TWO APs IN ONE: Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

A year since that fateful Saturday morning when Giffords was severely wounded during a shooting rampage in her home district, the Arizona congresswoman resigned on Wednesday with a plea for civility — and a hint that she’ll be back on the national stage. For now, the 41-year-old said, her movements and speech still halting, she needs to focus on her recovery.

For all the kind words showered on her, Giffords reflected in her resignation letter about a level of respect that seems like an aberration these days in a bitterly divided Washington.

In her five years in Congress, she said, “Always I fought for what I thought was right. But never did I question the character of those with whom I disagreed. Never did I let pass an opportunity to join hands with someone just because he or she held different ideals.”

Associated Press wire report, January 25, 2012.

Evidently, AP has forgotten the calls for civility from Giffords and Obama, as well as the pledges from their fellow left-leaning media mavens in early 2011 to avoid unnecessary gun metaphors — to the point of treating them like the N-word, as an MSNBC guest suggested to Chris Matthews’ approval, when they’re reduced to accepting the following photo for their wire service, composed by AP photographer Charlie Neibergall:

In response to the well-deserved firestorm last night, “the AP’s director of media relations Paul Colford released a statement explaining the photograph, but not apologizing,” as Mediaite notes today

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz was shown in a series of 14 photos taken by an Associated Press photographer at a ‘Celebrate the 2nd Amendment’ event Saturday afternoon, held at a shooting range in Johnston, Iowa. Five of the photos published by AP included images of guns seen on a wall in the background so that it appeared a pistol was pointed at Sen. Cruz’s head. The images were not intended to portray Sen. Cruz in a negative light.

Uh-huh. Of course in reality, all of that posturing from the left in 2011 really was just a modified limited hangout to browbeat the first GOP House since 2006. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in August of 2011 after the media ignored Joe Biden, Tom Friedman and others were referring to that Republican Congress as “terrorists” without a hint of media scolding, “To Hell with You People.”

UPDATE “Imagine Hillary Clinton were confronted by pro-life protesters, some of them carrying gory images of aborted babies, and one press photographer decided to frame a shot composed of nothing more than her face side by side with one of those gory posters in the near background. How do you suppose that image would go down with the left’s abortion warriors? Safe bet: We’ll never find out.”