Police Stopped Loughner?s Car on Day of Shooting

TUCSON ? Jared L. Loughner had repeated contact with law enforcement officers over the years, and hours before Saturday?s shootings was pulled over by a police officer for running a red light as he frenetically prepared to kill a congresswoman, the authorities said Wednesday.

Investigators are ?100 percent? certain that Mr. Loughner did not have an accomplice, and while they continue to investigate his ?online associations? they see no obvious connection between Mr. Loughner and political extremists, said Richard Kastigar, who oversees investigations at the Pima County Sheriff?s Department. Six people were killed and 14 wounded in the shootings.

Instead, local and federal law enforcement officials are focusing now on filling in gaps in the timeline on the day of the shooting and gathering evidence to counter an expected insanity defense, investigators said.

Judge Larry Alan Burns of Federal District Court in San Diego was named on Wednesday to preside over Mr. Loughner?s trial. Judge Burns was appointed to the federal bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush, and is best known for presiding over the trial of Representative Randy Cunningham of California, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors.

So far, this much is known about Mr. Loughner?s movements in the hours before the shooting, according to the authorities:

7:34 a.m.: Mr. Loughner was pulled over by an Arizona Game and Fish Department officer for running a red light on an access road a few miles from the supermarket where the shooting later took place.

?The contact was very cordial,? said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the department. ?Mr. Loughner was very forthcoming with his license and registration and insurance. The officer did a visual examination of the vehicle. He had no probable cause to search the vehicle or detain the subject.?

About 8 a.m.: Randy Loughner saw his son take a black bag out of the trunk of a vehicle outside the family home. When the father demanded to know what was inside, the son mumbled something unintelligible and took off on foot. His father followed in a car but lost him.

9:18 a.m.: Mr. Loughner contacted a taxi company from a Circle K convenience store between the family home and the shooting site.

9:41 a.m.: A taxi arrived to pick him up.

9:59 a.m.: The taxi arrived at the Safeway supermarket where Representative Gabrielle Giffords was about to conduct a meet-the-constituents event. The driver and Mr. Loughner entered the supermarket to get change for the fare.

10:11 a.m.: Mr. Loughner opened fire, beginning with Ms. Giffords and then aiming into the crowd.

Investigators say the evidence they are gathering shows that Mr. Loughner set out to kill Ms. Giffords and that he knew the difference between right and wrong. They cite comments to a friend asking for forgiveness. Mr. Kastigar also noted scrawlings on a piece of paper found in his house, including the words ?die bitch,? ?die cops? and words to the effect of ?assassination plans have been arranged,? Mr. Kastigar said.

The sheriff?s department released records Wednesday showing that Mr. Loughner and a member of his family had at least nine contacts with law enforcement between 1994 and 2010. He had been bullied at school, and poked with a needle by a classmate in 2004. He was also rushed to the hospital in 2006 after showing up at school severely intoxicated; he told the police he had consumed a lot of vodka because his father had yelled at him.

In 2007, the records show, he and a friend were arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia after the police smelled marijuana when they stopped a vehicle they were in.

In 2008, an officer seemed to notice something was amiss with Mr. Loughner, who came to the station to report that someone had improperly posted his name and photograph on a Web site. ?I noted that Jared was slow to respond to my questions,? the officer wrote. ?He often hesitated as if he was trying to think of an explanation.?

Mr. Kastigar offered a robust defense of police officers? actions with regard to Mr. Loughner, who had ?minor? run-ins with them before the shootings.

?There?s been all this speculation? that the gunman could have been stopped, he said. But ?there was nothing, and I cannot underscore this strongly enough,? he said, that would have led law enforcement ?to conclude that this guy was going to act out and shoot 20 people.?

Investigators are combing through social networking sites like Facebook and other online forums to reconstruct Mr. Loughner?s trail on the Internet in the weeks leading up to the shooting. But Mr. Kastigar said that would take time.

Another law enforcement official said the only gun found at the home was a single-shot shotgun. ?He didn?t have a major cache of weapons,? the official said.

Mr. Loughner bought the bullets for the Glock semiautomatic pistol used in the shooting on Saturday morning at a local Wal-mart, the authorities said. The bullets were full metal jacket range rounds, one official said, noting that had the gunman purchased more expensive self-defense rounds that mushroom upon impact, many more people might have died. It certainly would have done far ?more damage,? the official said.

The most severely wounded of the survivors, Ms. Giffords, who received a bullet wound to the head, continues to recover, doctors said Wednesday.

?We have decreased the amount of sedation and she is becoming more spontaneous,? said Dr. Peter Rhee, the director of medical trauma care at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where Ms. Giffords is being treated. Three hospital workers were fired Wednesday for looking at private medical records of victims of the shootings, though officials said they did not believe the information had been publicly released.

