my congresswoman was shot today

[Crankin]

I most certainly have policed myself in this discussion. Mostly, because I don't want to be seen as bashing someone with a different point of view. Still, I am looking wistfully back at the sixties and seventies, when I felt like I had the power of a lot of people behind my own beliefs and actions.
You have heard me mention my relatives who are super right wing conservatives. I actually highly respect my cousin, who is probably the most right wing of them, because he is intelligent, articulate, and lives his beliefs. I just can't go along with having guns in the house with 2 teenagers and a child, or him thinking he can take away my right to choose. I cannot, however, respect my aunt, who just parrots the views she hears on talk radio and the half understood ideas she gets from her children.
In the last month I happened to look at the comments below a couple of news articles on Yahoo. I could not believe the vehemence spewed in the comments (all from the right wing view point). I won't look at that stuff anymore, but it made me glad to be in my bluest of blue state bubble. Frankly, we saw the writing on the wall in 1990, with regard to politics in AZ, and it played a significant role in our decision to move. I gave up a very nice life that took me years to recover, so I could bring my kids up in the same atmosphere I grew up in.

[KnottedYet]

One of the weirdest things I came across in the news articles is that someone already checked Daniel Hernandez Jr.'s immigration status. (He's a naturalized US citizen from Mexico)

Obviously the young man is Latino, but was it really necessary to run his immigration papers? Did someone have the thought, "I wonder if Gabrielle Giffords hired an illegal immigrant for her intern?"