Nobody Could Have Predicted …

Would make a good RICO case. Plus, you could file it in federal court to try to get some distance from the local state court tools.

Tiller’s family should sue Operation Rescue and any other zealot involved for everything they have. Bankrupt them. They need to learn, once and for all, the pushing their religion down other people’s throats will result in serious pain.

Wordy McWord. Surely the good folk at SPLC have a “bankrupt the motherfuckers” template Tiller’s lawyers can work with.

Tiller’s family should sue Operation Rescue and any other zealot involved for everything they have. Bankrupt them. They need to learn, once and for all, the pushing their religion down other people’s throats will result in serious pain.

Oooh, Dodger, I want to go there with you, but I just can’t. First off, if he had been calling the Catholic Church or even Focus on the Family to get court appearance information on this guy, I’m not sure we would be having this conversation. Operation Rescue is a vile organization, but just like the Nazis or the Klan they have the right to assemble, disseminate information, and be assholes just like everybody else. I hate them too, but I have to err on the side of free speech on this one.

I am surprised she she downplayed her relationship with Roeder. Figured she show up on Good Morning America calling him a hero, licking her lips and begging for a chance to carry his babies to term, to birth a deadly army of righteous assassins and go down in history as the mother of the Adkisson Brigades. “I want Scott and my babies to KILL for CHRIST!”

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: Fuck these people. Sure she’s renounced violence – because now she just incites others to violence. Charge her and her fucking gang of thugs criminally as accessories, and sue them civilly after and let the chips fall where they may. Free speech crosses the line when you start to fuck up someone else’s life with your stupid religion – that’s in the first amendment too. They base their lives on fucking Bronze Age works of fiction and – as I can tell you after doing lots of work on the Zombie Bible – those are two seriously fucked up books. Their fucking sky god is always killing and maiming and smiting and sending plagues. These people believe that shit and live their lives that way. If they want to live in a theocracy, let them move to Israel, or Vatican City, or Utah. I have had enough.

@blogenfreude:

I feel like that too…I just don’t think that in this case telling someone when a court case that concerns your organization is being heard qualifies as inciting someone to violence. Believe me this horrifies me, particularly as a person of faith, but I just don’t see the incitement. Show me some meetings between them, some e-mails that show collusion, then we have a different story. In that case, I say prosecute and sue away. Oh, and of course, fuck them…that goes without saying. Fuck them right in the ear from the get go.

The pro-choice movement and its supporters need to be careful not to let their rhetoric get inflamed as well. We need to be the adults in the room…

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/28649

This looks like a formative moment in the development of the Adkisson Brigades. All the jesupathic cults are glorying in the assassin’s handiwork. They taste the blood and love it. Only a matter of time until they join up with the neonazis in their shared hatreds of Obama, Democrats and non-whites.

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: Operation Rescue certainly helped establish the climate of fear — they bragged about arranging Billo’s ambush interview — but yes, let’s be careful. Indicting them in the public square is one thing, indicting them in court is another.

So: How would RICO work here?

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: Fine – you’ve got to do an investigation as well as civil discovery, but it needs to be done. Will Kansas or the feds do anything? Probably not, because they’re chickenshits. They’re worried about appearances. And they’ll continue to do nothing until more shooters appear at more churches and kill more doctors. Then maybe they’ll write Op. Rescue a stern letter.

Betcha we learn some interesting new facts from phone records in the next few weeks.

@Dodgerblue: Really? I thought this applied to continuing criminal enterprises. And that designation would be established by tests to satisfy the requirement that they were established and maintained specifically to animate one or more criminal enterprises. Cheryl calling this guy up and shouting, “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him and I’ll suck your dick for JAY-SUS!” doesn’t really equate with OR being developed from the get-go to train assassins to kill doctors.

@Serolf Divad: That’s what I’m thinking: let more facts emerge. And Rachel opened with a very chilling historical summary of abortion-clinic violence last night, to set the broader context.

Personally, I was hoping Barry would do something more forthright than issue a statement. At least tape a YouTube clip, if you don’t want to interrupt the canned weekend programming on the cable networks.

@Serolf Divad: Betcha we will. Also emails and texts.

@nojo: You need to prove an underlying predicate act such as mail or wire fraud, which are quite broadly defined. Here’s some poop on civil RICO suits that I snagged off somebody’s website:

The civil RICO cause of action is created by 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c): “Any person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation of § 1962 … may sue therefor … and shall recover threefold the damages he sustains and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee….”

The reference to § 1962 incorporates four separate causes of action:

Investment. Under § 1962(a), it is unlawful to invest income derived from a pattern of racketeering activity to acquire any interest in any enterprise that is engaged in interstate or foreign commerce.

Acquisition. Under § 1962(b), it is unlawful to acquire or maintain any interest in, or control of, any enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.

Participation. Under § 1962(c), it is unlawful for any person to conduct or participate in the conduct of the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.

Conspiracy. Under § 1962(d), it is “unlawful for any person to conspire to violate any of the provisions of” § 1962(a)(c).

Let’s pull up that OR bragging again:

Producers for Fox News host Bill O’Reilly were in Wichita last Friday where they confronted late-term abortionist George R. Tiller as he visited a Quick Trip gas station. Operation Rescue assisted the O’Reilly crew in locating Tiller for the impromptu interview.

