As I noted yesterday, Floyd Corkins, the guy who planned to kill a bunch of people at the Family Research Council offices in Washington, DC and then rub Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces as they died, pleaded guilty yesterday. And he admitted that he picked the FRC and several other targets based on a “Hate Map” at the Southern Poverty Law Center website:

If this sounds familiar to you, it’s exactly what the left and the media (PTR) claimed was the cause behind Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Arizona two years ago, in which he killed six people and severely wounded Gabby Giffords. Within hours, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters seized upon a map from Sarah Palin’s website as the cause:

According to leftist logic, this map made Jared Loughner shoot a bunch of people, whether he ever saw it or not. It didn’t matter whether he saw it. It didn’t matter that blaming Palin for it made no sense. It didn’t matter that it was insane. It felt right. So they went with it.

Now we have another maniac and another map. Except this time, the maniac is pointing directly at that map and saying, “That’s why I picked those people.” But since the targets of his thwarted rampage don’t hold the correct opinions, they don’t count.

They’re not keeping quiet about it, as Paul Bedard reports:

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that the Southern Poverty Law Center should take responsibility for the shooting and take down their hate map. “The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarter and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,'” he said. “Once again, I call on the SPLC to put an immediate stop to its practice of labeling organizations that oppose their promotion of homosexuality,” said Perkins, adding, “Whether the SPLC continues to demonize those who hold to biblical morality or not, the Family Research Council will remain unequivocally committed to our mission of advancing faith, family and freedom.”

But the left and the media hate the FRC’s opinions about homosexuality, so that will be the story.

I noted yesterday that in CNN’s story on Corkin’s guilty plea, the SPLC isn’t mentioned until paragraph 19. Talk about burying the lede. Which makes sense when you consider that CNN actively promoted the SPLC after Corkins’ arrest. Newsbusters:

Only 20 hours after the shooting, CNN cited a 13 year-old FRC pamphlet to support the SPLC’s label of them as a “hate group.” Anchor Zoraida Sambolin passionately insisted: “But it is spewing hate, isn’t it? It is spewing hate. So it’s hate spewing hate.” Four days after that, anchor Randi Kaye used the SPLC map to report on “hate groups” in the U.S., still treating it as a credible source.

Maps don’t make people do things, any more than guns make people do things. The point here is the double standard. The left blamed a map for Gabby Giffords’ shooting because it was an excuse, however tenuous, to blame conservatives. Now they’re going to ignore, underplay, and/or explain away Floyd Corkins’ open admission that he used the SPLC’s “Hate Map” to target conservatives.

Because they are utterly corrupt.

P.S. In related news: Suspected LA Cop Killer Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web. But you won’t hear about it on the network news. That’s the rule among the media: It’s “right-wing violence” even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the right wing, and it will receive saturation coverage. Whereas violence that’s very clearly left-wing gets perfunctory national coverage (if any) that ignores the left-wing motive. Again: They are utterly corrupt.