This will be short but I am hoping somebody else will pick this up. I know this is cold and many won't have the stomach for this. But the progressive movement must move quickly to take control of the media meme coming out of Boston. I have seen this happen before, like vultures the right wing moves in with lightning speed to create a meme about any traumatic event that suits their purposes. It is already happening with Boston as documented by Greg Sargent. The right wing Boston meme is going to be wall to wall, 24 hours about immigration. It will be used to destroy what is left of the immigration bill. It will hit fever pitch when Limbaugh starts his broadcast. It will become more coordinated over the day. Many in the mainstream media will take their ledes from these psychopaths.
We have to learn to use the Internet to take control of memes (this was done to some extent in the Obama campaign but we must get better). The question has to be how did we allow these two people to become armed, violent assailants. They had a shoot out with the police and one of them got away. Where did they get the guns? Would they have had the confidence to even plant those bombs if they didn't have an arsenal at home? Where did that arsenal come from? Would people like this have been able to get guns if there had been background checks? The suspect would have been apprehended easily if he didn't have a gun and he would not be able to terrorize an entire city. Guns are ripping out entire social fabric apart. Again and again talks about these issues when discussing what is going on. It is about guns. It is about turning pretty much anybody into an armed assailant who can terrorize us at a whim, whether a kid from Chechnya or a kid from Connecticut.