The great identity problem the right seems to be having at the moment is not about whether they are complicit in these particular murders, but whether it’s plausible they could have been. That’s especially true since Glenn Beck has rhetorically encouraged violence against groups and individuals, and, as Media Matters’ David Brock points out, some nut has followed up. It’s not whether people like that knowingly stoked Loughner’s particular incoherence, delusion and detachment from reality but whether far too many of them have exhibited the same dangerous fantasies and eliminationist tendencies in their own statements and writings.

With the release of the Presidential Oil Spill Commission report this week, we’re seeing some renewed interest in the fallout from the BP oil spill. In particular, the $20 billion escrow fund managed by Kenneth Feinberg has been a main point of contention between the Gulf and BP since last fall, when BP began threatening to withhold compensation to residents if Congress placed greater restrictions on their drilling.

The President will speak sometime during the “Together We Thrive” event happening at the McKale Center on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, four days after the assassination attempt that wounded 15 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), and killed 6 others, including a Giffords staffer, a federal judge and four constituents. It is expected that he will speak for 20 minutes and focus mainly on the victims themselves

North Carolina State Representative Larry Brown, proving that ignorance about public health knows no bounds even in the 21st century, wants to deny state assistance to citizens who contracted HIV through their own “perverted lifestyle.” This returns the debate to the era of the Innocent Victim, when only little children who got AIDS through botched blood transfusions or while being born to junkie moms were worthy of America’s attention and assistance. There’s a reason the most comprehensive federal assistance for HIV patients is named after a boy who was shunned at school, not a friendless San Francisco drag queen tossed out on the street.

Rather than admit that property owners have the right to sue in this country, the Third Way thinks that we can best protect them by limiting their right to sue to actual damages.

You have an establishment at least somewhat concerned about the vituperative Tea Party movement, and not just their rhetoric but their ideas. In another corner of the conservative coalition, you have this contretemps over CPAC allowing a gay group to participate in its annual conference. Yesterday the first actual member of Congress pulled out, Rep. Jim Jordan, joining multiple conservative groups, including the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation, in boycotting the event.

The conservative/Republican version of Orwell’s Ministry of “Truth” is at it again, hijacking and corrupting yet another set of words — this time it’s “blood libel.”

Pretty crazy, isn’t it, imagining what it would be like to live in a country with a functioning rule of law … like Colombia?

I don’t really care that Boehner won’t support the King bill, which I find pretty ridiculous. But if legislation that comes from the Republican side can’t even get past the introductory stage, I don’t see what hope there is for Democratic bills.

DDay already has some great insights on The Quitter’s latest Facebook fatwa, but I thought this passage was worth revisiting.