Kennedy warns of potential violence.

The American Life League, the Virginia-based Catholic antiabortion organization who produced 10,000 signs bearing the message, "Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy" have stated that there was nothing violent or insensitive about their message.

“There’s absolutely nothing violent about the sign,” Brown said, noting that her group distributed 10,000 at a rally earlier this month on the national Mall; she could not immediately say how much they cost.

“I believe it was extremely insensitive for his father to have advocated the death of millions of babies,” Brown said, referring to the elder Kennedy’s support for abortion programs. “I don’t think what we did was insensitive.

I don't quite know what point she is trying to make here. Even if she thinks Kennedy was "insensitive" to support abortion, does his supposed insensitivity rule hers out? I mean, if someone is insensitive towards my beliefs, does that mean it's impossible for me to be insensitive towards theirs? It's an idiotic point which she is making.

To use the death of Kennedy in the posters is insensitive in itself. And to suggest that other things, be it programmes or people, should follow Kennedy into death is also appallingly insensitive. And crass. And possibly encouraging violence.

It really is quite indefensible.

Kennedy's son, Patrick, has spoken out against this rhetoric:

“My family’s seen it up close too much with assassinations and violence in political life. It’s a terrible thing when people think that in order to get their point across they have to go to the edge of violent rhetoric and attack people personally.”

“They had mass-produced signs, ‘Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy,’ ” he said after the AARP event. “It wasn’t just an individual who was over the edge in their ideology and vitriol. This stuff was mass-produced and mass-distributed and mass-funded. When you put that together with folks around the country calling in very destructive ways for other things about Obama, and connotations of my family name, it’s not a real stretch as to what the message is here.”

Some on the right are, as usual, cranking this up way beyond where decent people would choose to go.

When you find yourself equating anything with an actual person's death and hoping that this death will be replicated, then you have gone too far.

And that's before we get to polls like this one having to be removed from Facebook.

These Republican dumbasses are playing with fire.

Kennedy referenced an article published Friday on the news Web site Politico that cited interviews with former Secret Service, FBI and CIA officials also concerned that the intensity of today’s debate could produce violence. The article notes that this summer’s health-care protests included an episode where freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr., D-Md., was hanged in effigy. Anti-energy bill protesters tarred and feathered an effigy of Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla.

“It’s very, very dangerous,” Kennedy said in the interview. “We put a lot of people in jail around the world for threatening our country’s security. But this atmosphere of attack that doesn’t attack the issue, but attacks the people, is very disruptive to the institution of democracy, which relies on a respect for the opposition.”

He continued: “George Wallace didn’t need a gun to pull a trigger. We just need to be mindful of the wisdom of people … who have been through these ugly periods in American history. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Kennedy is right. History shows us where this kind of rhetoric can lead. There is simply no excuse for anyone indulging in this crap, no matter how "insensitive" they think others have been to the things they care about.

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Tags: Kennedy, Obama, tea party protests