A Truly Disgusting Human Being

I want you to think about something for a moment. Think about what Bill O'Reilly is saying about women. He is saying that he believes there are thousands of women who would seek to end their pregnancy in the last trimester on a whim or a lark. He is promoting a notion that there are countless women so cold hearted that they would have no qualms about going through that procedure simply because they "wanted to go to a concert". I don't have a problem with people being opposed to late term abortions, but to put the situation is such obviously ridiculous terms is just reprehensible. When his guest tries to correct him he immediately begins to talk over her. He doesn't want to know or even consider what the truth is. It couldn't be that these procedures are actually reserved for women whose lives are really in danger. No, not in his world. He is just all too happy to keep framing the debate in false terms to try to paint Dr. Tiller as a monster.

You see he isn't really upset that Dr. Tiller was murdered, he is just upset that people rightly leveled some blame at him for it. Bill O'Reilly is a coward of the highest order and we need to find a way to get his advertisers to pull away from him. This man doesn't deserve a second chance to try to get another doctor killed.

Uncommon Courage

If you are like me and watch "The Rachel Maddow Show" on a regular basis, then you probably are familiar with Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell. She is a frequent guests and she gives very informed and many times witty takes on racial issues as they relate to politics. Well today she has a very powerful, moving, courageous, and just about any other positive adjective you can think of post up at "The Nation" about the assassination of Dr George Tiller over the weekend. On Monday there Rachel had Dr. Susan Wicklund on TRMS who had this to say.

We have to get women to start standing behind us as providers. We need the 45 million women who have had abortions in this country Roe versus Wade to stand beside us as providers and clinics now and come out of your homes, come out of your comfort zone and talk about it. Make everyone know how common this is.

At the time I thought to myself that Dr. Wicklund was absolutely right, but what she was asking of many of these women might be too much for them to bear. Well Ms. Lacewell shows that there are women out there willing to tell their story in order to push back against the anti choice crowd.

Forty years ago my mother was part of the movement of individuals who helped desperate women find safe ways to terminate their pregnancies. This network provided safe houses, transportation, and follow-up support for women who had to cross state lines to obtain abortions. She was willing to risk her life and livelihood to protect women's reproductive choices.

Nearly twenty years ago my older sister was diagnosed with cancer during the second trimester of her pregnancy. Her religious commitments led her to refuse her doctor's advice to terminate. She risked her life to ensure that she would not have an abortion. She and my niece are both healthy.

When we were 14-year-old, high school freshmen my friend decided to have the baby of a boy she'd had sex with only once. It changed her life forever, but she graduated from school and made a life for herself and daughter. In my twenties I stood by dear friends who simply could not afford emotionally or financially to carry their pregnancies to term. Their decisions to seek abortions were difficult and painful, but they faced them courageously.

I'm a 35-year-old, educated, black, divorced mother. Like so many other women my age I have faced my own tough reproductive choices. I've had a child, an abortion, and hysterectomy. I love and respect women who have chosen many different paths. Their stories and my own are part of the reason that I am a committed supporter of reproductive rights.

The murder of George Tiller is personal to me. It is not just a matter of politics or policy. I am an aunt to three teenage girls and the mother to a daughter. It is critical to me that their health, safety, and choices are protected.

I HIGHLY recommend reading the full text of her post because it definitely deserves your attention. I can't imagine how much courage it took for Professor Harris-Lacewell to tell her story but I hope she is an inspiration to other women who have a similar story to tell.

Somethings Been Missing On Morning Joe

I have a love hate relationship with Morning Joe and no matter how frustrating it is to watch I still find myself watching it every weekday morning. Well the last two days it has been very apparent that Joe Scarborough and his yes men and women have gone out of their way to not talk about the assassination of Dr George Tiller by a crazy right to lifer. I thought it was pretty cowardly for them not to talk about it but I just chalked it up to the yellow streak in Scarborough's nature.

Turns out there is more to the story.

