Star One Smart Blog's

My Gawd, Charles M. Blow’s written this at the NYT…

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right. …

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

Not helpful, Chas. Someone might require you attend a remedial Democrat Talking Points session. Expect it to be closed-door.

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UPDATE
This, spotted at Don Surber's, fits well with Charles M. Blow's surprising moment of lucidity.

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Nice blood libel you frame here, Dr. Krugman. In less than 3 paragraphs you place this nutcase on the right, and blame right-wing 'extremists' for his craziness. You do realize that this man voted for Barack Obama, don't you?

"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" - Barack Obama, 6/14/2008.

Jared Lee Loughner listened to whom? Not to Sarah Palin, or 'right-wing extremists'; Loughner was a lefty who likely hated Sarah Palin and I doubt he listened to any right-wing pundits on radio or TV. Maybe Jared Lee Loughner listened to Barack Obama, and pushed back against a decidedly blue-dog Democrat? Maybe he reads Markos Moulitsas (proprietor of the far-Left blog Daily KOS, a prominent Democrat site that has hosted diaries written by Democrat politicians, and yes, even Keith Olbermann)?

Daily KOS had a diarist's post up two days before the shootings, since scrubbed, stating that Ms. Gifford was 'dead to me'. More likely that a 22-y/o was attracted to Daily KOS than to the 'old men' in the party of FOX.

Professor Glenn Reynolds asks this:

"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?"

From what I read here, Dr. Krugman, and from many other far-left news organizations and web sites, I see no reason to have any reaction other than contempt.

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