Tomorrow Wendy

Today's column over at the Daily Banter takes a look at Wendy Davis's somewhat stunning but truly ballsy admission: Texas's women are going to lose the battle over a draconian abortion bill tomorrow.

Here's the opening shot:

"It may not have seemed possible, but in some strange way I respect Wendy Davis even more right now that I did the night she stood up and stood down a draconian anti-abortion bill two weeks ago on the floor of the Texas senate. Davis’s 13-hour filibuster was instantly the stuff of political and cultural legend, but in some ways it takes even more guts to admit to ugly reality than it does to rally the hopeful to action. Or maybe it’s like this: It takes guts to both rally the hopeful and admit that despite that you’re still going to lose the battle at hand."

Read the Rest Here

Bill of No Rights

This Texas abortion bill take on a Schoolhouse Rock classic is the best thing you'll see all day.

Tweet of the Day

Perfect. Just perfect. I've gotta give Stockman credit: He manages to push two GOP articles of faith in one simple sentence and create an image of a kind of conservative utopia, where abortion is impossible and even the unborn are armed.

Stockman, by the way, is a special kind of raging idiot, even among Texas conservatives, who as you know have raised raging idiocy to a transcendent art form. He's the one who took Ted Nugent as his date to the State of the Union address earlier this year; he's vowed on more than one occasion to try to impeach Barack Obama; and he recently invited any gun owner who feels "persecuted" by his state to move to Texas, an idea that I have to admit I'm all for. By all means let's concentrate them in the one place they're all already pretty much concentrated in, then maybe build the 50-foot-high electrical border fence they've all been clamoring for and cut the whole fucking place loose as its own post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Seriously, Texas is the stupidest goddamn place on Earth.

Adding: Oh, hey, look. No sooner had I posted the above than I came across this tweet from Barry Smitherman, whom Rick Perry appointed as the top Texas oil and gas regulator. Basically, Smitherman is all outraged over Republican lawmakers who either support sensible gun control or who apparently aren't fighting hard enough to defend unimpeded gun access -- so of course he circulates a picture that accuses them of being guilty of "TREASON" and hangs a noose next to their names. Not only are these people stupid and crazy, they're also really fucking dangerous.

True Believers

As promised, today's column over at the Daily Banter has to do with Richard "Howling Mad" Mourdock and his BFF, Mitt Romney.

Here's an excerpt:

"Mourdock’s status as one of the new breed of unpolished, ideologically pure Tea Party darlings that have seized the imagination of the right over the past four years — make no mistake, in direct response to the election of Barack Obama — is really what’s at the center of this latest mess for the GOP. He’s like a child. He doesn’t know any better. He just blurts out what’s on his mind. Mourdock’s the picture of unfiltered conservative sincerity. And that’s what allowed him to wipe the floor with longtime Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar back in May of this year: the fact that he appeals to the batshit crazy beliefs and superstitions of the base and, upon winning, immediately throws down the eliminationist gauntlet by declaring that his idea of bipartisanship in Washington is 'Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.' The no-longer-fringe right of today eats that crap up like soma."

Read the Rest Here

Adding:



That didn't take long at all. Boo-ya.

Howling Mad Mourdock

The Romney campaign has said that the above ad will continue running in support of Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana -- this despite Mourdock being the latest Neanderthal idiot to make a really ill-advised comment about abortion. Surely you've heard by now, but Mourdock said Tuesday night that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen," which echoes in a slightly more delicate manner Tea Party darling Sharron Angle's argument a couple of years back that a rape pregnancy was an opportunity to turn "a lemon situation into lemonade."

Look, don't be shocked by this. Don't be shocked at all. This is what the modern conservative movement believes, lock, stock and barrel -- Romney included. He may be trying to "distance himself" from Mourdock's comments, but he agrees with them entirely and so does his running-mate, Paul Ryan; any concession otherwise is made simply for the sake of political expediency (because an artful politician knows that you can think these things but you can't under any circumstances say them out loud). These people have ceded their ability to be reasonable and humane to the will of a magical deity they believe in to the point of madness and whose demands they expect everyone else to bend to as well.

Chances are this will be my next Banter column, so stay tuned.

