Goodbye, Gabby

It should have become apparent to anyone who realized just how badly wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was in the January 2011 shooting in Tucson that she would eventually have to resign her seat. So it was no surprise when Giffords announced that would in fact quit the House of Representatives this week to concentrate on her ongoing recovery. She was able to put the announcement in her own words, literally - she made the announcement in a video release - so the woman who has been an inspiration to many has a very good chance of recovering fully. And she's vowed to remain active in politics regardless.

Alas, she won't be an inspiration to pass meaningful gun control legislation, which has a very good chance of getting defeated in Congress - if anyone has the gall to even bring it up. (Every time a horrendous shooting occurs in this country - which happens frequently enough to feel like an everyday occurrence - Chris Matthews asks the panelists on his Sunday broadcast show if gun control legislation has a chance of even getting considered, and his panelists respond with an imitation of Marcel Marceau in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie - "No!") This isn't so much a partisan condition as it is an American condition - a peculiarly and insufferably American love of firearms.

Am I suggesting that Americans are peculiar and insufferable? You can draw your own conclusion.

On the other hand . . .. Sarah Palin - one of the most peculiar and most insufferable Americans in recent memory - has seen her stature reduced a result of the Giffords shooting. In the 2010 midterm election campaign, Palin posted a map of Democratic House districts targeted by Republicans, depicting the districts with rifle crosshairs over them - one of them was Giffords' district. After the shooting, she gave such a mean-spirited defense of her actions in the wake of charges that she incited violence that her rising star dimmed quickly. So some taste survives here, enough to not only lessen Palin's visibility but to also eliminate the Minnesota Twins (Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann) from the Republican presidential nomination contest early.

Democratic Brownout

Scott Brown's tell-all memoir revealing his history of child abuse may seem in part like a campaign device for the Massachusetts Republican's next U.S. Senate election campaign in 2012, but its early release suggests that he's getting the tale of his past out now to avoid the appearance of a campaign stunt later. And it would seem rather crass to tell about the abuse suffered as a child for purely political reasons. Some would disagree on the nature of the timing of Brown's book, though, suggesting that it's a way for Brown to get ahead of any potential Democratic challenger now. Indeed, the 2012 election campaign may have already begun. Six U.S. Senators to date - the latest being Democrat Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico - have announced that they will not seek re-election in 2012, allowing potential candidates in their states to prepare for the primary campaigns.

The field still looks dismal for Democrats, having to defend twice as many Senate seats next year with many vulnerable incumbents while the few Republicans up for re-election all but assured another six years in office. That includes Scott Brown. Despite Massachusetts being a heavily Democratic state, even Boston mayor Tom Menino, a Democrat, declares that the moderate, pragmatic Brown is unbeatable. In which case, the Democrats might as well run Martha Coakley against him again.

Among incumbent Senate Democrats, the most vulnerable ones for 2012 include Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who enthusiastically supported a health care law that only generates enthusiasm among its opponents, Sherrod Brown of economically depressed Ohio, and Jon Tester of Montana, who will likely face a Republican opponent - Denny Rehberg, the state's only House member - more popular than he is. Vulnerable Democratic seats in Florida and Nebraska have Republicans looking to execute a half Nelson (take out Bill of Florida or Ben of Nebraska) or a full Nelson (take out both). And, if not Brown, whom can the Democrats unseat on the Republican side? Roger Wicker of Mississippi? Bob Corker of Tennessee? Get real!

Democratic hopes for continued Senate control rest on open seats. Olympia Snowe's seat could open up if the Tea Party defeats her in a primary with one of their own candidates, but Democrats shouldn't assume that they would beat such a candidate. Look at Paul LePage, Maine's loudmouth Tea Party governor, who won that office in November. Right now, Democrats are considering the possibility of picking up Republican Jon Kyl's seat in Arizona. With former Arizona governor and current Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ruling herself out, though, there aren't that many other prospects for the Democrats. I was just thinking how, if only Gabrielle Giffords hadn't been shot, she could run for Kyl's seat. She'd be a slam dunk.

It turns out that Giffords, due to her steadily progressive recovery from the January 8 massacre in Tucson, is being considered, and there are many calls for her to seek the Senate seat. U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz,a Florida Democrat and a Giffords ally, is currently helping to raise money for Giffords's re-election campaign to the House, though, and says that any idea of a Giffords Senate candidacy is premature.

So, for that matter, is the idea of a Republican takeover of the Senate, as the number of retirements from both parties is changing the landscape in the coming races. But Democrats still have an uphill battle to keep control of the upper house, given the number of Democratic seats up and the fact that it was this volatile class of seats that gave Republicans the majority in 1994, rendered the Senate evenly divided in 2000 (until Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords became an independent and switched party caucuses), and gave Democrats the majority in 2006.

And God help losing Democratic incumbents and challengers, because the party won't. Unlike losing Republicans, they won't asked to come back (like George Allen) and they won't be asked to try again (like John Thune). Democrats who lose in 2012, be it for the Senate or for the House, will be forgotten quickly.

That goes double for the guy in the White House at the top of the ticket as well. :-O

Giffords Story Update

Authorities are trying to learn more about Jared Lee Loughner, the young man who shot Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and seventeen others, six of them fatally. He has refused to cooperate with any of the authorities, and new evidence has been found in the form of a note written on an envelope that included the words "I planned ahead," "My assassination" and the name "Giffords" next to what appears to be his signature.

