In 2004, this is what Mitt Romney said about the kind of weapons that James Holmes used to mow down 70 people in a mere seconds when he signed an assault weapons ban as governor.

“These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense,” Romney said at the time. “They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”

Quite right.

But now here's the 2012 Mitt Romney, carrying the NRA's water by lying about the Aurora massacre.

"This person shouldn't have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them," Romney told NBC News in an interview. "And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't."

In, fact it wasn't illegal.

Holmes broke no laws when he purchased an assault-style rifle, a shotgun and Glock handgun, and he passed the required background checks.

If Romney doesn't think Holmes should've had "any kind of weapons" -- then the laws need to be changed. That's certainly what he believed eight years ago when banned assault rifles as governor of a liberal state, long before he was running as Chief Wingnut.

What a disgrace and a coward this guy is.

I figured after a little time off I wouldn't get so sick reading and writing about the twisted minds of the conservative/TeaCrack Party, but I was wrong. Twitter has really fueled their lunatic scribblings. Check this out.

John Cole:

James Taranto, the WSJ rightwing nutjob whose job is the Best of the Web feature, which invariably means reposting whatever Glenn Reynolds or the halfwits at NRO write every day:

He is, of course, referring to the reports that a number of men used their bodies to shield their loved ones during the Aurora massacre. Most of us thought of this as a noble and amazing sacrifice, but to the American Taliban, these may have been slutty slut sluts who use birth control (or even worse, vote for Democrats!) and make their own decisions, so whether or not they deserved to be saved is up to wingnut judgment.

You know who got to make the decision whether their lives were worth it, Taranto? The three heroes who ate bullets saving their loved ones, not some fat scumbag neocon filth sitting comfortably with a glass of bourbon while wanking on twitter from the comfort of a wingback chair in Manhattan.

Taranto went on to pen a mea culpa, sorta kinda, at the WSJ:

We intended this to be thought-provoking, but to judge by the response, very few people received it that way. The vast majority found it offensive and insulting. This column has often argued that a failure of public communication is the fault of the public communicator, and that's certainly true in this case. What follows is an attempt to answer for this failure with a circumspect accounting of our thoughts.

One word: L.A.M.E.

Notice that at no point does Taranto say he's sorry for having even vaguely implied that the survivors -- who are also victims -- might be unworthy of the sacrifice. Nah. Being a right-wing a-hole means never, ever, EVER saying "sorry".

What you really notice here is that Taranto writes (habitually) in the Royal We, aka the Majestic Plural. In the 21st century, this kind of writing is perhaps excusable for editorials produced by an editorial board. Not so much for personal opinion columns. Then it’s just preposterously pretentious. Though perfect, in a let-them-eat-cake way, for a would-be spokesperson for the 1 Percent.

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Colorado should be Ground Zero for a renewed commitment to new gun control legislation. It has witnessed two of the worst mass shootings in US history over the past 13 years, and in both of which, children were among the victims. In the Aurora massacre, the stockpile that James Holmes was able to legally amass included a gas powered assault rifle with a 100-round clip (which would've been banned under the 1999 Assault Weapons Ban), and scores of online purchases including 6,000 rounds of ammunition,

"...bulletproof vests and other tactical gear, and a high-capacity “drum magazine” large enough to hold 100 rounds and capable of firing 50 or 60 rounds per minute — a purchase that would have been restricted under proposed legislation that has been stalled in Washington for more than a year."

But none of this suggests to the governor of Colorado, Democrat John Hickenlooper, that stricter gun control laws should be considered.

STEPHANOPOULOS: [...] As you can imagine, Governor, the debate over whether this could have been prevented has already began. You probably heard the comments of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, who made headlines on Friday with his calls for tougher gun laws. Other people, several in your state, saying that perhaps if someone else in that theater had a gun, the killer could have been stopped. Does it make you think at this point that you need to take another look at Colorado’s gun laws?

HICKENLOOPER: You know, I’m sure that that is going to happen, but I look at this, this wasn’t a Colorado problem, this is a human problem, right? And how we can have such a warped individual and no one around him be aware? You know, I worry that if we got rid all of the guns -- and certainly we have so many guns in this country, we do have a lot more than gun violence than many other countries -- but even if you didn't have access to guns, this guy was diabolical. Right? He would have found explosives, he would have found something else, some sort of poisonous gas, he would have done something to create this horror.

What an absurd hypothetical. I'd really like to know what "explosives" or "poison gas" Hickenlooper thinks Holmes could've "found" that would allow him to kill or injure 70 people in a few seconds. The fact is, bomb making requires patience, materials, skill, testing -- and a deployment strategy. Same goes for poison gas. Which is why we haven't had 36 mass poison gas attacks or mass bombings over the past 30 years.

Also, the notion that gun control laws don't work isn't supported by the evidence. After the Dublane school massacre in 1997, the UK effectively banned guns -- and they haven't had a mass shooting event since.

How does Hickenlooper explain that?