(h/t Jamie)

Founder of the blog Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson has seen the light and decided he can no longer support the right wing of his party and makes no bones about why:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.) Read on...

Conservatives like Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley found out that leaving the GOP fight club isn't easy -- and Johnson will undoubtedly suffer the same fate. Johnson is taking major heat for his defection, which comes as no surprise, and comments like these at Politico merely prove his point.

I don't expect to see Charles Johnson showing up with Code Pink at any war protests any time soon, but this post covers much of what C&L and other progressive blogs have been saying about the GOP for some time now. It is a dying party that has been taken over by religious extremists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and worse.

Johnson's observations about his party mirror those of my conservative friends and family...well, most of them. They wonder what happened to their party and where they belong in the political spectrum.

I agree with Nicole Belle who wrote backstage - "I don't want him on the left. But it's nice to see someone on the right injecting a little sanity into the discussion."

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From The Rachel Maddow Show, June 8, 2009.

Author Frank Schaeffer, former anti-abortion activist, challenges members of the anti-abortion movement to salvage their reputation for caring about life by turning in to the FBI and Justice Department the violent extremists within their ranks.

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Well, you had to figure this was coming:

The Justice Department on Friday opened an investigation into the killing of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller to see whether the accused gunman had accomplices.

The department will investigate possible federal crimes in connection with Dr. Tiller's slaying at his church on Sunday in Wichita. State prosecutors have already ruled out seeking the death penalty against the accused gunman, but federal prosecutors did not rule out doing so as they announced their own investigation.

"The Department of Justice will work tirelessly to determine the full involvement of any and all actors in this horrible crime," said Loretta King, head of the department's civil rights division.

Anyone who played a role in the killing, she said, will be prosecuted "to the full extent of federal law."

The sound of sphincters clenching from people like Randall Terry and Cheryl Sullenger could be heard for miles and miles.

You can read the text of the DOJ release here.

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Rachel Maddow last night covered the unholy alliance between George Tiller's accused murderer Scott Roeder and the anti-abortion extremists Operation Rescue. Cheryl Sullenger is described as the senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue out of Wichita. Sullenger's name and phone number were found on Roeder's car dash, and records show multiple phone calls between them in recent months. Considering Sullenger's own terrorist history more than a few eyebrows were raised. Heather has the video and more detail in her post, Maddow's devastating expose: Tiller's assassin tied to Operation Rescue.

Maddow's segment featured several video clips of Sullenger, without sound. Those now seem to have been pulled from YouTube but I thought it might be interesting to hear the woman in her own words. In the clip above Sullenger is railing against Nola Foulston, Sedgwick County (Kansas) District Attorney for, according to Sullenger, "abusing the power of the DA’s office by wrongly dismissing 30 criminal charges of illegal abortions against her friend, George Tiller, even though two independent judges determined that there was probable cause to believe that Tiller violated the law". Sullenger wanted to replace her with a more sympathetic to the cause rightwing republican. Dr Tiller would go on trial in March 2009 for misdemeanor charges laid by the state Attorney-General stemming from procedures he performed, alleging he hadn't secured the proper second professional opinions necessary. It turned out he had, and the jury took less than an hour to aquit. Assistant Attorney General Barry Disney's case was tenuous at best, and lacked credible evidence.

The verdict was a blow to the pro-life community in Kansas, but especially enraged the extremist groups who looked on in the courtroom in disbelief.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman takes notes Monday in Sedgwick County District Court, the first day of George Tiller's jury trial in Wichita. (edit: Cheryl Sullenger is sitting to his right.)

And of their sworn enemy Sedgwick County DA Nola Foulston, this was her yesterday.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston announces charges against Scott Roeder during a news conference in front of the Sedgwick County Court House in Wichita, Kan.

Ezra Klein sees the Tiller assassination in its political context:

As The American Prospect's Ann Friedman writes, this has to be understood in context. It is the final, decisive act in "an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services." That campaign stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder. The different elements were not always orchestrated. But the intent remained constant: To counter the absence of a statute that would make Tiller's work illegal with enough intimidation to render it impossible.

This was, in other words, a political act. Tiller was murdered so that those in his line of work would be intimidated. In conversations with folks yesterday, I heard well-meaning variants on the idea that it would be unseemly to push legislation in the emotional aftermath of Tiller's execution. I disagree. Roeder was acting in direct competition with the United States Congress. And it's quite likely that he changed the status quo. Legislative language and judicial rulings had made abortive procedures legal and thus accessible. Yesterday's killing was meant to render abortive procedures unsafe for doctors to conduct and thus inaccessible.

