AP: Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to the scene of the horrific shooting that wounded her and killed six people two years ago, urging senators Wednesday to pass background checks for gun purchases in her first public event at the site since the rampage.
Giffords, who is still recovering from her injuries, spoke fewer than 20 words in the parking lot of the Safeway grocery store in her hometown of Tucson in a brief but emotional call for stricter gun control measures.
“Be bold. Be courageous,” Giffords said. “Please support background checks.”
Gabrielle Giffords listens to a speaker Wednesday as an emotional husband Mark Kelly hugs her during a return to the site of a shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that left her critically wounded
Charles Pierce: Is anyone taking seriously the complaints now coming about how the president’s re-election campaign is using the decision to kill Osama bin Laden to its own advantage? I think the killing of the author of the 9/11 atrocities, and a considerable international murderer even beyond that particular crime, is something that a president who wants to be president again is within his rights to use…..
…. it’s no more or less “fair” on the merits than is Romney’s constant refrain that the president “doesn’t understand how the economy works” because he’s never been a vulture capitalist.
….. demonstrating the pure class and raw political courage that has marked his entire political career by throwing a cheap shot at someone who wasn’t in the room, Romney said that, “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.” This from a man whose toughest decision in his life has been which house to sleep in.
…. every time he talks about foreign policy, Romney is a blindfolded man in a yard full of rakes. He wrote a Washington Post op-ed about arms control that proved Romney didn’t know enough about the subject to feed to his fish. He flirted with advocating a trade war with China, and he and his advisors occasionally slip and call Russia “the Soviet Union.” Of course, he did make the bobsleds run on time, so there’s that.
Washington Post (Chris Cillizza and Rachel Weiner): The one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden has occasioned a fierce political debate about the appropriateness of President Obama’s reelection campaign touting the death for their partisan benefit.
It shouldn’t. Here’s why …. simply because the death of bin Laden bolsters Obama’s case for reelection doesn’t mean that it is out of bounds. What’s good for the political goose is good for the political gander.
In case you need a little more convincing, remember that President George W. Bush stoked considerable controversy when just one day after formally announcing for reelection, he launched TV ads that prominently featured imagery from Sept. 11, 2001. “Sept. 11 changed the equation in our public policy,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at the time, defending the ads. “The president’s steady leadership is vital to how we wage war on terrorism.”
That’s, in essence, the same argument that Obama and his team are making about the use of bin-Laden in two web videos released by the campaign over the last 96 hours. If the American public needs to make a judgment on Obama’s first term decision-making, then it doesn’t make sense to ignore one of the major moments of those four years….
Charles Pierce: Good on the Obama people for taking on the current national campaign of voter-suppression at the local level. Back in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer, volunteers were deeply schooled in the various regulations and tactics used to deprive African Americans of their right to vote ….
The new Florida rules … were the centerpiece of a training effort over the weekend by the Obama for America staff in the state. All volunteers and staff members in Florida are required to attend a mandatory session on the new laws … Those who go through the training must pass a quiz administered by the campaign before they can attempt to register voters on the president’s behalf.
This is absolutely the same thing that those people did in Mississippi 50 years ago, and it’s become necessary to do it again because the same foul impulses that brought us literacy tests and the poll tax is bringing us these latest attempts to make difficult what should be the easiest right for us to exercise. And, not for nothing, but Greg Palast brings our attention back to 2000 again, and the effect that what looks today like a rudimentary exercise in voter-suppression had on our history.
The Fact Checker (Washington Post): Two well-funded Republican groups began running hard-hitting ads against President Obama last week, aiming to spend an estimated $8 million in key battleground states. The spots hit similar themes, attacking Obama on green-energy investments, and even cite similar sources.
Watching these ads is a depressing duty for The Fact Checker, because many of their claims – regarding “billions” of stimulus dollars going overseas – had been debunked two years ago by our colleagues at PolitiFact and Factcheck.org. Yet here the erroneous assertions emerge yet again, without any shame, labeled as “the truth” or “fact.”
….. One can certainly raise questions about how stimulus funding was used and whether it was effective. But there is no excuse for these kinds of ads, which take facts out of context or simply invent them. These groups should be especially ashamed, given that these claims have been previously debunked, or, in the case of the erroneous ABC report, withdrawn.
Annika Shepp basks in the arms of First Lady Michelle Obama at Tucson International Airport on April 30. Shepp was one of nearly twenty youth volunteers to greet the First Lady as she arrived to speak at a campaign event downtown
****
****
President Obama has no public events listed on his schedule. First lady Michelle Obama will attend campaign events in Las Vegas, Nev., and Albuquerque, N.M.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords talked with President Barack Obama on Sunday, the one-year anniversary of a southern Arizona shooting rampage that left her and 12 others wounded and six people dead.
The congresswoman will be among those marking the somber occasion by attending a vigil Sunday night on University of Arizona’s campus, one of several such memorial events in recent days.
…. Obama called Giffords on Sunday “to offer his support” and say that she, other shooting victims and the Tucson community are “in their daily thoughts and prayers,” the White House said in a statement.
“The president expressed amazement at the courage and determination Rep. Giffords has shown along her incredible road to recovery, calling her an inspiration to his family and Americans across the country,” the statement added.