Assistant to the Quote of the Day

"They keep making this case in public because it has important policy consequences for them. You see, if you can't get pregnant by being raped then anybody who is pregnant by definition was not raped. It could not have been a rape; no matter what you say you must have wanted it if you ended up pregnant. And if you wanted it there's no reason to feel sorry for you and let you end this pregnancy. You should have thought about that before you lured your supposed rapist to do this thing that you obviously secretly wanted. What was the line there? 'To get pregnant takes a little cooperation.' So we know you secretly wanted it otherwise you wouldn't be pregnant and we wouldn't now be talking about what the government is going to force you to do with regard to your pregnancy."

-- Rachel Maddow, brilliantly turning the argument around, exposing the true motives of those pushing the false claim that women who are raped can't get pregnant and basically annihilating the anti-abortion legislation crowd

Seriously, set aside twenty minutes and watch this.

It's just a masterful takedown.

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way, and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter."

-- Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa on the ongoing "debate" over whether a woman's body can prevent pregnancy in cases of rape or incest

It's almost not worth quoting King -- he's that crazy. But there it is again: the idea that proven scientific fact is up for discussion and that if someone doesn't have personal experience with a given situation, it diminishes the truth of it. We see this all the time when some idiot says, "Well, it's really cold where I live in Missouri right now, so global climate change must be a hoax."

It's just staggeringly stupid.

Quote of the Day

"Faithful to the 'self-evident' truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

-- From the official 2012 Republican Party platform, according to CNN, which pushes for a Constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions

Well, there you have it. Don't ever let it be said that the Republicans are trying to hide in the shadows or pull some kind of bait-and-switch; they're coming right out and telling you what they're all about and what their plans are for the country should they return to power. One thing you can say about this election: You can bitch about drone strikes and the like all you want, the choice is still crystal clear.

No Choice

This is being circulated far and wide today and with very good reason. As Cesca rightly says, it's the most important -- certainly the most infuriating -- thing you'll read all day.

Published in the Texas Observer, it's the very personal story of the torment and heartbreak -- the heartbreak on top of heartbreak -- that a woman and her family were forced to endure at the hands of Texas's despicably draconian pre-abortion sonogram law.

This is what a growing number of Republican lawmakers are trying to do. This is their idea of smaller, less intrusive government: forcing their way into the space between a doctor and a woman, and into the most personal and often emotionally devastating decision a woman will ever make.

But remember, you can always just close your eyes.

The Texas Observer: "No Choice": One Woman's Ordeal with Texas' New Sonogram Law/3.15.12

Quote of the Day

"You just have to close your eyes."

-- Republican Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett's advice to women on how to deal with the mandatory pre-abortion ultrasound being proposed in his state

You know, I'm all tapped out of clever today -- can we please just jam a baseball bat up this man's ass?

Just close you eyes, Tom. You won't even feel it.

Jesus Christ, he even sounds like a rapist.

Penetrating Insight

You know that whole discussion about whether abortion is acceptable to the conservative right in the case of rape? Well, Virginia (state motto: "Maybe 28 Square Miles of Relative Sanity") has figured out a really clever and creative way to amp up that debate: Try to get an abortion and they'll have someone actually rape you.

If you haven't seen this yet, get ready to head straight for the thesaurus to find every possible synonym for "unconscionable."

We talked about it on the podcast this week, but Dahlia Lithwick -- imagine that, a woman; who cares what they think, right? -- eviscerates the Virginia legislature for their sickening plan and rightly demands to know where the outrage is.

Slate: Virginia Ultrasound Law Is an Abomination/2.16.12

Vacuum Rubes

The latest entry into the competition for the Best Thing Ever on the Internet is this: a Yelp page for the Planned Parenthood "Abortionplex," which, if you haven't been paying attention, was the subject of a story in the Onion that completely fooled the hell out of -- and drew plenty of amusing outrage from -- a lot of very dumb religious conservatives.

May the "Forcible" Be with You

First of all, the idea that the brilliant Kristen Schaal is pulling duty for The Daily Show just makes me giddy to no end. Now add to that her part in the show's hilariously scathing attack on the GOP's abhorrent recent efforts to cut taxpayer funding for abortions resulting from rapes that don't qualify as "forcible," and you've got yourself a truly priceless TV moment.



Incidentally, in a concession to, oh, I don't know, sanity, House Republicans are now dropping the "forcible rape" language from the Hyde Bill. Just remember: largely old white guys, members of the supposed party of limited government that stays out of your life, pushing once again to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies. The irony would be laughable if it weren't so fucking sad.

