Giffords, he began a descent into drug use and erratic behavior, records show.

In October 2007, Loughner was cited by the Pima County Sheriff's Department for possession of drug paraphernalia, a charge that was dismissed a month later when he completed a court-ordered program.

A year later, he faced a charge in Marana Municipal Court that was dismissed after the completion of another program. The charge was never made public.

Yet the same sheriff of Pima County today blames "talk radio" for this incident, when his own office failed to pursue charges against Loughner and he was allowed to get a gun permit. Maybe we can accuse that idiot sheriff of having blood on his hands (see video of Megyn Kelly with him here).

Meanwhile, more is revealed about how weird and creepy Loughner was, including this photos from the NY Daily News.

A sinister shrine reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman accused of shooting a member of Congress and 19 others.

Hidden within a camouflage tent behind Jared Lee Loughner's home sits an alarming altar with a skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges.

A row of ceremonial candles and a bag of potting soil lay nearby, photos reveal.

Experts on Sunday said the elements are featured in the ceremonies of a number of occult groups.

Investigators have focused on Loughner's online anti-government ramblings as the chief motivation for the shooting Saturday of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

The discovery of the shrine raises the possibility that Loughner, 22, may have been driven by other forces. Students and faculty at Pima Community College, which he attended until his suspension last summer, said Loughner was clearly at odds with the world.

Despite all this seemingly every online news source you go to if replete with wild accusations and comments against the usual litany of "suspects," from Palin to Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck, none of whom have the slightest relation to the maniac Loughner. Typical one from the NY Post link:

This just shows you that the rhetoric Limbaugh, Beck and Palin spew causes those who are less than stable to act out in ways the talking heads never wanted or expected. The blood of all those injured and killed is on the hands of all those who champion hate speech directed at people with a different viewpoint. The left or right isn't the enemy, the extremists are.

Such idiocy sounds remarkably similar to that of esteemed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

So where does this leave us today, less than 48 hours laters? Why, we have calls from senators to tone down the rhetoric despite their own incendiary history, calls to ban crosshairs by Democrats while they ghoulishly raise money off a tragedy and a tiresome, predictable assault on the Second Amendment.

Where is their decency?