Rep. Gabrielle Giffords remains in critical condition

Congresswoman among 14 wounded; six killed in Tucson shooting spree

Members of Congregation Chaverim in Tucson, Ariz., attended a healing service Sunday morning and prayed for one of their own, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who represents the state’s 8th District. The elected official, known as Gabby to her friends, remains in critical condition after being shot in the head on Saturday.

Arizona’s U.S. Chief Judge John Roll, Giffords’ constituent services director Gabriel Zimmerman, and four others were killed by alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner, 22. Fourteen others, including Giffords, were wounded in the shooting spree at a meet-and-greet event convened by the first Jewish woman elected to Congress from Arizona.
The United States Attorney for the District of Arizona, Dennis K. Burke, announced Monday that his office filed a federal complaint against  Loughner. The alleged gunman made his first appearance in a Phoenix federal courtroom today.
The mass murder in a state embroiled in controversy over immigration issues has sparked public discussion over the bounds of political rhetoric.
JTA reported:

Giffords’ office in Tucson was ransacked in March following her vote for health care reform — a vote the Democrat told reporters that she would cast even if it meant her career. She refused to be cowed, but she also took aim at the hyped rhetoric. She cast the back-and-forth as part of the democratic process.

“We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the course of the last several months,” Giffords told MSNBC after the middle-of-the-night attack, which left a window shattered. “Our democracy is a light — really a beacon — around the world because we effect change at the ballot box and not because of these outbursts of violence and the yelling.”

She called on all leaders — of both parties and in the community — to consider how they cast their arguments. Giffords, who last week took the oath of office for her third term, noted how her re-election bid was being treated by 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.

“The way she has it depicted is that she has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district,” Giffords said. “When people do that they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that action.”

A Palin aide, Rebecca Mansour, told talk radio host Tammy Bruce in an interview.  “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps,” she said, suggesting that it is a “surveyor’s symbol,” according to a report on Politico.com.
Also, Jewish Funds for Justice has seized on the shooting rampage in Tucson to highlight its campaign against political extremism, which is trying to keep Glenn Beck’s talk radio show off of New York City airwaves. Simon Greer, the group’s president and CEO, states that Beck’s “hate-filled rhetoric is always unwelcome, but it is particularly unwelcome today.”
Although Giffords is Jewish, it is not clear that the alleged shooter was motivated by anti-Semitism. Some news reports have mentioned Loughner’s association with a group called American Renaissance, an extremist anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic group, according to a Department of Homeland Security memo sent to law enforcement authorities and obtained by Fox News.
JTA reported that Giffords became more interested in Judaism after a 2001 tour of Israel with the American Jewish Committee, as she told The Arizona Star in 2007:

“It just cemented the fact that I wanted to spend more time with my own personal, spiritual growth. I felt very committed to Judaism,” she said. “Religion means different things to different people. It provides me with grounding, a better understanding of who I came from.”

Her wedding to Cmdr. Mark Kelly, an astronaut, was written up in The New York Times. The item noted that a mariachi band played Jewish music and there were two canopies — a chupa and one of swords held up by Kelly’s Navy buddies.

CNN reported that Pres. Barack Obama will travel to Tucson on Wednesday. He is likely to attend a memorial service and visit with relatives of the shooting victims.

— Mordecai Specktor