Here’s a great tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, by Kevin Williamson:

Jobs was sometimes criticized for not being a philanthropist along the lines of Bill Gates. Take this article, for example:

Last year the founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review called Apple one of “America’s Least Philanthropic Companies.” Jobs had terminated all of Apple’s long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997, citing the need to cut costs until profitability rebounded. But the programs have never been restored.

CNN, being CNN, misses the point. Mr. Jobs’s contribution to the world is Apple and its products, along with Pixar and his other enterprises, his 338 patented inventions — his work — not some Steve Jobs Memorial Foundation for Giving Stuff to Poor People in Exotic Lands and Making Me Feel Good About Myself. Because he already did that: He gave them better computers, better telephones, better music players, etc. In a lot of cases, he gave them better jobs, too. Did he do it because he was a nice guy, or because he was greedy, or because he was a maniacally single-minded competitor who got up every morning possessed by an unspeakable rage to strangle his rivals? The beauty of capitalism — the beauty of the iPhone world as opposed to the world of politics — is that that question does not matter one little bit. Whatever drove Jobs, it drove him to create superior products, better stuff at better prices. Profits are not deductions from the sum of the public good, but the real measure of the social value a firm creates. Those who talk about the horror of putting profits over people make no sense at all. The phrase is without intellectual content. Perhaps you do not think that Apple, or Goldman Sachs, or a professional sports enterprise, or an Internet pornographer actually creates much social value; but markets are very democratic — everybody gets to decide for himself what he values. That is not the final answer to every question, because economic answers can satisfy only economic questions. But the range of questions requiring economic answers is very broad.

Here’s Jonah Goldberg:

There are many sincere and decent people — on both sides of the ideological spectrum — who are opposed to the death penalty. I consider it an honorable position, even though I disagree with it. I am 100 percent in favor of lawfully executing people who deserve the death penalty and 100 percent opposed to killing people who do not deserve it.

When I say that, many death-penalty opponents angrily respond that I’m missing the point. You can never be certain! Troy Davis proves that!

But he proves no such thing. At best, his case proves that you can’t be certain about Davis. You most certainly can be certain about other murderers. If the horrible happens and we learn that Davis really was not guilty, that will be a heart-wrenching revelation. It will cast a negative light on the death penalty, on the Georgia criminal-justice system, and on America.

But you know what it won’t do? It won’t render Lawrence Russell Brewer one iota less guilty or less deserving of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment are extremely selective about the cases they make into public crusades. Strategically, that’s smart; you don’t want to lead your argument with “unsympathetic persons.” But logically, it’s problematic. There is no transitive property that renders one heinous murderer less deserving of punishment simply because some other person was exonerated of murder.

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people including 19 children. He admitted it. How does doubt in Troy Davis’s case make McVeigh less deserving of death?

We hear so much about the innocent people who’ve gotten off death row — thank God — because of new DNA techniques. We hear very little about the criminals who’ve had their guilt confirmed by the same techniques (or who’ve declined DNA testing because they know it will remove all doubt). Death-penalty opponents are less eager to debate such cases because they want to delegitimize “the system.”

Whenever the mainstream media fixates on a particular phrase or wording as if they were an autistic parrot stuck in an echo chamber my antenna always go up. Such is their coverage in the Troy Davis execution.

For instance, when you Google “Troy Davis seven of nine” you yield page after page of lazy journalists who simply have copy-pasted their fellow lazy journalists’ copy-pasted articles and commentaries. It’s almost comical, until you remember that a cop lost his life and another man was executed because of what appears to be for his poor choices as a young man. The full wording usual runs something like this:

“Convicted murderer Troy Davis has been executed in the southern US state of Georgia despite seven of nine key witnesses recanting or changing their testimony since his trial.”

Now, this isn’t a post on the pros or cons of capital punishment. Indeed, this case has brought out the worst of passions amongst us. But I can respect — even if mostly disagreeing (but not all) — those who oppose capital punishment across the board, whether for mass murdering dictators or for burglaries gone wrong.

