Fox News, Arizona, shootings and victimhood

Jon Stewart checks in, making sure that the victim of the Arizona shootings is recovering nicely. That would be Sarah Palin.


He also checks in with the new bipartisan demeanor at Fox, where they talk about how weird the memorial was. Yay for softer tones.

When will we stop the false-equivalency and admit the right wing has become increasingly violent? When someone dies?

The American media have been playing the "both sides are equally radical" card since the 2009 Town Hall fiasco. Every time someone on the right says something outrageous, they go looking for a similar quote from the left, often not finding it. So they do the next best thing: try to compare two actions that are not equal, but in an effort to appear non-partisan, equate them anyway.

False equivalency.

Recently, Howard Fineman published a piece on Huffington Post trying to equate an assault with a comedienne making a barbed quote.

Even though [Arianna Huffington is] backing Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity," and even though I now work for her, I had dismissed the event this Saturday on the Mall as self-indulgent, time-wasting comedy.

Until now.

The reason is that I watched two videos: one, of a thug named Tim Profitt pressing his shoe onto Lauren Valle's skull; the other, of Joy Behar calling Sharron Angle a bitch who's going to hell.

That was enough.

Seriously Howard? Joy Behar making a rude comment is exactly the same as an assault where someone gets thrown to the ground and stomped on by a group of men because of her views?

Really? That's the same?

The left has taken heat over the recent firing of Juan Williams from NPR, saying that they're stifling his freedom of speech. What's been ignored in NPR's ham-fisted handling of the dismissal is that he wasn't fired for the content of his comments per se, but because he had repeatedly violated NPR standards prohibiting analysts from engaging in partisan discussion.

"Infringement of free speech", the nabobs of the right cry, completely misunderstanding the meaning of the first amendment it's protection of speech.

However it's become plainly obvious that this has moved beyond words; the right has gotten violent. Consider the following:

1) Tim Profitt's curbstomp assault on a protester at a Rand Paul rally.

2) Charles Wilson, sentenced to prison for threatening to kill Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), was, according to his relatives, "was under the spell that Glenn Beck cast".

What happened later with Charlie is something I think I can understand. He became basically housebound due to illness and his small world became even smaller. His brother got him a computer and he was able to stay connected with family. And he watched television and found Glenn Beck.

3) 72-year-old Victor Philips was arrested for allegedly assaulting a 23-year-old activist protesting about 40 feet from the entrance to Dino Rossi's Republican campaign office in Washington state.

4) Richard Poplawski, the man accused of gunning down three Pittsburgh police officiers, was a big fan of FOX News host/right-wing cult leader Glenn Beck.

5) The white supremacist charged with the deadly shooting at the national Holocaust museum last year originally wanted to kill White House senior adviser David Axelrod, Time magazine reported Thursday.

James von Brunn, who died in January in a prison hospital awaiting trial, reportedly viewed Axelrod as a priority target who was easier to reach than President Obama.

"Obama was created by Jews," he wrote, according to Time. "Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do." (Fox News)

6) Andrew Stack crashed his airplane into an Austin, TX, office building where nearly 200 employees of the Internal Revenue Service worked, leaving behind a rant against the government, big business and particularly the tax system.

7) The moderator and the organizer of an Illinois congressional debate who were criticized for not allowing the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited said they have received death threats and plan to go to law enforcement authorities to file complaints.

Each also blamed Fox News host Glenn Beck for stirring up opposition to their work by criticizing the incident and attacking them by name on his Fox News program, which they say has sparked an increase in hateful e-mails and phone calls since then.

"Our webmaster has stopped forwarding the e-mails to me because they have become so ugly," said Jan Czarnik, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, which sponsored the Oct. 20 forum in Evanston. "I am getting death threats and I am taking it to our local FBI. There are postings on Fox News' Facebook page that include threats on my life." (Media Matters)

8) Law enforcement authorities are investigating the discovery of a cut propane gas line at the Virginia home of Rep. Tom Perriello’s (D-Va.) brother, whose address was targeted by tea party activists angry at the congressman’s vote for the health care bill.

An aide to the congressman confirmed to POLITICO that a line to a propane tank behind his brother's home near Charlottesville had been sliced. (Politico)

Now, if we want to have this "both sides" argument, then show me 8 incidents of serious left-wing violence in the last 20 months. Show me, because these aren't the only 8, they're just the most prominent.

