Dancing on the Line Between Free Speech and Crime

I wasn't going to comment on Bill O'Reilly's reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Keith Olbermann is right to call him "Bill-O the Clown." O'Reilly's just a self-important blowhard idiot with a tremendous ego, a braying ass who freaks out over made-up non-issues like his childish "War on Christmas," where saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is just the worst possible insult to the Christian faith. He's impossible to take seriously. Sure, he's got a top-rated cable news talk show, but that's a case of being big fish in a very small pond. In terms of market share, O'Reilly probably gets his ass kicked nightly by reruns of Everyone Loves Raymond on TBS. Why anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.

But someone does, obviously. Otherwise he wouldn't have that top-rated cable news talk show. Apparently, there's no shortage of idiots out there who believe that an invented "War on Christmas" is the worst thing ever, rather than the ridiculous annual ratings-grab it obviously is.

So, as I said, I wasn't going to comment on Bill O'Reilly and George Tiller. There's no shortage of blogs out there doing the same thing and no reason to jump on that bandwagon. For the most part, I save O'Reilly stories for the roundups, because the only thing he deserves is ridicule.

But then I came across a story at the Southern Poverty Law Center's blog, Hatewatch. It turns out there's a line that broadcasters can't cross.

On Wednesday, veteran neo-Nazi threatmeister Hal Turner, who Hatewatch reported in 2008 may have been on the FBI payroll, was taken into custody by police in his hometown of North Bergen, N.J. According to Turner’s blog, the police tricked him into coming to the station by telling him about a possible death threat against him. Turner is scheduled to appear in court today to face extradition to Connecticut, where police reportedly intend to charge him with inciting injury to persons or property.

The charges stem from a posting on Turner's blog that asked his readers to "take up arms" against two Connecticut state officials, Sen. Andrew McDonald and Rep. Michael Lawlor. The Connecticut State Capitol Police Chief, Michael Fallon, said Turner's comments went "above and beyond the threshold of free speech." "He is inciting others through his website to commit acts of violence and has created fear and alarm," said Fallon.

Turner's racist rants and violent threats are legendary. Railing against President Bush in 2007, he told his audience that, "a well-placed bullet can solve a lot of problems." He has written that "we need to start SHOOTING AND KILLING Mexicans as they cross the border" and argued that killing certain federal judges "may be illegal, but it wouldn’t be wrong."

There is a line you cannot cross, even in a nation that values free speech. Forget the "yelling 'fire' in a theater" cliche, you can't run up to an angry mob and say, "hey kids! Let's put on a riot!" -- that's a crime with the self-explanatory name "incitement to riot." Luckily for O'Reilly, that line you cannot cross is so bright and so clear that even a useless blowhard moron like him can see it easily. And Bill O'Reilly doesn't just tip-toe up to that line, he dances on it.

He's called Tiller "Tiller the Killer," compared him to Nazi death camp criminal Dr. Joseph Mengela, and once said, "[I]f I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech."

"O'Reilly is being incredibly disingenuous when he claims that he bears no responsibility for others' actions in the killing of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday," wrote Mary Alice Carr, vice president of communications for NARAL Pro-Choice New York, in the Washington Post. "When you tell an audience of millions over and over again that someone is an executioner, you cannot feign surprise when someone executes that person." Carr, a frequent O'Reilly guest, says she'll no longer appear on his show.

And O'Reilly didn't just feign surprise, he pretended (or maybe believed) he was being attacked unfairly by people pointing out his hate speech. "Now it is clear that the far left is exploiting the death of the doctor," Bill-O said in response to Tiller's murder. "Those vicious individuals want to stifle any criticism of people like Tiller. That and hating FOX News is the real agenda here."

That's right, a man was shot dead in church -- in front of his family -- but Bill O'Reilly and FOX News are the real victims here. Because people are being mean to them. Bill then moved on to what he considers the "real" news -- a story about comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and rapper Eminem. Bill's US Magazine-level intellect has never been so apparent.

You're not Hal Turner, Bill. You're really not. Apparently, there's someone out there who's even more stupid and irresponsible than you are and who can't see that line you do your highwire act on. But you aren't Edward R. Murrow, either -- as much as you obviously believe you are. You're just a melon-headed fool who's been lucky enough to find an audience of idiots more simpleminded than even you.

