Abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed while attending church this morning in Wichita, Kansas. A suspect has been arrested. From the Wichita Eagle:

WICHITA – A suspect in this morning’s fatal shooting of George Tiller is in custody and on his way back to Wichita, deputy chief Tom Stolz of the Wichita Police Department said today at a news conference.

The 51-year-old male suspect was arrested about three hours after the shooting without incident near Gardner on Interstate 35.

Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation.

Tiller was serving as an usher at the church, one of six ushers listed in the church bulletin. He was handing out bulletins to people going into the sanctuary minutes before being shot.

A church member who did not want to be identified said the gunman threatened another person at the church after the shooting.

I am pretty sure the far-right anti-choice crowd is cautiously condemning this act of terrorism — which is what it is — while trying to mitigate it by saying that Dr. Tiller himself was guilty of thousands of murders of the “unborn.” They can say “Yes, we condemn this, but…” all they want, they can make all the excuses that they want, and they can pray to whatever god they choose to in thanks for vindication of their beliefs, but Dr. Tiller was practicing medicine within the laws of the State of Kansas and even if he wasn’t, the act this morning was nothing less than what we accuse the Taliban and Al-Qaeda of doing and for what we allegedly went to war for.

Now I am sure the far-right will, on cue, play the victim and claim that the act of this terrorist will be used to tar their entire movement. They will say that they can’t be responsible for the individual acts of every person that follows their path. They will say that it is a terrible tragedy but Dr. Tiller brought this on himself and that God has rendered His judgment.

Bullshit.

If they don’t condemn this unequivocally and without a “Yes, but,” and if they don’t do everything they can to disavow and work to remove these lone wolves, they are as guilty of terrorism as the man who pulled the trigger. They would expect no less from us should there happen to be an act of terrorism from the left. To paraphrase President Jed Barlet, until they do, they can get their fat asses out of the public discourse.

I hold Dr. Tiller and his family in the Light.

In case you’re not keeping track, the latest evil plot that Barack Obama is cooking up is buried in the Chrysler bankruptcy: by shutting down over 700 dealerships, he’s exacting revenge against car dealers who gave money to the GOP in the 2008 election. OMG; has the man no shame?

Yeah, that would work except, as Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight points out, there’s little flaw in the logic:

Nobody has bothered to look up data for the control group: the list of dealerships which aren’t being closed. It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.

[…]

It shouldn’t be any surprise, by the way, that car dealers tend to vote — and donate — Republican. They are usually male, they are usually older (you don’t own an auto dealership in your 20s), and they have obvious reasons to be pro-business, pro-tax cut, anti-green energy and anti-labor. Car dealerships need quite a bit of space and will tend to be located in suburban or rural areas. I can’t think of too many other occupations that are more natural fits for the Republican Party. Unfortunately, while we are still a nation of drivers, we are not a nation of dealers.

Maybe they should move along to the next hush-hush conspiracy: a vast majority of Democrats voted for Barack Obama in last year’s election. What’s up with that?

Red State blogger Erick Erickson thinks Rush Limbaugh, whom he perceives is under attack from fellow right-wingers, is comparable to Jesus Christ.

Peter, under pressure and fear, denied Christ not just once, but three times. Peter, though, feared death. The strain on Peter was great. The rest of us, though, typically fear the opinions of others.

There are those who like it when we feel guilty for associating with someone. More troubling, in the conservative movement and in the greater right-of-center coalition, there are many, many fellow traveller who would rather spend their time throwing their own under the bus than fighting the left…

The incidents of late with Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dick Cheney, and others is why I raise this. Putting it bluntly, were these guys on the left, their fellow leftists would at best be cheering them on and at worst silently nodding along. There wouldn’t be any on that side rushing to the nearest microphone to condemn them…

As an aside, perhaps an even greater bother are the high minded types on our side who condemn any level of aggressive activism because it is icky, mean, or beneath us. There is a war going on. We fight. Suck it up.

I’m pretty sure that even a casual follower of Christianity would find it pretty creepy to hear their Lord and Savior compared to a flaming gasbag in a glass booth. Not to mention the fact that it’s tough finding a crown of thorns that will fit over that inflated head of his.

Another day, another series of attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor:

• John Derbyshire doesn’t buy her “compelling life story” —
  

  The woman grew up in the capital of the world, went to two Ivy League schools, and was blessed by Providence with the precisely correct right race-gender two-fer for the moment.

  This is a story of privilege, dammit, not adversity.

  Yeah, the projects in the South Bronx are really the Hamptons. Who knew?