The Born Indemnity

Along the same lines as last week's Tyler Clementi post, Monday's piece on the abortion debate spawned a surprising amount of healthy discussion among the Huffington Post peanut gallery. There were those who agreed with me -- which is interesting, because my overall point seemed mildly nebulous, even to me -- and of course those who ripped me to shreds. Since I really did seem to straddle the fence on this issue, it's tough to determine just which commenters I feel like I should want to vociferously respond to, but the following were the ones that struck a nerve with me in one way or another.

"I waited for the logic... but it was yet another subjective opinion by a male author. No logic here... What happens to the child after it is born? Is it born into a society that cares and nurtures it, or one that was just using it when it was a zygote only to abandon it after birth?"

-- Heauxbeaux

What happens to a child after it's born is hugely important, and I actually do believe that there's an argument to be made that a fetus may be better off in the long run meeting a swift end than to face a life of being unloved and unwanted -- which is always a possibility. The problem, of course, is that nobody has a crystal ball that actually works; nobody can predict someone's future with 100% certainty.

"So many assumptions, Chez. Where to begin? No abortion isn't ordering a pizza, but then again, to me, it's not murder. The belief that a soul enters the fertilized egg at the moment of conception and becomes human is a religiously based belief. I don't share it. I think I have the right not to. The basis of Roe v. Wade is the idea that to be a human being whose life should be protected legally, you need to have a body that can viably survive outside the womb. I agree with that and feel I should be able to live my life in accordance with my own beliefs."

-- cornflower

Two problems: First, I specifically stated that I don't believe in the religious argument for keeping a fetus alive no matter what; I don't go for the whole the-soul-is-created-at-conception thing. I thought I made that perfectly clear. Second, the claim that a fetus isn't truly "viable" until it can live without the assistance of its mother is a great argument at face value, until you consider that the point at which a child can survive outside of the womb -- and therefore officially be called a child -- varies greatly, and certainly advances in medical technology keep pushing that point further and further back toward the initial inception.

Speaking of which, this nice lady gets the argument I was trying to make about a fetus undeniably becoming a living human being relatively early in the process:

"I love this article. I believe that a woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body...but the problem is...is the fetus part of her body? A fetus is a seperate body within her body. Does she have the right to make decisions for it? I believe it is hypocritical, as a feminist, for me to demand that my full humanity be recognized, but then deny it to someone else! I believe women should be able to save their own lives if the fetus will physically kill them or they need chemo or the like...but I just can't justify any other reason for abortion...as the article states...this is a baby with its own brain waves, its own limbs, its own humanity. Religion does not even need to be brought into this...this is simply a human rights issue."

-- Laura Latora

She of course is quickly descended on by Rage-infected zombies:

"If you oppose abortion for yourself, then fine. But you cannot call yourself a feminist and in any way, deny another woman our right to decide for ourselves what happens to our own bodies. Whether or not the fetus is "separete" is beyond the point. In fact, whatever someone says about the fetus' so-called "humanity" is besides the point, if the woman does NOT WANT to be pregnant. No woman owes the use of her own body to a fetus. Just being pregnant is a huge sacrifice-one which no woman is obligated to incur if that is not her desire. It is a basic human rights issue that woman be allowed to make our own reproductive decisions. We are not in any way morally or even more, legally obligated to subordinate our entire lives to fetal survival if faced with a tragic, unwanted pregnancy. In other words, forcing a woman to sacrifice our own bodies to carry a pregnancy to term, is nothing less than involuntary servitude... We are not incubators."

-- VirginiaBlue, who goes on to say, in hilariously melodramatic fashion, "This is also a kind of rape, to legally force a woman to share her body with someone else, in this case, a fetus."

Right, except for one thing: If you accept that a fetus is a human being -- and for the most part I do, because as I said, I believe that at a certain point that's just fucking undeniable by anyone not looking for a way to rationalize a decision to terminate -- then whether you want it or not is irrelevant. It's life and you're extinguishing it. Simple as that. Also, if you believe that a fetus is human, then the inconvenience of your "sacrifice" in having to carry it will never trump the moral wrong done by ending the pregnancy.

