OK, Kooks Who Are Mad As Hell — Chill out!

A video  flashback of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords discussing political violence following her vote on the health care bill and Sarah Palin’s gunsight target ad, via TPM. Below is the ad from Sarah Palin’s website, reposted today on Huffington Post: “There is no evidence at this time that the shooting of Giffords was politically motivated, but it’s grimly ironic that the candidate appeared on a map of House Democrats “targeted” by Palin in 2010.”

Huffington Post on 010811: “There is no evidence at this time that the shooting of [U.S. Rep. Gabrielle] Giffords was politically motivated, but it's grimly ironic that the candidate appeared on a map of House Democrats "targeted" by Sarah Palin in 2010.”

Update 010911: Who was the shooter? News sources identified him as Jared Lee Loughner. A YouTube video (via AlwaysUpToDate) points to Loughner’s YouTube channel: Classitup10. Here is one of his videos, titled America: Your Last Memory In A Terrorist Country!

According to NYT:

Jared Lee Loughner had become increasingly erratic in recent months, so much so that others around him began to worry.

He had posted on his Myspace page at some point a photograph of a United States history textbook, on top of which he had placed a handgun. He prepared a series of Internet videos filled with rambling statements on topics including the gold standard, mind control and SWAT teams. And he had started to act oddly during his classes at Pima Community College, causing unease among other students.

That behavior, along with a disturbing video, prompted school administrators to call in Mr. Loughner’s parents and tell them that their son had been suspended and would have to get a mental health evaluation to return to college. Instead, he dropped out in October, a spokesman for the college said.

The evidence and reports about Mr. Loughner’s unusual conduct suggest an increasing alienation from society, confusion, anger as well as foreboding that his life could soon come to an end. Still, there appear to be no explicit threats of violence that explain why, as police allege, Mr. Loughner, 22, would go to a Safeway supermarket north of Tucson on Saturday morning and begin shooting at a popular Democratic congresswoman and more than a dozen other people, killing 6 and wounding 19.

Gabrielle Giffords Google News feed | Google Blogs feed

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