Alleged Tucson Shooter's Insane MySpace and YouTube Videos: 'Goodbye Friends' Jared Lee Loughner's MySpace Page and YouTube Videos

Tucson authorities are saying that 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner is the man who shot Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head at a meeting with constituents in Tucson this morning. While Giffords remains in surgery at a northwest Tucson hospital, Loughner is currently in police custody.

Last year, Giffords was one of 20 House members targeted with crosshairs on Sarah Palin's controversial "Take Back the 20" map.

At this point, there's been no word on Loughner's motives. But looking at his online presence, it seems clear that he was a man unhinged (notice the handgun atop an American history textbook in his photos). In one of the last messages left this morning on his MySpace page, which has already been deleted, Loughner wrote, simply, "Goodbye friends ... Please don't be mad at me."

 

Loughner's YouTube videos are also disturbing, and strikingly similar to the sort of pseudo-intellectual chatter regarding overbearing governmental power that has become a mainstay at American Tea Party rallies.

Lastly, here's a video Loughner had "favorited" on YouTube, which depicts a masked man in a desert stomping around an American flag before lighting it on fire.

Here's hoping both Giffords and Loughner get the help they need.