A Celebration of Women

sends our condolencses to all of Congresswoman Gifford’s Family and loved ones….such tragedy.

 

 

Patty Atkins, right, prays early Sunday morning, Jan. 9, 2011 at a vigil for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,

and other victims at University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz

________________________________

 

WASHINGTON—The caustic U.S. political climate has become a suspect of sorts in the rampage that left six dead and a U.S. congresswoman critically injured in Arizona. Already, appeals are being heard to tone down the rhetoric.

The captured suspect’s motives remain unknown despite his online diatribes betraying resentment of the government and a scattered state of mind. Still, the attack on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and those who were with her has intensified the scrutiny on how much is too much, and how hot is too hot, in political debate.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democratic leader in the Senate, on Sunday cited imagery of crosshairs on political opponents and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s combative rallying cry, “Don’t retreat; reload.”

“These sorts of things, I think, invite the kind of toxic rhetoric that can lead unstable people to believe this is an acceptable response,” Durbin said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The attack might be the work of “a single nut,” Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva, whose Arizona district shares Tucson with Giffords’ district, said Saturday, the day Giffords was shot. But he said the nation must assess the fallout of “an atmosphere where the political discourse is about hate, anger and bitterness.”

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who is teamed with federal authorities in a joint investigation, emerged as a particularly outspoken figure after warning Saturday that “freedom of speech does not come without consequences” and describing Arizona as “the capital, the mecca, for prejudice and bigotry.”

On Sunday Dupnik expanded on the warning, saying,

“when the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates” reaches a fever pitch, it “has impact on people, especially (those) who are unbalanced personalities to begin with.”

Still others cautioned against blaming political rhetoric — or the language and imagery of a particular political group — for the tragedy in Tucson. Republicans were especially sensitive to suggestions that the conservative Tea Party movement, with its anti-government stances, was contributing to a more poisonous political environment,

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, noted Sunday that the suspect in the Tucson rampage was connected to Internet postings that included Marxist and Nazi literature.

“That’s not the profile of a typical Tea Party member, if that’s the inference that’s being made,” he said on CNN.

Rep. Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican who ran as a Tea Party favourite, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC: “I just hope we can have some civility and move forward. You have extremes on both sides; you have crazy people on both sides. Your job as a leader is to talk to people in a rational way to bring down the rhetoric”.

The House’s newly installed Republican leaders postponed Wednesday’s scheduled vote to repeal the new health care law. That divisive issue was at the centre of the harshest criticisms of Giffords and many other Democrats for the past two years.

Giffords also was among about 20 Democrats opposed in last November’s elections by Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. Palin’s Facebook page in March posted a U.S. map with the cross-hairs of a gun scope imposed over each of the 20 Democrats’ districts. Gun imagery appeared in various ways in the campaign, often not connected at all with gun rights.

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Giffords said at the time.

“The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action.”

Palin’s Facebook page after the shooting extended condolences to Giffords’ family and the other victims.

Congresswoman Giffords: http://giffords.house.gov/

 

 

God rest her Mind, Body & Soul…assisting her to achieve forgiveness of such a senseless act.

  

 

A Celebration of Women