Arizona shooter Jared Loughner is Jewish.

Is Jared Loughner's mother Jewish, JTA's Ron Kampeas wonders, based on the statement that she is by Loughner's friend Bryce Tierney in an interview with Mother Jones Monday.

Ron writes: "Now we get this from Mother Jones. Nick Baumann interviews Bryce Tierney a friend of Jared's who recalls the alleged shooter's first encounter with Giffords, in 2007 -- and then explains why Jared might have listed Mein Kampf as a 'favorite book':

Tierney believes that Loughner was very interested in pushing people's buttons—and that may have been why he listed Hitler's Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books on his YouTube page. (Loughner's mom is Jewish, according to Tierney.)

Conceivably, it seems possibe that given his state of mind, Loughner might have made up to his friend that his mother is Jewish.

(And one white supremacist website, based apparently on Tierney's comment to Mother Jones, has already decided that Loughner's mother went to Rep. Giffords' Tucson temple and that there's been a coverup of the thing.) A woman who answered the phone at that temple told AOL News Monday that "staff had been told not to talk about it but said, 'We have no proof that they [the Loughners] were ever members.'"

Public records show that Loughner's mother's maiden name is Amy Joanne Totman, and that she married his father Randy Lee Loughner on April 24, 1986. (As Ron points out to me, Totman is an old English name.)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, whom Loughner is accused of attempting to assassinate, is the first female Jewish lawmaker from Arizona. Arizona residents say that Giffords discovered her Judaism about a decade ago, and say they recalled that her father was Jewish by birth and her mother non-Jewish.

Given the deep interest in Loughner's motives for the attempted assassination, whether he was influenced by extremist groups (a subject reportedly being probed by local authorities), the stunning and horrific irony if Loughner like Giffords has a Jewish parent.