From what I heard, that Federal judge just happened to stop by at the event

[Duer 157099]

There was no publicity that he would be attending at all, so he was probably an innocent bystander.

Does anyone have any other info on that?

[valerief]

1. Maybe the shooter randomly decided to shoot the judge, too. nt

[Duer 157099]

2. Right. But I doubt he knew it was a judge.

I doubt the judge goes out wearing robes or anything.

[valerief]

7. Why? nt

[Duer 157099]

9. Would you recognize a federal judge at your local supermarket?

I know I wouldn't!

[Barack_America]

8. Not targeted, but not random.

I'm sure they knew each other, making him more likely to be in close proximity to the congresswoman.

[notesdev]

3. That would be quite a coincidence

perhaps there is more going on here than we yet are aware

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. And perhaps it's just a coincidence

It's already become evident from the shooter's Youtube and Favebook and Myspace pages that he is almost certainly psychotic in the clinical sense of the word, very probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia; given that it's quite a stretch to impute any kind of coherence to his thought processes much less the sort of planning you seem to be suggesting.

[notesdev]

6. it opens another possibility

if the judge was scheduled to be there and did not just show up at random... perhaps he was the primary target, rather than Giffords?

[Peace Patriot]

10. What I've read about the judge is that he ruled in favor of some immigrants,

was then attacked by rightwing hate radio, got hundreds of death threats and was given U.S. Marshall's protection for a time. So, if this was a rightwing nut political hit, all this makes the judge more of a candidate for primary target than Giffords. Her house was trashed apparently over her health care vote, but it seems to me that racism (i.e., the judge's siding with immigrants) would be more likely to produce this kind of carnage and mayhem, than the more intellectual issue of a health care bill. This was major bloodshed including shooting to death a nine year old child!

I hadn't heard that the judge just dropped in on the event. So that certainly interferes with my guess that he may have been the main target. We'll just have to wait and see whether that is confirmed--and all the other details--in so far as we can believe what we are told.

There may be more at work here than we know--and than we can even guess at this point. These killings do not make a whole lot of sense. And, unfortunately, it is difficult, to say the least, to believe any "authorities" these days or the corpo-fascist press, which merely confirms whatever the "authorities" have to say, or, if that diverges from corpo-fascist interests, they simply give us the corpo-fascist spin. Our national political life is eerily similar to "Alice in Wonderland."

[EV_Ares]

4. Yes, you are correct, he lived nearby & when he found out the congresswoman was

going to be there meeting with her constitutes, he decided to go by & see her.

[malaise]

11. The Sheriff just said that the gunman did not act alone

and they have a photo of the other person

[Duer 157099]

12. No, he only said they think someone else came with him

and that *maybe* the other person was involved.

[sabrina 1]

13. The judge was a Bush 1 appointee. Don't know if that makes him

a Republican. But he did rule in favor of illegal immigrants in a case involving a rancher. He ruled to let it go forward and was immediately targeted by wackos on the right. He was given protection for a while after that ruling.

[InkAddict]

14. Isn't it ironic...

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanismorissette/ironic.html

It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_Roll

In 1994, Roll was one of several district-court judges who held that provisions of the Brady Law violated the Tenth Amendment,<2> a holding upheld by the Supreme Court in the related case of Printz v. United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_ActPrintz v. United States

In its 1997 decision in the case, the Supreme Court ruled that the provision of the Brady Act that compelled state and local law enforcement officials to perform the background checks was unconstitutional on 10th amendment grounds. The Court determined that this provision violated both the concept of federalism and that of the unitary executive. However, the overall Brady statute was upheld and state and local law enforcement officials remained free to conduct background checks if they so chose. The vast majority continued to do so<17>. This issue later became moot when NICS came online in 1998...
==============================================================================================
But it's the "hate" media that exacerbates the mind diseases, and it's access and affordability of mental health care surpassed only by the corporatist/banksters' greed that's really at the root of these tragedies...no?

[notesdev]

15. Laws don't stop this kind of thing

That close to the border, for the right price you can get anything you want... the other side is controlled by smuggling cartels. All you do with a law is disarm the law abider.