RA Student Shoots Congresswoman, Kills Fed Judge

[Martin Eisenstadt]

[Martin Eisenstadt]

Sometimes, danger lurks in the beanie on the head. Are they sure it wasn't a yarmulke?

Witness: Gunman 'was going for the congresswoman'
By Patrick Finley Arizona Daily Star Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Saturday, January 8, 2011 3:45 pm

The gunman, wearing a beanie and baggy clothes, approached Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ meet-and-greet Saturday wanting to speak with her immediately, a witness says.

Alex Villec, a 19-year-old volunteer, organized the line of constituents outside the Safeway where a young man approached the line.

He said, “Can I talk to the congresswoman?”, or something to that effect, Villec said. He told the man to stand at the back of a line to wait for about 20 minutes.

“He went to the back of the line,” Villec said, “and didn’t seem too interested in what I had to say.”

Minutes later, the man left the back of the line and walked toward Giffords, who was with 20 to 25 constituents, employees and volunteers.

“He was intent,” Villec said. “He was intent when he came back — a pretty stone cold glance and glare.”

“I didn’t see his gun, but it was clear who he was going for. He was going for the congresswoman,” Villec said.

“A few staff members were caught in the crossfire …. His goal was the congresswoman.”

The shooter walked past Villec and to his left, past tables and toward Giffords. He raised his hand. Villec heard gunshots before ducking behind a pillar and later running across the Safeway parking lot to a bank for safety.

“It was bedlam,” he said. “People were getting down on the ground. They were screaming. I just did what I could to keep myself protected.”

Villec worked on Giffords’ 2008 campaign and interned twice in the past year for her, both in Tucson and in Washington, D.C. The Catalina Foothills High School graduate volunteered Saturday in part to see old friends. He was set to return to Georgetown University on Sunday.

The weapon “sounded like a handgun.” He did not hear the shooter speak while firing; from behind a pillar, Villec heard someone cry, “Get down.” Villec did not see two men tackle the gunman, though spoke with one of the men afterward. That tackler, he said, was next in line to greet Giffords.

“It’s heroic,” Villec said.” I’m at a loss for words to describe the courage it takes to do a thing like that.”

At 10:19 a.m., Villec texted his mother, Anne Hoff.

“I’m safe and fine,” it read. “There was a shooting outside Safeway. I’m completely O.K.”

Hoff, who drove to the Safeway lot, said she was thankful for the pre-emptive text.

“I don’t know,” she said, “what makes someone lucky.”

Villec, who was still shocked about his close call, knew the gravity of what occurred outside the Safeway early Saturday.

“It’s clear that this is a contentious district. Passions run deep on these issues, so much so that somebody would be compelled to do something like this,” he said. “However, the kind of bickering that happens on a day-to-day basis never reaches physical violence.

“This is unprecedented — and it’s going to send shockwaves throughout the country.”

Man linked to Giffords shooting called 'very disturbed'
By Tim Steller, Arizona Daily Star Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Saturday, January 8, 2011 3:11 pm



The man linked to the shooting today of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others is 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, the Associated Press reported.

Police have surrounded a house at 7700 N. Soledad Ave., which is the address listed by a man with the same name on a variety of online accounts and in the volunteer registry for the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books. The home is near West Magee Road and North Thornydale Road on the northwest side, about five miles from the shooting scene.

A former classmate of Loughner at [regionally accredited] Pima Community College said he was “obviously very disturbed.”

“He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts,” said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College’s Northwest campus.

Sorenson doesn’t recall if he ever made any threats or uttered political statements but he was very disruptive, she said. He was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class, said Sorenson, a Tucson resident.

MySpace, YouTube and Facebook accounts maintained by Loughner suggest he has spent most of his life on the northwest side: His profile says he attended Thornydale Elementary, Tortolita Middle School, Mountain View High School and Pima Community College.

The online accounts also contain bizarre discussions of a new currency and literacy, as well as threatening and despairing messages.

“WOW! I’m glad i didn’t kill myself. I’ll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow .... why doesn’t anyone talk to me?..” he posted on MySpace Dec. 14.

On Dec. 13, he wrote: “I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer! I can say it.”

In a posting on YouTube, Loughner wrote repeatedly about a new currency.

“I’m thinking of creating a new currency,” he wrote. “Therefore, I’m thinking of a design for my new coins size, shape, color, material, and image to start a new money system.”

He also wrote repeatedly about literacy. In a written message on YouTube, Loughner said: “The majority of people, who reside in District-8 are illiterate — hilarious. I don’t control your English grammar structure, but you control your English grammar structure.”

