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Terry Says Obama Makes Attacks Inevitable; Also Serves Beer, Wings

This afternoon, anti-abortion activist and former Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry went ahead with his second press conference in as many weeks at the National Press Club, the first of which was held in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas. As promised, there were hot wings and Guinness. But there was also an ominous warning that the Obama administration may be making more violent attacks "inevitable."

I asked Terry whether he'd received any complaints or criticism for proceeding with his event despite the tragic murder just yesterday of Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen T. Johns at the hands of a right-wing extremist. He responded, "we've had this in progress for about a week. If I had known we would have done it at a different time."

But then Terry took a curious turn.

"Let me preempt all the bloggers in the world, OK. Here's where the bloggers are going to head." Affecting a sneer, he added:

"The white supremacists and the pro-lifers really are terrorists. Just like that paper from Homeland Security said." They're going to try to lump pro-lifers with this lunatic man who walked in and killed this fine security guard.... The bloggers are gonna make--trust me--I'll bet my last dollar. I'll give you a thousand-to-one odds on a dollar bet. Mark my words everyone. Watch. And by the way, you know the Homeland Security paper that came out about I don't know six, eight weeks ago? This list of all these bad people. And now they're gonna go "See! She was right! Pro-lifers and these white Idaho minute men or whoever they are--they're all bad! They're a threat to America! They all should be tried for terrorism and sedition!"

Fair enough--I hadn't mentioned the DHS report, but OK.

He didn't stop there, though. In response to a follow up question from The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel about the correlation between violent right wing extremism and Democratic administrations, Terry recalled a quote, which he believed to have originated with either Robert or John F. Kennedy: "When you make peaceful protest impossible, you make violent protest inevitable," adding, "I can promise you this--there is visceral contempt for this administration," in the pro-life community.

Terry spent much of his presentation drawing a tortured analogy between abortion and slavery. Pro-life Americans, Terry said, are the ethical heirs of Northern abolitionists, who refused to flinch when the violent Nat Turner rebellion sent Southern slave owners into an angry panic. Tiller's murder, he reasoned, was like the Turner rebellion--the sort of event that becomes inevitable when systemic injustice thrives. "They want to blame our rhetoric," Terry said. "They don't want to face that child killing has something so insidious inside of it that it will boil over and create havoc and heartache and violence."

Ed note: The quote Terry referenced comes from JFK: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Late Update: Here's the audio of Terry's presser.


78 Comments

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Well, you deserve hazard pay for having to listen to this freak.

And for having to drink Guinness with hot wings.

Genny Light is what you drink when you eat hot wings.

How has "peaceful protest" been made impossible by the Obama Administration?

And I'd like to thank Randall Terry for voicing the fact that the "pro-life" (sic) forces have "visceral contempt" for President Obama. Way to dial back the rhetoric, dude!

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I certainly hope that Brian had the decency to decline to eat anything provided by this vituperous vermin.

(although considering its source, Genny is a most appropriate beverage to be served by Terry.

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Can we call him a terrorist now? After all, he is making threats against the Constitution (the First Amendment doesn't only secure rights of conscience and speech; it also secures freedom of assembly -- with the limitation that it be PEACEABLE; violent assembly is not protected) and rule of law, and the president.

And against all US citizens who happen to hold different views than he.

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I am going to find some of this Genny Light.

To elaborate a little bit on his comments about how Obama is making peaceful protest impossible, I'll say this: the rhetoric out there is that the Obama administration is engaged in an unprecedented campaign to silence its critics. Not a lot of facts, but LOTS of rhetoric. I know a right-winger, so I hear it all. It goes right along with the Obama is imposing socialism, is going to confiscate the guns, and forced Chrysler to close down republican car dealerships. NUTS.

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Here it is

I grew up in Rochester. The brewery reeked on warm summer days, and the only think drinkable that it made was Genny Light.

I wasn't aware that wingnut nation believes that the Obama Administration is silencing its critics. Although it makes a fair amount of sense. Members of WN Nation must hear of Obama's popularity and reach the conclusion that the reason people still like him is because they don't know the truth. How else do you explain to yourself that you're pretty much alone (you and your unbalanced friends) in terms of your opinion of the President?

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I wasn't aware that wingnut nation believes that the Obama Administration is silencing its critics.