-Wisco


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The Sotomayor Episode of Political Theater

Let's be clear about something that should be obvious -- Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Unless someone finds bodies buried in her petunia beds, this seems inevitable. Democrats are a mere one vote shy of being able to break a Republican filibuster alone and that filibuster has been all but ruled out. There are only two groups talking about a "battle" or "fight" over the confirmation; conservative activists and the media. Everyone else knows this "fight" is already lost.

For the media, the motive is simple; a big fight is more likely to get you to watch TV. The right likes to paint the media as leftist, while the left sees a media that serves powerful corporate interests. But the idea that the entire media has the same bias is crazy -- it's as diverse as the rest of the nation. There's only one kind of bias that we see shared by nearly every media source -- what I call ratings bias. I'm not the first person to notice it, others call it "sensationalism." A supposedly "liberal media" wasn't skeptical enough about the excuses made to invade Iraq because war is great for the news business -- so much for all that anti-Bush bias. During the '08 election campaign, the media insisted on reporting the contest between Obama and McCain as a "tight race," even as it became clear that McCain had no hope of winning. None of this was the result of any real bias other than a desire for ratings. News is a business.

And it turns out that this "big fight" narrative is also good business for conservative activist groups. A political action committee may be one of the few groups where success isn't always measured by success, but by the number of problems they identify. So everything Obama and Democrats do is the worst thing ever, no matter whether it's important or inconsequential. And a nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States of America isn't exactly inconsequential. When it comes to things worth fighting over, this actually is one. And the fact that there almost certainly won't be a big fight is no reason not to capitalize on the importance of the occasion.

And let's be clear about something else, every single person in the Republican party -- in elected office or not -- is a political activist. They can be constituent-oriented, issue-oriented, industry-oriented, or whatever, but they are political activists. That's the whole point of getting elected. The same is true for everyone in the Democratic party. If the promise of a confirmation battle is good for activists, it just follows that it's good for Republicans serving in office. They know this and, despite the fact that attacking Obama and Sotomayor is bad politics, it's good fundraising. They can't attack Sotomayor and they can't not attack Sotomayor. What a quandry.





Or it would be if it weren't for the fact that unelected activists have absolutely nothing to lose in attacking her and everything to gain.

The Hill:

In public, Senate Republicans have kept their distance from conservative attacks on Sonia Sotomayor -- but behind the scenes, they have encouraged activists to keep their crosshairs trained on the Supreme Court nominee.

Lanier Swann, an aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), told a private meeting of conservative activists Wednesday to keep up their pressure on Sotomayor.

"Swann told us she wanted to encourage all of us in our talking points and that we’re having traction among Republicans and unnerving Democrats," said an attendee of Wednesday's weekly meeting hosted by Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform.

"The point was we should keep it up," said the source. "She told us at this meeting to put our foot on the pedal."

Problem solved.

Or nearly. Activists, both elected and unelected, have to walk a fine line. Republicans have to keep up the pretense of a fight without looking like they're fighting for the sake of fighting -- which they are. People milking the "big fight" narrative are those "whom want to keep up the charade for fundraising purposes, and some of whom seem to sincerely believe the outcome is in doubt," writes Steve Benen. "The tricky task for Senate Republicans, then, is putting on a good show for these folks."

So the trick is to use the word "concern," rather than "outrage" and to talk about a "debate," rather than a "battle." Benen offers an example from Republican anti-Sotomayor surrogate and political hack Manuel Miranda:

"We didn't call for a fight; we didn't say anything about bruising. What we said was, have a great debate... The letter we wrote, which is the nature of the story, is basically a call for Senate Republican leaders to have a great debate."

Miranda is calling for a filibuster. It's a doomed effort and everyone knows it. There's already a debate. It's been going on since Obama announced the nomination. A filibuster isn't debate, a filibuster is an action to stall debate. Miranda is putting his effort across as the exact opposite of what it really is. Where it's obstructionism for the sake of obstructionism, he wants you to see it as constructive and reasonable -- who doesn't want a "great debate?"

When all is said and done, this is just political theater. The unelected activists have a fundraising windfall and the elected activists score big points with the base. There doesn't actually have to be a fight, it just has to look like they tried to put up a fight and failed. Some of Sotomayor's most vocal critics may even vote for her.

