Congressman gets death threat over health reform

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A North Carolina congressman who supports an overhaul of the health care system had his life threatened by a caller upset that he was not holding a public forum on the proposal, his office said Friday.

Democratic Rep. Brad Miller received the call Monday, one of hundreds the congressman's office has fielded demanding town-hall meetings on the health care proposal, said his spokeswoman, LuAnn Canipe. She said the callers were "trying to instigate town halls so they can show up and disrupt."

"We had one of those kind of calls that escalated to what we considered a threat" on the congressman's life, said Canipe. "These are some strong-arm tactics, and we are trying to deal with and trying to talk to people in good faith about health care reform."

More here.

Wow.

This guy made a death threat, to a fucking congressman, because he wouldn't have a town hall meeting for the purpose of allowing conservative agitators to disrupt it. I've been thinking for years that the country's going nuts, but it is interesting to note that I can still be amazed.

More generally, I strongly condemn, of course, these right-wing disruption tactics, whether astroturf or genuine. If democracy stands on a foundation of free speech and lively debate, shutting down debates is necessarily anti-democratic, and therefore anti-American. And given all the misinformation and lies conservatives have been hurling about health care lately, such as the absurdly false Obama "euthanization program," Americans desperately need to know what's going on.

On the other hand, the left wing has been using this tactic on various issues for decades. It is truly ironic to watch liberals howl about all this when they've kept their mouths shut about it for so long: if it's wrong when they do it, it's definitely wrong when we do it.

But then, liberals have never been too good at looking themselves in the mirror.

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