Interesting read, ddt.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/rising-passions-of-the-right-20110415-1dhtq.html
Quote
Anger at Obama and his agenda had been seething. The movement to deny him legitimacy by claiming he was not born in the US grew and merged with the claim that he is a Muslim.
When his Democrat allies in Congress passed his health insurance bill, the anger surged, fomented by right-wing shock jocks. A number of right-wing figures, including political candidates, called for ''revolution''. And the anger was focused by the Republicans' Sarah Palin, former vice-presidential candidate. She famously urged supporters: ''Don't retreat - RELOAD!''
And she published her so-called target map with crosshairs pinpointing the districts of 20 Democratic Congress members, the priority list of seats for Republicans to retake.
The next day, Giffords, a Democrat who had voted for the health insurance bill, was interviewed on television. She said that Palin had put the ''crosshairs of a gunsight over our district''. She warned that ''when people do that, they've got to realise there's consequences to that action''.
She didn't know that it would be Jared Loughner, apparently insane, who would be the one to put bullets into his guns and decide to hunt an elected member of Congress. And she didn't know that she would be the member he would come after.
But she heard the rhetoric, noted the escalation, saw the incitement, and predicted ''consequences''. So did others. We don't know whether Loughner saw Palin's crosshairs or was affected by the level of anger in the political rhetoric.
But we do know that, after the shooting, Palin's staff redefined the crosshairs on her target map as a ''surveyor's symbol'' rather than gunsights. The map was withdrawn from Palin's website.
Publicly advocating the assassination of elected officials is treason isn't it? Why does Palin hate America?