If you're expecting a knock-down, drag-out brawl over the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, then prepare to be disappointed. On the other hand, if you're expecting a big show with all the overwrought emotion and grandious bellowing of a Puccini opera, then settle in and grab the popcorn.

You're going to get exactly that. Just don't expect a big twist at the end.

-Wisco


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What's it Take to be a Terrorist?

Two men, two guns, two cities, two days. On Sunday, Scott Roeder allegedly shot and killed Dr. George Tiller during a church service in Wichita, Kansas. The following Monday, Abdulhakim Muhammad shot Pvt. William Long and Pvt. Quinton I. Ezeagwula -- killing Long -- outside an military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Both shootings were politically motivated; Roeder killed Tiller because he performed late term abortions, while Muhammad killed Long because of what soldiers "had done to Muslims in the past" -- perhaps meaning torture or maybe just military action. What specifically set Muhammad off will probably become clearer. Two men, two murders, two political issues. Yet there's a clear difference between the two:

Associated Press:

...On Tuesday, Muhammad, also 23, pleaded not guilty to one count of capital murder and 16 counts of committing a terrorist act — and could face the death penalty. He is being held without bond. Federal prosecutors also are considering charges...

On the other hand:

Associated Press:

An activist abortion opponent was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the death of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, and the prosecutor said the evidence in the case ruled out the death penalty. Scott Roeder, 51, was shown via a video link from the Sedgwick County Jail. He fiddled with the charging documents on a podium in front of him, and said "OK" three times as Judge Ben Burgess read the charges and explained the court process...

Notice a little inconsistency there?





I'm not for the death penalty, so the disparity there in Roeder's favor doesn't really concern me. Besides, that's a difference in state law. Although Kansas allows for capital punishment, it sets the bar too high for Roeder's crime to clear. According to AP, "Kansas law requires that special circumstances exist for a defendant to be eligible for the death penalty. Such circumstances include the killing of a law officer, more than one person or a victim kidnapped for ransom or rape, or killed in murder for hire." Arkansas apparently has no similar restrictions.

Likewise, Muhammad was planning an ongoing crime spree. Police recovered "Molotov cocktails, three guns and ammunition" from his truck. Roeder, on the other hand, apparently had just one crime in mind. But Muhammad's crime was fairly random -- he had no specific person in mind. He just wanted to kill people in uniform. Roeder had a specific person in mind and a definite outcome was the motive -- no more abortions from Dr. George Tiller.

Yet, in the eyes of the law, one is terrorism and one is not. Muhammad faces 16 counts of terrorism charges and one count of murder. Roeder faces one count of murder. Something is definitely askew here.

Have we gotten to the point where define terrorism as a politically motivated crime committed by Muslims?

If we define the word terrorism as a crime committed to frighten, Roeder's crime definitely qualifies. There are now only two doctors in the United States who perform late term abortions -- how do you think those people feel about their career choices right now? Think they might be considering retirement?

And how many new doctors do you think will replace these three? Think that looks like an enticing line of work at this moment in history?

Muhammad's crime, while just as cruel, was much more pointless. I have deep, deep doubts that he's persuaded anyone that a military career is a bad idea. Other than revenge for perceived wrongs, it's hard to see what outcome this shooter expected, hard to see how this was supposed to change anything. That's not to say that Muhammad's crime doesn't earn him his charges, just that Roeder seems to get off easy for his.

We should probably take a moment and consider how we've redefined the word "terrorist" in our post-Bush world. When did it come to exclude anyone but a Muslim extremist? And when did it become impossible for a Christian extremist to engage in terrorism?

We can freak out about terrorism all we want, but when we get this selective with the label, it begins to lose it's meaning... Scratch that; it begins to take on meanings it didn't originally have. And it makes it much easier for terrorists like Scott Roeder -- who had been charged with possession of bomb materials in the past -- to continue and advance their careers in terrorism.

Pretending that only Muslims are terrorists helps no one but non-Muslim terrorists. And helping them really doesn't seem to me to be the right way to go here.

-Wisco


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Civil Unions, Marriage, and the Feds

June is now "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month." Someone call Hallmark, because we're going to need a bunch of cards. President Obama issued the proclamation yesterday, which makes it official. No one gets any new rights or privileges, but they do get a promise from Obama to "continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans."