In the runup to the election, the local ultra right wing radio sleezebucket was pooping his britches at the prospect of an Obama victory, thoroughly convinced that the Fairness Doctrine was about to become the law of the land as Obama's first official act. IIRC, Hannity pushed that theme until the inauguration.

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Nuts.

Sheer raving lunacy.

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How could they be against anything called "The Fairness Doctrine"? Personally, I think it should be re-instituted, but would it or could it include cable? The old doctrine covered only transmissions using the public (there's that word again) airwaves. I don't think it covered newspapers, although the one I worked for assiduously measured coverage of each side in column inches and made sure they were equal. ... And that was a Republican-owned newspaper staffed mostly by Democrats.

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Make mine a Genny Cream, please. (I spent some time in Rochester myself.)

Why is it, when the Bush administration really WAS doing things to silence its critics, that some left wing nutjobs didn't resort to violence?

-- ARG

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Hey, WTF?! Don't they make Genessee Cream Ale anymore?? I'm crushed...

-- ARG

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I was going to say. Props to Genny Cream Ale.

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I always knew it as Genny Scream Ale. Its enough to cause a teenager to become a tea totaler.

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Even FOX said these nuts' beliefs are fact-free. False. Not true.

Now, who was it again who helped originate those lies, and also to disseminate and perpetuate them?

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Hey, look. I lived in Rochester for 20 years. And I would not want Genny Lite with my wings.

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My sister lives in Rochester and swears that Genny made her start drinking scotch.

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It's all relative.

If your options are Genny, Genny Cream (gulp), or Genny Light, trust me: Genny Light will seem like nectar of the gods.

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Ah, but scotch actually IS the nectar of the Gods.

Cheers!

-- ARG

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Hence, my sister's plunge into the dark side of serious drinking....

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Make mine an Oban, please - although a dram of Laphroaig Quarter Cask from time to time hits the spot as well.

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mmmmm, that quarter cask is good stuff.... haven't been able to find it for a little while though

for something lighter but still islay peaty i like caol ila as well

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The NRA is a front for the gun industry. Neither is about actual patriotism. They are about selling more guns this year than last, and more next than this, and they couldn't care less who gets killed as consequence.

And its fools like you who are gunning-up in order to blast the corporatism you finance. All based upon the nonsensical belief that the nuke-armed US gov't is afraid of your pop-gun.

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Well, when you put it that way...But it's true: Genny Light is nowhere near as vile as Genny Cream Ale, the worst substance ever to have the word "beverage" (mis)applied to it.

On topic: Terry's comment about making peaceful protest impossible reminds me of recent mumblings from various corners of Wingnuttia about how Obama has already ruined the country/their lives/the world as we know it. None of them, though, seem to be able to point to a specific instance of how he's done so. I wish someone had asked Terry how his right to peaceful protest has been abrogated.

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How has "peaceful protest" been made impossible by the Obama Administration?

Excellent question. What are the odds that one of the fine journalists at this media event actually asked that question, as a follow-up? Or did they just accept all of Terry's violence-inciting bullshit at face value and dutifuly write it down in their steno books?

Someone needs to rebut Terry's garbage, preferably someone in a position of power. This may be a good time for Obama to talk about that DHS report on right-wing extremism and explain to the American people exactly what it said, and connect the dots with the recent incidences of violence. Otherwise, all people are going to hear is that white supremacist Nazis are actually left wing, (instead of the truth, which is that they're right wing), and that abortion rights have been strengthened over time (instead of the truth, which is that they've been diminished).

Oh, and Randall Terry: go fuck yourself.

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They're going to try to lump pro-lifers with this lunatic man who walked in and killed this fine security guard.... The bloggers are gonna make--trust me--I'll bet my last dollar. I'll give you a thousand-to-one odds on a dollar bet.

Hey, assuming I count as a blogger, you win, asshole.

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Oh, joy. Everything now has that 1968 feel. Great.

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I'm not sure about 1968, but some of these tactics remind me of 1984 in the Orwellian sense.

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This sounds rather like "blame the victim", no?

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Yep.

"If Obama hadn't done what he did, we never would have done what we did."

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Sounds like a wife-beater's excuse. She made me do it.

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We had a wife-beater who killed in my town -- he was heard shouting "See what you made me do!" as he stabbed the knife into her.

What Terry is complaining about is not that they can't demonstrate -- they just can't seem to get numbers which are impressive to Washington -- but that steps have been taken to limit their ability to intimidate women seeking care.

