Let’s pile into the time-machine, shall we?

Law enforcement officials continue to piece together the facts in Saturday’s shooting rampage that left a federal judge dead and a congresswoman critically injured in Arizona, and some are questioning whether divisive political rhetoric may have played a role.

-NPR, Liz Holleran, January 6th, 2011

It all now seems so quaint somehow, doesn’t it? Remember all that hand-wringing, all that blubbering, about “divisive political rhetoric”? Remember how we were ready to put mug shots of Sarah Palin up in all the post offices? The only thing that out-did the speculation of the press in the wake of the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Giffords was the brow-furrowed sanctimony of the Left.

…But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

-Paul Krugman, the New York Times, January 9th, 2011

Paul Krugman is, among a plethora of other things, a co-religionist of Maureen Dowd, sister-columnist at the Old Gray Lady– which is getting Older and Grayer by the day, thanks, in large part, to the likes of Krugman and Dowd. Krugman was crowding into the FastPass lane of group-think back in January, drooling at the prospect that copies of “Liberty and Tyranny” made the Laughner creep shoot up downtown Tuscon. Like I say, it all seems so last winter.

All the boogie-men have long since changed. We’re back to global warming causing (or not causing, depending on the news dispatch you choose) the limp hurricane that recently petered out over New York. That, and the “Tea Party” causing us to Default. Or whatever..

Clearly, tho’, we’ve long since forgotten “violent political rhetoric”. Just ask Maureen “Carrie Nation” Dowd over at the New York Times.

Dowd recently penned the most vile, drippingly hateful screed I’ve ever read in a newspaper for which you normally have to fork over a couple quarters. Crap like her most recent Sunday column, “Dart Vader Vents” (her ‘review” of Vice President Richard Cheney’s forthcoming autobiography) is the sort of bile I’ve come to expect in underground college broadsheets. But, to see it vomited on the pages of what was once a pre-eminent newspaper is truly eye-popping. Truly.

Get a load of this:

Cheney may no longer have a pulse, but his blood quickens at the thought of other countries he could have attacked. He salivates in his book about how Syria and Iran could have been punished.

and

Vice is … churlish about President Obama, who took the hunt for Osama bin Laden off the back burner and actually did what W. promised to do with his little bullhorn — catch the real villain of 9/11.

and

WHY is it not a surprise to learn that Dick Cheney’s ancestor, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, was a Civil War soldier who marched with Sherman to the sea? Scorched earth runs in the family.

Is it not easy to imagine Mzzzzz Dowd (with contempt frothing from her lips as she condescendingly calls Mr. Cheney “vice”) flaming away at her keyboard, fantasizing about the slow and painful death of Richard Cheney? Or, at the very least, inciting someone to do the deed with her, er, ah…  violent political rhetoric.

Whatever you do, Mr. Vice President, don’t let them take your book tour into a shopping mall in Tuscon. Maureen Dowd might be laying in wait.