What's a newspaper to do when it ostentatiously refuses to cut funding for a high-profile play in Central Park depicting an obvious President Trump-themed Julius Caesar being assassinated, and then a left-wing extremist attempts to assassinate a group of GOP congressmen?

The answer is obvious: lie!

The New York Times editorial today about the attempted assassination yesterday in Alexandria is one of the most despicable acts of the newspaper since its Russia correspondent Walter Duranty  actively covered up Stalin's crimes in deliberately starving Ukraine.

In its editorial on the attempted mass murder of Republicans, the Times admits that James Hodgkinson was politically motivated:

The sniper, James Hodgkinson, who was killed by Capitol Police officers, was surely deranged, and his derangement had found its fuel in politics. Mr. Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders supporter and campaign volunteer virulently opposed to President Trump. He posted many anti-Trump messages on social media, including one in March that said "Time to Destroy Trump & Co."

Here it gets tricky for the Times, having endorsed showing the public (including that percentage of the public that is mentally unstable) a vivid theatrical enactment of the assassination of President Trump (reportedly causing raucous applause from the audience at the point of bloodiness).  Any unstable members of the audience might conclude that one could be a hero among the Smart Set by killing President Trump, or by extension Republicans with less protection than a constant Secret Service detail.  So the Times has been sponsoring showing the public that assassination is something to be celebrated – when the victim is the Republican president.  Its endorsement is explicit and conscious, because the Times refused to pull funding (unlike Delta Airlines and Bank of America) when the horrific implications of the onstage incitement were widely discussed.

With such obvious culpability, the Times is forced to lie and claim that the problem is with the tone of politics, something for which both parties share responsibility, and the proof is that Jared Laughner was inspired by Sarah Palin to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords:

Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

"The link to political incitement was clear" is a damnable lie!

Peter Hasson of the Daily Caller points out:

There is no evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Loughner, a schizophrenic, was at all inspired by Palin's electoral map.

As CNN's Jake Tapper pointed out in response to the NYT editorial: "even way back in Jan 2011 we knew that Loughlin's [sic] obsession began 3 years before the Palin map." Tapper made that same exact point back in 2011 when he worked for ABC.

Other commenters pointed out the NYT's bizarre and inexplicable dishonesty.

"The NYT editorial falsely claims Loughner shot Giffords due to a target on a photo," Commentary editor John Podhoretz wrote. "It's not yet 11. They can change it. Let's see."

The Times didn't change it, even after its lie was pointed out.  Even some honest leftists are appalled:

Ben Dreyfuss, a senior editor with left-wing Mother Jones, called the editorial "stupid," adding: "Palin didn't make that loon shoot Gabby Giffords."

"Unbelievable. The Times is still peddling this despicable lie," said Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto. He added: "This is shockingly dishonest."

For a newspaper styled as "the newspaper of record" to outright lie in this way shows us that there is panic at the Gray Lady.  As on the left as a whole.  They have been caught out with the consequences of their fusillade of incitement to violence.

As I wrote at the time, Kathy Griffin's severed head photo is so vivid and resonant that it will linger in the collective memory of Americans for many years.  All the blather from the Times cannot obscure the fact that unprecedented levels of incitement to violence have been put before the public for over half a year.  There is absolutely nothing on the right that compares.  

Roughly 60 percent of Americans are either strong liberals or strong conservatives.  Among the 40 percent who are in the middle, the record of incitement and its consequences may have a telling effect.

Update via Yahoo News:

The New York Times has published an editor’s note correcting an editorial that linked the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., to a fund-raising email by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The editorial drew complaints from many conservatives and from Palin herself, who hinted she might explore legal action against the newspaper.

“An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords,” the note reads in its entirety. “In fact, no such link was established.”

The Times did not offer an apology.