Sunday’s passage of health care reform was preceded by many weeks of venomous attacks and wild exaggerations, yet it all seems so tame now in comparison.
Since the vote, at least 10 House members have reported death threats, harassment or vandalism at district offices. More than 100 House Democrats were alarmed enough to meet privately Wednesday with the FBI and Capitol Police. Some requested and received extra security.
Such violence and threats of violence are not free speech and political protest. It is intimidation, it is criminal, and it has no place in a democracy like ours.
Republicans, of course, have condemned the violence and acts of bigotry that followed the bill’s passage. Yet their ongoing vitriol has given license to the threats. They own what’s happening now.
Some of the scariest attacks have been directed at Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, the leader of anti-abortion Democrats in the House, whose support put the bill over the top. When Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas yelled “baby killer” while Stupak was speaking on the House floor, the GOP can’t later feign shock that someone left a death threat on Stupak’s phone.
It is Republicans’ right to fight the health care overhaul. GOP senators offered amendment after failed amendment to the “fix-it” bill before its final passage Thursday night.
Yet they haven’t stopped there. Cementing their reputation as obstructionist sore losers, GOP leaders have blocked other important legislative business that has nothing to do with health care.
Republicans stopped several committees from even meeting Wednesday, including the Senate Judiciary hearing for two eminently qualified judicial nominees in California: Goodwin Liu for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and Kimberly Mueller for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, headquartered in Sacramento.
Liu, an associate law school dean at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mueller, a magistrate judge and former Sacramento City Council member, both have the highest rating from the American Bar Association. And they’re both badly needed at unusually busy courts.
As of last Sept. 30, the 9th Circuit had more than one-third of all pending federal appeals nationwide, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. And in the Eastern District court, more than 10 percent of civil cases had been pending for at least three years and criminal cases had taken an average of 10 months to complete.
Justice delayed is justice denied. But in their all-out war against the health care bill, Republicans don’t seem to care much about that, either.