In a message posted on his MySpace account, titled “Goodbye friends,” Loughner said: “Dear friends...please don’t be mad at me. The literacy rate is below 5%. I haven’t talked to one person who is literate.” It was unclear when it was posted.

In a MySpace profile, Loughner said “My favorite interest was reading, and I studied grammar. Conscience dreams were a great study in college.”

He lists among his favorite books “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto”. But he also includes a broad variety of other titles, including: “Animal Farm,” “Brave New World,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

In another YouTube message, Loughner said: “I know who’s listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don’t know this accurate information of a new currency, aren’t aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn’t have happen.”

“In conclusion, my ambition - is for informing literate dreamers about a new currency; in a few days, you know I’m conscience dreaming! Thank you!”

In a youtube.com video dated Dec. 15, entitled “Introduction: Jared Loughner” the accused gunman describes himself as a U.S. military recruit who had applied to join the Army. The Army, however, said it rejected Lougher as a recruit in 2008.

Loughner’s youtube video makes a rambling mention of “MEPS in Phoenix” a reference to the Military Entrance Processing Station in the state capital that all Arizona recruits from every branch of service pass through before leaving for basic training.

“Every United States military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix is receiving one mini bible before the tests,” it said. “Jared Loughner is a United States military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix. Therefore, Jared Loughner is receiving one mini bible before the tests.

“I didn’t write a belief on my Army application and the recruiter wrote on the application: None.”

First Sgt. Brian Homme, who oversees Army recruiting in Tucson, said Loughner applied to enlist in December 2008 and was sent to Phoenix to take a test and physical. But “he was found to be unqualified so he never joined the Army,” Homme said.

He declined to say why Loughner was rejected, citing confidentiality laws.

Jared Loughner has had at least two minor run-ins with police, according to on-line court records.

In October 2007, Loughner was cited by the Pima County Sheriff's Department for possession of drug paraphernalia, a charge that was dismissed in November 2007 when he completed a diversion program.

One year later, in October 2008, Loughner was charged with a "local charge" in Marana Municipal Court, that charge was also dismissed following the completion of a diversion program in March 2009.

Court records indicate the Marana case file is due to be purged in December 2013. It's unclear what the exact charge was.

Grant Wiens, 22, attended Mountain View High School with Loughner, although they were not in the same grade.

Wiens also took a class at Pima Community College with Loughner, where they occasionally talked, he said.

“He was a guy in high school who definitely had his opinions on stuff and didn’t seem to care what people thought of him,” Wiens said. “He did his own thing.”

Ryan Miller, 19, was a sophomore at Mountain View when Loughner was a senior.

He said Loughner was seemed like a normal kid.

“I was in shock,” he said, describing his reaction to the shooting. “I didn’t know what possessed someone our age to do something like this.”

---

Please note: Those are not gunsight crosshairs on Sarah Palin's website. We have it on the best of self-appointed authority that those are really microscope reticules.

[Martin Eisenstadt]

Congresswomanperson Giffords is a Jew, although according to members of the heimishe community, not halachically a Jew. (Gesundheit.)

Shooter obviously is halachically a douchebag (in case there was any doubt).
Proof:

Is that you Robert Carradine, is this me?

Friends say shooter was a radical left wing pot head, which makes him eligible to be a college professor most places. If he's also gay he could be a moderator a DI.

[Armando Ramos]

Alex Villec, a 19-year-old volunteer, organized the line of constituents outside the Safeway where a young man approached the line...Villec heard gunshots before ducking behind a pillar and later running across the Safeway parking lot to a bank for safety.

Profiles in courage.

Let me guess...French?

[ham]

Now that's what I call a tea party worth of its name...
Lefty medias are already bellowing that

are coming for all


and

Oh, I forgot, silly me...

therefore
Help! Heelp! HEEELP! etc

[Albert Hidel]

...or something even more dangerous, like Rene Descartes.

Jared Loughner's college instructor: I was worried he might have a gun in class
By David A. Fahrenthold

A community college instructor who taught Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner was so disturbed by the student's outbursts in class that he requested Loughner's removal from the course, he told the Washington Post in an interview Sunday.

Ben McGahee, a third-year instructor at Pima Community College, taught Loughner in an elementary algebra class last summer. McGahee said that while Loughner never threatened him directly, he was concerned by his behavior.

"I always felt, you know, somewhat paranoid," McGahee said. "When I turned my back to write on the board, I would always turn back quickly--to see if he had a gun."

McGahee said he had to make several complaints before administrators finally removed Loughner.

"They just said, 'Well, he hasn't taken any action to hurt anyone. He hasn't provoked anybody. He hasn't brought any weapons to class,'" McGahee recalled. "'We'll just wait until he takes that next step.'"

