Editor’s Note: The language of quoted material, including profanity, has been preserved.
‘We will hunt you down. We will slit your throats. We will drink your blood. I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square. This is your last warning.”
Is this a passage from Bram Stoker’s Dracula? A snippet from al-Qaeda’s latest missive? No, this e-mail reached Wisconsin state senator Dan Kapanke (R., La Crosse) on March 9, after he voted for GOP governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget and labor reforms.
Kapanke is not alone. While the mainstream media generally yawn, leftists threaten top Wisconsin Republicans with murder.
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“Across the whole Republican caucus, I think we have received at least a dozen, credible, specific death threats,” one well-placed legislative staffer in Madison told me. “This was not just ‘Go to Hell,’ but threats that rose to a level that made people feel unsafe.”
The Left launched its civility campaign on January 8, after Jared Lee Loughner’s alleged, fatal shooting spree in Tucson. Barely two months later, the Left killed its own initiative in Madison, when politics interfered.
Civility anyone? A placard carried by an anti-Scott Walker protester
depicts the governor of Wisconsin with a rifle’s crosshairs on his face.
“The Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation and the Wisconsin Capitol Police have investigated numerous threats against elected officials over the last four weeks,” Wisconsin’s DOJ stated March 11. DCI chief Ed Wall added: “The Division of Criminal Investigation takes these kinds of threats seriously and will follow through with the investigation and prosecution whenever possible.”
Wisconsin officials have identified the sender of two specific death threats e-mailed to 15 Republican state senators at 9:18 p.m. on March 10. They will not release the suspect’s name while their probe continues. However, these chilling (uncorrected) words now are on the record:
Subject line: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!
I want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and your republican dictators have to die. This is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, this isn’t enough. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message. So we have built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) the 8 of you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. The 8 includes the 7 senators and the dictator. We feel that it’s worth our lives becasue we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. Goodbye ASSHOLE!!!!
FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, I AM FORMALLY REQUESTING TO SEE THE 30,000 EMAILS YOU HAVE GOTTEN MAKING YOU COMPLY WITH THE OPEN RECORDS LAW. I ASSURE YOU THAT NONE OF THEM ARE IN SUPPORT OF YOU OR ANYTHING THAT YOU OR YOUR STAFF STAND FOR. YOUR STAFF MEMBERS HAVE NOW BEEN ADDED TO THE HIT LIST AS WELL AS THOSE OF THE OTHER SENATE MEMBERS WE HAVE THREATENED. PLEASE ADVISE THEM OF THE IMPENDING DANGER LEADING TO THIER DEATHS.
This is so very disturbing.
We've always suspected the Liberals accused their enemies (Obama's word) of doing what they, themselves, were capable of doing. I believe they call it Transference in their psychology babble.
Can the fleebaggers be held accountable as an accessory?
What about those in, or rather out?, of Indiana? After seeing what actions similar to theirs have generated in WI, by continuing their course - are THEY not condoning and encouraging like action against the Republicans.
Can we be certain these threats won't grow to include, not only those representatives, but those who voted for them, or support their ideas in the media?
Who can be sure our President did not ignite, if not at least fan, these flames with such directives as "get in their face" and "if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"?
In very broad, generalistic terms being on the right usually means a person is ruled by their intellect while being on the left usually means a person is ruled by their passions.
I think one of the most pathetic things about these threats and comments from the left is the total disconnect from reality and the facts. The Republicans that voted on a bill to get the budget fixed without raising taxes are parasites on the taxpayer? How does that work? If anything they are the flea collar trying to get the parasites off the taxpayer.
But then, I am willing to bet that most of the people commenting like that are not actually taxpayers. Mostly college kids still bleeding their parents for money, or the ones that collect more in tax returns than they pay in. So who is the parasites on the taxpayers?
It takes a better person to gain admission to the finest schools, to succeed in his career, to arrogate to himself great wealth, to enjoy a happy and stable family life.
I'm very liberal. And I can, with ease, say that the terrible negativity of these verbal attacks is both counterproductive and poor decision making on the part of the attackers.
But I have to laugh loudly at the idea that this article is, itself, any less biased. When Glenn Grothman says “I have never seen a lobbying group more angry,” he must clearly be forgetting forgetting the protesters on the right who screamed elected officials out of town hall meetings, brought loaded weapons to parade outside the president's speeches, and, in the vein of Ann Coulter back when she mattered, proposed re-education camps for liberals.
Furthermore, is there no glimmer of irony in a group of people who condemn the other side for being elitist while spouting lines like, "In very broad, generalistic terms being on the right usually means a person is ruled by their intellect while being on the left usually means a person is ruled by their passions."
