Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."

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21st Century Democrats is no unheard of fringe group, either. Styling itself as one that is “building a progressive majority from the grassroots up,” it is interesting to note that some major top-down players in the Democrat Party founded the group. The group was created in 1986 by Senator Tom Harkin, a powerful Democrat from Iowa, and was co-founded by left-wing pundit Jim Hightower and former Illinois Congressman Lane Evans. These folks are hardly “grassroots” sort of folks.

Worse, even as this email blast accuses Sarah Palin and former candidate Jesse Kelly for using “violent imagery” and for “targeting” Giffords, this group is associated directly with The Daily Kos run by Markos Moulitsas who used precisely that same sort of “targeting” rhetoric last year during the campaign for the midterm elections.

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Shocking is more the word.

Unbelievable, not so much with the LEFT

And here we go again in Arizona, as people with political agendas unleash their attacks even before the victims of this senseless shooting have been buried. I find it depressing beyond belief.

This isn't about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map; it's about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life. It would be nice if we briefly put aside partisan differences and came together with sympathy and support for Gabby Giffords and the other victims, rather than opening rhetorical fire ourselves.

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The attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the killing of six innocents outside a Tucson Safeway has bolstered the ongoing argument that when speaking of things political, we should all avoid using inflammatory rhetoric and violent imagery.

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