><http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/01/09/who-is-jared-lee-loughner/>http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/01/09/who-is-jared-lee-loughner/ > >
The Southern Poverty Law Center goes off on the shooter as "mad as a hatter" and "mentally deranged" and quickly gets a lot of responses, rightly, from people who challenge their able-ism, and their glib association of mental illness with violence, pointing out that schizophrenics and others with mental illness are much more often the targets of violence. Surprisingly, nobody commented on their premature intervention into what is a legal question, essentially attributing his actions to "madness," when insanity as a legal defense is something to be adjudicated in court. In point of fact, the guy uses quite a bit of rhetoric that is common on the conspiracist right wing, including the idea of a 'second Constitution" (the post-Civil War constitution that includes the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments abolishing slavery and establishing birthright citizenship and voting rights for freed slaves. He also talks a lot about gold and silver being the only basis for currency, another common right wing theme, and more obscurely about "grammar" (this might be an anti-immigrant English-only type reference, or it might relate to several right-wing state sovereignty types, who invent systems of spelling, capitalization, punctuation and sentence construction that they claim absolved them taxes or release them from state control. The right has been trying to link the shooter to the left because he mentioned the communist manifesto and showed a flag burning on one of his web posts. But a lot of patriot groups denounce the US flag, particularly the one posted in most courtrooms and has gold fringe along the edge, as an "admiralty flag" and therefore a symbol of some corporation United States, as opposed to the "united States" in the Constitution. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