Maddow actually led with a headshot of Michael Griffin, the first abortion-doctor murderer, who killed Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida in 1993. She then moved on to copycat Shelley Shannon, who wrote letters of support for Griffin shortly before she shot George Tiller in both arms, an ominous foreboding of his murder 16 years later.Maddow could have called on a colleague with first-hand knowledge of the Griffin case -- Joe Scarborough, the folksy host of the network's Morning Joe and Griffin's pro-bono lawyer in 1993. A Voice cover story in 2008 examined in great detail Scarborough's role in the case, as well as the singular impact his exploitation of the abortion issue had in Scarborough's 1994 initial election to Congress. So what might his colleagues have learned about defending abortion-doc killers from Morning Joe?

Well....

Scarborough's hometown of Pensacola -- where his show once frequently originated -- was the site of the first two abortion murders, the second also occurring during his first run for Congress in 1994. A raw 30-year-old, Scarborough's surprising Republican win was principally funded by anti-abortion groups and he immediately went to Washington and voted against bills to protect abortion clinics, including one version sponsored by a Republican congressmen.

Griffin handwrote the Voice two long letters last year after we contacted him in prison, describing in depth his relationship with Scarborough. While Scarborough tried to minimize his ties in an interview, claiming he was merely doing "a favor for a friend" and briefly searching for a lawyer who'd take the case to trial, Griffin detailed Scarborough's efforts to stay on the case and work with the trail attorney.

So Scarborough himself has first hand experience with representing domestic terrorists, and for free no less. Of topic but I would say representing a cold blooded killer because he is a family friend is worse to me than "palling around" with Bill Ayers.

So the question is will any guest who goes on Morning Joe this week push the issue and bring up the murder or will they do like most of them always do and kiss Scarborough's ass?

Very Powerful

The son of one of the founders of the Right To Life movement, Frank Schaeffer appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight and what he said in light of the assasination of Dr. George Tiller was very powerful. He not only took responsibility for his part in stirring up that kind of evil with his hateful rhetoric previously, he also called for others in the RTL movement to come forward and take responsibility as well. I could try to describe what he said but I wouldn't do it justice so instead just check out the video from the show.



The tail end of the segment where he talks about the rage that wingnuts are trying to gin up at President Obama I think is exactly spot on. And I can only hope that the people tasked with protecting him are paying attention and are leaving nothing to chance.

When Hate Speech Kills

Greg Sargent is reporting what many people had already guessed, that tonight Bill O'Reilly will address the murder of Dr. George Tiller along with the fac that many people feel he bears some responsibility in the crime. I have no doubt in my mind that Bill O will shirk any and all responsibility. That's what he does. He gins up the rage of his viewers and then when one of them acts he never wants to admit that he had something to do with it. Well Jed Lewison has put together a video with many of the attacks Bill O has lobbed at Dr. Tiller over the last several years. You can come to your own conclusion as to whether his kind of rhetoric might have sounded to Scott Roeder like O'Reilly was cheering him on.

Will the Mainstream Media Stick Their Heads In The Sand Again.

News has just come in that George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, was murdered today as he headed into church.

WICHITA - George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.

Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.

No information has been released about whether a suspect is in custody.

Homicide detectives and Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston have arrived at the church.

Members of the congregation who were inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting were being kept inside the church by police, and those arriving were being ushered into the parking lot. Witnesses are being transported downtown for interviews and other members of the congregation are slowly being released from inside the sanctuary.

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5701 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993.

Now for some odd reason when a situation like this happens and its obvious that a right wing extremist was involved the mainstream media decides to leave that little bit of information out. They never seem to want to make the connection between extreme elements on the right wing of the country and domestic terrorism no matter how obvious it is. You saw it with the right wing cop killer in Pittsburgh and you saw it with the right wing cop killer in Florida. While the local coverage had tons of information about the perpetrators right wing extremist pasts the national mainstream media tended to avoid that subject all together.

And in the meantime people continue to lose their lives to these assholes.