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From the Los Angeles Times

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Obama urges Americans to debate 'in a way that heals'

The president, speaking to thousands at a Tucson memorial for Saturday's shooting victims, says our arguments should be 'worthy of those we have lost.'

by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Michael Memoli and Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times

January 13, 2011

Reporting from Tucson and Los Angeles

President Obama, facing the challenge of consoling Arizona and uniting the nation, urged Americans on Wednesday not to point fingers of blame but to "expand our moral imaginations" and to "sharpen our instincts for empathy."

Speaking at a memorial for victims of the Tucson shooting rampage that left six people dead and 13 wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), the president said the gunman's motives were shrouded in mystery.

"The truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind," Obama told a boisterous overflow crowd at the service, held at the University of Arizona's McKale Memorial Center.

"Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence.... But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other."

As soon as he arrived in Tucson, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to University Medical Center to visit victims of the attack. They met privately for about 10 minutes with Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, the White House said.

At the memorial, Obama departed from his prepared text to announce — with Kelly's permission, the president said — that Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time shortly before the service.

"She knows we are here and she knows we love her," Obama said. The crowd erupted.

Kelly, who was in the audience, received a hug from Michelle Obama.

More than 13,000 people packed into the auditorium, the university said, for a service that was at turns somber and sorrowful, defiant and triumphant. Another 13,000 who couldn't fit inside watched from a nearby football stadium.

The crowd — students, retirees, parents and children, Obama supporters, Obama opponents, people who knew the shooting victims and many more who did not — had waited more than 12 hours to get inside. Lines snaked for miles.

Joe Watkins, 50, a trial lawyer who attended with his wife and a co-worker, said he was "sick to death of the negativity that's been thrown around the past few campaigns."

"Now everybody on both sides of the aisle has stepped back and said, 'We have to think.' But will it last?" he asked.

As the ceremony began, an elderly woman unfurled a homemade sign that read: "We will heal."

The event came four days after a gunman, whom police identified as 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, fired 31 shots outside a Tucson Safeway. The dead included Arizona's chief federal judge, John M. Roll.

Authorities said Loughner's primary goal appeared to have been to assassinate Giffords. She had been hosting a Congress on Your Corner event, which the president called a "quintessentially American scene" — a congressional representative listening to constituents.

The shooting plunged much of Arizona and Washington into sadness, but also brought a renewed focus on incivility and violent imagery in politics.

Obama confronted that issue, saying that although debates over gun control or mental healthcare were important and proper, Americans should debate "in a way that heals, not [in] a way that wounds."

Incivility did not cause the attack, he said, but added that our debates should be "worthy of those we have lost" — not conducted "on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle."

Obama seemed to meld his customary austerity with an emotional accounting of the attack's toll. One by one, he told the stories of those killed — a snowbird who often knitted under a tree; a woman married to her high school sweetheart for 50 years; a retired construction worker who died while shielding his wife with his body; a federal judge on his way home from Mass; a Giffords aide who helped constituents.

The president seemed particularly moved when he recounted the life of the youngest victim, 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, who was about the same age as Obama's younger daughter, Sasha.

Christina was an A student, he noted, a member of her student council and the only girl on her youth baseball team. Born on Sept. 11, 2001, she was featured in a book about babies born on that tragic day, he said, with her photographs accompanied by text describing hopes for her life.

Those hopes included: "I hope you jump in rain puddles."

"I want America to be as good as she imagined it," Obama said. "… If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today."

Obama's rare display of emotion helped him reach out to grieving listeners, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said. But he had a greater responsibility to fulfill, she said — to take stock of the moment and offer meaning and inspiration.

"What he reminded us of, as the president, was that, however difficult this moment was, the best of America is still present," she said. "That's what the moment called for."

In preparing the speech, Obama was assisted by Cody Keenan, the young Harvard graduate who had helped the president craft his eulogy for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, said, "I've seen Obama, I've seen the race speech, I know his range.... This was beyond anything I've seen in a very long time."

Several attendees interviewed after the event agreed that Obama had struck the right tone.

"He was right on," said Brian Atkinson, 42, of Tucson, who brought his 11-year-old son, clad in his Boy Scout uniform.

The Obamas arrived on Air Force One in the afternoon. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer greeted them on the tarmac, clasping hands with the first lady and sharing what appeared to be a warm exchange.

At the arena, Obama met with 13 relatives of those killed. He was accompanied by Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was his opponent in the 2008 presidential election.

The Obamas then took their seats between Kelly and Daniel Hernandez Jr., the Giffords intern hailed as a hero after he ran toward the gunshots Saturday; Hernandez comforted the congresswoman and held her head up to keep her from choking on her own blood. He received a hug from Kelly and a standing ovation from the crowd.

Joel Contreras, 57, who lives a block from the site of the attack, also attended the service. He and his wife marched last year to protest Arizona's harsh immigration law, an emblem of the fierce brand of conservatism that has come to dominate state politics. Contreras, a construction worker, described Arizona as an intolerant place.

"And I'm a U.S. citizen," he said. "I'm used to it. But I hope my grandchildren don't have to be."

His wife, Regina, said, "I hope we can start loving each other more."

A Native American tribal activist said the event had dropped barriers between people. "This is a hopeful moment, a historic moment — that all of us can come together and mourn," said Mike Wilson, 61, of Tucson. "Nobody is a Democrat, a Republican, a 'tea party' member. We are all Americans."

