A Republican-appointed federal judge is dead at the hands of a flag-burning atheist liberal. But this is the Republicans' fault, partially because they opposed Obamacare.

Words fail me.

The sheriff has also acknowledged that the shooter had previous contact with law enforcement regarding death threats he had made.

One wonders which local law enforcement agencies handled those threats and, apparently, found less danger in them than the good sheriff now finds the health care debate.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Sheriff Dupnik was one of those who cautioned us not to jump to conclusions before knowing all the facts following the Fort Hood massacre. Apparently, the political opportunity following the Tucson massacre was just too tempting for the Sheriff to pass up. To claim that one party is doing all the good work, while the other party is trying to stop them is as ludicrous as it is dishonest. I can't imagine the residents of Tucson re-electing a Sheriff who operates the way this guy operates.

Sheriff Dupnik's immediate, overt politiziation of this horror is only to be expected. Although paid to protect the citizens of his county, he has been vocal in the media about his intention to not enforce SB1070, calling it 'racist'. There are numerous interviews on the internet in which he states his intent to subvert the law, rather than do what he is paid to do as a public servant.

It was surprising to this reader that Dupnik was immediately able to identify the shooter as an individual who is already known to police as 'unstable but not insane'. By whose criteria - the sheriff's? Makes you wonder why an unstable person would be allowed to legally buy a gun and keep it.

Looks like Dupnik relied on his allies in the media to point the finger elsewhere, in hopes that it won't turn back on him and shine a light on his own policing, or lack thereof. We have seen how quick they were to run with his narrative.

Did Dupnik check to see if this unstable (but not insane) individual had a gun? If not, why not?

I'm a constituent of both Sheriff Dupnik and Congresswoman Giffords. Unfortunately the Sheriff has spent the last few years becoming less of a law enforcement officer and more a partisan. I find it offensive when ANY elected official starts down the road of suggesting that a limitation on Free Speech should ever be considered. That the accused individual in this case seems to have found a better intellectual home (Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are listed as his favorites) among the rhetoric of the left seems to have escaped the notice of the Sheriff. Perhaps his detective skills, for which he is paid, might need a refresher course before opines again.

The sheriff and the shooter's mother are both employees of the same county. Pima County appears to have a very leftist administration given past incidents including the refusal to prosecute the two assailants that attacked Ann Coulter at the Univ of Arizona.

I wonder if there is any explanation here as to how the shooter stayed below the radar and avoided the criminal record that would have prevented him from acquiring the pistol this past November.

The message of Dupnik, shamefully ratified by Democrat Representatives Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn, seems to be:
Anyone who openly contests Obamacare, or any policy of the administration, or of "progressives" in general, is fomenting violence. Therefore, opposition to the progressive agenda must cease.

I understand this sort of frustration, but I'm afraid that professor George is mistaken: there is some strong evidence that increases in violent rhetoric do in fact lead to a higher likelihood of actual violence. I won't link to another blog from here, but some googling will quickly reveal this research. On a slightly different note, we might want to separate causality and responsibility. It is probably safe to say, now given the available evidence, that increasingly apoplectic political rhetoric did play some role in causing yesterday's events, but that hardly makes those who speak thus responsible for those events. Pressure for a congress person to greet citizens at gimicky set-ups like 'Congress at your Corner' is part of the cause of the Gifford's assassination attempt--without it, she likely would not have been shot--yet i don't think that anyone would hold this pressure responsible for it.

"Have you ever in your life encountered such transparent hypocrisy? "

Professor George must spend his daylight hours buried in books and his nighttime hours playing video games, i.e. he seems to have little contact with the modern US.