Why is it that when there is a divisive issue involving a high profile Democrat, inevitably they are the subject of death threats? What is it about the Republican party’s fringe that is so willing to bully to get their point across? I guess it isn’t just the fringe. It seems to be a deep seated Republican trait to strong arm their way through every situation.

The latest round of death threats is directed at Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic member of the 911 Commission. She was a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and wrote a memo that codified a long standing separation between the CIA and FBI. She didn’t create the separation. She just wrote a memo to explain it to people. The separation had existed for at least a decade, since the Reagan administration. Republicans are up in arms at this as a result of the testimony of John Ashcroft in front of the 911 Commission. He brought the previously classified memo seemingly for the purpose of pointing the finger at Gorelick.

Luckily for us, the head of the commission, former republican Governor Kean of New Jersey has made it clear that Gorelick can and should stay, and that she is a vital member of the commission. Have there been death threats against Governor Kean? Not likely.

Having a D in front of your name is the equivalent of the scarlet letter when it comes to our Republican brothers and sisters. We are guilty of the most heinous of sins in their unquestionably Puritanical minds. Like the witches that came before dear Hestor, we deserve only death. We stand in the way of their pure conception of America, one modeled after the squeaky clean morality of Leave it to Beaver.

For Republicans, morality peaked in 1958, and it’s been all downhill from there. That damn Rock and Roll. Hippies. Civil Rights. Ohhhhhhhh. The elephant in the room in 1958 was wild inequality between whites and blacks. You can’t judge that era without realizing that while superficial notions of morality were front and center, a chasm lurked either just below the surface or more often surrounded us like a fog. You could rationalize the morality because as far as you could see there was no fog, never mind that if you looked farther than the end of your nose things got far murkier.

So who thinks that the 50’s were great. White males mostly. Dumb white males. People with little compassion for the treatment of anyone other than the people they know, people that not surprisingly are also dumb and white. In other words, the people currently running our country. (and let me tell you, as a white male, nothing gives me greater shame)

OK. Plenty of Republicans haven’t thought this through. It’s probably more of an example of ignorance than actual stupidity. Lives are complicated, there’s not a lot of time to worry about greater societal issues. That’s what Democrats are for. And when we are annoyed by the actions of one of the Republicans we don’t threaten to kill them.