from Hunter @ Daily Kos:
excerpts:
Over the last three days or so, ... the coverage on the Little Three news networks-- Fox, CNN, MSNBC-- has ceased to be humorous. There is a difference between bad coverage and willfully irresponsible coverage, and another line between willfully irresponsible coverage and dangerously irresponsible coverage. In the last three days, those lines have been crossed. Repeatedly. And it has been absolutely, definitively intentional.
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Against this background of exploitation and misinformation, the usual bevy of archconservative media pundits has in the last several days begun to increasingly endorse a premise that is, to any rational mind, remarkable: the notion that because the courts have ruled in this particular fashion, it is now time for individuals and government figures to disregard the courts, and take matters into their own hands.
Death Threats Rattling Pols
3/25/2005, Helen Kennedy, New York Daily News
(TAMPA, FL) - As Terri Schiavo weakens and legal remedies peter out, tension here is intensifying.
Some activists are making ugly threats, making up "Wanted" posters for lawmakers and handing out the home addresses of judges who rejected legal appeals to keep Schiavo alive.
"I am afraid," said state Sen. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami), who has received numerous death threats by phone and mail because she voted against a measure to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube. "We're talking about the sanctity of life, and [they're] threatening my life."
The nine Republican lawmakers who voted against the measure showed up on anonymous "Wanted" posters that appeared in the state capitol in Tallahassee. State Sen. Nancy Argenziano said one of the "un-Christian" voice mails she's received wished stomach cancer on her.
Guards have been posted outside the politicians' offices.
Police won't discuss their security measures, but Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who has consistently upheld Schiavo's requests to end his wife's life, are under around-the-clock protection and staying out of sight. Both have been the targets of a flood of fury, branding them corrupt and abusive murderers who are flouting God.
"Various law enforcement agencies are aware of the emotions in this case and have taken appropriate actions," said Wayne Shelor, spokesman for the police in Clearwater, Fla., where Michael Schiavo lives.
Popular right-wing Web sites have had to post prominent warnings against threats of violence on their discussion boards after calls for the armed "liberation" of Terri Schiavo from her hospice and comments suggesting that if her husband were taken out of the picture, guardianship would revert to her parents, who want to keep her alive.
People on Schiavo's street in Clearwater have received anonymous postcards saying: "Your neighbor Michael Schiavo is trying to murder his wife."
Gov. Jeb Bush was alarmed enough to call for calm.
"There have been some reports that people are making threatening declarations if this process doesn't go their way," he said. "I urge all who want to help Terri Schiavo to honor her by remaining calm and acting peacefully, even though we are all very distressed by what's happening."
"Even though we may disagree with the courts," he added, "there is no justification for violent acts."
Man Tries to Steal Gun to Rescue Schiavo
3/25/2005 6:07 PM, Associated Press
(SEMINOLE, FL) - A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo," authorities said.
Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall's Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Mitchell, 20, told deputies he wanted to "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo" after he visited the Pinellas Park hospice where she lives, Pasha said.
Mitchell was in custody at the Pinellas County jail Friday after a judge set his bail at a total of $120,500 for the four charges of armed robbery, grand theft, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and criminal mischief.
The feeding tube that has kept Schiavo alive for more than a decade was removed March 18 over objections from her parents. Schiavo's husband has said his wife would not want to be kept alive artificially.
Doctors have said she would probably die within a week or two of the tube being pulled.
Randy McKenzie, the owner of Randall's Firearms, said Mitchell pulled out the box cutter and broke the glass on a couple of display cases.
"He told me if I wasn't on Terri's side then I wasn't on God's side, either," McKenzie told The Associated Press.
McKenzie said he then pointed his own gun at Mitchell and ordered him to lie on the ground. But Mitchell fled out the store's back door before police arrived, he said.
It was not known if he had a lawyer.
Seminole is about 5 miles west of Pinellas Park.
Man arrested in N.C. on charges of threatening Michael Schiavo
3/25/2005 7:23 PM, Associated Press
(ASHEVILLE, NC) - A man is in jail in Asheville Friday night on charges he threatened the husband of the brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of the right-to-die case gripping the country.
Richard Alan Meywes was arrested in Fairview, North Carolina for an alleged connection to an email placing a $250,000 bounty on the head of Michael Schiavo.
The email also offered a $50,000 bounty for the elimination of the judge who denied a request to intervene in the Schiavo case.
It's been a week that Michael Schiavo's wife, Terry, has been disconnected from a feeding tube. She's been kept alive but in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years as her husband and her parents fought in court about whether she should be allowed to die.
Meywes faces federal charges of murder for hire and transmission of interstate threatening communications.
An FBI spokesman in Charlotte didn't immediately return calls seeking details of the arrest.
Corporal Todd Ernst of the Buncomb County Sheriffs Office said Meywes has no prior record in Buncomb County. Ernst said Meywes is being held in the Buncombe County Detention Center. He appears before a federal magistrate, probably on Monday.
"When government fails to protect life, the people must do so directly. Today must mark the beginning of a new era of civil disobedience and conscientious objection, with simultaneous, determined efforts to curb the authority of the courts and restore government to the people through their elected representatives."
03/25/05 - Frank Pavone / Priests for Life
"I promise you, if she dies, there's going to be hell to pay with pro-life, pro-family, Republican people of various legislative levels, both statewide and federally, who have used pro-life, pro-family, conservative rhetoric to get into power, and then when they have the power, they refuse to use."
03/24/05 - Randall Terry / Operation Rescue
From David Neiwert @ Orcinus:
"Good gawd, if the Terry Schiavo drama -- and especially the atrocious role played in it by Jeb Bush -- weren't enough of a three-ring circus already, it's now drawn the participation of the extremist right. We're escalating from travesty to potential tragedy."
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