When are we going to stop pretending that both sides are equal? Does someone else have to die? How many? Right wing violence is out of control.

Dear Tim Profitt, you bitch-stomping manly man *guest commentary*

by the future Mrs. Archimedes

Dear Tim Profitt,

Did we date once? You seem a little—ah—mature for me, but then again, the camera makes everyone so larger than life.

Ah, Tim, if only I’d done a better job of sharing the lessons you taught me! We chicks should really know by now what mouthing off will get us, right? After all, you see how that whole 150-year-campaign for suffrage is working out for us, don’t ya?

Hey, look, I get it. If Lauren had done something better with her time last night, you wouldn’t have had to leave a sneaker mark somewhere around her temples. (I do hope that they were kinda new sneakers and you didn’t wear them while wading in manure….oh wait….never mind.) Silly girl! She seems like one of those bookish types, what with those glasses and all, but she could always try a hobby, like stamp collecting.

Now, I know that people are appalled that you thought that she looked dangerous. It’s the glasses thing, completely. After all, she is a 23-year-old with short hair….oh yeah….a BOY cut. She may not even BE a chick, or she may be one of those girls who like girls, and you know, what they do in private is their business but REALLY, they’re not women like our MOMS were women. If everyone was more realistic about this whole thing it would put this violence-towards-women thing completely in perspective.

But hey, Tim! I see that you kicked in $1900 for Rand. Pretty sweet that you have that kinda cash to invest. Times have been good to you, I see. I like a man who’s a big spender, Tim. I wouldn’t worry too much about this little incident….keep dropping dough like that and the women will be ALL OVER YOU.

Hugs,
Bootsie

Here's the guy who stomped a woman's head at a Rand Paul rally posing with.... *gasp*

MSNBC

The volunteer with Rand Paul's Republican U.S. Senate campaign who stepped on the head of a liberal activist and pinned her face to the concrete said Tuesday the scuffle was not as bad as it looked on video and blamed police for not intervening.

His name is Tim Profitt and here he is with Rand Paul.



This sounds a lot like Joe Miller's Goon Squad illegally detaining a reporter two weeks ago.

Is this the America the Tea Party envisions?

A response to those advocating violent Tea Party revolution

Bob Owens, who blogs as Confederate Yankee, posted the following on Sunday, titled A Nation on the Edge of Revolt. It's stunning in that he admits what many progressives have long felt, that the Tea Party and it's affiliated movements are not peaceful, but in fact are threatening violence. the reasons are irrelevant - they are threatening violence and bloodshed.

I'll lay it out bluntly for you; either the American people—not extremists, but good and decent patriots like your neighbors and yourselves—will revolt and destroy the ruling class and reform our government based upon first principles, or the United States we know as our forefather conceived it is dead. (...)

We can dispose of this government, and restore the Constitution that has served us and the rest of the world so well for so long. (...)

Revolution is a brutish, nasty business. Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt, and success is not assured. (...)

The question for you, my fellow Americans, is simple.

Will you fight, or will you surrender your liberties?

I pray for peace.

But I prepare for war.

Prepare for war. Gather your armies. He's not the only one. Media Matters notes other instances, including "Sarah Palin telling the Tea Party convention that 'America is ready for another revolution and you are a part of this' and Glenn Beck asserting that 'the second American revolution is being played out right now.'"

Predictably, the progressive side didn't take Owens' encouragement of sedition lightly. Media Matters, for one, chose to shed some light.

Owens responded with a threat:

I hope they do feel threatened. Attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives of those would not sit quietly by. Perhaps it will take a serious review of our capacity for violence to get them to realize we shall not surrender our individual liberties to their lust for power.

Here is where I realize that we are two different countries. Why these people oppose Obama is almost irrelevant at this point. I will submit that it's because of race, but mostly it's because of fear. These are the growing pains associated with the change that most people of these people so fear. I also know, from working with kids, that very few of them share this fear that their parents so obviously suffer from. As we move into a multi-racial society, people like Owens will simply die off and become discredited by history, much as the beliefs on race held by many middle aged whites in the 1950's have died away.

But... the hate and fear of change that these people feel for Obama has so warped their world-view that they see violence and bloodshed as the answer. "Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt" .

