There are hot takes, and then there are Las Vegas Sun hot takes. Police identified the shooter in an attempted assassination of a Louisville mayoral candidate as Quintez Brown, a well-known political activist and columnist in town. Brown had started a campaign for a different office on a platform of pan-African revolution and hardline socialist principles, similar to a long track record of progressive activism as a regular columnist at the Louisville Courier Journal.

The editorial board of the Las Vegas Sun apparently read that as evidence of Republican violence, and uncorked an editorial that makes pouncing look like a tiptoe through the tulips (via RedState):

Holy f*ck, @LasVegasSun. This editorial was written after the alleged shooter, Quintez Brown, was identified as a left-wing BLM activist. https://t.co/oZ2lEl71Lq pic.twitter.com/JG9Td1kQ5d

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) February 16, 2022

You’ll be happy to know that the LVS editors rethought their position on Brown. No seriously, they added this to the end of the editorial:

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect reporting on the alleged shooter’s political ties.

One might have thought that newspaper editors would wait to get that reporting first before writing a screen blaming Republicans. So what did they change? They didn’t change the opening paragraph at all:

A terrifying incident in Louisville, Ky., this week revealed the dangers of the talk coming from the right about civil war and political violence.

They did edit the two paragraphs highlighted by Tom Bevan, but only to attempt to shoehorn in their original blame-shifting to the Right:

The alleged shooter, a 21-year-old political activist, was arrested near the scene and later charged with attempted murder along with four counts of wanton endangerment.

While it’s been reported that the activist was involved in the Black Lives Matter and gun-safety movements and there has been no indication yet that he had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.

And from that point on, the LVS editors continue to lay the blame for radical-Leftist violence on Republicans and Donald Trump. It’s not as if there isn’t room for criticism about extremists on the Right, but why does the Left get a pass? We spent most of the last two years watching radical leftists burn down cities and stage insurrections in places like Seattle, Portland, and the Twin Cities. Quintez Brown may well have been driven by mental-health issues, but his context is clearly the hard Left. If that context doesn’t matter, then neither does the LVS-supplied context.

And let’s not forget that the hard-Left Black Lives Matter movement took steps to own Brown’s actions yesterday by posting his bail. Not a word about that appears in the LVS editorial. Instead, we get this:

Given that the GOP has largely fueled this problem, it holds the lion’s share of the responsibility for addressing it. Republicans must condemn, in the strongest terms, any member of their party who promotes or suggests political violence.

So when will we see the LVS editorial demanding that all of the Democrats and corporations who endorsed Black Lives Matter condemn this assassination attempt in Louisville “in the strongest terms”? Or at least condemn their bail-raising efforts for their activist and his targeting of a prominent Jewish Democrat for assassination?

Don’t hold your breath.