"All the vitriol we hear by people who make a living doing that--that may be free speech, but it's not without consequences."

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shooting press conference 01.08.11

From Congressman Chris Murphy's "Congress at your corner. Simsbury CT, Aug 2009.

1. Racial slurs directed at me...

2. Hartford Tea Party leader Jim Bancroft baiting Murphy supporter into a fight.

3. Bancroft and other tea party extremists running amok.

Jim Himes Town Hall meeting Norwalk 2009. 9/11 anti-Obama rally, Bridgeport 2009

4. Right-wing extremists shout down a priest for speaking in Spanish. Right-wing extremists threaten resident for playing music during Ann Coulter's speech at 9/11 anti-Obama rally.

5. Bancroft advocating that Chris Dodd commit suicide.

ConnecticutMan1 just posted some disgusting video from yesterday's protest where one Republican "Dump Dodd" activist appears to loudly suggest that Sen. Dodd (who last week announced he has been diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer) commit suicide:

"How come we don't just give Chris Dodd painkillers? Like a handful of them at a time! He can wash it down with Ted Kennedy's whiskey...!"

6. The text of a death threat left on my car by a member of Elise Marciano's anti-immigrant/tea party hate group, United States Citizens for Immigration and Law Enforcement (USCFILE). Danbury, March 2010.

"Hi-Assh*le, Your days are numbered. You n*** f***"

Huffington Post's take on death threat made against me.

This is a citizen journalist receiving threats; CTBlogger like many in the media, regularly follows Connecticut politics, the Democrats, the Republicans...and the Tea Party.

Danbury is a small manufacturing & chemical based city, positioned aside the New York State border. With a passionate political climate, becoming increasingly hostile; especially against immigrants (see ACLU) when Danbury City Council was set to approve 278 (g), partnering local police with ICE, permitting them to stop suspected immigrants and allow ICE agents to raid homes. Anyone who appeared Hispanic was fair game. Since CTBlogger arrived in Danbury in 1987, he has noticed recently a new harsh level of intimidation, harassment and violence towards immigrants after the election of Mayor Mark Boughton, (Republican Candidate for Governor) an outspoken anti-immigrant crusader in the State of Connecticut for the past decade.

CTBlogger usually does not receive threats to his life while covering the news. Chronicling political events began to changed once Obama became President, with the rise of the Tea Party, gone was the civility, replaced by the shrill, the loud and sometimes crude, or as my late mother would say; "crass" attempts to hijack discussions, garner media attention and disrupt meetings.

Well documented are the members of Congress walking into the Capital to begin the historic Health Care Reform voting, Tea Party Patriots crossed the line from wearing crazy hats, holding homemade signs to spitting on or hurling insults such as Nigger & Faggot at members of Congress. Hate mongering has spread far wider than the US Capital.

With numerous occurrences of vandalism and death threats across the country, this appears to be another page in the Tea Party playbook. CTBlogger rightly filed a police report, for what it is worth. Maybe each case of hate crime needs to be taken more seriously.

Marciano had this to about the threat made on my life by her group.

It's purely made up," Marciano said. "Most people don't even know what he drives and didn't even know he was there.

My post/video in response to her crap...

...and the anti-immigrant/teabagging group's response on their website to my filing a police complaint against them speaks volumes...as well as Mayor Boughton's appearance at her anti-immigrant/tea party event months later.



7. Leaked memo outlining strategy on disrupting Jim Himes' town hall meetings from tea party extremist Bob MacGuffie.

It's clear now that the top-down Republican strategy on health care for the month of August (a strategy made possible in part by the Blue Dog "victory" of delaying floor votes on legislation until September) will consist of organized and potentially violent disruptions of town hall meetings scheduled by members of Congress with their constituents in their districts.

On Friday, ThinkProgress posted a leaked "best practices" memo (PDF) written by Connecticut right-wing activist Bob MacGuffie based on his experience taking part in such an organized disruption of a Jim Himes town hall meeting in Fairfield back in late May. The memo includes such advice as:

- Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: "Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington."

- Be Disruptive Early And Often: "You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early."

- Try To "Rattle Him," Not Have An Intelligent Debate: "The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions."

