Giffords shooting will likely mean more guns in the public square in Arizona — not stricter gun control, Evan McMorris-Santoro reports from Tucson.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY): “We’ve always had throughout our history deranged people taking up arms.”
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ): “We don’t have more madmen, we have more guns.”
Last week we told you about “Phoenix Jones”, the masked and spandex-suit-wearing self-styled “superhero” who broke up a car-jacking just outside Seattle. His latest attempt at superherodom didn’t turn out quite so well.
Saudi officials clear Israeli vulture of spying charges. Bird to be processed and released from bird custody.
Ex. Dem Rep. calls for post-Giffords shooting ‘civility’, last year said Florida Gov. should be shot.
Every year the American Conservative Union and its subsidiary CPAC put on CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. The organization and the event are sort of the organizational core of what people used to call Movement Conservatism. But this year there’s been a mini-rebellion over CPAC’s invitation to GOProud, a gay conservative group. And they’re real players — like the Family Research Council. Now a bunch of the same groups are threatening a boycott for inviting Mitch Daniels.
Now, I know that beyond each of these developments there’s a lot of internal politics. Daniels made a splash last year saying there should basically be a ‘truce’ on social issues until critical economic and national security issues are resolved. And Dave Weigel notes that beyond the dispute over GOProud are some financial disputes among CPAC’s organizers.
But still, Mitch Daniels?
The family of shooting suspect Jared Loughner makes its first public statement on Saturday’s events in Tucson.
Tim Pawlenty’s considered by many an obvious presidential contender. And yet he’s got a very difficult path to the nomination. His efforts at positioning, as a relatively moderate governor trying to position himself in a hard-right era in the GOP, can be a downright painful.
Here he is this morning defending Sarah Palin on crosshairs but saying he wouldn’t use them because it’s not “my style.” Then this afternoon he’s saying that he’s so gung-ho on government shutdowns that he thinks maybe he should have shut down his own state’s government even longer than he did. Said Pawlenty: “One of things I wonder is whether I should have let the shut down run longer to get more of my agenda through.”
I have the sense Pawlenty’s trail to the White House is going to be both exceedingly long and very short.