Loughner is to face a judge today to be charged for murder, attempted murder, and assassination. Giffords remains in critical condition and shows positive signs of recovery, but will likely need more surgery later on.

One cruel irony of the shooting is that Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl who was killed in the shooting, turned out to have been born September. 11, 2001. She was even featured in a book titled "Faces of Hope" that chronicled one baby from each state born on the day the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked and the former landmark completely destroyed by Arab terrorists.

Meanwhile, John Boehner - whose biggest problem four days ago this time was placating the Tea Party members of the House - now has to calm all of the 433 members other than Giffords and himself, all of whom are on edge.

All of America is on edge now.

Armed and Dangerous

The shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has renewed the debate over guns in America and the need for stricter gun control. Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson shooting, had tried to enlist in the military but was barred, he was asked to leave school, and former classmates of his said he appeared to be "very disturbed." But he still got his hands on a gun.

Gun control has been an issue President Obama has tried to skirt, as he's been preoccupied with so many other issues. Ironically, right-wing demonstrators have shown up at presidential events with guns, paranoiacs have insisted Obama's ready to confiscate their guns, and Obama happily signed a credit card regulation bill to which Oklahoma Republican senator Tom Coburn - just as happily - added an irrelevant amendment to allow carrying firearms in our national parks. Obama may have to tackle the issue head-on and face the fact that we need tougher gun regulations, even though he's done less to initiate curbs on firearms than any President in recent memory.

I'm not optimistic about the regulation of guns in America in the future. Guns are as American as apple pie and stock car racing. And even if we controlled guns, it wouldn't necessarily make America a less violent place. Canada has a gun for every one of its citizens the same as we do, if we can believe Michael Moore, but its firearm homicide rate is much lower. Moore concluded that Americans may be more fearful of each other than Canadians are of each other - and Americans certainly fear their government. The violent rhetoric coming from the American right in the past two years makes me wonder if Jared Lee Loughner could have found a way to discharge his own paranoia without a gun. I doubt there were any weapons at the town hall meeting on the health care bill that I attended in September 2009, but the debate was anything but civil or reasonable. I was a little scared to be there.

Which begs the obvious question: If health care reform could generate such violent, hateful, and incendiary rhetoric, what kind of rhetoric would gun control generate?

The biggest reason I don't see any change in gun laws is twofold. First, violent crime rates tend to be higher in cities than in rural and suburban areas, where more people live and are largely unaffected by gun violence. I can think of only one shooting in my own suburban community in all the time I've lived here - a carjacking. Second, we've had several high-profile shootings in America in the past fifty years. If the shooting of Presidents and pop stars can't get people to wise up about guns and violence, how could a shooting of a U.S. House member do so?

Except - and this is the bit of hope in this Pandora's box - a change in our gun laws and a discussion about violence may yet be possible because of the circumstances surrounding this incident. After all, the attack on Gabrielle Giffords and others in that shopping center most likely wouldn't have happened - and several others would still be alive - if we didn't have the violent rhetoric to inspire the shooting and the easy access to guns to make it possible. Maybe people will think about that for awhile.

Tucson Massacre

I was afraid something like this would happen.

With all of the heated and toxic rhetoric against our leaders and representatives in Washington, it was only a matter of time before someone was hurt. In this case, it was Arizona Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Ms. Giffords had been the subject of angry and/or violent demonstrators before. Her district office had been vandalized after she voted for the health care law. Sarah Palin featured on her Web site a picture showing a rifle cross-hair symbol over her district that encouraged voters to take Giffords out in the 2010 midterm elections.

With the influence of talk radio, the presence of guns at presidential rallies, and a U.S. Senate candidate proposing "Second Amendment remedies" to big government, it was not a question of whether a U.S. Representative would be shot. It was a question of when.

I don't know the motive behind the suspected gunman, Jared Lee Loughner. There's nothing in his own rhetoric, much of it incoherent, to suggest a political or even a personal vendetta. But all indications are that he deliberately meant to assassinate Giffords (and killed a federal judge, John Roll, caught in the crossfire), and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is convinced that something in the heated political discourse in America might very well have provoked Loughner. He is not convinced, though, the Loughner acted alone.

It took Dupnik, an Arizonan, to say what others could not - that Arizona has become a "mecca" for bigotry and hatred, what with the backlash against Mexican immigrants and the hostility toward local politicians like Raul Grijalva, another Democratic congressman, and the questioning of Grijalva's very Americanism. In a state where a former Vice President's son has advocated "knocking the hell" out of Washington as a congressman, there was a powder keg waiting to explode. Today, it did.

Gabrielle Giffords has, as of this writing, come out of surgery and is expected to make a full recovery despite the severity of her wound, a bullet fired at point-blank range that entered her head and exited it at another point. Seventeen other people were wounded, the aforementioned federal judge, a nine-year girl, and four others fatally.

When Nancy Pelosi warned of such violence with great emotion in September 2009, many refused to take her warning seriously. Today, she expressed sorrow at the shooting of Ms. Giffords but didn't say that she'd told us something like this would happen. She was too classy to do so, and she didn't really need to.