What are those "equal rights?" According to the proclamation, "These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security."

Now someone clear something up for me -- civil unions are equal to what, exactly? Not marriages, that's the whole point of civil unions. They're the compromise between the positions of marriage for all and marriage for some. Civil unions represent equality in a "separate but equal" sense. That they aren't actually marriages is the whole idea.

You could say that former vice president Dick Cheney passed Obama on the left yesterday, as he came out in favor of same sex marriage. "I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," he told the National Press Club. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish."

But this isn't the "man bites dog" story that the media has been trying to make it. Cheney's position is actually only slightly more supportive of these marriages and just as unsupportive of equality. "The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support," he continued. "I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

Of course, his grasp of history is a weak as his grasp of the laws against torture. While not a federal statute, the Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia represents federal action in states' marriage laws. Loving struck down laws banning mixed race marriages. No one sane thinks this was a bad idea anymore. This is an example of what the right calls "judicial activism," but using it as an example of bad jurisprudence would be political suicide.





And it turns out that the federal level is where this will have to be resolved. While changing laws state by state would be a long haul, in a saner world it would get the job done. But the federal government's hand is in here. Bill Clinton guaranteed that the fight for marriage equality would reach the federal level by signing the backwards-named Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA blocks the federal government from recognizing same sex marriage, which means that nearly all of federal statutes that benefit other married people aren't applied to couples of the same gender. DOMA doesn't so much "defend" marriage as it ignores those for same sex couples. In short, it pretends people who are legally married aren't married. This isn't even "separate but equal." This is just separate.

That the feds can wash their hands of marriage equality and leave everything up to the states is a pretense that Cheney engages in plainly and Obama implies. For Dick Cheney, that pretense comes without consequence -- he has no hope of ever being elected to anything again. He'll never be in the position of having to defend that pretense, either in the court of public opinion or a court of law. But Barack Obama doesn't enjoy the freedom conferred by political hopelessness. Dealing with stuff like this is his job.

And the first real test of his commitment to equality is already in his lap. Writing for AMERICAblog, Joe Sudbay reports that the fight over DOMA is just beginning.

"[A]s I've noted before -- and will continue to note, GLAD filed a lawsuit aimed at finding Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional," he reports. "The government's answer is due by the end of June. During this LGBT Pride Month, if the Obama administration chooses to actually defend DOMA (and they do have a choice), that will speak much, much louder about Obama's continued support for gay Americans than this proclamation. (I actually think that if Obama wasn't hindered by his political advisers and consultants, he'd be much better on the issue. You know, in an off-the-record kind of way, he probably already is.)"

According to the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), "Section 3 of DOMA applies to the federal government only. It overrides a state’s determination that a same-sex couple is married and says that they are not married for purposes of all federal laws and programs, even though the federal government has always deferred to state determinations of marital status. Under this law, 'the word "marriage" means only the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife, and the word "spouse" refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.' This law requires all federal departments and agencies to disrespect the valid state-licensed marriages of same-sex couples but not other married couples. As a result, only married same-sex couples are denied all rights, protections and responsibilities associated with marriage at the federal level."

As I said, it pretends that legally married people aren't actually married.

Sadly, whether President Obama will keep his promise to "continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans" is an open question. That he pretends civil unions represent equal rights isn't a good sign.

-Wisco


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We Were Warned

Yesterday, Kansas abortion provider George Tiller was shot dead at church, while he wife sang in the choir. Scott P. Roeder was arrested in the killing a short time later. Tiller, one of the few doctors in the nation performing late term abortions, had been dubbed "Tiller the Killer" by anti-abortion groups and had suffered from this sort of terrorism before. According to Agence France-Presse, "A lightning rod in the bitter culture war over abortion, George Tiller has been picketed, bombed and shot in the arms."

The term "pro-life" has often seemed this inapt -- Tiller wasn't the first person to die at the hands of anti-abortion zealots. A more apt term would be "pro-forced pregnancy," since their goal is actually to force women to remain pregnant against their will. "Pro-life" is just a PR term -- only lunatics and neocons are "anti-life." And, as we've just seen demonstrated, anti-abortion extremists are often very selective about whose lives they're "pro-" about.

