President Barack Obama will speak at 6 this evening at a memorial service at the University of Arizona’s basketball arena. He will be joined by Attorney General Eric Holder, who will read a Bible verse at the event, and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, who was Arizona’s governor before joining the president’s Cabinet. The president is expected to focus on the victims and what he has learned about them, White House officials said.
On Thursday, the body of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green is scheduled to be buried. Members of Westboro Baptist Church, known for picketing U.S. troops’ funerals with signs decrying homosexuality, plan to protest at Green’s service. They say the gunman was “sent . . . to deal with idolatrous America.” But on Tuesday, the Arizona legislature approved legislation designed to keep the protesters at a distance. Denver Post wire services
