That’s what one of my fellow Minnesotans, a gun-nut proto-teabagger, said to Paul Wellstone after he was elected to the Senate, and was busy opposing Gulf War I. There were many other threats as well, once again demonstrating that right wingers are often rude, sometimes violent, and always obnoxious.
This comes up now because Paul Wellstone’s FBI file is suddenly in the public eye.
The threats alarmed Wellstone’s staff and led his state director, Jeff Blodgett, to contact the FBI and other authorities, MPR reported. Blodgett agreed to an agent’s recommendation to put a “trap and trace” on Wellstone’s St. Paul office phone line to track down the callers.
“We were shocked and surprised by these kinds of calls,” Blodgett told MPR last week. “We certainly didn’t expect that death threats would be part of the job of being a U.S. senator or taking death threats would be part of the job of Senate staff.”
Wellstone was saddened and “and as surprised as everyone else was” by the threats, Blodgett said.
Read the rest of the story here.
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*sigh* I miss Paul. It’s been a long 8 years. Just think what might have been if that plane hadn’t crashed. He represented MN so well.
Sadly, death threats seem to be part of the business for anyone left of center. Or center, for that matter. I’m sure most of them are hollow threats by scared, insecure people, but nobody should have to get used to getting their life threatened.
A couple other gems from this story:
Wait… What?
Let me see if I’ve got this straight:
The caller’s son was presumably in the military, and was at risk of being killed in a war not started – or even supported – by Wellstone.
Wellstone opposed U.S. involvement, a position consistent with reducing the risk of death to the caller’s son.
Therefore, if the caller’s son were killed in the war, Wellstone was to blame.
Regardless of one’s position on the first Gulf War, the caller’s (inferred) reasoning is convoluted, to say the least. The human mind is capable of some extraordinary mental gymnastics.
And:
Perhaps my logic is a bit suspect as well, or maybe I’m reading too much into this quote, but is it just me, or does this sound like a thinly-veiled “he-was-asking-for-it” remark?
Police: Man planned to kill Bush, Cheney
And that’s when they’ve been out of office for two years!
Virgil, you know as well as I do that the preponderance of death threats and other things is highly biased.