I have a total backlog of links on health care, foreign policy, and Sotomayor’s nomination, but honestly, I feel right now that I have to put much of my time to this domestic terrorism issue, so that Dr. Tiller’s assassination doesn’t just disappear in a mountain of news items, leaving people to forget about the ongoing threat that puts more health care workers and their patients in danger. With that in mind, I have to address the ass-covering that’s going on with conservatives, Republicans, and their apologists on this issue, starting with James Kirchick of WSJ. He’s pulling the “anti-abortion groups condemned the attack” bullshit, but this, while technically true, is a misleading statement. They offered mealy-mouthed reminders that murder is a sin and, more importantly, a crime, and then they said that Dr. Tiller had it coming. This was, over and over again, the line. Bill O’Reilly’s excuse-making is a perfect example—-he basically said the exact same things that “marginal” figure Randall Terry did. I won’t put that horrible video up, but here’s Keith Olbermann discussing it:
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These are not condemnations. Condemnations involve actually condemning what happened, not saying, “Glad he’s dead, too bad it had to be an illegal action that becomes a pain in our ass.”
But the excuse-making for domestic terrorists isn’t limited to claiming that half-hearted reminders that murder is illegal is enough to erase all the targeting of specific individuals for harassment and violence. The other trick is to try to put distance between the extremists, who we’re told are few in number, and the rest of the conservative movement. Kirchick:
The comparison between the religious right and Islamic extremists is invariably partisan so as to smear the GOP as being held hostage to forces as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah. “Even as the Bush administration denounces and battles Islamic religious zealotry abroad, fundamental Christian zealotry is taking hold here at home,” wrote Stephen Pizzo on the liberal Alternet Web site in 2004. On his popular HBO program, comedian Bill Maher frequently compares murderous Islamists to censorious Christians.
The notion that the GOP isn’t beholden to extremists and terrorist supporters is a laughable assertion. They are scared to death to denounce anti-choice terrorism, and that fear goes straight up to the top. Remember?