This post isn’t even necessarily about the innocence or guilt of Troy Davis. But you should be able to form your opinion given all of the facts. This has not occurred, from the coverage I’ve witnessed.

This is about how the media uses a case like that of Troy Davis to further an agenda, generally a left-leaning one.

You might be surprised to learn, for example, that there were no less than 34 witnesses for the prosecution in the original Troy Davis case. Not nine. Thirty-four.

You might also be surprised to learn that of the seven witnesses who recanted, all were fully found lacking by a 172-page opinion written by Judge William T. Moore. (Page 149 in Adobe) While Judge Moore does himself use the phrase “seven of nine” his opinion includes very detailed testimony of at least 28 persons (including Mr. Davis):

Not all recantations are created equal; a witness may recant only a portion of their testimony or the witness may recant in a manner that is not credible. To hear Mr. Davis tell it, this case involves credible, consistent recantations by seven of nine state witnesses. (Doc. 2 at 5-11.) However, this vastly overstates his evidence. Two of the recanting witnesses neither directly state that they lied at trial nor claim that their previous testimony was coerced. Supra Analysis Parts III.B.i (Antoine Williams), III.B.v (Harriet Murray). Two other recantations were impossible to believe, with a host of intrinsic reasons why their author’s recantation could not be trusted, and the recantations were contradicted by credible, live testimony. Id. Parts III.B.iii (Jeffrey Sapp), III.R.iv (Darrell Collins) . Two more recantations were intentionally and suspiciously offered in affidavit form rather than as live testimony, blocking any meaningful cross-examination by the state or credibility determination by this Court. Id. Parts III.B.vi (Dorothy Farrell), III.B.vii (Larry Young) . Moreover, these affidavit recantations were contradicted by credible, live testimony. While these latter two recantations are not totally valueless, their import is greatly diminished by the suspicious (149 Case 4:09-cv-00130-WTM Document 92-1 Filed 08/24/10 Page 87 of 112) way in which they were offered and the live, contrary testimony. Finally, Kevin McQueen’s recantation is credible, but his testimony at trial was patently false, as evidenced by its several inconsistencies with the State’s version of the events on the night in question. Id. Part III.Bii (Kevin McQueen). Accordingly, it is hard to believe Mr. McQueen’s testimony at trial was important to the conviction, rendering his recantation of limited value. Ultimately, four of Mr. Davis’s recantations do not diminish the State’s case because a reasonable juror would disregard the recantation, not the earlier testimony; and the three others only minimally diminish the State’s case.

[Page 169] Mr. Davis’s new evidence does not change the balance of proof from trial. Of his seven “recantations,” only one is a meaningful, credible recantation. Supra Analysis Part III.B. The value of that recantation is diminished because it only confirms that which was obvious at trial—that its author was testifying falsely. Id. Part III.B.ii (Kevin McQueen). Four of the remaining six recantations are either not credible or not true recantations and would be disregarded. Id. Parts III.B.i (Antoine Williams), III..iii (Jeffrey Sapp), III.B.iv (Darrell Collins), III.B.v (Harriet Murray). The remaining two recantations were presented under the most suspicious of circumstances, with Mr. Davis intentionally preventing the validity of the recantation from being challenged in open court through cross-examination. Id. Parts III.B.vi (Dorothy Ferrell), III.B.vii (Larry Young). Worse, these witnesses were readily available—one was actually waiting in the courthouse—and Mr. Davis chose not to present their recantations as live testimony.

Yet, over and again we hear “seven of nine,” “seven of nine,” “seven of nine.” Not 34, and certainly never the judge’s discrediting of those recantations in any detail.

One starts to think that the mainstream media wants you to believe there were only nine total witnesses in this case. In fact, the number nine doesn’t even come from the fact that there were just nine eyewitnesses, or that nine persons identified the shooter. It’s not particularly clear from where the number nine originated. (That also bespeaks of lousy journalism).