Billo’s producer couldn’t find the clinic in the phone book? Or did OR track Tiller some other way?

And here is the next set of instructions for the faithful.

@nojo:

Actually, Nojo, what’s particularly interesting about that quote, is that the O’Reilly crew did not ambush Tiller at his clinic. Instead, they ambushed him at a gas station of all places. What this shows is that O.R. has clearly spent some time following, trailing and shadowing Tiller. I’d say that makes it likely they were more involved in the Tiller assassination than they’re letting on. One wonders whether it was O.R. who informed Roeder of where he could find Tiller last Sunday.

@Serolf Divad: That’s exactly what I’m thinking: Billo’s producers could have simply lurked outside the clinic until Tiller showed up or, knowing them, staked out his home. What assistance in “locating Tiller” did they need?

I wouldn’t call it indictable conspiracy yet. But let’s get more facts on the table.

@blogenfreude: Clearly, it is targeting data but you can’t make an indictment out of it, even if the author and website owner recommended that someone blow this guy away like Tiller.

@FlyingChainSaw: Hey, not to brighten the mood in the room or anything, but my thick-necked relatives are now wondering out loud whether this is leading us to – wait for it – “race war”.

@Nabisco: Race war? You mean the Muslim Terrorist angle isn’t good enough for them?

@Nabisco: Oh, yeah, the Jesunazis will point at this guy and use it for an excuse to start blowing up mosques. The muslim population will arm and then the neonazi militias will point to that as proof that white America must arm and respond. The neonazis will catalyze a consolidation of jesunazis and white supremacists making the case that both abortionists and non-whites are part of a larger conspiracy to eliminate the white race. By this time next year, tens of millions of armed neonazi psychopaths will be openly attacking non-white or known Democratic-leaning communities and calling out white christians in the US armed forces to bring air strikes on those communities ‘in the name of jesus christ’. Fox News will be broadcasting fabricated pictures of the White House with minarets in front of it and O’Reilly intoning menacingly, “Can white America wait to be wiped out by abortion and muslim fanatics led by Al Qaeda collaborator Barrack Al Osama? Think about it and shoot to kill, America!”

@nojo: My thoughts exactly. My relatives aren’t always the deepest thinkers, and “race war” is probably their default switch for wingnuttery, like ‘nice rack’ is mine for, well, just about everything.

@ALL w/r/t possible RICO/other litigation:
@Also sprach Tommmcatt: It’s not about free speech when it crosses into incitement to physical violence or actual violence. And I don’t care if it were the priest at the corner church or the OR leaders or Bill O’Reilly – there is a line and it has been crossed. And faster than waiting for DOJ to start a RICO investigation/indictment is to hit them in the wallet.

Jamie hits the nail on the head – do a SPLC-style suit and hit them in the pocketbook. These violent anti-choice groups try to hide their money and funding sources through a never-ending series of shell organizations, but any corporate tax attorney worth her while working probono with SPLC can tear it apart in a few days. As for Bill O’Reilly and FOX – that’s easier.

@SanFranLefty:

My point, though, is that how can one say that the rhetoric- particularly the Fox rhetoric- specifically incited this specific act of violence? It sickens me to defend these people, but there it is. If I recommend choking Rush Limbaugh on the penis of a mule (as we have one or two times on this very site), and tomorrow someone goes out and strangles him, are we accountable? I think the situations are similar….

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: And if it were so easy to make that case, why isn’t Murdock being indicted every day for running what is essentially a neonazi hatecast every day that is thinly veiled code for a vast genocidal ambition to eliminate Democrats and non-whites?

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: I want to see a meticulous case precisely because I want to hang the motherfuckers.

Fox, alas, gets off as an unindicted co-conspirator, as do any number of hate-radio jocks who aren’t getting as much attention. And while Hern is correct that “silent vigils” are as threatening as the more robust kind, we do need to allow for peaceful assembly.

Again, it all comes down to the details. Let’s hear more about how these organizations actually operate.

@FlyingChainSaw:

Murdoch is on more than a few donor lists, which I’m sure would help keep him out of jail should the tide turn…

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: Um, anyone want a donkey penis? I won’t be needing it after all…

@Nabisco:

Nah, dude, if you knew me intimately you’d know I have one already.

**ducks, ashamed of the cheesy joke**

@nojo, Also sprach Tommmcatt: Speaking of hate speech and incitement to violence from right wing tools, check out the Excremento radio DJs who encourage physical and emotional violence against any child who might be transgendered, questioning his/her sexual identity, or not acting like a boy should.

@SanFranLefty:

The words for that, besides “moronic” and “evil”, are FRAT DICK. That attitude reeks of the homoerotic, homophobic confines of a secret hazing chamber, particularly the bits about shoes.

@Also sprach Tommmcatt: I like you, Tommcat, you are consistent in your principles; if she did not knwo what he was planning, thats not conspiracy.

And a blanket response to talk of the fundie whackjobs thinking this is now time, for an uprising, a race war, bring it on, for them to cross the line and make it abundantly clear that they are a violent, treasonous, revolutionary group, is the best thing we could hope for.

@Promnight: Honestly, I’d rather they think better of it. Or at least stick to teabagging.