Then there are the people who just let themselves and the moral argument completely off the hook by calling the embryo-fetus-whatever anything but a child:

"YOU CANNOT ASSIGN ANY "RIGHTS" TO A HUMAN ZYGOTE OR EMBROYO WITHOUT TAKING THEM FROM THE HOST ie the woman carrying said zygote. Period. End of story. If a zygote is given legal rights, they are taken from the woman, making her less than a fully functioning human with equal protection. Insisting that a woman carry a zygote to term takes away her rights to live her life as she choses. It says that once she is pregnant, all her personal rights are less than that of the zygote she carries, its needs supercede hers. This is completely unAmerican and unconstitional."

-- maribelle1963

If you say zygote one more time, like Beetlejuice it'll appear in your living room.

"Sorry, a fetus looking like a baby does not make it a human life. Walk into a toy store and buy one of the numerous dolls that are made to look like babies. They look like babies, but have absolutely no human consciousness. The same is true of a fetus certainly before six or seven months. It has no more human consciousness than a chick inside an egg. You may be thrilled about carrying a 15 week fetus and like to imagine that it is a baby, but many women hate it and see it as a unwanted tissue growth. Your unscientific religious fantasies instilled in you by brutal women-hating priests should not interfere with a woman's right to control her body and her life."

-- cee190

I love people who listen. What part of "I'm a fucking atheist" didn't settle into the space between your ears? That said, here we see the same argumentative fallacy that threads through so many of these responses -- that a woman's desire to have the child can somehow tap the wooden puppet growing inside her and magically transform it into a real boy. I'll take the question of whether a fetus is or isn't a living human being completely out of it; it still doesn't change the fact that desire and intent have absolutely no impact on physical characteristics. It either is or isn't a child; your opinion of whether it is or isn't is irrelevant.

Speaking of which:

"How about this: It's NOT a kid in your belly unless you WANT it... It becomes human when IT'S WANTED ! ! !"

-- hippynanainblingland

I rest my case.

As much as I, once again, had a difficult time buying into the following guy's ultra-pro-life stance, his points were essentially correct:

"I wonder if the guards at Auschwitz had a similar cognitive dissonance. Yes they must have thought, we are destroying life but doesn't Hitler have the right to choose? I realize that this is an extreme analogy but either you advocate killing human life or you advocate saving human life. There may have been a time before easily available birth control and the morning after contraceptives advertised daily on TV when abortion was a deplorable but understandable option. Today with the advent of better technology we know for sure that abortion is killing human life. Those people who deny this fact have something in common with those who deny evolution. Both groups are allowing personal beliefs to over ride proven science. Brain wave activity is a reasonable standard to go by. The ability to feel pain is another. At the point where a baby in the womb has brain wave activity and can feel pain it should have the constitutional rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

-- Warren Danzig

By the way, someone responds to him by saying, "In many cases abortions save lives," to which he responds, "And in every case it ends one."

I guess there really are no easy answers on this one.

Kid Gloves

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously said that the test of a first rate intellect is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. I've certainly done my best to adhere to this standard -- to compartmentalize the separate sides of the various cognitive dissonances that have presented themselves throughout my life, all in an effort to avoid the gears in my brain grinding to a halt. Trust me when I tell you that this is an important skill to master when you've got a past filled with positively atrocious behavior that you feel like you need to rationalize.

With that in mind, there's one bit of intellectual dishonesty that I've never been able to get my head completely around -- I'm talking the kind of crossed signals that leave me feeling like NOMAD the killer robot from Star Trek, bouncing off the walls, smoke coming out of my head, shrieking about how I must -- STERILIZE. And maybe that's why it's the one subject I've for the most part avoided writing about.

Abortion.

The other day, I was driving through Fort Lauderdale when I happened to come upon a protest outside of what I assume was an abortion clinic. If it wasn't, then the poor people inside the place had to wonder why some guy was standing on their sidewalk holding up a six-foot-tall picture of an aborted fetus and a giant wooden cross. My first reaction was, of course, anger, because regardless of how I myself feel -- or anyone feels -- about the abortion issue, it's unconscionably offensive to display images of that nature in a place where children who happen to have made it out of the womb can ostensibly see them. Holding a public street corner hostage -- and in certain respects, that's exactly what these people were doing -- in an effort to make what is essentially a political point is a form of terrorism. And that's not even taking into account the fact that it feels like it can't be more than a short hop from being the guy willing to stand on a sidewalk holding a dead baby in one hand and a cross in the other to being the kind of True Believer devoted enough to take the fight to the next level, if you get my drift.

