A 26-year-old Wisconsin woman named Katherine Windels has been charged with making death threats via e-mail to Governor Scott Walker and fifteen Republican legislators. She's facing felony counts. I absolutely believe that law enforcement should take this kind of thing seriously -- but please note the following, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Asked if she intended to follow through on any of her threats, Windels told the investigators "No," according to the complaint...
WKOW-TV reported Windels was not in custody. She was expected to be served Friday with her first court appearance in late April, according to the station's website.
I see no evidence that the woman had any means of carrying out this threat, and it looks as if authorities don't think she's particularly dangerous.
With that I mind, I direct you to the current list of blog responses to this story on Memeorandum (click to enlarge):
I had to break the screen shot in two to give you all of it.
Now I direct you to the reaction when Kevin William Harpham was arrested three weeks ago on charges of attempting to detonate a bomb at the Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington -- a bomb that actually existed, and that an FBI agent said "was very lethal and had the potential to inflict multiple casualties" (again, click to enlarge):
There's already more response on the right to the arrest of Windels than there was on the left to Harpham's arrest. The right blogosphere has decided to use the story of Windels to "win the morning" -- and it's working.
How big a story will this be? How well known will Katherine Windels become? If there really are recall elections for Republican senators in Wisconsin, will the right-wing noise machine make her a household name -- not just in Wisconsin but among Wingnut Nation from coast to coast? Will her story open wallets when they're looking for donors in that campaign?
Meanwhile, after three weeks, did you remember the name of the man charged in the Spokane bombings? (I didn't.)
Their messaging is just better than ours.
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