Their views are not rooted in reality. Ask a Tea Partier how Obama has subverted the Constitution and you won't get a coherent answer. They might cite the health care act, which was passed through an act of a dually-elected Congress as specified in the Constitution. They might cite "activist judges" that he's appointed. Never mind that he has every right to appoint judges, as every president has as specified by the Constitution. The answers you do get will be speculative and without any real proof other than the feelings of the Tea Partier: "he's taking away gun rights", "he's taking away OUR America", "he's not a citizen". No real proof, but it's enough for them to threaten violence.

Americans lost real rights under the Bush Administration, but the Tea Party was nowhere to be heard. Start with thew ultimate act of an activist court, the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision which took the election out of the hands of the people and put it in the hands of the court. The Patriot Act, which allowed the government to spy on its own citizens without a warrant. The repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, which was enacted after the Civil War to prevent the federal government from using troops as law enforcement. The 2001 act that allowed NSA monitoring of domestic phone and internet traffic. Allowing the government to monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity. Secret detentions of hundreds of people without charges. Government encouragement of bureaucrats to resist public records questions. The seizure of papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation. American citizens jailed indefinitely without a trial, without being charged, or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Those are real rights infringements. But not a peep out of the Tea Party. They never lifted a finger until a black Democrat came to power.

When this paranoia takes the form of fomenting revolution, something has broken. They have the ability to change government without revolution, through the Constitutionally mandated electoral process. But that's not good enough for them, because that process produced the election of Barack Obama. The group that claims to love the Constitution wishes to overthrow the free, fair and Constitutional election of a president, since they lost the last 2 elections by running on their principles.

Apparently loving the Constitution means subverting the Constitution.

This isn't even about views anymore, because to Owens and his ilk, progressives are "statists", who want more government. Never mind that we share many of the same views, that we are disgusted by the politics of Washington as well. Never mind that we don't want more government, just better government, that cares for the rights of all of its citizens, even you. When you advocate criminal activities to get what you want, we have a break. I cannot work with you. In fact, I want the government to protect me by arresting you and charging you with the crimes you've just committed.

Owens and his crowd obviously do not understand history. They cite the Sons of Liberty and the Founders, but fail to understand the differences in situations.

The founders revolted over a litany of minor taxes because those taxes were placed by a government over which they had no say. It wasn't the taxes, it was that they had no say in those taxes. There is a HUGE difference here: as English citizens, they were used to paying taxes. The growing problem was a lack of say in the government that placed those taxes.

Further, it was frustruation that those taxes were going to pay for England's wars in Europe that were accomplishing nothing good here. These wars were sucking us in to conflicts (The French and Indian War) that had nothing to do with this continent. They were wrecking our economy and we didn't think we should be obligated to fund them.

But it was also about many events besides taxes. It was the feeling that, after almost 170 years here we had earned the right to self-determination (as Thomas Paine said "It was absurd for an island to rule a continent"). It was about alienation from Britain and a feeling that we were really no longer English. Any ties we had were residual.

It was about mercantilism, that England was using us as a cash-generating ATM. They told us who we could buy from and who we could sell to and at what prices. Mercantilism and the Navigation Acts, over which we had no electoral say, caused a lot of law-abiding families to have to resort to criminal smuggling.

The American Revolution was about a lack of representation in Parliament. The Boston Massacre and the propaganda created by Paul Revere, silversmith and member of the Sons, was the spark that blew the powderkeg.

Argue the merits of the Revolution all day, but there is no tax or law on the books in America that has not been lawfully passed by your representatives in Congress and signed by the President as proscribed by the Constitution.

They might not like the laws. But that doesn't mean I get to cry "unfair! illegal!". They have representation in Congress that they are allowed to petition for redress of any perceived grievances.

This situation of "I don't like the laws, so they must be illegal and therefore I can take up weapons against those with whom I disagree" is so different from the complaints of the Sons of Liberty. The American colonists literally had no representation in Parliament. Not representation that they disagree with. They literally had no representation.

I wonder, then, since they're willing to take illegal extra-Constitutional means to get what they want, then what next? How can we trust a group that would usurp the Constitution to overturn a free election and restore power to themselves to then follow that document once they've regained the power they crave? So what next? Executions of anyone who doesn't subscribe to their point of view? Jails for progressives and liberals and immigrants? Re-education for faggots and union members? Elimination of inferior races?

