Stories with a purpose, not the news

Yesterday's shooting spree in Arizona where a federal judge and five others died was a horrible act.  Vice President Biden's statement about the tragedy was framed properly.  He said ""We do not yet know the motivation behind these shootings. But what we do know is that there is simply no justification, no rationale for such senseless and appalling violence in our society."   Unfortunately, the law enforcement official on the scene, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik did not have the sense to think before he spoke.  He said ""When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."   The Sacramento Bee had a story titled "New Focus on Political Vitriol" which seemed to play off the Sheriff's comments.  It quoted the Sheriff then went on to relay a number of details about recent political history that had no correlation to the event yesterday except possibly that the Representative had just gotten through a very close re-election campaign.


What we know about the suspect at this point is that he is deranged.  One of his web postings (on YouTube) ties the Communist Manifesto and hard currency together.  He was evidently thrown out of community college because college officials thought him unbalanced.


What annoys me about the Sheriff's comment is the notion that just because a political figure was the target of the shooting spree, does not assure that this was a political act.