Earlier in the day in Washington, the House adopted a resolution honoring Giffords and the 18 other shooting victims.

"Our heart is broken, but our spirit is not," new Speaker John A. Boehner (R- Ohio) said, his voice catching repeatedly with emotion.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat and Boehner's predecessor, hailed Giffords, saying she had invigorated Congress with "the thinking of a new generation." Pelosi called for a "renewed commitment to hope, to civility, to peace among the American people."

Giffords' office released a statement thanking Congress and the public for the outpouring of support.

"The resolution before the House today was a further reflection of the best of America — one after another, members came to the floor, without party labels, in support of those impacted by this tragedy. They honored the fallen, those recovering, and the heroes who responded quickly to save lives," the statement said. "Even during the darkest times, our nation's capacity for kindness and fellowship reminds us of the best in people."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-memorial-20110113,0,3042356,print.story

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Gabrielle Giffords' condition continues to improve, doctor says

Giffords opened her eyes after he visited her, President Obama says. She is making 'spontaneous movements' such as feeling her wounds and adjusting her hospital gown, says Dr. Peter Rhee of University Medical Center.

by Seema Mehta and Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times

January 13, 2011

Reporting from Tucson and Los Angeles

President Obama said that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes Wednesday shortly after he visited her, news that drew resounding cheers from the thousands who gathered to hear Obama speak at a memorial service for the Tucson shooting victims.

"Gabby opened her eyes, so I can tell you, she knows we're here, and she knows we love her," Obama told the crowd at the University of Arizona.

The development was more good news on a day when Giffords continued to show signs of recovery with "spontaneous movements" such as feeling her wounds and adjusting her hospital gown, Dr. Peter Rhee, chief of the trauma division at University Medical Center in Tucson, said earlier in the day.

"She's getting better every day, and she's making more and more spontaneous movements," he said. "She was able to actually even feel her wounds herself. She can fix her gown. She's making very specific kinds of movements, so we're very happy at this point."

Such movements are occurring, in part, because physicians have greatly decreased the amount of sedation Giffords is receiving.

Rhee, who has typically gone into great detail about the congresswoman's condition, was tight-lipped Wednesday. And he continued to urge caution, noting that the next two days remain crucial.

"If something was going to go bad, it would happen around this time period," he said.

Rhee said he was hopeful that Giffords would one day walk and talk normally, but he could not guarantee it. The congresswoman could have some "deficit" from the bullet that tore through the left hemisphere of her brain on Saturday, but it's unknown how severe it would be.

"There is without a doubt some permanent damage that's going to occur from that bullet," he said. "Will she be functional, viable, normal? I can't say for sure, but I'm very hopeful that she will be."

The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and is the center of speech functions. Physicians have been unable to assess Giffords' ability to speak because they have kept her intubated, even though she can breathe on her own, to prevent the buildup of fluids in her lung that could cause pneumonia.

Giffords remains in critical condition. Five other victims from Saturday's shooting rampage remain hospitalized at University Medical Center: Two are in serious condition and three in fair. One, Ron Barber, who is Giffords' district director, was upgraded to serious status on Tuesday because he was put on a ventilator after surgery to close wounds from an earlier operation.

Barber's daughter, Jenny Douglas, said her father was alert and recovering but heartbroken over Saturday's event.

"Dad is so deeply saddened by the loss of his friend and fellow staff member Gabe Zimmerman and his longtime friend Chief Judge John Roll," she said.

Douglas, accompanied by her mother, sister, husband and brother-in-law, thanked medical personnel, law enforcement and the woman who applied pressure to her father's wounds as he awaited medical care after being shot outside a Safeway where Giffords was meeting constituents.

She said her father had been repeatedly asking about the congresswoman.

"My dad wants to see her. It will help him to see her," Douglas said. "I believe they're going to arrange that. He's just asking about her every day."

Meanwhile, Fritz Simon, the son of community outreach director Pam Simon, delivered a message on behalf of his mother, who was also injured in the attack.

"The wounds inflicted are healing, thanks to the amazing care of the doctors and staff here at University Medical Center," Simon said. "The deeper wounds of needless loss of life, severe injury of co-workers and community members and sadness over this act of violence will take much longer to heal."

The statement urged prayers for Giffords, whom Pam Simon called "the leader who's truly needed in this nation."

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-na-arizona-shooting-medical-20110113,0,6673373,print.story

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Tampering with citizenship

Efforts to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants fly in the face of the 14th Amendment and a century of legal precedent.

January 13, 2011

Legislators from five states have unveiled model legislation with complicated provisions but a simple and pernicious premise: that children born in this country aren't citizens if their parents are illegal immigrants.

That assertion, however, is no match for more than 100 years of Supreme Court precedent holding that anyone born in the United States is an American citizen. If the states enact laws disregarding that principle, the court should resoundingly reaffirm its interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

The amendment, ratified after the Civil War, says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

The natural reading of that language is that it covers any person born in the United States, who by definition is subject to American law. But the legislators opposed to so-called birthright citizenship offer a different interpretation of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." They argue that a child is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States unless he or she has "at least one parent who owes no allegiance to any foreign sovereignty, or [is] a child without citizenship or nationality in any foreign country."

The legislators lack the authority to change the definition of citizenship, something they hope Congress will do. But they hope to lay the groundwork for a two-tiered system with two proposals based on the idea that birthright citizenship is invalid.

One would confer what's known as "state citizenship" on people with at least one parent who is a citizen or permanent legal resident, while denying it to children with two parents who are illegal immigrants. The other would create a compact in which participating states would issue two kinds of birth certificates, one for children who meet those criteria and another for children "not born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States," in effect creating a caste system.

The legislators' definition of citizenship is impossible to reconcile with Supreme Court precedent. In 1898, the court, interpreting the 14th Amendment in light of common law, ruled that the American-born child of noncitizen Chinese immigrants was entitled to citizenship. It rested its decision on the "fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory." The only exceptions, the court said, were "children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or [those] born on foreign public ships, or [children] of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and … children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes."

In the event that the legislators' initiatives are enacted, that precedent surely would lead the Supreme Court to strike them down. Still, these proposals muddy the legal waters in service of a mean-spirited campaign against the children of illegal immigrants. Whether it's hysteria about "anchor babies" or opposition to the DREAM Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for children brought to this country at a young age, anti-immigrant fervor is unworthy of this society. So is this ill-considered assault on a long-established legal principle.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-citizen-20110113,0,4222114,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Police Stopped Loughner's Car on Day of Shooting

TUCSON — Jared L. Loughner had repeated contact with law enforcement officers over the years, and hours before Saturday's shootings was pulled over by a police officer for running a red light as he frenetically prepared to kill a congresswoman, the authorities said Wednesday.

Investigators are “100 percent” certain that Mr. Loughner did not have an accomplice, and while they continue to investigate his “online associations” they see no obvious connection between Mr. Loughner and political extremists, said Richard Kastigar, who oversees investigations at the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Six people were killed and 14 wounded in the shootings.

Instead, local and federal law enforcement officials are focusing now on filling in gaps in the timeline on the day of the shooting and gathering evidence to counter an expected insanity defense, investigators said.

Judge Larry Alan Burns of Federal District Court in San Diego was named on Wednesday to preside over Mr. Loughner's trial. Judge Burns was appointed to the federal bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush, and is best known for presiding over the trial of Representative Randy Cunningham of California, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors.

So far, this much is known about Mr. Loughner's movements in the hours before the shooting, according to the authorities:

7:34 a.m.: Mr. Loughner was pulled over by an Arizona Game and Fish Department officer for running a red light on an access road a few miles from the supermarket where the shooting later took place.

“The contact was very cordial,” said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the department. “Mr. Loughner was very forthcoming with his license and registration and insurance. The officer did a visual examination of the vehicle. He had no probable cause to search the vehicle or detain the subject.”

About 8 a.m.: Randy Loughner saw his son take a black bag out of the trunk of a vehicle outside the family home. When the father demanded to know what was inside, the son mumbled something unintelligible and took off on foot. His father followed in a car but lost him.

9:18 a.m.: Mr. Loughner contacted a taxi company from a Circle K convenience store between the family home and the shooting site.

9:41 a.m.: A taxi arrived to pick him up.

9:59 a.m.: The taxi arrived at the Safeway supermarket where Representative Gabrielle Giffords was about to conduct a meet-the-constituents event. The driver and Mr. Loughner entered the supermarket to get change for the fare.

10:11 a.m.: Mr. Loughner opened fire, beginning with Ms. Giffords and then aiming into the crowd.

Investigators say the evidence they are gathering shows that Mr. Loughner set out to kill Ms. Giffords and that he knew the difference between right and wrong. They cite comments to a friend asking for forgiveness. Mr. Kastigar also noted scrawlings on a piece of paper found in his house, including the words “die bitch,” “die cops” and words to the effect of “assassination plans have been arranged,” Mr. Kastigar said.

The sheriff's department released records Wednesday showing that Mr. Loughner and a member of his family had at least nine contacts with law enforcement between 1994 and 2010. He had been bullied at school, and poked with a needle by a classmate in 2004. He was also rushed to the hospital in 2006 after showing up at school severely intoxicated; he told the police he had consumed a lot of vodka because his father had yelled at him.

In 2007, the records show, he and a friend were arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia after the police smelled marijuana when they stopped a vehicle they were in.

In 2008, an officer seemed to notice something was amiss with Mr. Loughner, who came to the station to report that someone had improperly posted his name and photograph on a Web site. “I noted that Jared was slow to respond to my questions,” the officer wrote. “He often hesitated as if he was trying to think of an explanation.”

Mr. Kastigar offered a robust defense of police officers' actions with regard to Mr. Loughner, who had “minor” run-ins with them before the shootings.

“There's been all this speculation” that the gunman could have been stopped, he said. But “there was nothing, and I cannot underscore this strongly enough,” he said, that would have led law enforcement “to conclude that this guy was going to act out and shoot 20 people.”

Investigators are combing through social networking sites like Facebook and other online forums to reconstruct Mr. Loughner's trail on the Internet in the weeks leading up to the shooting. But Mr. Kastigar said that would take time.

Another law enforcement official said the only gun found at the home was a single-shot shotgun. “He didn't have a major cache of weapons,” the official said.

Mr. Loughner bought the bullets for the Glock semiautomatic pistol used in the shooting on Saturday morning at a local Wal-mart, the authorities said. The bullets were full metal jacket range rounds, one official said, noting that had the gunman purchased more expensive self-defense rounds that mushroom upon impact, many more people might have died. It certainly would have done far “more damage,” the official said.

The most severely wounded of the survivors, Ms. Giffords, who received a bullet wound to the head, continues to recover, doctors said Wednesday.

“We have decreased the amount of sedation and she is becoming more spontaneous,” said Dr. Peter Rhee, the director of medical trauma care at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where Ms. Giffords is being treated. Three hospital workers were fired Wednesday for looking at private medical records of victims of the shootings, though officials said they did not believe the information had been publicly released.

At Ms. Giffords's Congressional office in Tucson, staff members said they were overwhelmed by outpouring of support for the wounded lawmaker. Among those visiting in recent days were former Senator Dennis DeConcini and Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, whose district abuts Ms. Giffords' and who has offered to assist his colleague with constituent services while she recovers.

Then there was the unknown man who came in and offered to be put to work. “He came in and said he wanted to volunteer,” said C. J. Karamargin, the congresswoman's communications director. “We said, ‘Who are you?' Then he told us he was a congressman.”

It was Representative Hanen Clarke, a newly elected Democrat from Michigan.

“It was a touching gesture,” Mr. Karamargin said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/politics/13giffords.html?_r=1&ref=us&pagewanted=print

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‘Creepy,' ‘Very Hostile': A College Recorded Its Fears

TUCSON — Officials at Pima Community College, where Jared L. Loughner was a student, believed that he might be mentally ill or under the influence of drugs after a series of bizarre classroom disruptions in which he unnerved instructors and fellow students, including one occasion when he insisted that the number 6 was actually the number 18, according to internal reports from the college.

In 51 pages of confidential police documents released by the college on Wednesday, various instructors, students and others described Mr. Loughner as “creepy,” “very hostile,” “suspicious” and someone who had a “dark personality.”

He sang to himself in the library. He spoke out of turn. And in an act the college finally decided merited his suspension, he made a bizarre posting on YouTube linking the college to genocide and the torture of students.

“This is my genocide school,” the narrator on the video said, describing the college as “one of the biggest scams in America.” “We are examining the torture of students,” the narrator said.

The documents offer vivid firsthand accounts of Mr. Loughner's contacts with law enforcement officials in the months leading up to the shootings, and will inevitably be studied closely for answers to whether the college did everything it could have, and should have, with him.

The college overhauled its procedures for dealing with disruptive students last year. As part of a revision to the code of conduct, it introduced a Student Behavior Assessment Committee, a three-member team that includes the assistant vice chancellor for student development, the chief or deputy chief of the campus police and a clinical psychologist from outside the college.

The team meets as needed to respond to students who have acted violently or threatened violence, or who may pose a threat to themselves or others. It came into existence in September, the same month Mr. Loughner was suspended following the five disruptive incidents reported to campus police.

A campus official involved in setting up the behavior committee, Charlotte Fugett, president of one of the college's five campuses, would not say whether the committee heard Mr. Loughner's case.

Many acquaintances and friends and fellow students at the college have talked about his outbursts and inappropriate behavior. The reports describe how Mr. Loughner behaved when confronted or questioned about his actions, and the images and perceptions that officers from the college's Department of Public Safety recorded show a mixture of behaviors, by turns odd, belligerent or silent and removed, sometimes all in the same encounter.

A campus officer wrote in one report in September, six days before Mr. Loughner was suspended, that he and a fellow officer thought “there might be a mental health concern involved with Loughner.”

In October, the college has said, it sent Mr. Loughner a letter stating that before he could return to class, he would need to present a letter from a mental health professional certifying he was not a threat.

One report offers details of the evening of Sept. 29, when two officers drove to the Loughner home to deliver the letter about Mr. Loughner's suspension. A friend of Mr. Loughner's said this week that he thought leaving Pima might have been a serious psychological blow to Mr. Loughner, and the security report suggests a clear apprehension by the officers as well — they requested that two backup officers be posted in the neighborhood.

The officers were invited into the garage by Randy Loughner, the student's father.

“While inside the garage I spoke with Jared who held a constant trance of staring as I narrated the past events that had transpired,” the reporting officer wrote.

After almost an hour, Jared Loughner broke his silence.

“I realize now that this is all a scam,” he said, according to the report.

Aubrey Conover, advanced program manager for Pima Community College Northwest, in a report prepared the day he was suspended, recounted a conversation with Mr. Loughner after the police were called to deal with him when he disrupted a biology class on Sept. 23. He had been repeatedly asking for full credit on an assignment he turned in late.

At one point, Mr. Loughner said he had paid for his classes illegally, according to Mr. Conover, and when pressed he said, “I did not pay with gold and silver.” Mr. Conover said that throughout the meeting, “Jared held himself very rigidly and smiled overtly at inappropriate times.”

After an incident in February 2010 in which Mr. Loughner blurted out in a poetry class that dynamite ought to be attached to babies, a campus police officer wrote, “I suggested they keep an eye on him and call us if anything else developed that concerned them.”

Mr. Loughner explained the remark matter-of-factly. “He said that the class had been talking about abortion, which made him think of death, which made him think of suicide bombers, which made him think of babies as suicide bombers,” wrote Mr. Conover.

After a discussion, Mr. Conover said, Mr. Loughner said he would not say anything in class. Mr. Conover said that he continued to act bizarre but that there had been no further interruptions.

On another occasion, Mr. Loughner told a biology teacher that it did not matter what he put down on his test because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the First Amendment enabled him to write whatever he wanted.

As for his remark that he did not have to go along with his instructor's view that the number 6 was actually the number 6, a counselor, Delisa Sidall, wrote: “I reminded him that a complaint was made that he was disruptive in class and he said, ‘I was not disruptive, I was only asking questions that related to math.'

