Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman, Bill Gwatney, Killed By Gunman

This is just awful. I was with a member of the extended family of the deceased when the call came in, before he died.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A man barged into the Arkansas Democratic headquarters and opened fire Wednesday, fatally shooting the state party chairman before speeding off in his pickup. Police later shot and killed the suspect after a 30-mile chase.

Police said they don’t know the motive of the suspect, who they described as about 50 years old but whose name has not been released. However, they said that moments after the shooting he pointed a handgun at the building manager at the nearby the Arkansas Baptist headquarters. He told the manager “I lost my job,” said Dan Jordan, a Baptist convention official.

Chairman Bill Gwatney died four hours after the shooting. The 48-year-old former state senator had been planning to travel to the Democratic National Convention later this month as a superdelegate. He had backed Hillary Rodham Clinton but endorsed Barack Obama after she dropped out of the race.

Prayers for the family, please.

Don’t know many details about the gunman, but it seems the crazies are coming out of the woodwork these days.

UPDATE: Predictably, Michelle Malkin is being a bitch about this. It seems someone e-mailed her and said the shit she writes incites people to violence. Well, it does. Don’t know if that had anything to do with this specific incident, but Jesus, Michelle Malkin, a guy with a family died. Can you wait a week before being a whiny egocentric asshole about it?

Also being assholes: This dick, this dick, this female dick, who actually goes through a few niceties before posting the unredacted e-mail address of the original guy who e-mailed Malkin…they’re all publishing the e-mailer’s information, but no, these conservative assholes aren’t unhinged, and they wouldn’t dream of inciting people to violence.

Like I said, I don’t know the circumstances fully. But wouldn’t it be nice if the conservatives simply shut the fuck up about it? Regardless of whether this specific incident was motivated by right-wing hate, Knoxville most certainly was, the militia broken up in Pennsylvania was…it’s kind of a right-wing phenomenon, actually.

UPDATE AGAIN: One of the dicks felt the need to write about my post. That’s fine. He admits he’s been drinking.

We all have those drunkie asshole moments.

He does attempt to compare me to other bloggers who have said things I decidedly haven’t. But then again he admits he’s been drinking.

He tries to connect me with people who wrote snarky joyful posts about Tony Snow dying or when Robert Novak was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

For the record, here is my post on Tony Snow’s death, and this is my post about Novak’s brain tumor.

I’m aware that conservative bloggers are loath to factcheck a single word they write…for instance, our drunkie conservative is still saying the shooter was a former employee of Gwatney’s, even though the latest reports have walked back that claim, as new information has emerged that the man had lost his job at Target earlier that day. The fact is we still don’t know. Unlike the conservative bloggers and pundits who raced onto a random quote about losing a job to create a narrative for the crime and thus absolve themselves from any possible or forthcoming responsibility for inciting hatred…just as they did with Knoxville…this writer has consistently asserted that we don’t know why yet.

What is perhaps difficult to accept for the drunk blogger is that the suggestion of right-wing violence is not unreasonable, as it’s been happening more and more lately. This is not about liberals vs. conservatives. This is about a fringe group of right-wingers who don’t understand how the United States works, have no respect for her Constitution, nor any understanding or respect for the principles that make this country great.

So again: We don’t know yet. But if it is? It won’t be a surprise.