Chris Stirewalt
A clearer picture is developing of the suspect in the shooting rampage aimed at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the image is of a deeply unstable young man who fixated on the congresswoman over a three-year period.
Federal authorities say Jared Loughner, 22, left taunting notes in a safe at the Tucson home he shared with his parents that read, “I planned ahead” and “my assassination” with his signature affixed. Loughner had also preserved a form letter from Giffords’ office – a thank you note for attending a 2007 event similar to the one at which police say Loughner killed six people and injured 14.
While many on the left are looking for a way to place Loughner on the political right in a bid to gain political advantage from the carnage, he seems to have been a true loner whose interests and fixations don’t meet any conventional political definition.
Though the New York Times incorrectly calls the publication of the white-separatist group American Renaissance “a conservative magazine,” the influences on Loughner’s tangled worldview don’t seem to come from anything identifiable as conservative.
Instead, drugs, mental illness and an obsession with grammar seem to be the main influences on what prosecutors say was a long-developed plot to kill Giffords.
Loughner’s rants, recorded online and by friends and classmates, have to do with some things that might be associated with the right, like his call for a return to the gold standard, some things that might be associated with the left, like his anger over the dissemination of Bibles by the U.S. Army, and some things that are not associated with anything, like his grammar obsession and a mathematical tic that seems to involve prime numbers.
As Giffords clings to life and doctors watch swelling in her brain for signs of a continued miraculous recovery, her family, friends and political supporters are learning the chilling news that Loughner met the congresswoman at a similar event in 2007 and told his few remaining friends that he was not satisfied with her response to his question, which he intended to spur a discussion about the government’s manipulation of grammar.
Loughner’s friends tell reporters that when the alleged killer met Giffords in 2007, he asked her “How do you know words mean anything?” and that the congresswoman responded with a few phrases in Spanish, presumably thinking he was referring to the bilingualism of the border district, and moved on.
Prosecutors say the incident helped cement a fixation on Giffords, whom Loughner’s associates say he called a “fake.”
Loughner, somehow fittingly, is represented by federal public defender Judy Clarke, who defended the eco-terrorist Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
Source: www.foxnews.com