Just as the left demonizes and imagines larger-than-life evil conservatives, so to does the right cherish its image of a shiftless welfare hippie who somehow still rides in a limo and has no idea what it is to be poor.
If you really object to incivility, you might think of acting civilly.
Well, here in Wisconsin the threats aren't getting reported. And I don't blame the media - they're leftists, and they're doing what leftists do. WHERE THE HELL IS THE GOP? The polls are turning against us. A few ads, with the pious quotes that followed the AZ shootings (note: the other side knows how to win) alternated with our fine public employees in Madison recently, with the death threats at the end, would turn things around. But a fight from the GOP? Right. As soon as there's civility from the left.
So just to let people know, the Dems will allow property taxes in Wisconsin to skyrocket, they will blame the GOP, which will respond civilly, conservatism will be wiped out here in 2012, and the state will be ruined soon after.
These people are statists who are used to getting what they want not through production, negotiation, and trade (the voluntary methods of a civil society) but instead through politics, which is ultimately to say, force. So when politics fails them, naturally they turn to other tactics rooted in force: threats, destruction, intimidation. That was the case in Greece and now we see the same thing in my home state. This is one of the inevitable consequences of politicizing society. Those who become used to feeding at the public trough turn into savages when the feed level is lowered even slightly.
In response to kj, I fail to see anything in Murdock's column that is "biased" or uncivil.
The U.S. would be a far better country if people on all sides of political disputes confined themselves to rational argumentation. While some opponents of the Obama agenda of greatly further politicizing the country have resorted to shouting, epithets, and threats, most instead use arguments. On the other hand, I have seen nothing but shouting, epithets, and threats (and worse) from the statists in Wisconsin who see their power eroding.
You forgot to add to your list that it takes a better person not to threaten violence and death to another.
Concerning the rest of your list of "it takes a better person to...", I have to disagree; I know of many a Liberal who has gotten into fine schools, succeeded in careers, seized wealth, and yes - even claim to enjoy a happy and stable family life. Some of them don't even work for the government.
People who, by every measure of success, have succeeded. People who have risen from meager living circumstances right to the top -- solely by dint of their superior intellect and drive. People who have swept floors and washed dishes to pay for the finest schools, augmented those jobs with academic scholarships based solely on test scores, attained partnerships in sophisticated and world-renowned financial firms, invested wisely, married well, raised terrific children. Indeed, those are better people. Closer to God, indeed.
I'm still waiting for the unions' and Democrats' appeals for civility and condemnation of their minions' terrorist threats.
Ah, the sweet sound of one hand clapping...
As for "People who have swept floors and washed dishes to pay for the finest schools, augmented those jobs with academic scholarships based solely on test scores, attained partnerships in sophisticated and world-renowned financial firms, invested wisely, married well, raised terrific children. Indeed, those are better people.":
No one here is making that argument or even implying such, save for yourself (with sarcasm, I assume). Don't you ever itch, cuddling with all those strawmen?
I think everyone's issue is with your use of the word 'arrogate' which includes the notion of unjustified success or attaintment. A taking or seizure of that to which the person has no legitimate right.
Find the names of the folks who write these noble words, then, with names attached, publish their musings for all to see and read.
It would be interesting to see how many turn out to be dedicated teachers of the sacred little childrens.
Some might even be comedians, you know, the ones who write that 300,000 people and their families are gonna starve and be naked to boot.
Our inability to distinguish between natural aggression and hate-driven aggression paralyzes as us as a nation both on the international scene and at home and accounts for why the pleas for "civility" that followed the shooting tragedy in Tucson are ignored by the union bosses in Wisconsin.
The difference between aggression needed to protect life and destructive hate is what separates our fragile democracy from anarchy.
Does anyone have the authority to decide if something is a better behavior than another? Or at least a better outcome given a choice of 2 options? I think so MikeB. Sometimes certain decisions lead to "better" things, and a person who makes those decisions consistently could even possibly be called a better person. There was no need to bring God into this. If we can't agree shaking someones hand when introduced is better than punching them, then political discourse is probably not going to happen.
Each threatening email can easily be traced back to the person sending it. Prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. Nothing else should be tolerated.
Isn't this the behavior we were told to expect from Tea Party members...but never saw? Come to think of it, hasn't Jesse Jackson been over chasing this Wisconsin ambulance? Now would be a good time for him to finally release that footage he took of those TP protestors yelling racial things at those Congressmen. He's been keeping that footage under lock and key for some reason...
