Let's Kill All the Judges

I don't think the latest GOP attempts to intimidate and threaten the federal judiciary are anything but that; threats. While they're screaming in favor of murder, it's merely more of the bullying tactics that they feel works so well. You can't help but blanch at the openly sanguinary tone, though. Like this from last week's "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference in Washington:

Ominously, (lawyer/author Edwin) Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

There's a guy who's probably lost a lot of cases over the years. Maybe it's not the judge's fault, but yours for studying Stalin quotes rather than defending your clients.

Then there's SpongeBob James Dobson of Focus on the Penis, I mean Family:

DOBSON: I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that's what you're talking about.

This just adds to the pile started by Tom DeLay and John Cornyn last week. If anybody made anything resembling these kinds of threats against the Presidency, the Secret Service would be down their throats within minutes. In fact, they've done it:

CHICAGO - The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President Bush with a gun pointed at his head.

"We need to ensure, as best we can, that this is nothing more than artwork with a political statement," (spokesman Tom) Mazur said.

Let's exercise some consistency, shall we? If you're investigating postage stamps, investigate rhetoric inciting riots and murdering federal judges.

But we all know that won't happen. Under Republican rule, threatening statements against judges are just seen as part of the debate. That whether or not a branch of the government should be impeached or killed constitutes political debate is an example of "moving the goalposts" so egregious, the goalposts are now sitting outside the stadium.