At Ms. Giffords?s Congressional office in Tucson, staff members said they were overwhelmed by outpouring of support for the wounded lawmaker. Among those visiting in recent days were former Senator Dennis DeConcini and Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, whose district abuts Ms. Giffords? and who has offered to assist his colleague with constituent services while she recovers.

Then there was the unknown man who came in and offered to be put to work. ?He came in and said he wanted to volunteer,? said C. J. Karamargin, the congresswoman?s communications director. ?We said, ?Who are you?? Then he told us he was a congressman.?

It was Representative Hanen Clarke, a newly elected Democrat from Michigan.

?It was a touching gesture,? Mr. Karamargin said.

Jennifer Medina and Anissa Tanweer contributed reporting from Tucson, and John Schwartz from New York.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=81990d8a4d3b6fa6f5c9a9a760511728

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Obama Calls for New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics

The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to ?sharpen our instincts for empathy.?

It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from Saturday?s shootings to urge Americans ?to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.?

?At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,? he said, ?it?s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.?

At an evening memorial service at the University of Arizona, the president led an overflow crowd in eulogizing the six people who died on Saturday and asked for prayers for the wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who the authorities say was the target of an assassination attempt.

He warned against ?simple explanations,? and spoke of the unknowability of the thoughts that ?lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man?s mind.? He suggested that the events should force individuals to look inward but also that they should prompt a collective response against reflexive ideological and social conflict.

While the tone and content were distinctly nonpolitical, there were clear political ramifications to the speech, giving Mr. Obama a chance, for an evening at least, to try to occupy a space outside of partisanship or agenda.

?If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let?s make sure it?s worthy of those we have lost,? Mr. Obama said. ?Let?s make sure it?s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.?

As members of the House reconvened in Washington for the first time since the shooting, setting aside a partisan health care debate to honor the lives of the victims, the memorial service here took on the form of a national catharsis, including a presidential reading from the Book of Psalms. But thousands of students and others in the crowd cheered at several other points during Mr. Obama?s 32-minute address, which took on the feel of a rally dedicated to the Arizona victims.

?If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse,? Mr. Obama said, ?let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy ? it did not ? but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.?

The president spoke after stopping to visit Ms. Giffords in her hospital room. He said he was told that shortly after his visit, Ms. Giffords opened her eyes for the first time, a moment that was witnessed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York; Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California; and other lawmakers who were here to pay their respects.

?Gabby opened her eyes for the first time,? Mr. Obama announced to the crowd. ?Gabby opened her eyes!?

The scene inside McKale Memorial Arena was a mix of grief and celebration, where a capacity crowd of 14,000 gathered beneath championship banners for the University of Arizona Wildcats. The service, which was televised nationally on the major broadcast and cable news networks, gave the president an opportunity ? and burden ? to lead the nation in mourning during prime time.

Aides said Mr. Obama wrote much of the speech himself late Tuesday night at the White House. Laden with religion overtones, Mr. Obama seemed as though he was striking a preacher?s tone with a politician?s reverb.

Helene Cooper reported from Tucson, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington. David M. Herszenhorn, Janie Lorber and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Washington.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=65f61fbd5aa2e83cc866bc731ddc56c4

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32% of my friends changed jobs last year. How many of yours? Linkedin will tell you.

32% of my friends changed jobs last year. How many of yours? Linkedin will tell you.

LinkedIn has started the New Year with a bang, pushing a new marketing campaign which aims to motivate users to get out of the jobs that they hate and start something new.

If you are a LinkedIn user, you might have received an email over the past couple of days that detailed how many of your friends on the social network changed jobs in 2010, providing thumbnails of the individuals and inviting you to learn more about them.

LinkedIn is well known for its ability to connect likeminded individuals in a certain profession, but it has also enabled recruitment specialists to connect with professionals and actively solicit business. Just last month LinkedIn rolled out a feature enabling its users to automatically generate a CV/resume which is populated automatically from a users profile. All the user needs to do was make sure that their information is up to date and they can generate a CV whenever they need.

Where Facebook has become the central hub of your social life, LinkedIn is making inroads into becoming the one-stop-shop for all of your professional needs. The email will almosty certainly prompt users to click the faces they recognise, generating pageviews but also increasing the chances of LinkedIn friends connecting with each other again and finding out what had changed for them over the past year.

A clever move by LinkedIn, even though I personally don?t use the network that much, I was tempted to click on the faces I recognised and see what jobs my friends had recently taken.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/01/13/32-of-my-friends-changed-jobs-last-year-how-many-of-yours-linkedin-will-tell-you/

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10 things Steve Jobs could say during sex

10 things Steve Jobs could say during sex

Yesterday I was joking around with Zee about the funny things Steve Jobs could say during sex in the comments section here. After that we came up with a few more funny quotes and this morning I decided to put them together in one image. Here you go.

Got more things that Steve could say? use the comments section.

Use this embed code if you want to place the image on your own site: