Alan Franklin & Nancy Pelosi

President Obama’s first Chief of Staff, and now Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, once famously remarked “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” It seems that ethos pervades the political left these days, with liberal pundits pouncing on tragic news to push a political agenda, sometimes within mere minutes of the tragedy occurring.

Yesterday’s bombing in Boston, unfortunately, was no exception.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof made the first major splash, using the death of innocent bystanders as an excuse to attack Senate Republicans over their opposition to Obama’s ATF nominee. Beyond the fact that there were no warnings of the attack, making ATF’s role nonexistent in stopping the attack, it is beyond reprehensible to use the death of innocents as an immediate excuse to launch into a petty political attack.

Kristof, to his credit, later apologized for his remark, calling it a “low blow.“

Unfortunately, the Left in Colorado does not have the same sense of self-awareness, with ProgressNow Colorado’s perennial political director, Alan Franklin, refusing to apologize for his own invoking of the tragedy to score political points.

As has become tradition on Tax Day, ProgressNow Colorado leads a merry band of paid political staffers in a hashtag game called #proudtopay where they boast of all the government spending they are proud to pay taxes for. The game began before the terrorist attack on Boston, but soon after news broke of the event it quickly became part of their political message, when Alan Franklin tweeted “First responders. #proudtopay #coleg”

Our good friends at Complete Colorado quickly called Franklin out for his tasteless tweet:

Classy…took you less than an hour to tie this into your hashtag party? RT @alanfranklin First responders. #proudtopay #coleg

— Complete Colorado (@CompleteCO) April 15, 2013

We are all proud of the heroic first responders in Boston yesterday, running toward the danger as people ran away. However, invoking them at a moment of national crisis to make a cheap political point about paying taxes — higher in the case of what ProgressNow advocates — is downright despicable.

As we admonished Franklin on Twitter, in times of tragedy you should offer prayers, not politics. There is plenty of time to discuss policy implications later on, but the moment of national crisis is no time to think about advancing your political football down the field.

We wish liberals would understand this basic facet of civilized society, but with Obama’s speechwriters unable to restrain themselves even during the day of the horrific Newtown shootings, we don’t hold out much hope.

Former Obama WH speechwriter. –> RT @jonlovett: Politicize the tragedy. Politicize the fuck out of it.

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) December 14, 2012

UPDATE: The shameless and despicable politicization continues, with House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) invoking the attacks to make a political point about sequestration. From the left-wing Talking Points Memo:

At his weekly Capitol briefing Tuesday, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said the explosions in Boston demonstrates “why having the ability to dress security concerns is important,” and thus provides more evidence that sequestration should be turned off.

UPDATE 2: Colorado’s own left-wing netroot ghoul David Sirota goes off the deep end, penning an article on Salon entitled “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.”

Yes, this is the same David Sirota who had no problem with a friend of his threatening to lynch a reporter from Ed News Colorado. What was that about white privilege, David?