As one of the commenters on Owens's site noted:

You're openly supporting violent takeover because you don't like how the majority of people in the country voted a couple years back. What gives you the moral standing to say that your preference is more valid than theirs, or to forcibly replace it? Absolutely sickening. I'm ashamed to share a country with you.

As I quoted earlier, Owens is upset that their "attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives".

How can you not be met by mockery and questioning of your motives? You are advocating criminal sedition and usurpation of Constitutional law in order to enforce your vision of what you think it says. You indict Obama for violating the rule of law and yet advocate violating that same rule because you supposedly know better; because you haven't been able to persuade the majority of Americans to agree with you at the ballot box.

Isn't THAT how tyrants operate?

Right-wing violence: IRS agents getting death threats in response to Newt's lies

In response to Newt Gingrich's wildly inaccurate, willingly deceptive and outragously, purposely false comment about 16,000 new IRS agents being hired to enforce health care:

Fox News via Media Matters

The federal government is investigating dozens of death threats to IRS employees that have been posted online since the House passed the health care bill, FoxNews.com has learned.

The health care law has sparked protests on radical anti-tax and anti-government Web sites and within their private, password-protected e-mail lists and message boards. Some writers have labeled March 21 -- the day the House passed the bill – "Bloody Sunday," and they see it as a call to violent action against IRS workers.

In the days following the House vote, animosity toward the IRS intensified, and many heated online protests included specific discussions about the best way to go about killing tax agents.

Hundreds of comments were posted in response to an incendiary story on infowars.com, the radical far-right Web site owned by radio host Alex Jones. The story, entitled, "The Cost Of Defying Obamacare: $2,250 a Month And IRS Goons Pointing Guns At Your Family," focused on the “increasing militarization of the IRS” and its expansion of powers under the new health care law.

One commenter wrote: "If they actually try to do this, there is going to be a whole lot of thugs start vanishing. This is the last line in the sand. Those fools have just signed their death warrants!!!"

"theres gonna be alot of IRS agents needing healthcare if they try to terrorize us Americans," another comment read. Yet another wrote, "Come and take them…….they will have to hire so many IRS agents because…well when 10 a day get killed….you do the math."

Update to CNN's Erickson's threats to shoot census workers

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has responded to CNN's Erick Erickson's threat to shoot census workers who might come to his house:

Huff Post

Tuesday, Gibbs described that statement as "remarkable crazy remarks of somebody that would threaten somebody simply trying to ensure that they're adequately represented in this country."

"These days, it never ceases to amaze you," he continued. "And usually it's only trumped by what somebody will knowingly say tomorrow about where -- I think Lincoln who said better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

Ed Shultz has some choice thoughts for CNN and Erickson:


Incidentally, CNN has scolded their own reporter, Bill Press, who asked Gibbs the question.

Interestingly, Bill Press, who asked Gibbs about Erickson, tweets that CNN management did not appreciate his raising the question at the White House.

"CNN brass emailed me after I asked Gibbs about Erickson, saying I MADE UP the quotes and was out of line. Bullshit - I quoted DIRECTLY," he said.

Stay classy CNN

Three weeks ago I wrote about new CNN hire Erick Erickson's penchant for extreme attacks on the left, such as calling Justice David Souter a "goat fucking child molester."

Two weeks after his "that was a mistake" mea culpa on air, Erickson is back, this time threatening to shoot census workers.

Media Matters

ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I'm not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They're not going on my property. They can't do that. They don't have the legal right, and yet they're trying.

You know you're off the reservation when you can get the Presidential Pres Secretary to call your comments "Remarkably crazy."

Jon Stewart on right wing health care violence

The end result of the right-wing violence movement

Let’s talk about the “violence movement” on the right. Let’s assume that they truly believe everything they’re saying about the government taking over their lives. It’s not true, of course, but let’s run with their assumptions for a minute.

Conservative blogs are running the violence angle. Hardcore blogs like Conservative Yankee are suggesting "[H]ave a swing" at "your Congressman". CY owner Bob Owens says “Jackasses" who call health care a right "deserve to be drawn and quartered."

His blog comes within a hair’s breadth of advocating treason: “I have some hope that the courts will respond favorably to the many states suing to eradicate this unconstitutional scheme… The thought of the morally-required alternative is almost too much to bear.”