Did you know that Mr. Davis was accused not just of the shooting of Savannah Police Department Officer Mark MacPhail, but of earlier shooting and wounding another man earlier in the evening at a local neighborhood party (Michael Cooper)?

You might be surprised to learn that four witnesses photo-identified Davis as the MacPhail shooter (but this is the primary basis of the recantations); two witnesses told police that the following day Davis confessed to killing MacPhail (Jeffrey Sapp recanted; but Monty Holmes did not); at least another eight witnessed the shooting (albeit they did not identify Davis by facial recognition). A few of these witnesses included members of the United States Air Force (Lt. Col. Anthony Lolas, Sgt. Robert Grizzard).

At bare minimum the shooting occurred and was related to Officer MacPhail happening upon an altercation between a pistol-whipped victim (Larry Young), Mr. Davis and two of his companions (Sylvester “Red” Coles, Darren Collins). Davis is placed at the Burger King and identified as fleeing to the home of one of the companion’s mother in order to discard his shirt, which Davis does not mention (which does not help his case). According to the judge, Davis doesn’t even seem to be pursuing angles that could best assist his defense: “Further diminishing the value of this evidence is the fact that Mr. Davis had the means to test the validity of the underlying confessions by calling and impeaching Mr. [Sylvester] Coles, but chose not to do s0.”

Again, the document exists. Read it for yourself. You might even decide that Davis is innocent, and that’s reasonable because it’s an imperfect case — albeit terrifying if an innocent man was put to death. I didn’t, however. And again, if the argument is “never execute,” I respect that. But the facts do matter.

Form your own opinion. Because you can bet good money that your mainstream journalists and columnists won’t read that document, and won’t give you all the facts you need. They’ll just keep echoing “seven of nine” while they stir the masses and generate a political distraction to keep your mind off of, say, 9%+ unemployment and awful GDP.

This week Rep. Allen West (R-FL) officially apologized for an e-mail he sent belittling Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla) — or did he? Both parties are now denying the apology.

To be honest, I did read West’s e-mail rebuke of Wasserman-Schultz and it was indeed over the top. But that’s not the story here. The bigger story regards blatant bias and hypocrisy by the mainstream media and Democratic Party (these are of course redundant terms).

A few days ago House Democratic women called for a rebuke of Rep. Allen West (R-Fla) for his “sexist” verbal insults against Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

But, ironically, and laughably, this came after days of saturation coverage that questioned if Republican Minnesota presidential candidate Rep. Michelle Bachmann has what it takes to be president because — drum roll — she reportedly suffers from migraine headaches!

Naturally there’s a better chance of Barack Obama switching parties and adopting the economic principles of Adam Smith than there is these same House Democratic women to likewise come to the defense of unfair and sexist attacks against Republican women like Michelle Bachmann.

Worse, the media’s criticism appears to be, “You can’t be president, honey, you’ve got a headache.”

Where’s the outrage over the media’s “historic and systemic” sexism from Reps. Gwen Moore (Wis.), Lois Capps (Calif.), Jackie Speier (Calif.), Donna F. Edwards (Md.) and Carolyn B. Maloney (N.Y.)?

Once more, like the standard of racism, the Democratic standard of what is or is not sexism applies to only one party – theirs.

N.Y. Rep. Anthony Weiner claimed he was a “victim,” first of hacked social media, then of just a “prank.” It was obvious to anyone with a hint of rational and objective reasoning skills, which is to say everyone who doesn’t work as a Democrat on Capital Hill or as a journalist, that Weiner was lying. Worse, he wasn’t even good at lying. My brother summed it up the best, analogizing that Weiner, “lies like a child” — each outlandish lie followed by one even more ridiculous.

The most comical outcome from Weiner-gate is the indictment against his liberal defenders and particularly against the mainstream media.