• Former Rep. Tom Tancredo notes that she belongs to La Raza, which he calls the “Latin KKK.” (It’s closer to the NAACP, but they all look alike to him.)
• The New York Times says that she has a “sharp tongue” which could “raise issues” on the court. If so, she would be in good company with Justice Antonin Scalia, who is not known for verbal restraint.
• Karl Rove said that Judge Sotomayor would not be the first Hispanic justice on the court; he says that honor fell to Benjamin Cardozo, whom Mr. Rove claims to have been “Sephardic.” Actually, Mr. Cardozo’s ancestors came from England and Holland, and even if there’s a link to Portugal, it’s not a Hispanic country. Hispanic refers to people who came from Spanish-speaking countries, and in Portugal they speak — wait for it — Portuguese. (If you think they’re all alike, tell that to someone from Lisbon. Or Madrid.)
• Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks square off over “empathy.” Dr. K suggests that the Senate Judiciary Committee beat the crap out of her during her confirmation hearing, then, duly chastened and on notice, send her off to the Court. Mr. Brooks, in his normal equivocation, cautions that there’s good empathy and bad empathy, and he hopes for the best.

So far none of these off-the-wall pronouncements and accusations appear to be having any effect on the populace. Rasmussen polling, which tilts to the right, reports that 87% of respondents say that she will be confirmed and 45% say she should be. And while watching all the histrionics and spluttering is amusing in the same way that watching a dog chase his tail or a cat go after a laser beam, I’m still sticking with my prediction that she will be confirmed with at least 80 votes, even if Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) has already made up his mind even before the confirmation hearings.

HT to Media Matters.

According to Karl Rove, “empathy” is a code word for judicial activism.

Mr. Obama said he wanted to replace Justice David Souter with someone who had “empathy” and who’d temper the court’s decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless.

“Empathy” is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn’t pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

This must be a new code word enacted since 1991 because President George H. W. Bush thought it was a fine quality to have in a Supreme Court Justice back then. And apparently Samuel Alito didn’t get the memo either, because he certainly spoke eloquently about that quality when he was being confirmed in 2006.

“[W]hen a case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position.

“And so it’s my job to apply the law. It’s not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, ‘You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.’ …

“When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”

I guess he got through Mr. Rove’s vetting process because he doesn’t actually use the word “empathy,” and he does talk about avoiding “bending the law,” but what the learned counsel is describing is exactly what President Obama and Judge Sotomayor were talking about when they used the term “empathy.”

It’s also a little more than ironic that were it not for judicial activism on the Supreme Court in 2000, Karl Rove wouldn’t have spent seven years working out of the White House instead of the state capital in Austin, trying to keep Gov. George W. Bush occupied while he ran the state of Texas for him.

HT to Steve.

The right wing noise machine is going into overdrive trying to come up with something with which to tar Judge Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate confirms her to the Supreme Court. If the last couple of days are any guide, you really have to marvel at the lengths and depths they will go to to come up with something — anything — to attack her with. It’s almost inspired.

First there’s the usual taking-out-of-context of words from a speech she gave in 2001 that Newt Gingrich says are so bigoted that she should withdraw her name; except when you read the speech you realize it’s nothing of the sort (to the point that conservative columnist Rod Dreher says he was wrong about her). Then Karl Rove claims that her educational background is inconsequential; “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.” Okay, who wants to hit that one out of the park? Rush Limbaugh calls her a “reverse racist,” whatever the hell that means

From there we go into the land of the truly desperate. Mark Krikorian at the National Review, demands that we shouldn’t be forced to pronounce her name correctly but conform to “English” pronunciation to assert her “assimilation.” Not only is it blatantly bigoted (not to mention channeling the Borg), I wonder if Mr. Krikorian knows — or cares — that Spanish surnames have been in North America a lot longer than America has been a country, that someone from Puerto Rico doesn’t have to “assimilate” because they’ve been citizens of the United States for nearly a century, and anyone named “Krikorian” has no right to tell someone else that they should make their name easier to pronounce unless they want to sound like a complete ignoramus.

But wait, it gets better. There’s actually someone who thinks that because Judge Sotomayor likes Puerto Rican cuisine, that might be a sign that she’s an “activist” judge. I kid you not.

According to Hill reporter Alexander Bolton, “This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ tongue and ears — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.”

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn’t certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

Slightly gobsmacked, I called Bolton earlier today and asked him whether this was for real–whether any conservatives were genuinely raising this issue. He confirmed, saying, “a source I spoke to said people were discussing that her [speech] had brought attention…she intimates that what she eats somehow helps her decide cases better.”

Bolton said the source was drawing, “a deductive link,” between Sotomayor’s thoughts on Puerto Rican food and her other statements. And I guess the chain goes something like this: 1). Sotomayor implied that her Latina identity informs her jurisprudence, 2). She also implied that Puerto Rican cuisine is a crucial part of her Latina identity, 3). Ergo, her gastronomical proclivities will be a non-negligible factor for her when she’s considering cases before the Supreme Court.

Got it? Good. This is the conservative opposition to Sotomayor.

(Ed. Note: TPM notes the correct translation of the menu — pig’s feet, not ears — here.)

If this is the best that the wingnuts have got going for them, then apparently we’ve found the summer replacement for America’s Funniest Videos. Get out the popcorn.