God hates sinners via danny.hammontree.

Randall Terry is at it again.  Because apparently the half-skull poster of Sonia Sotomayor and exhortations to his unstable flock about the Angel of Death weren’t nearly enough to get him the fundraising haul attention he needed.

In any polite society, his brand of dangerous stoking of the fires of hell would get him shunned by decent people.

In fact, it’s well past time that GOP lawmakers were asked — clearly and without any ambiguity — what they think of Terry’s fire and brimstone violence stoking on behalf of their policy agenda. 

Because they cannot have it both ways any more that Terry can. 

Using Terry’s dangerous rhetoric to push the Republican policy agenda makes them just as responsible for the ends of those means as Terry is. 

Either you embrace the violent ends that result from this and take responsibility.  Or you denounce it for what it is:  dangerous violence stoking rhetoric that poses a public threat, and is designed to scare public officials into inaction through threats of violence and retribution against their safety.

Just like it was designed to do with Dr. Tiller.

Here, though?  Terry gets time at the National Press Club to spew his vile, violent venom:

Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, and other local pro-life advocates will hold a press conference at the National Press Club (529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC) on Tuesday, July 21, at 2:00 P.M. Mr. Randall Terry to discuss what he and other pro-life leaders will and will not do if healthcare passes and includes paying for child-killing, and what convulsions follow.

"Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for the murder of babies, and betray God Himself, without horrific consequences." — Randall Terry (more…)

Pitiful.  Just pitiful.

(via Senate Democrats)

Remember the whole "Is he or isn’t he?" brouhaha over Alito’s membership in "Concerned Alumni for Princeton (CAP)?" 

With it’s subsequent Mrs. Alito subtle moment in the sobby spotlight during the Alito confirmation hearings? The one that Sen. Lindsey Graham conveniently engineered to bring out the bad news about CAP’s racist tendencies while attempting to make Alito look more sympathetic to the public, despite his creepy opening statement?

Because I do.

The tap dance and refuse to deliver act that the GOP put on to keep Alito’s "Concerned Alumni of Princeton" info out of the public eye was a shameless stonewall maneuver from start to finish.

Jane and I spent weeks trying to pry any substantive, on point information out of people on the Hill, as did Sen. Ted Kennedy:

And the Republicans know this CAP stuff is toxic. They’ve been stonewalling any legitimate inquiry into creepy Sam’s history with the group, and Specter is either so ignorant of what’s going on within his own committee that he’s in no position to be chairing it or he’s just a lying shill for the Bush administration when he says those documents were never requested.

Think Progress has a video of the dust-up with Ted Kennedy.

This is a history of the back-and-forth with the Kennedy office, according to Kennedy staff:

November 30, 2005: Senator Kennedy requests Congressional Research Service to ask Rusher’s permission to examine CAP documents at Library of Congress.

Week of December 5, 2005: Rusher turns down CRS request.

December 22, 2005: Senators Kennedy sends letter to Senator Specter asking for Committee request of Rusher documents. Delivered by hand to Judiciary Committee.

Date unknown prior to 1/5/06: Kennedy staff and Specter staff discuss December 22 request.

January 5, 2006, 7:29 pm: Kennedy staff request status report from Specter staff on request regarding Rusher documents.

January 5, 2006 7:50 pm: Specter staff replies that they are not inclined to grant request because they are personal documents. (more…)

Political pundits, electoral operatives and former elected officials are like the undead: just when you think they’ve been buried, they rise up again from the political graveyard. No matter how craptastic their myriad sins may be — stealing from public coffers, ethical lapses out the wazoo, being a race-baiting bigot, whatever — they continue on your teevee and in print.

There are plenty of questions that need to be asked an answered on legal grounds about Sotomayor before confirmation. She’s well-qualified, well-versed in the law, and more than capable of explaining her rationale on any number of those opinions in open session in the Senate.

And they should be asked, by Senators of both parties, based on her actual words and writing.

A former Indiana law school student of Dawn Johnsen’s penned an editorial for the local Journal Gazette newspaper recently. In it, this former student writes of the open and fair way that Prof. Johnsen conducted her classes, not only allowing opposing viewpoints but actively encouraging them to be aired, debated and discussed on issues as wide-ranging as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” abortion and executive power.

An anti-Sotomayor ad has hit the airwaves and it piqued my interest on who was really behind it.

It’s an odd ad, edited narrowly to portray a very stilted picture of Sotomayor — in short, it’s a classic political hit piece. Watch for yourself:

It’s from the Judicial Confirmation Network, headed by Gary Marx and Wendy Long.

From hurling labels of racism to claims of Sonia Sotomayor being an “affirmative action hire,” it’s been a show of dismal stupidity the last day and a half from far too many in the GOP. That the contradiction between the two epithets isn’t patently obvious makes it all the more ludicrous.