On his first day in class, McGahee said, Loughner yelled out a random number during a lesson, then asked the instructor a strange question. "How can you deny math instead of accepting it?" he yelled.

Other times, McGahee said, Loughner would listen to his iPod in class. On quizzes, he would answer some questions accurately, and then write nonsensical answers for others. On one, he wrote "Mayhemfest!" McGahee said he thought that was a reference to a rock-music festival: a concert tour called The Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival played in Phoenix last July.

On another test, McGahee said, Loughner wrote the words "Eat+Sleep+Brush Teeth=Math." "He just miserably failed the test," McGahee said.

Finally, several weeks into the class, McGahee said Loughner arrived and pointed to a copy of the U.S. Constitution on the wall.

"'You're violating my First Amendment right of free speech,'" McGahee recalled him saying. "That's when I went to go get the dean."

At that point, he said, a college official came to talk with Loughner, then assured McGahee that he would not return to class. "You don't have to worry about Jared anymore. We asked him to not come back to class," the official said, according to McGahee.

Lynda Sorenson, 52, another student in the class, said that Loughner was disruptive and unruly from the first day.

"There was never a time when he was in class that he was not disruptive, and he scared me. He frightened the daylights out of me," Sorenson said in a telephone interview. "I kept saying to people, 'I'm afraid he's going to come into the class with a gun.'"

Sorenson and her husband are unemployed: they had gone back to college to learn new skills for the job market. She said that Loughner's first outburst came on the first day of their class, which met four days a week for five weeks.

"The professor started talking, started teaching, and all of a sudden Jared started spouting off that this was all a fraud, and he was trying to deceive us," she said. Finally, she said, the professor told him to leave--and, after first resisting, Loughner did.

As the class went on, she said, Loughner exhibited other odd behavior: he wrote nonsensical answers on his tests, wrote on the class blackboard, and walked around and around in tight circles in the school courtyard. One day, she said, he sat in class with an odd, enormous grin on his face.

"Like he was just about to start laughing," she recalled. "And it was just--there was nothing funny. We were talking about something stupid like triangles." Finally, she said, a police officer and counselor removed him from class in the third or fourth week, and he did not return.

The school said on Saturday that Loughner was a student from 2005 to last September--several weeks after Sorenson last saw him. It said the final straw was a YouTube video Loughner had made on campus, calling the college unconstitutional. He was suspended, and agreed in October to withdraw.

Sorenson said that Loughner never threatened violence, but she felt menaced by him. She said her only previous contact with someone like that came at time when she was working in a psychiatric hospital.

By David A. Fahrenthold | January 9, 2011; 12:37 PM ET

---

Profiles in courage.

Captured by a 61-year old woman and a 74-year old man. Now we see why the Army rejected him.

I'm not denegrating their bravery in any way; they truly are the real deal:

Woman Wrestled Fresh Ammo Clip From Tucson Shooter as He Tried to Reload
Patricia Maisch Hailed as One of the Heroes Who Stopped Tucson Slaughter
By KEVIN DOLAK and JUSTIN WEAVER
TUCSON, Ariz. Jan. 9, 2011

Patricia Maisch looks like a grandmother, but she is being hailed as a hero today for helping to stop alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner by wrestling away a fresh magazine of bullets as he tried to reload.

Maisch, 61, effectively disarmed the shooter as several men pounced on him and threw him to ground. As they struggled to hold him down, Maisch joined the scrum on the ground, clinging to the gunman's ankles.

Maisch and her fellow heroes -- identified as Bill Badger, Roger Sulzgeber and Joseph Zimudie -- stopped the carnage after 20 people were shot, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Six people died.

"[I] knew right away it was a gun... I heard a continuation of shots," Maisch told a news conference today.

Maisch, who has a crown of snow-white hair, was standing towards the back of the line to greet and snap a photo with Giffords at the "Congress in Your Corner" event at a Safeway grocery store.

Speaking to the press today, Maisch recalled how she stopped Loughner as he tried to reload his Glock 9 mm weapon.

"I could see him coming. [He] shot the lady next to me," Maisch said.

As he was shooting, she said, she was expecting to be hit and she wondered what it would feel like.

There was "lots of blood and confusion," she said.

She considered trying to run away, she said, but thought that would make her more of a target, so she laid down on the ground. But then something unexpected happened.

"Then he was next to me on the ground," she said. "The gentleman knocked him down.

"I kneeled over him. He was pulling a magazine [to reload] and I grabbed the magazine and secured that. I think the men got the gun, and I was able to get the magazine," she said.