Regarding the former, we once again see that there most certainly exists a double standard between sexual scandals affecting Democrats versus Republicans. Weiner has adamantly refused to resign over his behavior, and to date he yields no calls from his party to do so. Contrast this to the scandals of Republicans like FL Rep. Mark Foley, ID Sen. Larry Craig, or N.Y. Rep. Chris Lee — all were immediately called upon to resign by Republicans on the Hill. There was no reason for a dog-and-pony show in the form of an Ethics committee hearing such as the one Nancy Pelosi is requesting — these guys were gone, and gone fast.

Peter Tucci sums it up simply:

Two things are clear: 1) What Weiner did is far worse than what [Chris] Lee did; and 2) If Weiner were a Republican, he would have already tendered his resignation.

Next, the indictment against the media.

The mainstream media were just about to let Weiner off the hook, and I believe would have were it not for Andrew Breitbart doing their job for them. As with the ACORN and Planned Parenthood scandals before this, Breitbart has exposed the mainstream media as being too slanted and incompetent to fairly cover any shortcomings in the Democrat Party or liberal organizations. Now, having been caught with their pants down, all pun intended, the mainstream media has suddenly rediscovered outrage — Yes, we’re outraged that Weiner would lie to our faces, say the media. It is to laugh. Like Weiner, the only thing the media regrets is having been exposed as inept.

Well, I suppose like a broken clock being right twice a day they’re not all schmucks in the media. ABC News Jonathon Karl at least attempted to throw some hardballs Weiner’s way, and he is deserved in extracting his pound of flesh now, given how Weiner attempt to turn the tables and shame Karl during that interview.

Great commentary from the Bret Stephens:

It’s what the good people on West 40th Street like to call a “Times Classic.” On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times ran a lengthy op-ed by Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, under the headline “Trusting Khomeini.”

“The depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false,” wrote Mr. Falk. “What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.”

After carrying on in this vein for a few paragraphs, the professor concluded: “Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.”

Whoops.

The Times is at it again. Last week, the paper published an op-ed from Essam El-Errian, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Council, who offered this soothing take on his organization: “We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians.” Concurring with that view, Times reporter Nicholas Kulish wrote on Feb. 4 that members of the Brotherhood “come across as civic-minded people of faith.”

… “We think highly of a country whose president is important, courageous and has a vision, which he presents in the U.N., in Geneva, and everywhere,” the Brotherhood’s Kamal al-Hilbawi told Iran’s Al-Alam TV earlier this month, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust and 9/11 denials. “We think highly of a country . . . that confronts Western hegemony, and is scientifically and technologically advanced. Unfortunately, these characteristics can be found only in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I hope that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia will be like that.”

Nor should there be any doubt about what the Brotherhood is aiming against. “Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny,” Muhammad Badie, the Brotherhood’s supreme guide, sermonized in October. “The improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained . . . by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.”

Such remarks may come as a rude shock to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence who last week testified in Congress that the Brotherhood was “largely secular” (a remark his office later retracted). They may also surprise a coterie of Western analysts who are convinced that the Brotherhood is moving in a moderate direction and will only be further domesticated by participation in democratic politics. Yet the evidence for that supposition rests mainly on what the Brotherhood tells Westerners. What it says in Arabic is another story.

In 2005, candidates for the Brotherhood took 20% of the parliamentary vote. Gamal al-Banna, Hassan’s youngest brother, once told me they command as much as 40% support. Neither figure is a majority. But unless Egypt’s secular forces can coalesce into serious political parties, the people for whom Islam is the solution won’t find the fetters of democracy to be much of a problem.

Oh, wait, can I say coffin, or might that instigate a mass murderer into action?

The mainstream media’s “blame Palin” crosshairs map has just about died a natural death despite a few blatant liberal mobilizers, the vast majority of the American public being far more rational and reasonable than the vast majority of New York Times reporters and MSNBC/CNN et. al. blowhards.

But there was this little gem from the Washington Post just days after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords.

