What happened today to U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona is hauntingly similar what a man in Yakima threatened to do to Sen. Patty Murray last spring over Murray's support for President Obama's health care reform bill:

On April 6, Charles Alan Wilson, a wiry 63-year-old man with sun-spotted skin and graying red hair, was arrested at his home in Selah, Washington. The charges: leaving more than a dozen voice mails for the state's senior Democratic senator, Patty Murray, in which he allegedly parroted Tea Party talking points and called Murray a "Pike Street whore" who deserved to be killed over her vote in favor of health-care reform. "Somebody's gonna get to you one way or another and blow your fucking brains out," Wilson allegedly said. "If I have the chance, I would do it." While searching Wilson's property, FBI agents confiscated a pistol they found in Wilson's Bronco, as well as two .22-caliber rifles from inside his butter-yellow ranch house.

Remember: When people paid attention to Wilson's voice mails, it turned out that Wilson—who was sentenced to a year in prison in October—was using phrases almost identical to those used by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as they campaigned against health care reform.