So the guy screams an Islamic oath at the top of his lungs then commences killing people. Nothing to see here, folks. Australian ABC news ran an eight-minute report without once mentioning Hasan’s faith. Barack Obama announced that “we cannot fully know” why Hasan slaughtered so many. Desperate to avoid the screamingly obvious, various media theorised that Hasan may have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, pre-traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder by proxy, prospective traumatic stress disorder, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma or secondary trauma. One problem with all that post-trauma talk: Hasan had no trauma to be post of…

Now to Tucson, Arizona, where six people are dead and Democrat congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is seriously injured following another gun rampage. Attacker Jared Lee Loughner has thus far offered no clue at all about why he did it. Apparently the fellow is a drug-using gamer whom one former classmate recalls as “left wing”, a “political radical”, “reclusive”, a “pot head” and “quite liberal”. He’d met Giffords four years ago and thought her “stupid & unintelligent”. Besides that background and Loughner’s MySpace and YouTube rantings, that’s all we have. There’s no “Allahu Akbar” here. Yet – incredibly – many clearly heard a cry of “Allahu Palin”.