Popa bar abba: I am not sure – and don’t care – whether the shooter of Congresswoman Giffords is a lefty, a righty, ambidextrous, or a pothead. He apparently is just plain nuts, though more information may emerge about him in the near future.
The connection between violent talk and a specific violent act is generally tenuous at best. Nevertheless, violent rhetoric has no place in intelligent political discourse not because it will prompt the deranged to kill people but because it degrades the quality of the political discourse and distracts from facts and reason.