Glenn Beck speaks of “armed insurrection”, “get your gun” and being the conservative equivalent of a Jewish Nazi hunter, a “progressive hunter”.

Erik Erickson asks "At what point do the people ... march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp?"

These people are advocating turning on their fellow American citizens. Not because they’ve been denied the right to vote (they haven’t), not because they’ve been denied the right to petition or assemble (they have legally done both frequently), not because they have been enslaved (they have not, despite their protests, which just show they don’t understand slavery or hyperbole).

They’re proposing turning their fists and their guns on fellow Americans because they lost an election, because there is a black man in office and because they lost a contentious vote in Congress.

What other reasons can there be? George W. Bush was appointed to his first term, not elected, and once in office he stripped away rights with the blessings of conservatives. He eliminated posse comitatus, opening the door to federal troops being used as domestic law enforcement – martial law. He weakened the Great Writ of due process. He allowed the government to spy on its own citizens without a warrant.

They didn’t cry a word of dissent when their rights were truly removed. It’s only now, once they’ve lost a fair vote after a fair election, that they cry oppression.

If they're serious about arming for a revolution (and cutting gas lines, etc...), their only option is to start eliminating their “enemies”. I know it sounds over-the-top and hyperbolic, but they don't need arms to vote. They're obviously talking about going past the political process.

How does this work? History gives us a roadmap for how this usually proceeds.

I’d guess that they first go after the government. Actually, I don't guess. The right-wing blogosphere has openly said it. They'd go after members of Congress who voted yes on health care. Drag them into the street and shoot them. Beating them will do no good, it will only harden resolve. They must be killed. Shot in the street. What happens to spouses and children?

Then what? Kill the President? I’d think they’d have to. If this is really a revolution, the king must die. Be very careful here. If you’ve followed this far, you now stand on the precipice of treason, if you already haven’t crossed it.

Then what? Round up members of the media who disagree with them? Are the Olbermanns and Maddows and Schultzes taken out and shot as well? What about the scholars, intellectuals, professors, artists and poets who disagree?

What about ordinary dissenters from your movement, like me? My dissent from your beliefs is what has led us to this place. You can’t possibly allow beliefs like mine, as dangerous to the nation as they are, to resurface, could you? I must be removed.

If I am to die, will I be given a trial first? On what grounds? I’ve broken no law. I’ve only voted, petitioned, and advocated. Under the Constitution you claim to love, what laws have I broken? If I am to be imprisoned for being a progressive dissenter, do I get a fair trial first? Can you risk my acquittal? Perhaps a military tribunal would be better.

Would they allow free and fair elections? Would a progressive be allowed to run? Would they allow the progressive to actually win, or would a popular progressive be assassinated before they could capture a fair vote? Would the vote just be rigged?

It would now seem that our Patriots have established a puppet government, one comprised of only those they’ve allowed to live. Those that agree with them and will be controlled by the mob. Puppets. Cantor, Boehner, Palin.

What next, you ask?

Then they run the government. What kind of government? I don't know, but what we've seen is not democracy, it's mob rule. Would they adhere to the Constitution? While I'm sure they'll claim otherwise, I’d say no. If they were Constitutionalists they’d have worked the ballot box, not the chambers of their guns.

What we appear to be left with is a totalitarian regime.

I am sure that any Patriot who has read this far is saying “no, no, no, that’s not what we’re about, we’re Constitutionalists’”. The language you’re using, the ideas that the most extreme among you espouse, say otherwise. History has shown us this path, over and over and over. You don’t speak of armed revolution without meaning to seize power, eliminate enemies and install the rules you have been otherwise unable to obtain by free and fair elections.

When you speak of armed revolution, you speak of overthrow. In 1776, it was to remove the rule of a king who had denied Americans the rights of speech, assembly, and petition. A king who had taxed them without letting them vote.

You, however, already have these rights. Your rights have not been abrogated. This Congress and this President were freely and fairly elected. The health care and stimulus votes in Congress were done openly and conducted by established rules.

You’re mad that you have been outvoted.

I know you’ll argue (mostly misquoted) polls. We can argue polls, but regardless, Congress is not bound to govern by polls.

If this totalitarianism that is the logical conclusion of your statements is not what you want, then what is the goal of those statements? What other end do you see?

