Demagogue

Bill Frist is definitely one.

The Senate chaplain started yesterday's judicial showdown with a prayer for "patience and peace" and "unity where there is division." Thirty-three minutes later, the majority leader just about accused the minority of attempted murder.

The Republican leader, Bill Frist (Tenn.), was asked why he, the head of the anti-filibuster movement, had voted to uphold the filibuster of a judge in 2000. ..."It's not the cloture votes, per se," he said, using the term for filibuster-breaking votes. "It's the partisan leadership-led use of cloture to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees."

Hmmm, who was it exactly who said that judges may have earned actual death threats and assassination attempts? Oh, that's right, another Republican senator, John Coryn of Texas, who is also a hyperbolic nitwit.

I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.

Or what about the threatening words of the World's Biggest Asshole in the wake of the Schiavo case? "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," said Tom DeLay. Digging a little deeper, DeLay is also on record saying "Judges need to be intimidated."

The war on judges, and the judiciary itself, has been declared by the Republican Party in their quest for total and complete dominion over the United States government, checks and balances be damned. Yet they insist on calling the Democrats assassins when it's obvious they are the ones with the garrote in their pocket?