The hot new way the right is trying to politicize the Boston Marathon bombing is through the fact that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been receiving government assistance until recently, while the Tsarnaev brothers' parents received assistance in the past. The implication is that YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS directly funded the bombing, never mind that Tamerlan's family income had exceeded the eligibility threshold and they hadn't been receiving aid for at least several months before the bombing. Even if Tamerlan had been on every kind of government assistance you can think of, though, it wouldn't make this a logical line of attack. As
Media Matters asks:
But where does this logic end? The Tsarnaev brothers presumably used taxpayer funded roads to physically reach the Boston Marathon finish line. Will right wing media next attack government spending on highway maintenance for literally paving the way for the Boston terror suspects to commit their crimes?
And what if Tamerlan had been working for Walmart? Would that mean the bombing was financed by Walmart?
Republicans blocked changes to gun laws despite the fact that we know that Adam Lanza and James Holmes and Jared Lee Loughner killed dozens with guns, to say nothing of all the other, lower-profile shooting deaths of recent years. But they're out beating the bushes for any way they can turn the Boston Marathon bombing to political advantage—pinning it on welfare, using it to try to derail immigration reform or to set a precedent for rolling back civil liberties. It's as if Republicans are seeking to completely sever the relationship between cause and effect, acknowledging reality only long enough to attach the relevant proper nouns to the political spin they were pushing anyway.