Maisch said Badger and Sulzgeber both sat on the gunman while she held his ankles down. Police said that Zimudie helped by hanging on to Loughner's legs.

Sulzgeber was reportedly standing with his wife, third in line to meet with Giffords, while Zimudie was in the nearby Walgreens and came running out once he heard the shooting.

"I thought I would be shot. I am thankful for those two brave men," Maisch said. "I am not a hero. The other guys are. I just assisted getting the clip."

Badger, a 74-year-old retired army colonel living in Tucson, told Pottsville, Pa.'s Republican-Herald how he helped capture Loughner, and that he was grazed in the back of the head by a bullet.

The Heroes of the Tucson Shooting

"I heard the shots but I thought they were fireworks at first," Badger told the newspaper. "I wasn't sure they were shots until I actually saw the shooter, and I was sure he was really shooting bullets when I felt the sting on the back of my head."

According to Badger, who the Republican-Herald confirmed was treated for an injury at a hospital, he was the first person standing next to a row of chairs leading to Giffords when the first shots rang out.

Badger told the paper, "I turned and saw him running down the line of people on the chairs. He ran between me and the store. Someone hit him with a chair and he flinched a little. That's when I grabbed his left arm. Someone grabbed his right arm and we got him to the ground.

"The other guy put his knee into the back of his neck and I grabbed him around the throat. We held him until police got there. While we had him on the ground I saw blood running and it wasn't until then I realized it was coming from the back of my head," Badger said.

Speaking outside her home this evening, Maisch said that when she noticed that one of the men was bleeding from the head, she ran into the Safeway to get paper towels.

"I put a compress on the man's head while he was securing the shooter," she said.

---

Reminds me of how often I get panhandled by dickheads with $2500 worth of tattoos. Not joint tattoos either, but the store bought ones like this dumbass has. If you can afford body art you can afford bus fare, asshole.

[ham]

Let's be straight...if they TRULY wanted to remove all time-wasters, underachievers, campaigning nut-cases and those potentially inclined to criminal actions, diversity on campus would suffer tremendously.

I also read the Wikileaks people [i think the whole thing may just be a set-up] received bazillions of death threats from people in the US military...are we concerned about that, too, or is it just "being real Americans"?

And those who bragged online a few years ago about "nuking the frogs" and "ass-grabbing Russia"?

[Armando Ramos]

Lefty medias are already bellowing...

This nut Loughner is a radical leftist pot smoking musician. He apparently did himself a little drain bramage somewhere along the line by consuming too much alcohol (alcohol poisoning). He has a couple of drug arrests, and got rejected by the Army for failing the drug test.

He read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and thought it sounded like fun. He couldn't find Nurse Ratched to strangle so he took a run at the biggest female around, his local congressladyperson. Knowing he was too big a wuss to actually throttle her bare-handed, he had to use a gun. And he had that taken away from him by a 61-year old lady, and then got body slammed by a 74-year old man.

He took a cab to the murder scene! Not driving one, like Travis Bickle, but as a fare.

This sounds more like Keith Olbermann than anybody I ever saw at a tea party. How anyone can tie this mental midget Loughner to conservatives or conservatism is beyond me. He's about the exact opposite of everything conservatives stand for. On the other hand, add "PhD" after his name and he could get a job at nearly every RA college in the country.

[ham]

Lefty medias are already bellowing...

This nut Loughner is a radical leftist pot smoking musician. He apparently did himself a little drain bramage somewhere along the line by consuming too much alcohol (alcohol poisoning). He has a couple of drug arrests, and got rejected by the Army for failing the drug test.

He read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and thought it sounded like fun. He couldn't find Nurse Ratched to strangle so he took a run at the biggest female around, his local congressladyperson. Knowing he was too big a wuss to actually throttle her bare-handed, he had to use a gun. And he had that taken away from him by a 61-year lady, and then got body slammed by a 74-year old man.

He took a cab to the murder scene! Not driving one, like Travis Bickle, but as a fare.

This sounds more like Keith Olbermann than anybody I ever saw at a tea party. How anyone can tie this mental midget Loughner to conservatives or conservatism is beyond me. He's about the exact opposite of everything conservatives stand for. On the other hand, add "PhD" after his name and he could get a job at nearly every RA college in the country.

