Bob Herbert:
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.
Unsupported by data of his own, George F. Will decries a spot-on assessment of wingnuttia:
Three days before Tucson, Howard Dean explained that the Tea Party movement is "the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity." Rising to the challenge of lowering his reputation and the tone of public discourse, Dean smeared Tea Partyers as racists: They oppose Obama's agenda, Obama is African American, ergo . . .
Let us hope that Dean is the last gasp of the generation of liberals whose default position in any argument is to indict opponents as racists. This McCarthyism of the left - devoid of intellectual content, unsupported by data - is a mental tic, not an idea but a tactic for avoiding engagement with ideas. It expresses limitless contempt for the American people, who have reciprocated by reducing liberalism to its current characteristics of electoral weakness and bad sociology.
Whether rancid political discourse had anything to do with Jared Loughner's lethal spray of bullets last weekend, Eugene Robinson says lax gun laws definitely did:
To buy the gun, Loughner was required to pass a federal background check - and he did, a store manager told reporters. It is against federal law to sell a gun to someone who is mentally ill, but there is no indication that Loughner was ever officially deemed to suffer from mental illness. Even if he had been, there is a good chance that his name would not have been properly entered in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, about 80 percent to 90 percent of disqualifying mental health records are not in the background-check database. Some states simply don't bother to submit the information; others do so haphazardly.
Patt Morrison tells about another gay hero at a shooting incident whose actions made his life worse.
William Rivers Pitt writes "The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right":
I just thought you should know a few things about the people you helped into their graves and hospital beds this weekend.
Yes, you.
Mona Charen:
Actual violence isn't necessary for the left's campaign to slander the right, but it is useful. Former President Clinton, with the help of the left-leaning press, cynically pinned responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing on "talk radio." Because conservative talk shows expressed hostility to big government, he argued, they were creating a "climate of hate" that inspired Timothy McVeigh.
Connie Schultz showers kudos on former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petros, who, with his wife Nancy, has become champion of innocent inmates with their myth-busting book False Justice.
Katha Pollit says Naomi Wolf is wrong about wanting to end the anonymity of rape complainants:
Rape victims already face formidable obstacles in getting justice, which is a big reason why so many don't go to the police. (In the US, only about 13 percent of reported rapes result in a conviction; in the UK, it's about 6 percent.) Wolf argues that victims of other crimes don't get anonymity, but in no other crime do complainants face anything like the skepticism and hostility widely meted out to those who report sex crimes, especially when the accused is famous, respectable, admired, important or even just good-looking. Never mind what publicizing names would do for "women," the theoretical construct. What about the actual human beings who have been the victims of sex crimes? Why does Wolf want to increase their suffering? Isn't it bad enough that the police may well not take them seriously, their rape kits may not be processed, their credibility will be attacked in court in a way that would never happen if the crime were burglary or mugging and, if the defendant looks like one of their own—their son, their brother—at least some members of the jury will be looking for reasons to acquit?
Kai Wright:
The overt violence these ideas stir didn’t start Saturday. Before Giffords ever cast the health care reform vote that drew her into Palin’s sites, the threats of the tea party mobs that filled her campaign rallies had taken life on the steps of the Capitol. They spat at Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and other black congress members, hurled homophobic slurs at Rep. Barney Frank, phoned in graphic threats to several members and vandalized a number of their homes and offices, including Giffords’.
Nor has the violence been limited to elected officials. Mosques are vandalized and Muslim Americans threatened. Reports of hate crimes against Latinos are on the rise. Good luck and the keen eyed policing of a California state trooper is all that prevented mass murder at the Tides Foundation last summer. This weekend, luck ran out.
All of this violence is horrific and worsening, to be sure. But the right’s enemy-in-our-midst politics inflicts a broader destruction on the nation, too. Anti-government zeal has taken a toll that can be measured in tens of thousands of lives.
Fareed Zakaria: "If Pakistan cannot reverse its downward spiral, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is doomed."
Ken Silverstein:
The general unsightliness of the capitol makes it a fitting home for today’s Arizona legislature, which is composed almost entirely of dimwits, racists, and cranks. Collectively they have bankrupted the state through a combination of ideological fanaticism on the Republican right and acquiescence and timidity on the part of G.O.P. moderates and Democrats. Although dozens of states are facing budget crises, the situation in Arizona is arguably the nation’s worst, graver even than in California. A horrific budget deficit has been papered over with massive borrowing and accounting gimmickry, and the state may yet have to issue IOUs to employees and vendors. All-day kindergarten has been eliminated statewide, and some districts have adopted a four-day school week. Arizona’s state parks, despite bringing in 2 million visitors and $266 million annually, have lost 80 percent of their budget, with up to two thirds of the parks now in danger of closure.
The legislature slashed the budget for the Department of Revenue, which required the agency to fire hundreds of state auditors and tax collectors; lawmakers boasted that these measures saved $25 million, but a top official in the department estimated that the state would miss out on $174 million in tax collections as a result.
Paul Buchet explains why "You Should Feel Cheated, Deceived and Sickened by America's Stunning Inequality, Even If You're Doing Well."