Wow, this is insane and scary:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
In a Tea Party-sponsored conference call held on Wednesday night, a participant called for the assassination of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) over her support for immigration reform. Prominent conservative policymakers Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)’s communications director Stephen Miller and Heritage Foundation research fellow Robert Rector also joined the call, hosted by the conservative Eagle Forum group.
The most jarring and unexpected moment of the night was when the moderator opened up the phone lines to callers:
BOB FROM MAINE: I’m from Maine and our Tea Party will be meeting up next week. What is the best way that we can get our senator to listen to us?
ANOTHER CALLER: Shoot her. [laughter]
MODERATOR: Yes, we will shoot her with…(inaudible) and phone calls. - Think Progress, 5/30/13
This of course isn't the first time Tea Party members have threatened politicians like Susan Collins (R. ME):
http://www.rawstory.com/...
Tea partiers have threatened U.S. officials before. In 2011, Jules Manson, a failed tea party candidate for local office in California said of President Barack Obama in a blog post, “Assassinate the fucking ni**er and his monkey children.”
Manson later deleted the comment, but not before the Your Black Politics blog was able to get a screen shot of the racist remarks.
In April of this year, an Oklahoma state senator was threatened by a co-founder of the Sooner, OK tea party, Al Gerhart. Gerhart sent state Senator Cliff Branan (R) a death threat via email, writing that if Brannan didn’t acquiesce to Tea Party pressure over “Agenda 21,” the supposed U.N. “mind-control” plot, “We will dig into your past, your family, your associates and once we start on you there will be no end to it. This is a promise.”
Signs carried by tea party members at rallies regularly threaten violence against the government, often alluding to “Second Amendment remedies” and other threats of gun violence. - The Raw Story, 5/30/13
Here's a little background info on Collins' stance on immigration reform:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Collins hasn't yet said how she would vote on comprehensive immigration reform, which will go to the floor early next month after the Senate has resolved its farm bill. The bipartisan "gang of eight" immigration bill passed in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week in a 13 to 5 vote, with three Republicans joining to vote for the bill. Two of those, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), are members of the gang of eight, while one, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), signed on only after his amendment on high-skilled worker visas was adopted. Hatch said his vote for the bill in committee does not necessarily mean he will support it on the Senate floor.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told news program "To the Point" on Tuesday that he expects it will be "pretty easy" to get the 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, and that he will need only eight Republicans to support the bill.
Many Republicans outside the Judiciary Committee have declined to give a straight answer on whether they will support immigration reform. But Collins, often a more moderate member, may be a likely target for crossing the aisle on immigration reform. She's the sole Republican co-sponsor in the Senate of the Uniting American Families Act, a contentious bill that would allow LGBT couples to be considered in the same way as heterosexual ones for spousal visas. An amendment based on that bill from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was withdrawn last week, to the dismay of advocates. It could, however, come up again on the Senate floor.
Collins has said she would support including LGBT equal treatment in immigration reform. - Huffington Post, 5/30/13
Now I'm not a fan of Susan Collins. In fact, I'm hoping the Tea Party will find a candidate to beat her in the primary and create another pick up opportunity for Team Blue this year. Especially since the Tea Party was able to get this clown elected:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) sounded a dire note of caution Wednesday about the dangers of curtailing the First Amendment, warning ominously that any limits to free speech should serve as a call to arms.
LePage was still fuming over an incident at a state Appropriations Committee meeting on May 19, when his request to speak about the state budget was denied by a Democratic legislator.
"It’s freedom of speech. You folks should understand that better than I," LePage told reporters, as quoted by the Portland Press Herald. "It is the First Amendment, then there is the Second and I love ‘em both."
The outspoken governor added, "The minute we start stifling our speech, we might as well go home, roll up our sleeves and get our guns out." - TPM, 5/29/13
Not to mention the tea baggers are already going after Collins on her vote for background checks:
http://www.timesrecord.com/...
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, back before she became senior in Maine’s U.S. Senate delegation, was seen as not as bad as Sen. Snowe. She never managed to invoke the ire of conservatives and nonmoderates as much as Snowe, her viscerally loathed comrade in RINO-ism. Snowe took all the ire and practically reveled in it, churning up the angst whenever it died down in almost regular fashion.
Collins seems to see her new role as to be the new bane of conservatism everywhere. She has, since November, done her best to poke the coiled up snake on a yellow background as much as she can.
By banding together with Senate colleagues, she waded waistdeep into the gun control debate, invoking the ire of gun owners everywhere. Maine gun owners have quickly come to realize she can’t be trusted with the 2nd Amendment, and that she is keen to introduce legislation to limit access to guns.
By co-sponsoring a gun control measure in the Senate with several Democrats, Collins stuck a RINO horn into a rattlesnakes’ nest and riled up the coiled snake in the grass. She has struck on the one issue that unites constitutionalists, tea partiers, libertarians and conservatives. - Andrew Ian Dodge, 2012 Republican/Libertarian Maine U.S. Senate Candidate, The Times Record, 5/21/13
But of course I don't condone violence of any sort and the Tea Party should be ashamed of itself not only for letting one of their lunatics make this threat but for laughing and cheering that threat. But it's the Tea Party, they have no sense of shame. I also want to see immigration reform get passed this year. But I do urge you to contact Collins' office and tell her to get behind immigration reform:
(202) 224-2523