Is blaming Palin, covering sheriff’s incompetence?

Cartoon: Glen Foden.

The Tucson shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and around eighteen others was and still is a tragedy. The unfortunate attempts by the left to spin it to their own paranoid agenda are fast turning it into a farce, or an exercise in the truly bizarre. It seems that in the eyes of the left there has to be someone other than the killer to blame, and that has to be someone on the right.

In the beginning there was speculation that the intended target was Judge John Roll as he had made a recent decision that had upset ranchers in the area. It was not difficult to see where this was heading. Despite the fact that the killer was caught right there in the act, and was known to be a relatively unstable drop out the media immediately moved to blame the Tea Party, and more specifically Sarah Palin.

The Sherriff, Clarence Dupnik was especially quick off the mark in blaming the crime, not on the killer but on “vitriol of the nation's talk radio fueling the kind of hatred that was acted out today.” This is a lawman who didn’t think to have a police presence in the area where the Congresswoman was holding a public meeting, even just to keep an eye on things.

It seems that he may have good reason to deflect the blame for this event as far away from Tucson as possible.

Loughner has been in trouble for a long time, including being tossed out of college after five run-ins with college police. Now it has been revealed by Dupnik himself that he has made death threats before and been contacted by law enforcement officers about it.

There is now a post in “The Cholla Jumps,” which though unconfirmed adds another dimension to the storyline:

Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation.

If true, it raises the specter of the local sheriff using his influence to protect a family member of an employee of the local authority that he is responsible to. In other words it is nepotism. It appears, if this is true that if anyone other than the killer is to blame it is Dupnik himself.

It is not surprising that he wants the blame to be laid on Sarah Palin.