PHOENIX PAPER SLAMS SHERIFF DUPNIK

The Arizona Republic is now on record as telling Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik that he is out of bounds. They even gave him a pass for his words in the hours after the shooting. Where they're drawing the line is his repeated media appearances in order to echo and exacerbate the sentiment.

Via AZ Central:

On Saturday afternoon, with his friend Gabby Giffords in surgery fighting for her life, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik railed against the tense partisan politics - "the anger, the hatred, the bigotry" - that prompted the mass murders outside Tucson, in his view.

And, jarring as such claims may be, we understood. Or tried to understand, despite the spectacle of a lawman - an official whose very job it is to dispassionately gather facts and to maintain order and calm - tying the attack on Rep. Giffords and others to political speech in Arizona, which he considers prejudiced and bigoted. There is no evidence that the state's politics in any way contributed to this atrocity.

Was Dupnik unnecessarily inflammatory? It seemed so. But it came mere hours following a horrific, bloody mass murder. If you weren't on edge, you weren't being human. But then, on Sunday, the venting continued anew. And a horrified nation began paying closer attention to the Pima County sheriff.

Read it all.

h/t to Gateway Pundit

LEADER FOUND IN CONGRESS!

New U.S. Rep. from Florida's 22nd District, Lt. Col. Allen West has developed quite the reputation for speaking his mind but he is going on offense in the aftermath of the Liberal onslaught on the Tea Party by politicizing the Safeway massacre. While many conservatives point to the tactics of the left, West demonstrates leadership by saying he will not tone down his rhetoric.

Via the Palm Beach Post:

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, this morning criticized “political opportunism” in the wake of Saturday’s shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and said he has no plans to tone down his own “stronger language.”

A little later in the article...

“One of the concerns I do have is the political opportunism that has come out of this. That’s kind of deplorable and unconscionable what some people are doing. This is not the time to start looking for grandstanding and things of that nature,” West said on his way into a West Boca Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Boca Lago Country Club.

Asked if he had any regrets about his choice of words in the past, West said, “No I don’t, because I think when you look at the president saying don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and the fact that the president talked about if the Republicans were to win in the midterms we’re going to have hand-to-hand combat.”

He also said a blogger in Broward County had once said West should be skinned alive, so “I think there are some things that both sides need to be concerned about.”

West, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, has said his references to “bayonets” and military imagery are metaphorical — and he has no plans to stop using them.

Unless conservatives like West go on offense, the left will be able to politicize this tragedy to the point of giving political correctness a quantum leap.

West is dead-on target (yes, that was intentional).

h/t Weasel Zippers

VIDEO: ARIZONA SHERIFF DOUBLES DOWN, BLAMES RUSH LIMBAUGH

On the day of the Safeway massacre, Arizona Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik blamed talk radio for the actions of Jared Loughner, an apparent citizen of Dupnik's county who had previous run-ins with the law, including with Dupnik's Department; threats of bodily harm were apparently among them. On Mondays program, Limbaugh said that Dupnik was 'making a fool out of himself.' Later that day, ABC's Diane Sawyer interviewed Dupnik, at which point he doubled down and named Limbaugh specifically.

Astonishingly, when Sawyer asked him how he could link the shootings to Rush Limbaugh, a Sheriff of these United States simply said that such a view was his opinion. How far have we fallen when a County Sheriff links murder to someone else through opinion? It very well may have to do with a desire on the part of Dupnik to deflect attention away from his Department's handling of Loughner in the past.



h/t Hapblog:

Now, take a look at James Taranto's appearance on Hannity in which he calls out Dupnik specifically and outwardly expresses a concern that the Sheriff may be attempting to distract from the potentially very flawed history of his Department and how it may have dealt / not dealt with Loughner in the past.



h/t Gateway Pundit