Journalistic irresponsibility with regards to the Giffords shooting

There's a good post here at American Spectator about how journalists used the event of the tragic shooting in Arizona of Congresswoman Giffords with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. One of my leftie friends on Facebook was also trying to make that association. As the American Spectator piece points out, there is no association whatsoever between the shooter and the Tea Party. If anything, the guy might have been something of a liberal as pointed out in the article in a citation of a Twitter exchange with one of the shooter's classmates:

"One of Loughner's classmates in high school and community college, Caitie Parker, voided much of the baseless media speculation with a few Twitter messages Saturday afternoon. Parker, herself a liberal, said Loughner was "a really good friend," whom she described as having been "left wing," "a political radical" and "quite liberal" when she knew him, although she lost touch with him after 2007 when he "became very reclusive." Loughner was a "loner" and a "pot head," Parker said in a Twitter colloquy with Anthony De Rosa of Reuters."

Even liberal journalist Howie Kurtz has pointed out that there is no basis for trying to pin any responsibility on Sarah Palin.

Happy 7th Anniversary Spirit... hope we hear from you soon

It was 7 years ago today that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit landed on the plains within Gusev crater on Mars. We have gotten a lot of great science from Spirit and have learned a lot about Mars. Last year we lost contact with Spirit when it went into Martian winter with its solar panels not oriented sufficiently well to catch enough sunlight to keep it "awake" and communicating. So it has been hibernating, or perhaps worse, since then. With the sun getting higher in the sky though, Spirit could come back to life and start communicating. If it does, it will still be in a bad way with two inoperative wheels, but there is still a lot of good science that can be done with even a stationary platform. A good summary of Spirit's situation is here.