The analogy between slavery and abortion is profoundly racist: it has always been clear that blacks are full-fledged human beings while it is highly debatable whether a fertilized human egg is a person in any meaningful way other than sharing the same number of chromosomes with the cells in a human being. A fertilized egg is a device programmed by nature to produce a human being if provided the right circumstance but it is not yet a human being in any reasonable sense.

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What steps are those? It seems that the guy who killed Tiller had very little trouble. Of course, he didn't go after Tiller at the clinic, where he probably would have had an escort, which would have made things harder for the killer. No, he went after Tiller in his church - and killed him, in one of those places where they pray to the same god who tells assholes like Randall Terry that abortion is the same as killing babies.

But Tiller had been shot before. He's been in the news lately, because of the court case against him that the anti-abortion wackos filed, and that he won, and because of supposed ties to Sebelius. In hindsight, he made an obvious target. Why wasn't he better protected?

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I see:
He's in the propaganda wing of the terrorist group.
The actual shooters are the military wing.


How else to interepret this bullshit?

"When you make peaceful protest impossible, you make violent protest inevitable"

Who is infringing on rights to protest peacefully? This is wanton violence and murder by hateful extremists who just want to engage in violence, because protest doesn't satisfy their need for power and control.


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they are turning it around, the quote they should be using is, "if you refuse to protest peacefully, you'll have to protest violently."

Imam Terry.

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When does the FedGov call treason on those who talk, talk, talk like this in public forums, on Fox "News" & hatefilled nutter radio shows, or wherever repeatedly disseminated?

Will it be before or after someone in this Fed Admin. has been shot or blown up by one or more fanatical followers inflamed & emboldened by the ceaseless rhetoric?

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What we have here is a whole group of people that are literally being driven crazy by the fact that we have a black man in the white house. Seriously. The cable crowd knows that they can't quite get away with saying that out loud, so they complain about socialism (and fascism, go figure), etc. and blame Obama for every bad thing known to man. I think if they just all got in a room and screamed the N-word at the top of their lungs they just might get it all out of their system.

It's just not possible for this level of craziness to surface if the true motivation were valid policy/philosophical differences.

That's not to say that I haven't heard cogent criticisms of Obama from the right, I have, but never from this fringe element (and I put Rush, Palin and some of the Fox News anchors in this category). It's mostly all apocalyptic craziness.

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It might be more like a pep rally. The loud repetition might intensify it.

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Yes, Brian, did anyone ask a follow-up to the follow-up (re the Kennedy quote)?

In what way does Mr. Terry contend that peaceful protest has been made impossible? Can he offer a single example?

-- ARG

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Aside from wishing Terry's tongue would turn to ash in his mouth before he could misquote JFK, I can't help but wonder how Terry has turned this quote inside out.

JFK was referring to the oppression of the majority by a powerful minority. But the reason a "peaceful revolution" with respect to abortion is impossible is that the majority of Americans across the political spectrum want abortion to remain "rare, safe, and legal." They may not like abortion, they may even consider themselves "pro-life" but they don't want to see RvW overturned.

Terry's spin on this quote would seem to say, "It's not our fault we've turned to violence, but how else is a vocal minority supposed to get its way?"

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Use all Bush-era anti-terrorism statutes to the maximum extent to monitor, to investigate, and to prosecute these terrorists. They asked for it. They're going to get it. Bye, bye, Terry!

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Violent protest "inevitable"?

Here comes the American Taliban, they've been called to action by their Mullah!

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I normally laugh at irony. Unfortunately, the heart of all irony is truth.

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And by the way, when will our lazy media starting asking all those Republicans they keep inviting onto their talk shows day after day whether or not they agree with all this crazy bullshit spouted by their supporters?

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Never!! is the answer. They are totally incompetent and incapable of asking any kind of follow-up questions or they don't care to.

I am sick of all of them

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And, never was the incompetence of our media more evident than on Obama's first trip to Europe as President. The European press asked really hard questions of him - questions with substance and on point.

Our media is obsessed with stupid questions that come from the likes of Ed Henry and Jake Tapper and the rest of the idiots in Washington.

Pathetic is our media/press

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"The white supremacists and the pro-lifers really are terrorists. Just like that paper from Homeland Security said." They're going to try to lump pro-lifers with this lunatic man who walked in and killed this fine security guard...

