Last week, the tea party-dominated Republicans took control of the US House of Representatives. Today, a Democratic congresswoman was shot in the head at point-blank range during a public meeting in Arizona. She had previously appeared on a "target list" circulated by tea party Queen Sarah Palin, which carried the chilling headline "we've diagnosed the problem... Help us prescribe the solution" and marked target candidates with crosshairs:
Now that map is looking like a literal hit-list, an incitement to murder.
The tea party was all about inciting the whackos. Now that has reached its natural conclusion, with somebody being shot. The question is whether this will cause them to stop and think - or to pursue such tactics even harder.