5. Local anti-immigrant, racist maniac Tom Bennett and USCFILE co-founder John McGowan, advocating residents kill members of the immigrant community: Danbury 2007.



...and more threats.



Although his language resulted in his show being deemed inappropriate for viewing before 10PM by the cable advisory committee and Comcast execs, somehow Bennett was allowed to move his act to another evening show where he continues his brand of violence and threats against immigrants...language that was criticized by the State Democratic chairwoman last year.

In September, Danbury Mayor and Republican Lieutenant Governor Candidate Mark Boughton was caught campaigning for himself and Tom Foley at a United State Citizens for Immigration Law Enforcement (USCFile) rally, at which his was warmly welcomed by USCFile leader, Elise Marciano. Marciano, the woman who publicly declared her belief that President Obama was a Muslim, had this to say on the topic: “He’s (Obama) not going to a Christian church. As President of the United States, he’s not going to a Christian church, even though he claims that the Reverend Wright’s church was Christian. How do you figure that? I’ll tell you why – because he was brought up as a Muslim, and he is a Muslim and they cannot go back on their religion.”

On Tuesday night, Boughton’s favorite anti-immigrant extremist and supporter Elise Marciano was at it again, this time claiming that President Obama has told “the whole damn world” to come into the country to “take over these damned Americans who are reading and writing and finding out what we are doing in Congress.” In particular, Marciano said she believes President Obama especially wants the “ones that are uneducated to come in and take over by sheer magnitude of numbers.”

But it gets worse.

Following Marciano’s tirade, her good friend, fellow anti-immigrant extremist Tom Bennett, put forward his own idea to form a “vigilante” group to “get busses and take these illegals…out on the ocean and put them in a boat with holes in it.” During the entirety of Bennett’s radical and scary rant, Marciano smiled and stayed silent, refusing to oppose Bennett’s call for vigilantism.

[...]

TRANSCRIPT:

ELISE MARCIANO: “He’s (President Obama) just telling the whole damn world, come into America, we’re going to let you do whatever you want. We just want you to take over these damned Americans who are reading and writing and finding out what we are doing here in Congress, and they don’t like it, so we gotta overwhelm them. That’s what they’re doing. That’s exactly what they’re doing. They want all these people, especially the ones that are uneducated, to come in here and take it over by sheer magnitude of numbers. They won’t know what they’re voting for, they won’t know what to do. It’ll be, you know, just anything they want.”

TOM BENNETT: “It’s time to do vigilantism, that’s what it’s time to do. We have to be organized and become vigilantes for our own protection. We have to protect our country, our citizens, because the police aren’t doing it. We have to protect our own borders. So I say, that we have to get together and have a very, very large vigilante group. Oh yeah. We need that. And then we can have club dues, have fundraisers and then we can get busses and take these illegals and we can get rid of them ourselves. We can take them out on the ocean and put them in a boat with holes in it. And that’s it, okay?”

8. Tea Party bumper sticker, Milford 2008 (h/t to CTBob)



9. Liberal hunting license:



10. Congressman Joe Wilson's "You Lie" comment engraved on AR-15 assault rifle lower receiver.



11. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on being targeted on Sarah Palin's list.



Greenwich Post editorial (via My Left Nutmeg):

We don't know yet what exactly led a gunman to shoot a U.S. congresswoman in the head and then open fire on a crowd, shooting indiscriminately and killing senior citizens, a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge who had come by after church to say hello to his representative. As a tragedy like the one in Arizona last weekend makes us question whether our political rhetoric has reached a point beyond what is acceptable, the finger pointing has inevitably begun.

While it is unfair to lay this directly at the feet of the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks and those who see the need to use violent imagery and rhetoric to make their political points, it would also be shortsighted to ignore the fact that the toxic climate coming from the political right in this country is hurting our democracy.

It's no longer enough to disagree with someone politically. Now we must "kill" bills. Political opponents are identified through gunsights. People come armed to town meetings.

The right wing talk show hosts and political leaders in this country have turned reasonable opposition to Barack Obama's and Nancy Pelosi's ideas into a battle for American freedom, equating tax increases for the wealthiest Americans and health care for the uninsured with the loss of our liberty. People are buying this nonsense and it's turning the Becks, Palins and Limbaughs into wealthy people making a fortune off our fear and ignorance.