Don’t believe everything you read.

That’s a good point. Seems to me that if someone issues a credible death threat on a blog or online forum, the correct thing to do is not to get the whole bleeping blogosphere drawn into a flame war over it but to alert the authorities. You’d send it to Phoenix police, say, and let them know that this person made this threat, and maybe they should check it out. If the threats are credible, the last thing you want to do is bait and inflame the threatening individual even more.

The fact that righties went with the “bait and inflame” course tells me that either they don’t have the sense God gave onions — possible — or that they knew the threat was not credible, but they made a Big Bleeping Deal out of it anyway because it gave them a self-righteous platform for expressing their venomous hatred of lefties.

In the case of the nice doggie — yeah, it’s probably hyperbole. Probably, I say; the nice doggie is not the most stable puppy in the kennel. But let’s assume he doesn’t really mean it. That kind of talk could very well incite someone else to attempt assassination of a Supreme Court justice. The world is full of miswired people who have been incited into committing crimes with much less provocation.

I have a long-standing policy here of not allowing commenters to even joke about assassinations for that reason.

Now, I know I’m opening myself up for criticism for asking this, but at what point are these death threats legally actionable? At what point do we start talking about the 14th amendment instead of viewing this speech purely within the ambit of the 1st amendment? I don’t have a law degree, so I’m not asking this in a purely rhetorical sense; at what point is the line crossed (in the eyes of The Law).

http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=23632

Karl Rove just can’t lose. No matter how bad it gets, all he has to do is schedule a few photo ops with Uncurious George and get ole Tony Snow to flash his pearly whites.

Forty percent of the American public fall for this crap every single time. And apparently there’s not a damned thing anybody can do about it.

Dean writes a book that explains the psychopathology of these right-wing shepherds and their sheep, but that does not matter. The morons of the Republican base do not read books, they just follow orders.

A depressing way to start the day. Forty percent. And climbing. God save us all.

The candidate who speaks and acts as if that were the sign on their war-room wall gets my vote. If not, they’re not talking to me. They’re living on some other planet.