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Palin: 'They're Not Going To Shut Me Up'

Saying that the "mainstream media" has tried to score political points and that she and other conservatives were "falsely accused of being [an] accessory to murder," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spoke again last night about the shooting rampage in Arizona and discussions afterward regarding the tone of political debate.

On Fox News Channel's Hannity,the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee expanded on things she said in a video she released last week. She told Sean Hannity that:

-- "I will continue to speak out. ... They're not going to shut me up. ... They can't make us sit down and shut up."

-- Regarding the tone of political discourse, "it's going to be very tough and even futile to ... start censoring everyone's speech and everyone's icons. ... We hear now of this desire, this demand for civility. ... [I am] certainly in agreement with the ideal of being civil. ... [But] we should not use an event like that in Arizona to stifle debate."

-- The much-discussed map that her political action committee posted last year, with crosshairs on the districts of 20 members of Congress (including that of Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically wounded in the Jan. 8 attack) "wasn't an original graphic." It is like others used "for many years ... in political races" by Democrats and Republicans.

The decision to remove that map from her PAC's website shortly after the shootings was made by "the contract graphic artist. ... I don't think that was inappropriate [removing the map]."

But, the map "had absolutely nothing to do with an apolitical or perhaps even left-leaning criminal" attacking the Giffords event in Tucson.

Here is the video of Palin's appearance on Hannity. Palin is a paid contributor on Fox:

Update at 7:45 a.m. ET. Speaking of Palin, this video tribute was originally put on YouTube last October, but seems to have "gone viral" in recent days:

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.