And Now For Some More Fatuous Threats Against Judges!

Just a little follow up on my posts, Well Now, Isn't That Special! and Purely For Foul and Corrupt Political Advantage.

First we had Tom DeLay's threats against judges, next we had Senator John Cornyn sympathetic and understanding take on violence against judges, after that we had lawyer Edwin Vieira--in a conservative discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny"--opine that his approach to the Supreme Court would be that of the very practical Joseph Stalin: "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

Well, guess what? We now have another off the cuff remark, to a correspondent from The Nation, from that same conference:

In Contempt of Courts

by Max Blumenthal, Washington

Michael Schwartz must have thought I was just another attendee of the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference. I approached the chief of staff of Oklahoma's GOP Senator Tom Coburn outside the conference in downtown Washington last Thursday afternoon after he spoke there. Before I could introduce myself, he turned to me and another observer with a crooked smile and exclaimed, "I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!"

And it gets even better as the behind-the-scenes operatives tell how they plan to politically exploit those menacing threats of express or implied violence to the Federal and State Judiciary:

The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution."

We've seen this before. The last time we went through this "arousing the anger of the base with a rising tide of threats" we ended up with Eric Rudolph. Remember Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion terrorist?

Rudolph, 38, of Murphy, North Carolina, was charged in the Northern District of Georgia for the bombing attack at Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996, which killed Olympic spectator Alice Hawthorne and seriously injured more than 100 other people; the bombing attack on a Sandy Springs, Georgia, family planning clinic on Jan. 16, 1997, which injured more than 50 people; and the bombing attack on a Midtown Atlanta nightclub, the Otherside Lounge, on Feb. 21, 1997, which injured five people. Rudolph was also indicted in the Northern District of Alabama for the bombing attack on a Birmingham family planning clinic on Jan. 29, 1998, which killed Birmingham Police Officer Robert Sanderson and critically injured nurse Emily Lyons....

Pursuant to the plea agreements, Rudolph disclosed to the government the existence and locations of more than 250 pounds of dynamite buried in several locations in the Western North Carolina area. Three of the locations were relatively near populated areas, including one location where Rudolph buried a fully constructed dynamite bomb with a detached detonator. As required by the plea agreements, Rudolph described the locations of those dangerous materials and provided other information necessary for the government to conduct render-safe procedures.

Essentially a plea-bargain by blackmail.

Let hear it once again: a cynical and deliberate ploy to "anger the base", by making repeated threats of violence against judges, purely for foul and corrupt political advantage.

I wonder where the ATF will have to investigate the first judicial bombing?