Oddly, and for the life of me I can't really explain why, my opinions when it comes to abortion have never really been swayed by the gruesome images of shredded fetuses that are so popular with the truly psychotic among the self-described pro-life crowd. Maybe that's because I feel like they shouldn't be necessary; it should be obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes and an adherence to reality what abortion does to the tiny being whose image in a sonogram, under different circumstances, would bring intense joy to a woman, couple, etc.

And that's where the dissonance comes in: I fully support a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. I do this even though I think that, in many cases, abortion is an absolute wrong.

I realize I'm opening one hell of a Pandora's Box by saying this, and that I'll likely be accused of being a patriarchal monster who wants to deny women the right to control their own bodies and their own destiny, but let me stress once again that, particularly from a political standpoint, I think a woman has to have the last word over what happens to her. But by the same token, I do agree with those who say that abortion is a decision that should by no means be trivialized, which is why it's always made me queasy to hear at various feminist rallies the indignant cries of "abortion on demand," as if those calling for such unrestricted access to the ability to end a pregnancy have no real appreciation for the seriousness of the subject they're talking about. Getting an abortion isn't the same thing as ordering a pizza and it shouldn't be treated as if it were. I'm certainly not claiming that everyone, or even most women, are militant to the point where they approach an abortion with little or no understanding of or feeling for the significance of the decision they're making; on the contrary, I really do believe that terminating a pregnancy is an act that's rarely taken lightly and that those who choose it often do so for reasons that deserve unequivocal support and compassion.

But where I have the problem, where it all goes wrong for me and twists me up inside, is that it is simply impossible -- particularly with the kind of technology that now provides a veritable window to the womb -- to deny that a fetus is a human life. It is. That's just all there is to it. I'm of course willing to concede that in the earliest stages of a pregnancy, the fetus resembles a tadpole more than anything else, and since I'm not approaching this from the point of view of someone who's religious, I couldn't care less about whether a new soul is created at the moment of conception; that's complete rubbish as far as I'm concerned. But by the time the second trimester rolls around -- and abortions are still very much permitted at that stage -- that fetus looks quite a bit like what it is: a baby. You can call it whatever you'd like to make yourself feel better about it -- and I fully admit that I often do, simply to prevent the aforementioned cognitive dissonance from growing too loud and impeding my ability to function -- but that's a kid you're carrying. Just ask anyone who's thrilled about being 15 weeks pregnant.

But back to the religion question for a moment. I can't help but think that it's unfortunate that the Christian ultra-right has hijacked the abortion debate, because in reality this isn't a metaphysical question at all; it can be argued from the point of view of almost pristine logic. Even if you take the notion of God completely out of the picture -- and I'd highly suggest that you do -- you still have inarguable physical evidence of something growing during pregnancy that's completely separate from the mother in which it's incubating. Separate brain waves, separate limbs, separate life. The only question is: At what arbitrary cut-off point do you declare that that life is developed enough to deserve deference at the very least, protection at most?

Those protesters standing on the sidewalk had it all wrong. They didn't need the giant cross because they had the image of the dead baby. The didn't need religion on their side. They had reality.

And yet in the end I still can't bring myself to support their cause, either way.

Quote of the Week 1973

"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."

-- Richard Nixon, in a newly released White House recording made not long after the Roe v. Wade decision

How much do you love that interracial sex comes before rape?

(h/t Cesca)

Bill Kill 2: The Reckoning

Does Olbermann have his own agenda -- one that deserves to be taken into consideration when listening to his opinions on Bill O'Reilly's role in the murder of Dr. George Tiller? Yes, as a matter of fact.

Regardless, are those opinions for the most part right? Absolutely.

Bill Kill

Here's a sucker bet: A hundred bucks says it takes Bill O'Reilly all of a minute or so into his show tonight to condemn the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

By now you probably know that yesterday during a church service in Kansas which he was attending with his wife, George Tiller, a controversial provider of late-term abortions, was shot dead. The man who police say killed him is, needless to say, a walking cliché: He's a 51-year-old fundamentalist Christian named Scott Roeder who hails from an unremarkable suburb of Kansas City and who boasts a supposedly vivid history of mental illness. In other words, he's exactly the kind of person you'd expect to walk into a church and gun down an abortion doctor in front of his wife and a crowd of stunned parishoners -- a guy who was such a human time bomb that he probably had C-4 hardwired into his fucking DNA.