If a woman cannot get an abortion because no nearby providers are willing to assume the risk of performing it, the actual outcome is precisely the same as if the procedure were illegal. Roeder has, in all likelihood, made abortion less accessible. It would be, in my view, a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively prove his action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive.

That's not to suggest fast-tracking legislation that radically transforms the county's uneasy consensus. But there are plenty of remedies that speak to the question of access alone: Bills that make abortion centers safer and help poor women afford treatment, for instance. We can't stop Scott Roeder from killing George Tiller. But we can stop him from having his intended effect on a woman's ability to choose.

Dr. George Tiller of Women's Health Care Services clinic in Wichita, Kansas was gunned down outside his church yesterday. Tiller had long been a top target of the anti-abortion movement because he performed medically necessary late-term abortions.

He faced down decades of harassment, threats and vandalism and went back to work after being shot in both arms by a radical “pro-life” activist in 1993. Just last month his clinic was severely damaged by vandals. Tiller probably suffered more than anyone else in recent decades to defend reproductive rights.

After news of the shooting broke, his antagonists came out to dance on his grave: Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, led protests against George Tiller's late-term abortion clinic in Wichita in 1991. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states,

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

"Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

Other radical “pro-lifers” took to Twitter to gloat:

UPDATE... Doctor George Tiller was aborted today in his 204th trimester - aren't paybacks a bitch - Punch

oh HAPPY DAY! Tiller the baby killer is DEAD! - Samantha Pelch

George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead this morning. God bless the gunmen who hopefully won't be caught. - readnwatchchris, Creedmor. NC

And Frank Pavone of the so-called Priests for Life tried to muddy the waters and deflect blame for the killing:

I am saddened to hear of the killing of George Tiller. At this point, we do not know the motives of this act, or who is behind it, whether an angry post-abortive man or woman, or a misguided activist, or an enemy within the abortion industry, or a political enemy frustrated with the way Tiller has escaped prosecution. We should not jump to conclusions or rush to judgment.

Let us all remember that this tragedy comes just one month after O’Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, and gang went ballistic over a Homeland Security report concerning the potential for violence by right-wing extremists.

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(h/t Scarce for video)

Following the brutal slaying of Dr. George Tiller, Operation Rescue released this statement:

“We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”

And now the group's leader, Randall Terry has released this Rally the troops video to all anti-choice advocates. In the above video he calls President Obama and pro-choice politicians child killers, and proclaims Dr. Tiller to be a mass murderer, who "reaped what he sowed," but voices regrets that the slain doctor wasn't able to "get things right with his maker" and that it was unfortunate that he didn't get a "trial of a jury of his peers and to have a proper execution."

This is one sick, twisted individual. To deny that hateful propaganda like this could incite someone to violence, is just plain dilusional.

Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast:

On Wednesday, I reported for The Daily Beast that key leaders of the white supremacist movement are seeking new opportunities to infiltrate and influence the political mainstream, particularly within the Republican base. An exclusive new video, shown here for the first time, offers new evidence of their strategic push.

In the video, shot by an amateur videographer (available here) who provided me exclusive access to his footage, an unidentified staffer from one of the country’s most popular white supremacist radio programs, The Political Cesspool, is seen promoting his show’s website at an October 13 rally for Sarah Palin in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Just feet away, Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, hands out fliers and recruits volunteers to canvas for McCain-Palin.

Though neither Political Cesspool nor Randall Terry have any known contact with the McCain-Palin campaign, their presence at the recent Palin rally presents one of the clearest portraits yet of the far right’s attempts to exploit the Republican base’s anti-Obama resentment for organizational gain.

According to its "Statement of Principles," the Political Cesspool "represent[s] a philosophy that is pro-White" and which "heartily endorse[s] and accept[s] as our own, the founding tenets of the Council of Conservative Citizens [CCC]," America’s largest white supremacist group. A 2007 article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report noted that, “The Political Cesspool' in the past two years has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America.”

Your "soulmate", Senator McCain, the one you say "energizes the base" that you're so proud of is pallin' around with white supremacists and people who advocate harassment of Planned Parenthood offices. What a fine person of which to be proud.