From the Rachel Maddow Show: Terrorist Threats Against Women's Health Clinics on the Rise

It really looks like more violence against women and medical providers in the crusade to end abortion, is coming. These groups are just whacked out, picketing people's private homes, yelling at and touching patients, threatening doctors and staff. Etc. Tiller's murder emboldened them, and the closing of his clinic has further emboldened them. Now we see that Operation Rescue wants to make a bid on Tiller's clinic.

Perhaps more insidiuously, a meme has been gaining traction, recently articulated by this assshole, arguing that by taking the abortion issue "out of the democratic process," the Supreme Court is to blame for political violence. How unfortunate that the New York Times would publish such trash.

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Tiller's Clinic Closed

Linking to this AP piece, Charles at Little Green Footballs asks:

Does anti-abortion terrorism actually work in America?

A chilling question, yes?

From the AP piece:

Dr. Warren Hern, one of the few remaining doctors in the country who performs late-term abortions, said the closure of the clinic was an "outrage" and he feels the loss for Dr. Tiller's family and the patients he served.

"How tragic, how tragic," Hern said when contacted by phone at his Boulder, Colo., clinic. "This is what they want, they've been wanting this for 35 years."

Asked whether he felt efforts should be made to keep the clinic open, he said: "This was Dr. Tiller's clinic. How much can you resist this kind of violence? What doctor, what reasonable doctor would work there? Where does it stop?"

A bit further down:

Hern blamed comments from anti-abortion groups for Tiller's death.

"The anti-abortion fanatics have to shut up and go home. They have to back off and they have to respect other people's point of view. This is an outrage, this is a national outrage

Meanwhile, back in crazy-fucktard-town:

Randall Terry, the founder of the original Operation Rescue group, responded to news that Tiller's clinic would remain closed with, "Good riddance." He said history would remember Tiller's clinic as it remembers Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.

"What set him apart is that he killed late-term babies," Terry said. "If his replacement was going to continue to kill late-term children, the protests would continue, the investigations would continue, the indictments would continue."

And so here we are.

Deeply Retroactive Assy McGee Award® to Michael Reagan

An extremist white supremacist radio host named Hal Turner was just arrested for engaging in what apparently DO constitute "fighting words." Turner has been charged with:

inciting Catholics to “take up arms” and singling out two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official on a Web site -- was taken into custody in New Jersey late Wednesday after state Capitol police in Connecticut obtained a warrant for his arrest.

But blightful a human being as he is, it is not Turner who wins the Assy McGee Award® for today. That honor instead goes to President Ronald Reagan's son, Michael Reagan. The clip below, Harrogate learned about from one of the commenters in the above link, and from there it did not take long to find video footage of a blood-chilling exchange that took place between Reagan and a caller on 8/15/2006. This is some of the most extreme rhetoric you will find on Right Wing talk radio, and that is saying something.

What we encounter below on its face would appear to be hyperbolic, not representative of right wing punditry. But given the increasingly shrill climate on the internet, the radio, and even on cable news today, one wonders just how hyperbolic it really is in the circles to which Bill O'Reilly caters, and to which George Tiller's murderer undoubtedly belonged.