Roeder's now in police custody, and one would hope they're going to throw the proverbial book at him -- or possibly use it to hit him repeatedly in the head until his brains are coming out of his ears. He killed a man in what was unequivocally an act of political and religious terrorism, and as such he deserves to suffer the full brunt of whatever harsh punishment our legal system decides to dole out to him.

But while Scott Roeder shouldn't be allowed to escape the blame for an act that, at face value, was committed solely by him -- the reality is that there's plenty of fault to go around on this.

Sure, Roeder pulled the trigger, but there were a hell of a lot of people standing behind him, indirectly encouraging him to do it.

People like Bill O'Reilly.

For years now, Dr. George Tiller has been one of O'Reilly's favorite cultural boogeymen -- providing a regular target for the talking head's pompous, self-righteous venom. O'Reilly glibly called him "Tiller the Baby Killer"; he painted him (wrongly) as a Mengele-like monster, gleefully murdering babies right up to the moment of their births, all for a few grand a pop; he accused Tiller of having blood on his hands and warned that a "judgment day" was likely coming. Bill O'Reilly, and the unscrupulous, unethical assholes like him, laid the groundwork and set the wheels in motion that led to yesterday's almost inevitable violent conclusion.

But tonight, make no mistake, O'Reilly's going to put on his best reputable journalist and decent human being face and aloofly insist that he had nothing to do with Tiller's murder. That he never once advocated the shooting of someone he claimed over and over again was a one-man-holocaust -- a guy who went around killing kids with impunity thanks to the protection of a justice system corrupted by elitist liberal pussies. O'Reilly's going to deflect blame away from himself -- to wash his hands of the whole ugly tragedy.

He shouldn't be allowed to, though. Not for a second.

For years, groups like Operation Rescue have been permitted to terrorize abortion providers and, worse, their patients. They've never fully been taken to task for inciting and justifying criminal behavior through hateful rhetoric -- for creating wrath-of-God nightmares like Eric Rudolph and Paul Hill. They've been allowed to get away with being complicit in violence against people who, like it or not, are innocent citizens in the eyes of the law. It's always been sickening that the motto of some within the "pro-life" movement seems to be, "Life begins at conception -- and ends in cold blood at the moment of our choosing." But it's even more sickening that this kind of barbarism, while decried by most of the civilized world, is still held up as a merely extreme opinion within a legitimate political debate.

Operation Rescue and the religious right in general have helped to foment the special brand of righteous outrage that would make the most whack-job among their ranks kill or wound in the name of God -- but they've always needed media coverage to push their agenda.

O'Reilly actually is the media. He has a forum that reaches millions of people, including an undeniably substantial number of highly-strung white guys nursing persecution fantasies. They're people just looking for a way to physically fight back against the encroaching secular liberal darkness that they've been warned about (by none other than O'Reilly himself), and all it takes is a little push from the face on the TV to motivate them to action. I've said this before, but it bears repeating over and over again: If you know that even a small part of your audience is susceptible to suggestions of violence -- that it can be easily moved to take the law into its own hands at the behest of the right kind of rhetoric -- then engaging in that kind of rhetoric without considering the potential consequences is like shouting fire in a crowded theater. It's the textbook definition of incitement. Likewise, to deny that there can be an equal and opposite reaction to your actions is intellectually dishonest -- which is a fancy way of saying that you're entirely full of shit if you try to pretend that you can spend years accusing someone of being a murderer among us, then blithely evade accountability when some psychopath takes what he feels is the logical step to correct this injustice.

Put yet another way: I think Bill O'Reilly's not just an arrogant windbag -- I think he and his rotten ilk are fast becoming an outright danger, that they're putting lives in jeopardy.

So does that mean someone should kill him?

Don't answer that.

Related:

DXM: Revolutionary Goad/4.7.09

The Huffington Post: "How I (and Other 'Pro-Life' Leaders) Contributed to Dr. Tiller's Murder/6.1.09

Quotes of the Week

"To call this a crime is too simplistic. There is Christian scripture that would support this."

-- Prayer and Action newsletter publisher and anti-abortion activist Dave Leach, referring to the murder of Dr. George Tiller and forgetting that "Christian scripture" is fucking meaningless when it comes to our legal system's interpretation of what is and isn't a crime

"(He) was a mass murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed."

-- Founder of Operation Rescue Randall Terry, who claims that the pro-life movement, despite its often heated and violent rhetoric, bears no responsibility for the murder of Dr. Tiller