COMMENT: Future posts will ana­lyze the lat­est “not polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed”, “lone nut” polit­i­cal assas­sin in Ari­zona. [Ini­tial press accounts dis­cussed more than one sus­pect.] What has received lit­tle notice is the death in a strange-sound­ing car fire of Ash­ley Tur­ton, the wife of Oba­ma’s liai­son to the now-GOP con­trolled House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Dan Tur­ton.

Was the death of Ms. Tur­ton a mes­sage to her hus­band?

Is THIS the GOP’s con­cept of bi-par­ti­san­ship?

NB: Some salient, rel­e­vant com­ments below.

The late Ms. Tur­ton’s car appears hard­ly dam­aged [right].



“Tur­ton Fire Caused by Low-Speed Crash, Police Say” by Rachel Blade, Jes­si­ca Brady and Ann Palmer; Roll Call; 1/10/2011.

EXCERPT: The car fire that led to the sud­den death of Ash­ley Tur­ton was caused by the impact after a low-speed crash, accord­ing to the major crash inves­ti­ga­tion unit of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment.

“It’s quite pos­si­ble that the vic­tim was maneu­ver­ing the car and came in con­tact with some kind of flam­ma­ble chem­i­cal mate­ri­als,” D.C. Fire spokesman Pete Piringer said.

Tur­ton, 37, was the for­mer chief of staff to Rep. Rosa DeLau­ro (D‑Conn.) and wife of White House liai­son to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan Tur­ton. . . .

. . . Police said there was a heavy fire in the garage at 4:45 a.m. that caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the 2008 BMW X5, which was par­tial­ly backed out into the dri­ve­way and looked singed. Fire dam­age could also be seen on a cor­ner of the brick home Mon­day.

When the fire was extin­guished, fire­fight­ers dis­cov­ered Turton’s body inside the car. . . .