“I asked him to tell me the question he asked? He said, ‘My instructor said he called a number 6 and I said I call it 18.' He also asked the instructor to explain, ‘How can you deny math instead of accept it?' ”

Over all, there were seven contacts between Mr. Loughner and campus police in seven months, including two in one week. He clearly was on the radar screen of the authorities, though the documents suggest that they were uncertain how much of a threat he might be, or unclear on how to respond to him.

Mr. Loughner's grades were redacted in the reports released by the college but they showed that he took a wide array of coursework, including public speaking, sign language, Bible studies and yoga.

Even in his gym classes, there were problems. In May, the police were called by Mr. Loughner's Pilates instructor, Patricia Curry, who said she felt intimidated after a confrontation over the B grade she wanted to give him. She said he had become “very hostile” upon learning about her intention. “She spoke with him outside the classroom and felt it might become physical,” the police report said.

Ms. Curry told the police she would not feel comfortable teaching Mr. Loughner without an officer in the area, and the officers stayed to keep watch over the Pilates class until the class ended.

The documents show that the campus police served him with a notice of suspension after officers discovered the YouTube video. Although the narrator's face was obscured in the video, officers said that based on their previous encounters with Mr. Loughner they recognized his voice.

In a sign of how seriously the college took the video, the campus police sought a county grand jury subpoena for the YouTube records of someone identified as “2PLOY.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13college.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Increase in Arizona Handgun Checks

The F.B.I. said on Wednesday that federal background checks on people in Arizona seeking to buy handguns had increased sharply since Saturday's shooting rampage in Tucson that left six people dead and Representative Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life.

There were 263 background checks in the state on Monday, the first weekday after the shootings, compared with 164 on a corresponding Monday last year.

But the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the number of background checks initiated did not necessarily reflect gun sales because some people are disqualified, change their minds or do not buy a firearm for some other reason.

The shooting also appears to have led people in Arizona to stock up on high-capacity magazines — that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, gun store owners said.

Greg Wolff, who owns two Glockmeister gun shops, in Phoenix and in Mesa, said Wednesday that while firearms sales had increased this week, the spike in handgun magazine sales had been particularly dramatic.

“I'd say it's 300 percent to 500 percent above normal,” said Mr. Wolff.

Mr. Wolff said he had been selling several hundred high-capacity magazines a day, including magazines identical to the 33-round clip used by the accused gunman in Saturday's shootings.

Gun dealers in Arizona said the rise in popularity of the high-capacity clips is due to fears that the magazines will soon be outlawed — as they were in the United States from 1994 to 2004.

Members of Congress said this week that they planned to introduce legislation this month to ban magazines that feed more than 10 rounds of ammunition at a time.

“People are paranoid about the laws changing,” Mr. Wolff said. “That's the only reason I see why this is happening now.”

Brian Murphy, owner of Murphy's Guns and Gunsmithing in Tucson, said that he had not noted a marked increase in sales at his shop, but said a ban on high-capacity clips would be unfair.

“They're going after an item instead of an individual,” Mr. Murphy said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13guns.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Reporter on Quest to Close 1964 Civil Rights Case

ATLANTA — Stanley Nelson writes for a small weekly newspaper in the Louisiana delta. For the past four years, he has been obsessed with one story: who threw gasoline into a rural shoe repair and dry goods shop in 1964 and started a fire that killed Frank Morris?

No one disputes that the death of Mr. Morris, a well-liked businessman who served both black and white customers, was connected to the Ku Klux Klan. The case is on a list of unsolved civil rights murders the F.B.I. released in February 2007, the day Mr. Nelson first heard of the story.

But for a lengthy article that appeared Wednesday in The Concordia Sentinel, Mr. Nelson, 55, put together what he believes is a key piece of the puzzle. He names the last living person he says was there that night.

In the article, both a son and a former brother-in-law of Arthur Leonard Spencer, 71, a truck driver from rural Rayville, La., say Mr. Spencer admitted to being involved in the fire. Mr. Spencer's ex-wife, Mr. Nelson reported, said she had heard the same story from another man who was also there.

Mr. Spencer, by his own account, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. But in interviews with Mr. Nelson, he denied knowing or having been one of two men suspected of burning the shop in Ferriday, La., near the Mississippi border, the hometown of the famous cousins Mickey Gilley, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Rev. Jimmy Lee Swaggart.

Mr. Spencer has not been charged, and the F.B.I. has not said whether it is investigating him. However, he told journalists after the article appeared on Wednesday that the F.B.I. had interviewed him within the last two months.

Mr. Spencer could not be reached by The New York Times at his home or at Jimmy Sanders, a farm supply store where he works. His co-workers said he had gone to the hospital for blood tests.

Bettye Spencer, 67, who was married to Mr. Spencer at the time of the fire, said in an interview on Wednesday by phone from her home in Rayville that she had never heard anything about the case. The F.B.I. visited her a few months ago and she told them that she had been a young mother when Mr. Spencer left her for another woman. That woman and her son are both sources in the article linking Mr. Spencer to the fire.

Mrs. Spencer is still close to her former husband and said she talked to him early Wednesday. He was surprised that people were trying to connect him to the fire.

“I'm telling you he had nothing to do with this,” she said. “We're just old country people and I don't understand where this is coming from. This is 46 years ago and now people are digging up bones?”

Unlike many of the 110 civil rights murders being investigated by both the F.B.I. and journalists who operate under the umbrella group called the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, the story of Mr. Morris's death stands out because it is one of a handful in which someone believed to be connected to the episode is still alive.