I hope that some of them will read this and say, “No, you’re wrong, this is not what we want”. Good. I hope so. I have to ask: then what is the point of this talk of armed violence? You have your rights, so what else is it that you want?

Is it to get by force what you couldn’t attain by election? If not, how else do you propose to get what you want? Once you speak of revolution and guns, you have by definition abandoned the electoral process. What else could be the point?

If this is not the end you seek, then tell me – what other end do you see by advocating violent armed revolution against a government that has not violated your rights, that preserved your rights to assemble, petition and vote?

This is madness.

Cantor deliberately lied about gunshot reports

Add this one to the "lying hypocrite" file:

Responding to increase violence, and threats of violence, from the right, Eric Cantor tried to engage on some "me too". He claimed that a bullet was shot at his window this week, apparently hoping to blunt some of the charges that the heated rhetoric his party helped create spilling over into actual violence.

Unlike the severed gas line at the home of the brother of Rep. Tom Periello (whose address had been posted online), this story doesn't hold water. Richmond police say the bullet that hit a window of Republican Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor's office had been randomly fired skyward.

Random gunplay. Not a purposeful attack.

DailyKos

It hit a window in the building in which Cantor has an office (the bullet didn't hit his office) -- it is clear that Cantor willfully misled the media this morning. Cantor and his office knew that they were not targets of the shooting, but they claimed otherwise to score political points.

Gawker

Let's just get the obvious arguments out of the way first: liberals are not the ones carrying firearms to angry public demonstrations. In fact, liberals are not attending angry public demonstrations, because right now liberals don't actually have anything to be angry about. Liberals just won! Why the hell would they be angrily threatening anyone?

It's the pissed-off raging teabaggers who are furious with the Republicans right now, for failing to stop the thing they promised they would stop.

Sorry Republicans, I know playing the victim is the one thing you guys love doing even more than attacking actual victims of things like hate crimes and economic disadvantages, but no one wants to shoot any of you.

This smacks of the Ashley Todd story. She's the girl who said an Obama supporter cut her face because of a McCain sticker.

Of course, it turned out to be a hoax and a lie to distract from the heated rhetoric that was building up on the McCain/Palin side during the campaign.

Cantor needs to retract his statement and strongly condemn the threats of violence spawned by the climate that his party has helped to create. But that won't happen. What are, to most people, wingnuts are called something else by the GOP: their base.

Fox Excuse Machine: the right trivializes, questions, dismisses threats of violence

Media Matters

Amid reports that several Democrats in Congress have been the targets of death threats, racial and anti-gay epithets, and have had their offices vandalized for their votes on health care reform, several Fox News personalities have been quick to first condemn the threats but then immediately make excuses for the threats. Others have appeared to dismiss the seriousness of the threats.

Doocy: "So why are people angry? Maybe because they didn't want this bill?"

Kilmeade: "Are Democrats using" threats of violence "to their advantage to marginalize Republican opposition?"

Carlson agrees it's "disappointing" that Democrats are making threats so public and says "they should just stop discussing it all together."

Beck: Obama is "poking and prodding" people to commit violence. ... "They need you to be violent. They are begging for it."

Hannity: "So do you think that this is just an effort to smear conservatives?"

Cupp: Democrats "want us to feel sorry for them that they've gotten a couple of ... angry voicemails."

Fox Nation: "Are Threats Really Elevated, or Are Dems Playing Politics?"

Fox Nation: "Was Tea Party Story a Racial Rant or a Set Up?"

Charles Krauthammer: "I'm sure a lot of this is trumped up. ... You are always going to have a kook and a nut here and there."

Stephen Hayes: "This happens all the time," "counterproductive" for GOP to condemn them again.

And the blogs.....

NewsBusters: "The Media's Myth of Right Wing Violence."

Confederate Yankee: "[H]ave a swing" at "your Congressman" instead

Gateway Pundit: "Suddenly the State-Run Media is Horrified that Politician's [sic] Home Addresses Are Published on the Internet."

Big Journalism's Walsh: Media "never once stops to question whether the Alinsky Party is, you know, exaggerating or even lying."

Big Government: "We doubt these threats are actually real and, certainly wouldn't condone them."

The fight continues: Weiner tells O'Reilly 'You're Making Stuff Up', Obama dares GOP to repeal