Too Cleaver By Half

As the hate rhetoric on the right keeps growing, so do the threats to Democrats in office.

It turns out that the right-wing crazy who was threatening Patty Murray supporters with a cleaver in Spokane on Thursday is a man with a history of mental illness:

Friends and family of Sieler told KREM 2 News he is psychotic and needs help.
"He has no control of what he's doing," Sieler's ex girlfriend Theresa Stapleton said. "He's made death threats on people."

Stapleton is the mother of Sieler's child, and says she speaks to him regularly. Stapleton says Sieler has been off his medication and has dangerous psychotic episodes.

Recently, Stapleton says he's been obsessed with politicians who he thinks they are out to get him.

Interestingly, this incident is only the latest in a string of violent threats at Democrats -- and particularly President Obama -- cropping up very recently, and in all of them mental illness appears to be playing a significant role.

And it's not just this one time.  Several incidents just in the last six weeks indicate that the vitriol that the right tosses off as "just playing to win" is in fact increasingly dangerous.  You have to wonder just what is driving people to literally come after Democrats with cleavers.

However, you have to wonder what will happen if they wake up on the morning after Election Day and discover that their planned takeover of Congress has failed. Because then, it won't just be the diagnostically insane who will be acting out.

No, it won't.  But of course the loudmouths on the right will never take responsibility for any of this.