I Really Have to Stop Reading the News…

It isn’t even light yet, and I’ve already read stories that make me want to crawl back into my bed and pull the covers up over my head.

In national news, the Southern Poverty Law Center has released a new study showing a dramatic rise in hate groups–especially anti-government, “patriot” groups. And closer to home, Mother Jones reports that

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn’t end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: “Use live ammunition.”

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs” who were “physically threatening legally elected officials.” In response to such behavior, he said, “You’re damned right I advocate deadly force.” He later called me a “typical leftist,” adding, “liberals hate police.“

Only later did the reporter realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

Apparently, this Deputy AG–one Jeff Cox–has been communicating similar messages for most of the ten years he has been employed by the people of Indiana to uphold the rule of law. The Mother Jones article contains more quotations, along with his defense that he has a First Amendment right to express his opinions.

I don’t debate his right to voice opinions (although a semanticist might quibble on the grounds that infantile name-calling can hardly be dignified by the term “opinion”). I do wonder what sort of “logic” fails to recognize that the protesters also have First Amendment rights, or that he is one of the “public workers” being vilified by people like Governor Walker and…Jeff Cox.

I also wonder what kind of job performance the people of Indiana have been getting from someone so intemperate and lacking in judgment. Those aren’t exactly the qualities that make for good lawyering.

Perhaps he would be better suited to a job defending some of those “patriots” the Poverty Law Center identified.