For those who have been living in a cave for the past eighteen hours, U.S. congresswoman Gabriel Giffords was shot through the brain today at a "meet and greet" event in her home district, AZ-8, outside of Tucson, Arizona. She survived emergency surgery and her surgeon is "cautiously optimistic" that she will survive her injuries. Six other people were killed, including a nine-year-old girl and U.S. federal judge who had come to thank her for her support in a judicial issue. The shooter appears to have been a 22-year-old with previous history of threatening behavior and indications of mental illness. :/

Giffords was married to Navy Captain and astronaut Mark Kelly, and was a strong supporter of NASA and the U.S. space program. Over on SFFNet, most of us feel that she's "one of the family"; I know that the praying folks are praying and the rest are thinking about her and her family. She sounds like the kind of people that RAH and VGH would have liked very much.