Stop Yer Crying
by digby
… or I’ll give you something to cry about.
On Easter morning in Alexandria, Va., a motorcyclist spotted the license plates on his car, then pulled up next to him and asked if he was a congressman. The Republican from Gold River said yes.
“He started using profanities and telling me how I was a criminal and I ought to go to jail,” Lungren said. “Then he pulled the motorcycle to the other side of the car, where my wife was, and repeated the very same thing, to which my wife responded, ‘Have a nice Easter.’ “
Lungren said he didn’t feel any particular need to publicize the harassment. And he wishes more of his colleagues would follow suit.
“We ought to kind of cool it in terms of the publicity of this stuff,” Lungren said. “I don’t think it serves any purpose other than maybe encourage some nutcases out there because they think they’ll get publicity about it.”
As the top-ranked Republican on the House Subcommittee on Capitol Security, Lungren gets regular briefings from Capitol police, who investigate any threats made against a member of Congress.
While Capitol police won’t say anything about the issue, Lungren said there are no data to suggest that the number of threats is increasing this year.
“I have no evidence at this point that there is a steep rise in threats or that it’s a more dangerous situation with respect to members of Congress,” he said.
Lungren’s assessment was challenged Friday by Democrats on the subcommittee.
“Discussions with members of Congress and law enforcement officials have shown increased incidents of threats directed at members,” said House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady of Pennsylvania and Capitol Security Subcommittee Chairman Michael E. Capuano of Massachusetts, both Democrats, in a joint statement.
[…]
Lungren said the official police policy is to keep all threats private, unless arrests are made and charges are filed, which is what happened in the Pelosi and Murray cases.
[…]
Lungren noted that while many members of Congress are going public with the threats against them, nearly all threats against the president are kept quiet.
“We shouldn’t be any different,” he said. “The Secret Service has to run down all sorts of purported threats against the president and vice president,” he said. “That’s always been done, but you almost never read about it in the newspapers.”
Moreover, he noted, people have every right to speak up.
“It’s when they go from the position of saying something nasty about a member of Congress, which the Constitution allows them to do, to becoming an actual threat of physical harm,”
And when they say nasty things, you should keep your yap shut and take it because they might get fed up with your lip and do something violent. And you’d have no one to blame but yourself. And anyway, you’re all making it up. And that makes me really mad.
My favorite thing about this story is the fact that the person who allegedly yelled at him from his motorcycle was almost guaranteed to be a conservative.
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