From the master of being wrong on the right — Gerard Henderson:

Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik did not mention any of the above when he blamed the deaths and casualties on "the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country". But, watching his media conference, it was evident that he had the Tea Party/Palin/Fox News trifecta in mind.

Dupnik's rush to judgment can perhaps be excused. But by yesterday morning Australian time there was reason to be wary of theories - especially as evidence was gathered about Loughner's personal views and mental state.

Nevertheless, on ABC TV and radio, commentators were quick to run the line advanced by sections of the American left.

On ABC News Breakfast yesterday the co-presenters Mary Gearin and Waleed Aly made it clear early in the program that they saw the hostility to Barack Obama's program - as exemplified in the Tea Party and Palin - as providing a spark which could ignite a murderous rage against the likes of Giffords.

This became evident in the segment reviewing the morning newspapers shortly before the 7am news bulletin. The guest commentator was the academic and Herald Sun columnist Jill Singer. It was one of those ABC discussions where everyone essentially agrees with everyone else.

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Yes, Gerard... But one has to account for the possibility that about 50 per cent of the US population is completely nuts and about 80 per cent of the entire population operate on the premise that US might is right and that promiscuous mama bears have the right to defend their cubs with guns, after having placed gunsights on maps...

In a television broadcast filmed before students in Abu Dhabi, Mrs Clinton was asked why the 9/11 terror attacks, the work of a handful of men, had been allowed to colour American views of a whole people.

She replied that America was "proud" of its many Muslim citizens and public servants, and said that the media exaggerated the voices of those who presented hostile views of the Muslim and Arab worlds.

She then raised the shooting at the weekend of the Arizona Democratic congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords.

"We have extremists in our country," she said. "A wonderful and incredibly brave young woman congress member was just shot by extremists in our country.

"We have the same kinds of problems, so rather than standing off of each other we should work to try and prevent the extremists wherever they are from being able to commit violence."

Hillary Clinton Compares Gabrielle Giffords Shooting To 9/11 Attacks

'Extremists...?''

What happened to good plain old-fashioned 'terrorist'?

Of course, a society made-up of the cruellest, most bigoted, militaristic, blood-soaked bunch of thieving war criminals in the history of the planet could never spawn a 'terrorist', now could they?

Talk about playing the victim ... absolute denial ... ultimate exceptionalism ...

from Bob Ellis...

The Fox News blondes weren’t yelling as they usually do and the excruciation on their faces as they tried not to mention their acclaimed Fox colleague Sarah Palin (though Gaby Giffords was shown in her cross-hairs before she was shot in the head on Saturday in Tucson) was riveting to behold.

Talk about the moose in the room. Palin, who may be guilty of ‘encouraging a terrorist act’ is politically finished I would think now, and Donald Trump the automatic Republican front-runner, closely followed by his hair. And Fox News, which has done its fair share of enflaming domestic terrorists with its Tea Party war cries and yodellings, may lose some sponsorship and a lot of audience, fast.

Their current quarrelsome confusion is a wonder to behold. Countless shopping-mall massacres have taught them to murmur in awe, ‘Who knows what was on this crazed killer’s mind?’, but in this case Jared Loughner, if asked, may tell them. Countless provincial mass killings have taught them to say, ‘What the hapless victim thought in her last seconds of life, we will never know,’ but Gaby Giffords is alive still too, at the time of going to press, and may tell them.

She certainly gave an interview fingering Palin as an assassination-urger and this, in the context of a smashed right frontal lobe and seven surrounding innocent dead, may serve as adequate evidence that the tongue-speaking trout-clubbing beauty might make a poor First Magistrate all in all should she and the Dude be so uplifted soon.

Politically, it’s fascinating. The Health Care Bill, which Giffords passionately advocated and the Republicans want to spend a trillion dollars rescinding, may not now come to a vote in the House, lest Giffords arrive in a wheelchair to mumble against it, or her husband Todd the astronaut return from space to fill her seat and beweep her radiant posthumous desire to heal the sick and dry the tears of the wetbacks, and Obama put up the Public Option as an election promise in 2012 and defy them to run against it.

The Tea Party will look more O’Duffy’s Blackshirts or Mosley’s Cockney fascists or De Groot’s New Guard now than they did before.