Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

Less than two months after the horrifying shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona  prompted nationwide calls for civility in public discourse, mobs of angry union workers in Wisconsin have thrown all sense of decency to the wind and are turning to violence in revenge for the passage of a bill that will restrict their collective bargaining rights.

The situation in Wisconsin began to deteriorate last night shortly after Republican lawmakers passed a bill restricting some of the collective bargaining rights of the state’s public unions. Just after the vote, thousands of union workers stormed past security guards and took over the first floor of the Capitol building.

According to Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, the building is still too unsafe to use this morning. 

“Law enforcement is doing the best they can, but they’re just undermanned,” Fitzgerald told 620 WTMJ.

Lawmakers will not return to the building until police can restore order and ensure that it is safe.

Even more alarming are the growing number of death threats aimed at Republican lawmakers and their families. The State’s Department of Justice has confirmed that they are looking into several of these threats, including one that was sent by e-mail to Republican Senators last night.

The following is the unedited email that was obtained by WTMJ:

“Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

“We want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.

“We have all planned to assault you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a democratic process.

“So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go against what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!”

Judging by the lack of outrage for these actions by the same lawmakers who were so quick to blame the tea party for the shooting of Rep. Giffords, it’s safe to assume that all those grandiose calls for civility had nothing to do with a genuine concern for the common good, but were nothing more than political theatrics.

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