Go figure...
as soon as it happened, here a newspaper quoted "well-informed intelligence sources" that ascribed this "tide of hate crimes" to "racist and paramilitary" underground syndicates, with a pic of Nazis marching (taken in 1938 I guess...).
Schopenhauer wrote:

Stratagem XXXII
If you are confronted with an assertion, there is a short way of getting rid of it, or, at any rate, of throwing
suspicion on it, by putting it into some odious category; even though the connection is only apparent, or else
of a loose character. You can say, for instance,
“That is Manichaeism” or “It is Arianism,” or “Pelagianism,” or
“Idealism,” or “Spinozism,” or “Pantheism,” or “Brownianism,” or
“Naturalism,” or “Atheism,” or “Rationalism,” “Spiritualism,”
“Mysticism,” and so on.
In making an objection of this kind, you take it for granted (1) that the assertion in question is identical with,
or is at least contained in, the category cited—that is to say, you cry out, “Oh, I have heard that before”; and
(2) that the system referred to has been entirely refuted, and does not contain a word of truth.

Bandwagon appeal...
They call every dissident a Nazi without the slightest clue what they are talking about...anti-immigrationist, religious fundamentalist of various persuasions, racialist, survivalist, right-wing libertarian...

[WilliamW]

The Left Hypocritically Exploits Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting
Rachel Alexander

Just hours after Saturday’s tragic shooting incident in Tucson, Arizona, numerous news sources on the left from CNN to the Huffington Post were casting blame upon Sarah Palin, Tea Parties, and Second Amendment supporters. Hoping the shooter had right-leaning views, the Left immediately started portraying Jared Lee Loughner as a right wing nut. Even as information trickled in revealing Loughner had some left-leaning political views, the left ignored it and ran with their own spin, labeling him a product of the right.

Loughner is far from a right winger. A former high school classmate of Loughner’s described him as “…left wing, quite liberal...a pot head and into rock, like Hendrix, The Doors, Anti-Flag.” Loughner’s list of favorite books on his MySpace page include The Communist Manifesto, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Two YouTube videos he posted include numerous rants about the government and mind control, and reveal he does not believe in God. In one video he states, “No! I won’t trust in God!” Another of his 'favorite' videos shows a masked man burning the American flag.

Ignoring these facts about his political persuasions, the Left instead has tried to turn the focus of the shooting to blaming the right and Sarah Palin, trotting out a map Palin created last year “targeting” incumbent Congressional candidates. This is outrageous. There is no comparison whatsoever between “targeting” members of Congress for defeat in elections and attempting to murder them. Right-leaning politicians and activists do not approve of murder. There is also no indication Loughner was inspired by Palin’s map, considering his political leanings come from the anarcho-left.

In order to justify that desperate stretch, the left ignores the fact that one of their own, defeated Arizona Democrat Congressman Harry Mitchell, ran a campaign ad against JD Hayworth in 2006 featuring Hayworth in the crosshairs of a rifle.

The Democrat Sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, a partisan who has long fought with conservatives over enforcing illegal immigration laws, implied Saturday that the actions of Loughner were akin to Arizona’s stance on SB 1070 and illegal immigration. "We have become the capital, the mecca for prejudice and bigotry," Dupnik told reporters. He also said some of the anti-government sentiments in the media may have influenced Loughner.

The Left embraced Dupnik’s politically motivated smear of right-leaning viewpoints, using it to associate Loughner’s shootings with Tea Party activism. The liberal blog Blue Wave News posted an article entitled, “Tea Party Rhetoric: Nothing better than a dead liberal,” using one lone woman’s inappropriate remarks on video to justify lumping the entire Tea Party movement in with Loughner’s shootings. In actuality, Loughner has little in common with the Tea Party. His dislike of the American flag, his choice of The Communist Manifesto as a favorite book and his anarchist ramblings all point to someone on the other side of the political spectrum. The Tea Party’s biggest issues have been government spending and Obamacare, and Giffords was regularly protested by Tea Parties for her support of Obamacare. There is zero evidence that Loughner had any concern about those issues.

The left is using the shootings to call for stricter gun control laws, placing blame on Arizona’s strong pro-Second Amendment laws for the shootings. At this point, it is not fully confirmed whether Loughner broke any gun laws, so it is premature to assume that stricter gun laws would have stopped him. He has a history of arrests and convictions for various criminal activities, and was removed from community college for disruptions. There is no reason to believe he would have respected gun laws.

Most likely the real story is that Loughner is a seriously disturbed individual who fits the profile of a psychopath and was motivated by a number of factors, none of them being conservative ideology. Did the values pushed by the left of moral relativism, self-indulgence promoting acceptance of his imbibing of illicit drugs, and “tolerance” of hate-filled totalitarian books like The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf while dismissing the teachings of the Bible contribute to Loughner’s delusions? Perhaps.

Loughner is behind bars, so we may find out someday. Meanwhile, as more evidence comes out revealing Loughner has ties to the left, not the right, expect the left to suddenly blame his actions on mental illness.