That's right Terry. And you know why? Because you ARE all alike. You're mentally ill. You condone and encourage violence, trying to rationalize it by saying that you have no other choice. You have an obsession that leads you to value one very narrow section of humanity far above all others. In your case, it's fetuses. In von Brunn's it's white Christians. Everyone else is fair game.

Napolitano called it right. You and your kind are a danger to the rest of the people in this country. You don't care who gets hurt, because it's all in the name of your crusade to save every single fetus and you don't care how many post-natal humans get killed in the process.

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From The Progress Report -- doubt it's been put like this in MSM.


Powers, and Brad Johnson
RADICAL RIGHT
The Very Real Threat Of Extremism

Yesterday's tragic shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, by an "88-year-old white supremacist," is the latest in a string of right-wing extremist attacks. The number of hate groups such as the "Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, racist skinheads and Black separatists" operating in the United States is at an all-time high, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Moreover, gun purchases since President Obama's election surged. However, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declassified a report "detailing potential increases in right-wing extremism" in April, right-wing commentators and Republican politicians decried the report as a politically motivated attack on all conservatives. They claimed that "the Obama administration is targeting conservatives and others simply because they disagree with administration policies and proposals." Ignoring that the report -- like a similar one describing the threat of left-wing extremists -- was commissioned by the Bush administration, conservatives called for the resignation of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. Media Matters Action Fund's Matt Finkelstein asks, "Will Republicans admit that their partisan 'outrage' was misplaced?"

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“…..there was also an ominous warning that the Obama administration may be making more violent attacks "inevitable."

The inevitability of the violent responses past and future seem to imply that through some sort of mental stealth attack, Mr. Obama is able to steal reason and responsibility from violent right wing attackers. The total loss of control over the attackers actions is excused because of the imagined provocation and the theft of free will. So then who is responsible for the violent politically attacks on others? Is this a new criminal defence available to the Tiller and Johns assassins to a charge of murder? “I wasn’t responsible. He made me do it. He’s at fault.” It is not terrorism when I do it but it is when you do it.
Mr. Terry's thinking is illogical and morally bankrupt

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In response to a follow up question from The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel about the correlation between violent right wing extremism and Democratic administrations, Terry recalled a quote, which he believed to have originated with either Robert or John F. Kennedy: "When you make peaceful protest impossible, you make violent protest inevitable

...You know, it's interesting, if you read this a certain way he almost seems to be saying that reports suggesting right-wing extremists will resort to violence are responsible for right-wing extremists resorting to violence.

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They really have no choice, do they? "I only resorted to violence because you had the gall to say that I was prone to violence. So there!"

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They don't believe in choice: that would imply the necessity of reasoning about morality. I'm right so I can kill works much better for them.

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They don't believe in choice: that would imply the necessity of reasoning about morality. I'm right so I can kill works much better for them.

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Suggestions for "getting" the hate spewers is problematic from a criminal law point of view, but there is an options which might work. How about if the Tiller family sued both Terry and O'Reilly for wrongful death? The theory would be that both are responsible for spearheading hate campaigns that inevitably led to someone acting on the objects of their hate speech. I'm sure others could be attached as co-conspirators, perhaps even Murdoch. That would be satisfying.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Mrs. Tiller is up for this.

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Gosh durn, those bigots just can't keep their fingers off the trigger. Shouldn't Obama know that? /snark

Remember when Cheney shot his buddy in the face, and the buddy apologized? This is the same thing...just not funny.

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What a demagogue.

Randall Terry is a misguided and malevolent fool. He's in it for his own self agrandizement. The last thing he wants is for abortion to end. Then he has nothing to do.

I just hope the government spends as much time putting spies into his group as it does spying on peace protesters who advocate the dangerous concept of peace and stoping organized state violence in the form of warfare. What a twisted world we live in.

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Why does the National Press Club give this maniac a forum to preach?

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I have to agree. It's a big WTF that they would give him the mic after the last one.

John

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Because our "Press" is a sorry bunch of reprobates. They want and need attention. They have no desire in reporting real news or real truth. It's all about who gets on whose show to be a talking head.

I am sick of all of them

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Because he rented the room.

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BINGO! We have a winner.

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This Randall Terry guy,

he's done a lot of drugs with
the Guinness and wings,

right?

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I donno, seems to me that he is skating very close to incitement to murder and assassination. And he's not alone. From inside their minds, they are the heroes, the champions of all that is good and true. Many things are justified in the name of morality, the sense that God is with you.

