NPR is reporting that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and six others have died following the shooting at a public event in Tuscon.

Our sincere condolences go out to the friends, family and staff of Rep. Giffords, and those of the other shooting victims.

Update II: Sheriff Dupnik says that Gifford is still alive but in critical condition, says he is 100% sure, at 2:29 pm ET.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was holding a constituent service day in her Arizona district this morning, was shot in the head and wounded along with some of her staff.

This past week, as the Coptic Christian Church prepared to celebrate Christmas (celebrated by them and other eastern Christian churches on January 6), Islamic fundamentalist militants in Egypt threatened to carry out bomb attacks on their churches if they gathered for worship. Given similar attacks in recent months in Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east, this was no idle threat.

And the people of Egypt reacted, coming out in defense of their neighbors: “We either live together, or we die together.”

Imagine how different the world would be is more people started talking like that?

After a member of Iceland’s Parliament and former Wikileaks volunteer, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, revealed on Twitter yesterday that Twitter has been subpoenaed for details on her Twitter account, Glenn got a copy of the subpoena. The subpoena was first submitted to Twitter on December 14, and asked for account information for six people as well as any account associated with Wikileaks, going back to November 1, 2009. Of particular note, they ask for:

In this day and age, it’s a common thing for Democratic executive-branch leaders, be they governors or presidents, to cower at the sight of Republicans — and this is doubly true when the Republicans actually have official control of one or houses of a state or Federal legislature. Which is why it’s so refreshing to see Governor Dayton, politely yet fearlessly, go toe-to-toe with Republicans and their patrons.

I love love love poached eggs.

Dudley Moore and The Electric Mayhem — How High The Moon, from episode 407 of The Muppet Show.

Such is the state of conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., that it took Matt Bai (who’s regurgitated his fair share of it) to push back in the New York Times today on the reaction to the naming of the new White House chief of staff.

While the Obama administration is thinking about ways to win over independents in anticipation of the 2012 election, they actually should be worried that a large segment of former Democrats are no longer choosing to identify themselves with the party.

With talk of repealing health care in the air, I thought it would be a good time to look at a couple New England states going in the opposite direction: Vermont and Connecticut. Both of them are in the midst of designing or recommending alternatives to the private health care market, which could go all the way up to a single payer program.