“The big concern about all of this is time,” Mr. Nelson said. “The time to solve these cases is maybe another year, or another two years maybe. People are dying.”

The F.B.I. investigated the killing of Mr. Morris, who was 51, twice in the 1960s, and took up the case again in 2007. Since the most recent investigation, The Sentinel and other organizations have criticized the speed with which the F.B.I. and the Justice Department have approached the old cases.

Cynthia Deitle, chief of the F.B.I.'s civil rights unit, told the newspaper that federal officials were actively working on the case and that she believed people were still alive who knew who killed Mr. Morris. She reiterated her agency's dedication to what she called “one of the most horrific and troubling of all the F.B.I.'s civil rights era cold cases.”

The link to Mr. Spencer is based in part on the newspaper's interviews with his son, William Spencer, known as Boo. William Spencer told Mr. Nelson that he was trying to turn his life around after getting out of prison and finding religion.

He said he heard his father speak of the fire more than once. The elder Spencer was one of at least two white men who headed there in the early morning hours, intending to burn the shop as a message to the black owner, whom Klan members believed was too friendly with white female customers. The men did not expect the shop owner to be inside, the son told The Sentinel.

“My dad said they could hear a stirring in the place, then a man came out,” William Spencer said. Mr. Morris apparently had come out of the store to find men splashing gasoline and was forced back inside. Burned so badly that nurses could not recognize him, Mr. Morris lived for four more days. He gave interviews to the F.B.I. but never identified his attackers.

“Son, it was bad,” the younger Mr. Spencer recalled his father saying. “I'll never forget it.”

Arthur Spencer's former brother-in-law, Bill Frasier, told the newspaper that he, too, had heard the story from Mr. Spencer.

The newspaper reported that both William Spencer and Mr. Frasier had told their stories to the F.B.I. The agency would not comment on the case, but a spokesman pointed out that prosecuting an arson case in federal court might pose challenges. The arson would have had to involve something that was a federal crime at the time, like interstate kidnapping or the use of a specific type of explosive, or it would have had to have happened on federal property.

It was Rosa Williams, Mr. Morris's granddaughter, who moved Mr. Nelson to dedicate himself to this and the other cold cases. After he wrote his first article on the subject in 2007, in which he revealed that the owner of the shoe shop was on the F.B.I.'s list of unsolved civil rights murders, Ms. Williams called.

She told him she had never known what had happened to her grandfather, and she thanked him. She also asked Mr. Nelson to help figure out who killed her grandfather. “I told her I'm going to try,” he said.

From that moment on, Mr. Nelson has reported on little else. With the help of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at the Syracuse University College of Law, he went on to file more than 150 articles on the subject, culminating in this one, which he hopes will lead to an arrest.

But he is also motivated by the curiosity of a newsman.

“What kind of human being could set another man on fire?” he said. “I was just curious about something that happened in our community that I never knew about. I just wanted to find out who did it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13case.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Justices Look Again at How Police May Search Homes

WASHINGTON — More than 60 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the police were not entitled to enter a residence without a warrant merely because they smelled burning opium.

On Wednesday, at the argument of a case about what the police were entitled to do on smelling marijuana outside a Kentucky apartment, two justices voiced concerns that the court may be poised to eviscerate the older ruling.

“Aren't we just simply saying they can just walk in whenever they smell marijuana, whenever they think there's drugs on the other side?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, considering what a decision against the defendant would signal to the police. “Why do we even bother giving them a warrant?”

The old ruling, Johnson v. United States in 1948, involved the search of a hotel room in Seattle. The smell of drugs could provide probable cause for a warrant, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the majority, but it did not entitle the police to enter without one.

“No suspect was fleeing or likely to take flight,” Justice Jackson wrote. “The search was of permanent premises, not of a movable vehicle. No evidence or contraband was threatened with removal or destruction.”

In the new case, police officers in Kentucky were looking for a suspect who had sold cocaine to an informant. They smelled burning marijuana coming from an apartment, knocked loudly and announced themselves.

Then they heard sounds from inside the apartment that they said made them fear evidence was being destroyed. They kicked the door in and found marijuana and cocaine but not the original suspect, who was in a different apartment.

The Kentucky Supreme Court suppressed the evidence, saying that any risk of drugs' being destroyed was the result of the decision by the police to knock and announce themselves rather than to obtain a warrant.

Lawyers for Kentucky and the federal government told the justices on Wednesday that the lower court had erred. There had been no violation of the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable searches, they said, because the police had acted lawfully every step of the way.

Justice Elena Kagan expressed doubts about that approach.

A standard that looks only at the lawfulness of police behavior, Justice Kagan said, “is going to enable the police to penetrate the home, to search the home, without a warrant, without going to see a magistrate, in a very wide variety of cases.”

All the police need say, she said, is that they smelled marijuana and then heard a noise. “Or,” she continued, “we think there was some criminal activity going on for whatever reason and we heard noise.”

“How do you prevent,” Justice Kagan asked Joshua D. Farley, a Kentucky assistant attorney general, “your test from essentially eviscerating the warrant requirement in the context of the one place that the Fourth Amendment was most concerned about?”

Mr. Farley said that nothing the police had done in this case had violated the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Sotomayor was even more direct.

“Aren't we just doing away with ‘Johnson'?” she asked.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked why the police could not simply roam the hallways of apartment buildings, sniffing; knock whenever they smell marijuana; then break in if they hear something suspicious.