But we were warned about this. We were told that there was a danger of this happening. A Department of Homeland Security report listed right wing extremists -- including those in the anti-abortion movement -- as the greatest domestic terrorism threat facing the country. The right, for their part, were quick to take offense, as they always are. While they like to portray themselves as rugged individualists, heirs to the cowboy myth, they're the whiniest bunch of cowpokes in American history. Quick to point their fingers at everyone else, let someone hold them responsible for their rhetoric and they break down in tears and play the victim card.

Never mind that the report singled out the "far right" -- nazis, religious zealots, survivalist groups, and anti-government militia types -- mainstream Republicans were quick to claim these lunatics as their own. That's the difference between left and right; the right refuses to condemn their own nuts until it's too late. You don't have to look far to find a conservative pundit condemning Roeder's crime, but you'd have one hell of a time finding one willing to condemn the extremes of the anti-abortion movement. Even today, when all the hysterical "he's a murderer!" talk has led to its logical conclusion.





When the DHS report came out, Michelle Malkin wrote a post about it titled "Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real." Shelly, always the level-headed commenter, called it a "piece of crap report" that "is a sweeping indictment of conservatives." I guess neo-nazis and abortion clinic bombers were considered mainstream Republicans then.

"My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report -- which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified 'resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and... the historical presidential election,'" she wrote.

Except this wasn't an "Obama DHS hit job." It came from Bush's DHS. What was being reported as an existing report was a draft begun on Jan. 23, 2007 -- the date on the draft Malkin says she read through. Either she was so eager to be offended that she didn't notice or found that date was inconvenient to her contrived outrage. Frankly, I'll believe either -- Michelle Malkin is not known for here rigorous journalistic process or her commitment to truth.

Malkin is just my example here, the entire right did pretty much the same thing. Barack Obama -- secret Muslim terrorist and president of the Bill Ayers fan club -- had a lot of guts calling out the right for their terrorists, killers, and nuts. They grabbed the skinheads, the pipe-bombers, the people stockpiling guns for when the UN takes over, and held them close. "We are them and they are us," they basically said. "We're all right wing extremists."

That is, until one of the people we've been warned might go fullblown terrorist goes fullblown terrorist. Then they're a lone nut. When Jim David Adkisson went on a shooting spree in a Unitarian church -- because the church supported what he called "weirdos and sickos and homos" -- he wasn't a Republican anymore. Never mind that investigators found his reading list consisted of by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly.

"I'd like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I've done," Adkisson wrote in what he thought was his suicide note (he was overpowered by church members before he could kill himself). "If life ain't worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go. Go kill liberals."

A right wing extremist went terrorist -- just as we were warned some would. But the right continued their pretense of offense. When a right wing nut job was busted with the ingredients of a dirty bomb in Maine, they continued to pretend to be offended. They took the idea of being a "right wing extremist" to their stupid tea bag protests and made it a rallying cry. Google "'right wing extremist' proud of it" and you get 55,400 hits, starting with the PoudExtremist.com, which bills itself as a "site is dedicated to all of those who [DHS head] Janet Napolitano calls Right Wing Extremists!"

Yay for neo-Nazi skinheads and wild-eyed bomb-tossers!

After all this feigned and weepy complaining by the right over the report, Napolitano pulled it. Conservatives did a little dance, having won what they saw as a minor victory over Obama, but anyone who believes that DHS isn't keeping an eye on right wing extremists anyway is a complete idiot.

Republicans can continue to cry and whine that worries about right wing terrorism are unfair, but until right wingers stop being terrorists, those complaints are just stupid. The right chose to own these people, when they pretended to be so insulted by the DHS draft report. No one forced these people on them, they grabbed them with both arms in a big old bearhug. How dare we worry that anti-abortion crazies might shoot someone? How dare we worry that some talk-radio addled moron would equate liberals with terrorists and shoot a couple? How dare we worry that some crazy racist recluse, reacting to the first African-American president, would put together a dirty bomb? How dare we take freakin' reality into account?

What we should be doing is pretending that every right winger everywhere is angelic and all this talk about the "second holocaust" of abortion isn't going to drive someone to do something about it.

Republicans love their nuts -- until those nuts act. Then those nuts aren't Republicans anymore. The right is proud of their right wing extremists -- until they're not.

-Wisco


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