Investigate and Charge Political Figures and Political Media with Incitement to Violence in Connection to the January 9, 2011 Arizona Shootings and Attempted Murder of Congresswoman Gabriell

To the Honorable Members of the Supreme Court:

We the undersigned believe that the poisonous rhetoric used in the political media outlets and by several prominent politicians has had a direct link to the attempted murder of congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford that lead to 6 deaths, including that of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green; and that the gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, was responding in his actions directly to the noxious political discourse that has been escalating in the past few years.

In 2010, long before the shootings, Gabrielle Gifford said: We're in Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action.

The symbolic, rhetorical and figurative language and actions of certain politicians and political figures such as Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Glenn Beck, Bill OReilly, Rush Limbaugh and others, we believe, catalyzed, aggravated and even caused the January 9 shootings; and we therefore believe a mass investigation of the political media and the conduct of politicians in the media should be unleashed and charges of incitement to violence, soliciting a criminal act and / or willful disregard should be made where appropriate against members of the media and political body who have made such comments or have acted in ways that reflect a call to violence that has manifested itself in the Arizona murders of 6 and the attempted murder of Gabrielle Gifford.

We understand that the scope and breadth of such an investigation and charges would be immense, but so would its impact on the American public, in understanding that, as we have learned from the suicides of dozens of LGBT teens, talk matters, and that even free speech should be carefully considered lest it devolves from discourse and becomes incitement and provocation.