Mr. Farley said, “That would be perfectly fine.”

Other justices appeared untroubled by the standard the government lawyers proposed.

“There are a lot of constraints on law enforcement,” Justice Antonin Scalia said, “and the one thing that it has going for it is that criminals are stupid.”

He said a sensible criminal would answer the door but decline to let the police enter without a warrant.

In a blog post, Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and an authority on the Fourth Amendment, said the case, Kentucky v. King, No. 09-1272, presented a tricky question based on murky facts.

But he said the police should not be allowed to take advantage of at least some of the circumstances their own conduct creates. Among those circumstances, he said, are the reactions of people who are made to believe that the police are about to conduct a forcible search of their homes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13scotus.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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OPINION

Why Not Regulate Guns as Seriously as Toys?

Jared Loughner was considered too mentally unstable to attend community college. He was rejected by the Army. Yet buy a Glock handgun and a 33-round magazine? No problem.

To protect the public, we regulate cars and toys, medicines and mutual funds. So, simply as a public health matter, shouldn't we take steps to reduce the toll from our domestic arms industry?

Look, I'm an Oregon farm boy who was given a .22 rifle for my 12th birthday. I still shoot occasionally when visiting the family farm, and I understand one appeal of guns: they're fun.

It's also true that city slickers sometimes exaggerate the risk of any one gun. The authors of Freakonomics noted that a home with a swimming pool is considerably more dangerous for small children than a home with a gun. They said that 1 child drowns annually for every 11,000 residential pools, but 1 child is shot dead for every 1 million-plus guns.

All that said, guns are far more deadly in America, not least because there are so many of them. There are about 85 guns per 100 people in the United States, and we are particularly awash in handguns.

(The only country I've seen that is more armed than America is Yemen. Near the town of Sadah, I dropped by a gun market where I was offered grenade launchers, machine guns, antitank mines, and even an anti-aircraft weapon. Yep, an N.R.A. dream! No pesky regulators. Just terrorism and a minor civil war.)

Just since the killings in Tucson, another 320 or so Americans have been killed by guns — anonymously, with barely a whisker of attention. By tomorrow it'll be 400 deaths. Every day, about 80 people die from guns, and several times as many are injured.

Handgun sales in Arizona soared by 60 percent on Monday, according to Bloomberg News, as buyers sought to beat any beefing up of gun laws. People also often buy guns in hopes of being safer. But the evidence is overwhelming that firearms actually endanger those who own them. One scholar, John Lott Jr., published a book suggesting that more guns lead to less crime, but many studies have now debunked that finding (although it's also true that a boom in concealed weapons didn't lead to the bloodbath that liberals had forecast).

A careful article forthcoming in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by David Hemenway, a Harvard professor who wrote a brilliant book a few years ago reframing the gun debate as a public health challenge, makes clear that a gun in the home makes you much more likely to be shot — by accident, by suicide or by homicide.

The chances that a gun will be used to deter a home invasion are unbelievably remote, and dialing 911 is more effective in reducing injury than brandishing a weapon, the journal article says. But it adds that American children are 11 times more likely to die in a gun accident than in other developed countries, because of the prevalence of guns.

Likewise, suicide rates are higher in states with more guns, simply because there are more gun suicides. Other kinds of suicide rates are no higher. And because most homicides in the home are by family members or acquaintances — not by an intruder — the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of a gun murder in that home.

So what can be done? I asked Professor Hemenway how he would oversee a public health approach to reducing gun deaths and injuries. He suggested:

We can also learn from Australia, which in 1996 banned assault weapons and began buying back 650,000 of them. The impact is controversial and has sometimes been distorted. But the Journal of Public Health Policy notes that after the ban, the firearm suicide rate dropped by half in Australia over the next seven years, and the firearm homicide rate was almost halved.

Congress on Wednesday echoed with speeches honoring those shot in Tucson. That's great — but hollow. The best memorial would be to regulate firearms every bit as seriously as we regulate automobiles or toys.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Man arrested after threats to Rep. Jim McDermott: 'I'll kill his family'

FBI agents arrest a California man who called Rep. Jim McDermott's Seattle office in December and left two threatening messages linked to the Democrat's stand on extending the Bush tax cuts.

by Warren Richey

January 12, 2011

A Palm Springs, Calif., man was arrested on Wednesday on a federal charge that he threatened to kill Rep. James McDermott (D) of Washington because of the congressman's stance in last month's debate over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts.

FBI agents arrested Charles Turner Habermann for making two late-night cell phone calls to the congressman's Seattle office Dec. 9. According to an FBI affidavit, Mr. Habermann has a history of contacting elected officials and received a warning from California law enforcement officials in March 2010.

“Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, if any of them had ever met Jim McDermott, they would all blow his brains out. They'd shoot him in the head,” Mr. Habermann, 32, allegedly said in a recorded voice mail message on Mr. McDermott's office telephone.

The shooting Saturday unleashed a heated national debate over whether political rhetoric can trigger violence by unstable individuals. It also prompted an examination of how best to protect elected officials.

“You let that [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] know, that if he ever [deleted] around with my money, ever the [deleted] again, I'll [deleted] kill him, okay,” Habermann said, according to a sworn FBI affidavit on file in federal court.

“I'll round them up,” he added. “I'll kill them. I'll kill his friends, I'll kill his family, I will kill everybody he [deleted] knows.”

