Both the specific argument and the more general one at the end; I'll address them in that order; since sequentially listing facts isn't getting through, let's try a syllogism: 1) Giffords' stated Palins crosshairs imagery would have "consequences"; 2) Palin calls such statements "blood libel": Therefore, 3) Palin accused Giffords of "blood libel". Giffords and Palin can both say what they want (though I believe the SCOTUS is very clear that right stops well short of inciting violence) but if, as you say, "the facts prove" Giffords wrong, then Palins charge against her of "blood libel" is true. Good luck getting any court outside the Cato Institute to agree "the facts prove" any such thing though. And if "the facts prove" no such thing, Palins charge of "blood libel" is ITSELF libel, because she's publicly accusing someone of something they didn't do. Sarah's welcome to try it, but I suspect if it went to a civil trial to decide who libeled whom the jury would side with the woman who has a bullet hole through her head--especially since the subject of the trial would be whether she was right to feel threatened by Palins imagery.

As to cheerful civility, no law requires either in political rhetoric, though the latter is definitely desirable and sorely lacking on both sides. I've lost a lot of my own once scrupulous and well regarded civility the past couple years (gee, I can't imagine why, though it remains wrong). I've really TRIED to regain my compusure, but when one of the most liberal Congressmen in Barry Goldwaters home state is gunned down along with 18 others and the far rights reaction is "we had nothing to do with it and you liberals should stop persecuting us since he was one of YOU anyway!" it's quite a challenge. Every single thing that's ever gone wrong in world history is somehow the lefts fault if you ask the far right. Even Hitler was a leftist now in the minds of the US far right (but no one else, then or now), and that's somehow proof that a man who read Ayn Rand, Mein Kampf and Nietzsche (who Hitler, rightly or not, claimed as a major inspiration) before exercising his Second Amendment rights against perhaps the most liberal Congressman in his state (the same state that produced "extremism in defence of liberty is no vice" ) is somehow a flaming liberal because he also happens to have read the Communist Manifesto.

Can you see how some on the left MIGHT be slightly less than civil in the face of that? Six people are dead and thirteen others (including at least one conservative) wounded because someone tried to murder one of our own over her politics, and it's somehow our fault yet again because the far right demagogues and their supporters deny all accountability. I could shrug off the rhetoric after noting its inaccuracy, have in the past, but the woman who coined the term "death panels" wants to talk about libel while Gabrielle Giffords tries to learn how to speak again and a nine year old girl is buried. Nineteen people were SHOT and even though it's absurdly disingenuous to say the shooter (who had a MySpace account as well as one on Palins beloved FB) was wholly uninfluenced by far right demagogues those demagogues are insisting, as stridently and belligerently as ever, that they refuse to do anything differently, because there's NO possibility they contributed. I don't care so little about my country or its citizens that I'm willing to just "be the bigger man" and walk away this time, because if the inciteful rhetoric continues so will the killing, and I pity us all if you can't see that.

'Cos here's the thing, man: There are plenty of people on both sides who are confrontational and argumentative, always have been and always will be. That's shameful and regrettable, and I don't deny I've indulged in it to my cost in the past, though I'm making a conscious effort to do so no more. Where it crosses a line, however, is when we start portraying our opponents as traitors, terrorists, godless, and routinely use militant violent imagery to say they must be not simply resisted but actively destroyed at any cost. I don't give anyone a free pass there, avoid Kos in no small part for this very reason, but I did note your statement that they used bullseyes the same way Palin used crosshairs, and I believe it both because I consider you credible and them capable of that. That's every bit as wrong, but, far worse, it's every bit as DANGEROUS. Not in the sense of eroding freedom or jeopardizing democracy, though that's a real risk also, but in the sense of encouraging unstable and/or extreme political fanatics to match their violent rhetoric with actions.

I try to choose words very carefully, as much to avoid condoning as to avoid appearing sympathetic to violence. Just because I know what I mean doesn't mean every whackjob who reads my words does, but apparently Sarah Palin thinks it's more important to use crosshairs and talk about "Real America" than to avoid the risk of inciting violence; perhaps she's incapable of articulating her views without invoking a weapon, but that just implies all the fears about her are correct. You'll surely note I didn't mince words here, but I managed to be very clear and firm, as well as somewhat confrontational, while refraining from language that even MIGHT be taken to encourage or condone violence; I certainly wasn't forced to be terse. Anyone unwilling to even consider that risk, moderate THEMSELVES in the interest of not inciting murder, is no one to listen to on the subject of politics or anything else.