The attempted assassination of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) generated an interesting “distancing” exercise on several fronts, with regard to allusions of weaponry and political vitriol.  There are indications the “targeting” symbology from the political action committee of Sarah Palin has been removed.  Keith Olbermann “apologized” for any implications of calls for violence in his own prior speech while saying “violence…has no place in our Democracy” (Thomas Jefferson might take issue).

In a fascinating display of naiveté, an internet blogger even attempted to play the “distancing” role for Michael Weinstein.  Said Christine Woodman: 

[Weinstein] has all of the fire, all of the passion and none of the threats of violence…The worst thing he threatens or commits is legal action which is painful but not deadly.

Really?  Woodman is either defending a person she doesn’t know at all, or she is willfully ignoring Weinstein’s own words.  To wit:

Weinstein has said he is “engaged in…a bloody battle that only ends with the last person standing.”  He has expressed a desire to [use “withering fields of fire”] to leave “sucking chest wounds” in those who oppose him.  He “challenged” now-disgraced Pastor Ted Haggard to a fight “behind the junior high school,” expressed a desire to box Rush Limbaugh, and with respect to Klingenschmitt…Weinstein has said: “I would like to beat the [expletive] out of him in a boxing ring or in an alley behind a Safeway.”

How is that “none of the threats of violence?”

It is Weinstein, not his public adversaries, who has alluded to physical violence when he has been unable to articulate a simple reasoned defense of his positions.  He is the one who has tried to rally people to his cause by saying American Christians are trying to organize a second Holocaust with “oceans and oceans of blood.”

Contrary to Woodman’s assertion (which Weinstein called “thoughtful” and “flattering”), Weinstein is the poster child for “threats of violence” in political discourse. Of course, outside of his own unsubstantiated assertion he once struck a military officer, there’s no indication Weinstein (or any of his followers) has actually engaged in physical violence, but that hasn’t stopped him from making the threats.  Weinstein threatens and intimidates (“litigates and agitates”) with his mouth and his lawsuits.

Interestingly, Woodman was complimentary of Weinstein’s “legal action.”  Perhaps she is likewise unaware that every single one of Weinstein’s lawsuits against the government in the past five years has been dismissed before making it to trial, and, despite repeated and impassioned promises from the mouth of Weinstein, not a single appeal was ever filed.

It would seem Weinstein relies more on his mouth than his lawsuits.