"Tim Profitt -- and a Contemporary History of Political Thuggery"

We Progressives/Liberals have tried our best to stay the course... win elections with intelligence, truth, facts, and history on our side... finally, elect a black President. This must have been the conservatives breaking point... all they have done is continue to go further and further to the right, more extreme, more manipulation, more billionaire money, tell lies, freak out... snap... violence! How sad.

It truly is sickening what this year's vote comes down to. Those who support the tea baggers, FAUX News, the leaders of hate in America, and those that have no interest in moving this country forward are to blame. They have gone so far they express outrage when they are caught on video participating in violence... an act of apology is a sign of weakness or wrongdoing... it's a shocking commentary on American society. And every conservative (American period) who does not denounce these actions is just as guilty for allowing this behavior to continue. (7 of 6)

This appalling story of a woman MoveOn activist in KY being grabbed, pushed down to the cement, and having her head kicked by a Rand Paul supporter, as terrible as it is, only becomes the latest in a long line of political violence in the past few years. From relatively isolated incidents to ones even more violent and troubling, there's a growing pattern here, and as someone who reveres American democracy, I find it quite frightening. Here's just a few examples from the current era: * Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller hires a group tied to a paramilitary militia to do security for him, and his paratroopers assault and handcuff a citizen journalist just trying to get a question answered. * a bullet is shot through Rep. Grijalva's campaign office window, and obscene threats are delivered to his ofc as well. * Rep. Perriello's gas line to his house was cut. * Republican congressional candidate Allen West using a motorcycle gang known for violent criminal activity for security, and then gang members actually harassed and bullied a Democratic staffer trying to videotape a public event. * Vandalism and assassination threats occur at offices of Congressional members during the health care fight. * a doctor who performs abortions in KS is brutally murdered while coming out of his church on a Sunday morning. * a guard at the Holocaust Museum is murdered by an anti-Semitic racist stoked by listening to Limbaugh and Beck. * a lunatic also stirred up by Glenn Beck shows about the Tides Foundation is stopped on his way to murder people at the Tides office in San Francisco. These are just the actual acts of violence. In the meantime, we have people coming to town hall meetings and Presidential rallies with assault weapons, Republican Senate candidates talking openly of having to use "Second Amendment means" in case regular politics doesn't work, Republican Governors (both Rick Perry and Sarah Palin) meeting with secessionist groups with ties to racist leaders. Rand Paul's wimpy statement about civility is only the latest in Republicans' utter unwillingness to clearly condemn violent acts or rhetoric on the part of way too many of their supporters. The sad thing is that all this violent talk and action, along with the cowardly acceptance of it by the political party benefiting, is a terrible reliving of American history too many times over. When lynchings and church bombings and the brutal murders and beatings of civil rights activists were going on in the South during the civil rights movement era, politicians in the South rarely said a word to condemn or even restrain their citizens. When an abolitionist Senator, Charles Sumner, was caned by a Senator Preston Brooks from South Carolina, he was cheered and congratulated throughout the South. When the staff at abortion clinics have been murdered several times over the years, "pro-life" politicians have fallen strangely silent way too often. If Republican politicians don't strongly condemn the thuggery of way too many of their followers, they share in the blame. When they ratchet up their own rhetoric, and talk about second amendment solutions and the President being friends with terrorists, they share in the blame. Democracy is premised on us being able to freely and vigorously debate the issues, and on those who win elections governing the way they believe, but our entire democracy is at risk if violence becomes just another standard operating procedure and isn't swiftly and strongly condemned. Republicans who welcome paramilitary militia members and people with ties to violent racist organizations do so at not only their own peril, but our entire way of government. - Mike Lux

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP’” - Rand Paul, May 2010

Not ok on the throat of corporations, but ok on the neck of a citizen expressing freedom of speech.