Reading a piece on Think Progress about Giffords, I noticed the "related stories" list at the end. In some cases, I followed the links. In others, I went directly with the original story. here's a sampling. More after the fold:
I am livid, beyond belief, and having trouble forming coherent thoughts about this. So I will just say two things. This is a comment I left in another piece:
The more pictures of someone you have with a target over their face, the more rhetoric you use indicating that someone is a Manchurian candidate, a wolf in sheep's clothing, etc., the more chance there is that when some random person goes off the deep end, they'll pick the target that you marked. You don't need to pull the trigger. You don't need to be directly responsible. You just have to say the right things in enough places and coyly claim you were just being rhetorical before someone with easy access to a weapon decides to pull the trigger.
The more pictures of someone you have with a target over their face, the more rhetoric you use indicating that someone is a Manchurian candidate, a wolf in sheep's clothing, etc., the more chance there is that when some random person goes off the deep end, they'll pick the target that you marked.
You don't need to pull the trigger. You don't need to be directly responsible. You just have to say the right things in enough places and coyly claim you were just being rhetorical before someone with easy access to a weapon decides to pull the trigger.
And I will end on a note of hope and possible inspiration: an intern with the campaign, who'd been there for just five days, may have saved Giffords life by running directly towards the gunfire and applying emergency medical care.