Ten minutes later, Habermann called back and left another message. Just as in the first call, he began by offering his real name and his telephone number. Then he left a second, similar, message.

Habermann took issue with McDermott's characterization of the issues in the tax debate. He said Democratic members of Congress were “stealing” money from “the wealthy” and giving it away to “losers.” He said McDermott would never get away with it.

“I'll [deleted] hunt that guy down and I'll [deleted] get rid of him,” Habermann said, according to the affidavit. “Do you understand that? I'll get the [deleted] rid of him. I'll pay people, I'll pay my friends, I, I grew up in Chicago just like your [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] Jim McDermott did.”

Later in the message, Habermann adds: “I hate Jim McDermott. I hate his family. I hate his kids. I hate everybody. … I could round them all up, you know, I could look for them.”

The following day, FBI agents arrived at Habermann's home and confronted him with the recorded messages. According to the affidavit, Habermann admitted leaving the voice mail messages and a third message for a congresswoman identified only by the initials C.P. He told the agents he had been drinking alcohol prior to making the calls.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree is a Maine Democrat and critic of extending the Bush tax cuts who was just reelected to a second term. Her office refused comment when contacted by the Associated Press.

Habermann said he made the telephone calls to try to scare members of Congress into voting to extend the Bush tax cuts, but that he never had any intention of hurting anyone, the affidavit says.

It says Habermann has a $3 million trust fund.

Habermann also acknowledged that in March 2010 he had left voice mail messages for a member of the California Assembly. In one of those messages he allegedly said he wasn't going to kill anyone, but that the assembly member should “watch his back.”

He also said that the Founding Fathers, if they were alive today, would kill President Obama and other officials, according to court documents.

Five days earlier, Habermann had met in the assemblyman's office to discuss a pending health-care bill. He allegedly told the unidentified assemblyman that he was wealthy and did not want to support immigrants and Latinos.

“Habermann was described as agitated, paranoid, uneasy and couldn't keep still,” the affidavit says.

After the three encounters in March, officers with the California Highway Patrol interviewed Habermann. According to court documents, Habermann told them that he was intoxicated and had been smoking marijuana when he left the voicemails. He told the officers he used marijuana for his depression.

The officers gave him a warning.

Habermann is charged with threatening a federal official. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

“We are blessed to live in a country that guarantees and protects the freedom to disagree with our government and speak our minds. That protection, however, does not extend to threats or acts of violence,” US Attorney Jenny Durkan said in a statement.

“Those actions are intended to silence debate, not further it. They instill fear not just in the immediate victims, but in many who might hold the same views or take the same course,” she said. “Such threats are crimes.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0112/Man-arrested-after-threats-to-Rep.-Jim-McDermott-I-ll-kill-his-family

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State lawmaker wants to protect victims from defendants' questions

by Queenie Wong

Seattle Times Olympia bureau

OLYMPIA — State lawmakers are revisiting legislation that could prevent sex-crime defendants who represent themselves from directly questioning their accusers in court.

The new bill was prompted by a recent incident in which a 21-year-old woman threatened to jump off the King County Courthouse rather than face questioning by the man charged with raping her when she was a child.

The man was acting as his own attorney at the trial.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, will be heard in the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. It requests that the state Supreme Court adopt rules by July that would limit how pro se defendants accused of sex offenses cross-examine their accusers.

The defendant would have several options, including having a court-appointed attorney cross-examine the accuser using the defendant's questions, asking the questions himself while seated a distance away from the victim, or conducting the questioning from another room via video hookup.

These measures could be used only if the court found the victim would suffer serious emotional or mental distress from being cross-examined by the defendant.

Goodman said he introduced House Bill 1001 after he heard about the distraught child-rape victim, set to be cross-examined by her alleged rapist, who managed to get onto the King County Courthouse roof and threatened to jump. She was led to safety after talking with Seattle police negotiators.

Jurors from that case are expected to testify at the committee hearing Wednesday.

"This rarely happens in court, but we don't want it to happen ever," said Goodman.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who plans to testify in favor of the bill, said very few defendants represent themselves, but it's now happened in two rape cases in the last year or so.

"Both times we wish we could have avoided it because it put a lot of people through unnecessary grief," he said. "We shouldn't let the court be a forum for secondary victimization."

Former Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, proposed similar legislation last session, but it failed to pass the Senate Judiciary Committee because of constitutional concerns.

Among those concerns was whether the state Legislature could impose such rules on the courts and whether limiting how a pro se defendant cross-examined his accuser would violate the defendant's right to self-representation under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Goodman said he worked with Williams and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Madsen to create new but similar legislation that would balance the rights of the defendant with the rights of the victim.

He plans to introduce a substitute House bill Wednesday that would broaden the legislation to include cases of violent offenses, not just sex offenses.

Criminal-defense lawyer groups, which testified against Williams' bill last session, argue that the new bill still violates the Sixth Amendment. Allowing a court-appointed lawyer to conduct the questioning on behalf of a pro se defendant doesn't solve the constitutional problem, said Kimberly Gordon, who represents the Washington Defender Association and the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"I think a cross-examination is much more than words on a paper — so much is a flow of questioning and reacting," she said.

The bill likely will still face a hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, who chairs the committee, said Superior Court judges already have the authority to limit a defendant's questioning, much like a captain who controls his ship.

"This is legislation that makes everyone feel good, but it's not necessary," Kline said.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/mobile/?type=story&id=2013909207&st_app=ip_news_lite

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