House Votes Unanimously To Condemn Tiller Murder
For what it's worth, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution yesterday, authored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), condemning the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Full text below the fold.
Whereas Dr. George Tiller was murdered in Wichita, Kansas, on May 31, 2009;
Whereas Dr. Tiller is mourned by his family, friends, congregation, community, and colleagues;
Whereas Dr. Tiller, 67, was killed in his place of worship, a place intended for peace and refuge that in a moment became a place for violence and murder;
Whereas places of worship should be sanctuaries, but have increasingly borne witness to reprehensible acts of violence, with 38 people in the United States killed in their place of worship in the past 10 years and 30 people wounded in those same incidents;
Whereas these acts of violence include the murder of an Illinois pastor at the pulpit in March 2009, the murder of an Ohio minister in November 2008, the murder of an usher and a guest during a children's play in a Tennessee church in July 2008, the murder of four family members in a church in Louisiana in May 2006, and the shooting of a worshipper outside a synagogue in Florida in October 2005; and
Whereas violence is deplorable, and never an acceptable avenue for expressing opposing viewpoints: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) offers its condolences to Dr. Tiller's family; and
(2) commits to the American principle that tolerance must always be superior to intolerance, and that violence is never an appropriate response to a difference in beliefs.
Attest:
Clerk.


















Wheras all the acts of violence mentioned above were the work of Right Wing Extremist Domestic Terrorists it shall be held that the DOJ Report on Right Wing Extremism be republished without the ridicule it got the first time around.
June 10, 2009 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you.
This resolution* and a gift card will get you a cup of Starbucks.
*Congress'. Not yours.
June 10, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
err... DHS Report, not DOJ.
Thought remains the same
June 10, 2009 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It looks like they aren't quite able to keep up with the right-wing violence. They just finally got around to condemning Tiller's murder and another right-wing nut kills someone else at the Holocaust Museum. If/when they decide to condemn that there probably will have already been *another* act of right-wing violence to condemn.
June 10, 2009 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reading the resolution, it jumped out at me that all of the emphasis is on the fact that Dr. Tiller was murdered in church.
What is obviously missing from it is the fact that this was a political assassination based on Dr. Tiller's provision of legal reproductive health services. Even the list of who mourned him failed to include one obvious group - "his patients", the women who went to him for these services.
Do we think it would have been impossible to get a unanimous House vote on a resolution that addressed the motivations for Dr. Tiller's assassination? Would the wingers have been unwilling
to support a resolution that expressed those obvious truths?
June 11, 2009 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink