Free Republic

Here's one very odd and overlooked twist in the exhaustively chronicled shooting at a public event for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last month: One of the Tucson firemen summoned to the scene refused to go, on political grounds. The emergency worker in question, a 28-year fire department veteran named Mark Ekstrum, retired a few hours afterward, according to the Arizona Daily Star. The paper reports that in the service logs for Ekstrum's unit, one of his supervisors noted that "he mentioned something about 'political bantering' and he did not want to be part of it" after the call went out for...

James Eric Fuller was one of the 19 people that were shot in Tuscon when a madmen unloaded his gun on Congress woman Giffords and many of her supporters. Within hours of the senseless shooting spree, many on the Left (including Fuller) decided to blame the Right for stirring up the violence even though the shooter had absolutely no connections to conservative beliefs. Sadly the blame game has led to Fuller being arrested Saturday for shouting out death threats to a Tea Party member.

... "Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof."

Rambling and agitated, Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner strode through Pima Community College, camera in hand — alternately laughing and voicing anger at his "genocide school," which he called "one of the biggest scams in America" in a video released by college officials late Friday. The nearly four-minute video, which was posted on YouTube on Sept. 23 and later removed, appeared to show Loughner on campus at night, moving briskly through buildings and a series of open courtyards. "All right, so here's what we're doing. We're examining the torture of students," Loughner said as he began his narration of...