Also, we are in a time when we are trying to find a consensus on abortion policy -- heck, that's one of Obama's goals and one that upsets the...left. If it happens, the absolutists was become more isolated, more angry, feeling more betrayed. Add all of this to the other dangers of our times and hope or pray (as you wish) for the best.

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Right on!

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I can attest to one thing that Terry says in the course of his rant.

He said, "I can promise you this--there is visceral contempt for this administration,"

I have a close and dear friend who is a Catholic monk. Let's call him Friar Jim. We have known each other for just over forty years. Friar Jim is one of the kindest, most understanding, most forgiving men I have ever met. (And I have made my career in medicine, so my standards are pretty high on that score.) Like many religious Catholics, he has a visceral anti-abortion stance.

In all the years I have known Friar Jim, I have never, ever known him to be so enraged by a President as he is by Obama... not even Nixon, who completely INFURITATED Jim around the time I met him. (He and I once were on a hunger strike together in protest of the Vietnam War.)

Yet, Friar Jim's reaction to Nixon "back then" doesn't hold a candle (so to speak) to his reaction to Obama now. Friar Jim seems to place Obama somewhere between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

I must admit that I don't get it. But it's there, and it's real. And it's all about abortion.

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I would love to know more about what Friar Jim is so angry about. Is it easing restriction on abortion and stem-cell research?

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I'm guessing that the orders have come in from the Vatican to crank it up. This pope seems to think that the anti-abortion stance is the last moral handle that the Church has on American Catholics. I suspect that it will be the Church's rallying cry to regain both lost membership and the moral high ground that it ceeded with the priestly child abuse scandle.

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I'd love to know more too about why exactly he hates Obama more than, say, Clinton, who was also pro-choice. There are also plenty of pro-choice Senators, members of congress, supreme court justices and governors. But only Obama seems to inspire such hatred. I don't understand it, unless perhaps it involves the stem cell research issue as well, which is not something previous Presidents other than Bush have really faced. But these folks seem to get a lot more worked up over abortion than stem cell research. I just don't buy that it's all about abortion. There's got to be something else going on.

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Well, he's assuming life begins at the moment of conception, so abortion is murder and he's against murder. Of course, the majority of Americans think this view is as out of touch with reality as the view that a miscarriage must be manslaughter.

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Why does the National Press Club continue to let Randall Terry hold press conferences there if he's using them to essentially incite people to violence?

How do you book a room at the NPC, anyway? Can any homicidal maniac hold a press conference there and get their message spread to the world for the cost of a room rental?

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Good points!!

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Helmet Head.

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Time for operation "weed-out."

Send undercover officers to rural taverns & churches dressed up as flamboyant black Muslim gay men wearing an Pro-Choice T-Shirt, and arrest anyone that threatens them.

We'll be able to get them before they get any more of us.

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WTF is the matter with these folks....do they not realze the violence they incite...

Today...I've never been more afraid of "My Fellow Ameircans"

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"Pro-life Americans, Terry said, are the ethical heirs of Northern abolitionists"




These lunatics are still fighting the Civil War. I have relatives who still refer to that conflict as The War Of Northern Aggression.

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SO.these maniacs believe in GOD AND THE BIBLE/THEY BETTER HOPE THAT THE BIBLE IS ALL A LIE..BECAUSE THEY HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO..OOOOPS.I FORGOT SATAN DOESNT NEED NO EXPLAINING TO

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Will somebody let Peter King know, this is what a right-wing extremist looks like?

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Oh my God, this guy is absolutely friggin' prescient. He was exactly right! I'm a blogger and I did go almost immediately to the DHS report--remember that one? The one that indicated that right wing extremism was getting out of hand? The one that Janet Napolitano was forced to apologize for because it offended the sensibilities of right wing 'commentators' to have their terroristic underbelly exposed to the light of day? The one that turned out to be absolutely, 100% correct? He pegged it, alright. Us unreasonable liberal types will do anything in our power to unjustly link things that are actually linked. We're bastards that way.

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Terrorist Terry: "there is visceral contempt for this administration,"

To paraphrase Twain: Never use many words when fewer will do. Admit it, Terry: you mean "n*gg*r" administration. Your anti-choice/freedom rhetoric is all-consumingly about saving the "white" race from being buried under non-white birth rates.

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Why is the National Press Club hosting a terrorist sympathizer?

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