What's the difference between Pam Atlas and a terrorist?

You got me. I don't see one. Neither do I see a difference between the loathesome spewing of Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Robertson and dozens of others of their ilk and the rantings of al Qaeda. All of them routinely call for the reckless murder of Americans. Our resident right wing terrorists are in fact worse than AQ, since they call for the death of their fellow citizens not of out of an ideological conviction, but simply to advance their careers as professional hate-mongers.

One might be inclined to simply ignore their unpleasant pandering and write off their hapless fan base as irredeemably angry, but as Glenn Greenwald details in this post, their violent rhetoric has consequences in the real world. There are numerous instances of law abiding citizens being swamped with death threats after being targeting by one of the high profile, right wingnut extremists. And just this week some nutcase, who apparently subsists on a steady diet of Malkin and Coulter's bile, mailed anthrax-like powder to the pair's very long list of enemy list of Americans who dare to use their constitutional freedoms to publicly disagree with the zealots' party line.

Should we wait until some deluded fan sends the real thing before we confront these terroristic pundits among us? I think not.

Someone needs to hold these self-professed pundits responsible for their irresponsible rhetoric. I would think their victims could sue under hate speech statutes. Certainly, it's clear their goal is to provoke violence with their words. Or perhaps they could be declared enemy combatants for calling for the death of their fellow Americans. That would be the ultimate justice, for them to be snared by the very mechanism they're willing to kill their fellow citizens to "defend."