I’m So Old…

So if I understand the arguments coming from the Right…when millions of indomitably hateful, batshit idiots in this country build their daily routines around communing with the fearmongering muses on Fox teevee and Hate Radio -- when they listen to O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck and their squalid ilk with the high-focus crazy of a Charlie Manson playing "Helter Skelter" for the thousandth time- - well that’s all just enter-fucking-tainment!

And yet I am troubled by vague recollections of an era now obviously lost to history and the memory of Man.

An all-but forgotten age when Konservatives Kulture Krusaders marched by night through torch-lit streets in celebration of something called “Justice Sunday”.

When men of God openly terrorized members of the federal judiciary because judges who did not obey the dictates of the mullahs of the American Taliban were all worse than “a few bearded terrorists who fly planes into buildings.”

And so it was back in those ancient days that a Very Prominent Republican known as “John Of The Cornyn” was more than willing to link “words” and “violence”, just as long as it served his sick, theocratic agenda:

“
Senator Links Violence to 'Political' Decisions
'Unaccountable' Judiciary Raises Ire

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A07

…
Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable.

In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists.

"It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people."

Cornyn continued: "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. . . . 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. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
…”

Of course, being a Republican, when the actual facts of the case did not in any way support his venomous talking points, Cornyn just made shit up (citation of vintage Tom DeLay fatwa included for no extra charge):

…
Cornyn, who spoke in a nearly empty chamber, did not specify cases of violence against judges. Two fatal episodes made headlines this year, although authorities said the motives appeared to be personal, not political. In Chicago, a man fatally shot the husband and mother of a federal judge who had ruled against him in a medical malpractice suit. And in Atlanta last month, a man broke away from a deputy and fatally shot four people, including the judge presiding over his rape trial.

Liberal activists criticized Cornyn's remarks, and compared them to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's comments last week following the death of a brain-damaged Florida woman, Terri Schiavo. DeLay (R-Tex.) rebuked federal and state judges who had ruled in the Schiavo case, saying, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, said last night that Cornyn, "like Tom DeLay, should know better. These kinds of statements are irresponsible and could be seen by some as justifying inexcusable conduct against our courts." The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee called the senator's remarks "an astounding account of the recent spate of violence against judges, suggesting that the crimes could be attributed to the fact that judges are 'unaccountable' to the public."
…

But of course that was all thousands of years ago.

On a different planet orbiting a different sun.