To the editor:

Simple as ABC. A three-link chain of events that, once set in motion, was predictable and inevitable.

The first link, Sarah Palin urges tea-baggers to target U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. In case they didn’t get the hint, Palin depicts the district in the crosshairs of a telescoped rifle (wink, wink, nod, nod).

The second link, proving the dictum that political action follows political rhetoric, has a gunman shooting Giffords through the brain and killing at least six people, including a 9-year-old girl. The child, Christina-Taylor Green, was either at the grocery store gathering of constituents, in which case she was a presumed liberal and Arizona has declared open season on liberals, or she was shopping for groceries with her mother. In that case she would be collateral damage.

Once this chain of events got started, the third link was the most predictable and pathetic. Sarah Palin, declining to gloat in public, is among the first to call with crocodile tears and condolences. Sarah, who has knowingly spread lies about “government death panels” denies any responsibility for creating a real death panel of her own.

As for the Journal-World, your headline in Sunday’s paper covers the opening of the Kansas Legislature next week while putting the political murders of six on page 8A. This lead, like the victims, was well and truly buried.