Hours after the statement’s release, two law enforcement sources said that FBI agents had found a 2007 letter from Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) to the shooting suspect, with the words “Die, bitch” and “Die, cops” scrawled on it.

The letter, which thanked Loughner for attending an event of hers, was found in a safe in his Tucson home, the sources said.

2007? Sarah Palin wasn’t even part of our political lexicon in 2007.

The notion that there’s a causal relationship between politicians’ rhetoric and a mass murderer is as stupid and silly as when serial killer Ted Bundy attempted — in one last grasp of straw to avoid the electric chair — to blame pornography for his murders.

And that gets us to some entities that do deserve some blame, in incrementing order: the Pima County Sheriff’s office, our mental health system, and most culpable beyond Jared Loughner himself — Mr. Loughner’s parents.

The police have the least blame of the three parties but should be included because Sheriff Clarence Dupnik’s odd behavior seems to be an attempt to shift the spotlight from his department to the conservative body (Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, maybe Ronald Reagan if he looks hard enough). What’s he trying to hide? I don’t think much, honestly, but John Fund brought up some solid points last week:

His fellow lawmen in Arizona are appalled because all of the evidence so far suggests that the gunman is a deeply disturbed individual with no coherent political motives. “I just hope he’s not giving this 22-year-old an alibi by blaming talk radio,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told the Los Angeles Times. …

Sheriff Dupnik would do far better to spend his time figuring out how Jared Loughner managed to buy a gun last November to commit his crimes. He apparently passed a federal background check solely because he had no prison record. But Reuters reports that Sheriff Dupnik acknowledged that “there had been earlier contact between Loughner and law enforcement after he had made death threats, although they had not been against [Rep. Gabrielle] Giffords.” The sheriff’s department was aware that Loughner had been asked by police at a local community college to stop attending classes because of his odd behavior. Several of his fellow students expressed fear of him and said they believed he was unstable.

The real debate in the aftermath of the Arizona shootings should be why a troubled individual was able to compile such a record without attracting more attention from Sheriff Dupnik and his fellow law enforcement professionals. Perhaps if Loughner had been convicted of making death threats, he wouldn’t have been able to clear the federal background check he needed to purchase a firearm last November.

Now saying the police should have acted and the police actually having enough evidence and cause to arrest Loughner are two different things. I tend to think that cops usually get the short end of the stick on such hindsight “what ifs.”

Next, I think the country would be better served by a national conversation on the state of our mental health care than on our political rhetoric. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey demonstrates the importance of just that by explaining how Arizona has one of the worst mental health systems in the Union:

The truth is that these tragedies [mass shootings] are happening every day throughout the United States. The only reason this episode has received widespread publicity is because there were multiple victims and one victim was a member of Congress. Such senseless killings have become increasingly common over the past 30 years, starting in about 1980, when Allard Lowenstein, coincidentally a former congressman, was killed by Dennis Sweeney. Sweeney was a young man with untreated schizophrenia who had been Lowenstein’s protégé in the civil rights movement. Congress was also prominently involved in 1998, when Russell Weston, who also had untreated schizophrenia, killed two policemen while trying to shoot his way into the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

These tragedies are the inevitable outcome of five decades of failed mental-health policies. During the 1960s, we began to empty the state mental hospitals but failed to put in place programs to ensure that the released patients received treatment after they left. By the 1980s, the results were evident—increasing numbers of seriously mentally ill persons among the homeless population and in the nation’s jails and prisons.

Over the past three decades, things have only gotten worse. A 2007 study by the U.S. Justice Department found that 56% of state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners, and 64% of local jail inmates suffer from mental illnesses.

A 2008 study out of the University of Pennsylvania that examined murders committed in Indiana between 1990 and 2002 found that approximately 10% of the murders were committed by individuals with serious mental illnesses. There are about 16,000 homicides a year in this country. Using the Indiana study as a guide, roughly 1,600 of them are likely committed by people with serious mental illnesses.

In Arizona, public mental-health services are among the worst in the nation. In a 2008 survey by the Treatment Advocacy Center, Arizona ranked next to last among all states in the number of psychiatric hospital beds per capita. If you don’t have hospital beds and outpatient clinics to treat mentally ill people, those people don’t get treated. Thus the tragedy was somewhat more likely to happen in Arizona because mentally ill individuals are less likely to receive treatment there. Although Arizona is the worst state, except for Nevada, in psychiatric-bed availability, there is no state that currently has enough beds for its mentally ill population, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center study. This tragedy occurred in Arizona, but it could easily have happened in any state.

The big picture is even scarier. Based on Arizona’s 2010 population and on estimates by the National Institute of Mental Health of the number of individuals with untreated schizophrenia at any given time, there are today in Arizona over 21,000 individuals with untreated schizophrenia. Most of them, thankfully, are not violent. But a small number of them—about 10% according to my meta-analysis of relevant studies—do become violent, usually because of their delusional thoughts and what their voices (auditory hallucinations) are telling them. This situation holds in every state. It is thus not a question of if such tragedies will occur but rather when and how often.

Okay, so there’s work to be done in this system. Even so, as the old saying goes, one can lead a horse to water but one cannot make the horse drink. Are the parents of Jared Loughner not culpable?

[WSJ] The documents also demonstrate the challenges facing campus police when students exhibit disturbing, even threatening, behavior—even when parents are notified. School administrators and counselors met repeatedly with Mr. Loughner, who twice appears to have been accompanied by his mother, according to the documents. Campus police talked to Mr. Loughner’s father when they delivered the suspension letter to the family’s home on Sept. 29.

The parents may not have known what their son would end up doing, but they certainly knew he was very troubled — troubled enough to be kicked out of college for very bizarre behavior. We can blame all these other forces until Kingdom come, but in the end if the family isn’t willing to help themselves, then nobody else will too.

Here’s Jay Nordlinger:

Even before Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started. When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words “SNIPERS WANTED.” Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.”) Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”

Here’s an interesting note found by Atlas Shrugs. It’s another example of the Mainstream Media (MSM) becoming so caught up in acting as paid agents for the Democrat Party that they miss the forest for trees.

We’re to believe that through some strange osmosis person A says something “inciting” that in turn causes person B to not just assassinate a political target but gun down a nine-year-old child and a dozen others. Now we have pundits and politicians actually channeling George Orwell by calling for a ban on rhetoric, on words, on symbols. Meanwhile, as Michelle Malkin demonstrates with factual evidence, the political wing intent on quieting everyone else is the group that demonstrates the likelihood of actually committing violence.

[Atlas Shrugs] We know Loughner was a political radical back in 2007, according to his high school friend, college friend, bandmate and fellow liberal Caitie Parker. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Jared Loughner targeted Giffords as far back as 2007.

There was no Tea Party in 2007, or Palin (who has officially replaced George Bush as the Left bogeyman), so what will the media spin? Nothing. Facts are irrelevant! Pump out the propaganda.

After the shooting, investigators searched a safe connected to the shooting suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, and found a letter apparently sent to him by Ms. Giffords’s office thanking him for previously attending a similar “Congress on your corner” event in 2007.

Much remains unknown about what motivated Mr. Loughner, who is in custody. But the initial evidence, including the constituent letter, has led law enforcement officials to think that the suspect had been thinking about the congresswoman for years, according to people familiar with the case.

Investigators also found paper on which the suspect apparently wrote the word “assassination” and “I planned ahead.” The meaning or significance of that writing isn’t clear.

The suspect has been uncooperative with investigators, according to law enforcement officials. Charges are expected to be filed later Sunday.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller said the charges would include the attack on Ms. Giffords and Judge Roll and other victims, with later additional charges likely. Investigators seized computers during a search of the suspect’s home, and Mr. Mueller said those were being examined.

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” — Former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Here’s Glenn Reynolds:

Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on “rhetoric” and a “climate of hate” to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America’s political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?