Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we detailed last year, WorldNetDaily initially sought to distance itself from the shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller by Scott Roeder (despite having repeatedly labeled him as "Tiller the Killer" prior to his death), depicting Roeder as mentally ill and not a part of the anti-abortion movement (even though he was). So it's interesting that most recent mentions of Roeder at WND sought to condone his murderous behavior.
Jack Cashill defended the murder as a "frontier justice" necessity in columns on Nov. 12 and Jan. 14. And in a Feb. 3 column, Jill Stanek tried to have it both ways, claiming that she had "a problem with Scott Roeder murdering Tiller" while simultaneously lamenting that Roeder was not allowed to mount a "necessity" defense because it is "is anathema to both pro-aborts and the U.S. legal system thanks to abortion," going on to cite "Tiller's continued avoidance of justice."
This prompted a response by Gregg Cunningham, head of the anti-abortion Center For Bio-Ethical Reform, chastising Stanek's condoning stance, which WND surprisingly published on Feb. 8:Regarding the murder of abortionist George Tiller, she argues essentially that Scott Roeder's jury should have been allowed to find that stalking, ambushing and blowing out the doctor's brains wasn't murder because George Tiller was an abortionist. Jill emphasizes that she is personally opposed to vigilante assassinations. She says that she might not have voted to reduce Scott Roeder's offense to manslaughter had she been given that option as his juror. But she then asserts that jurors should be permitted to consider the horror of abortion as a mitigating circumstance when deciding the fates of those who kill abortionists. This chilling, "eye-for-an-eye" ethic is difficult to distinguish from the barbaric apologetic used by the "Army of God" anarchists who cheer on sociopaths such as Scott Roeder. It is a license to kill.
[...]
Jill also endorses Roeder's failed attempt to establish that killing George Tiller wasn't murder because Tiller was allegedly committing illegal abortions for which he wasn't being brought to justice. George Tiller was never convicted of aborting unlawfully. A very pro-life Kansas prosecutor named Phill Kline couldn't even nail him for what amounted to paperwork violations. And even if bias by other prosecutors protected Tiller from further pursuit, is a lynch mob really the proper antidote for prosecutorial corruption?
[...]
Jill concludes by lamenting that the babies were denied "their day in court" when the Roeder judge placed abortion off limits as a proper consideration in determining the defendant's guilt. But she has chosen the wrong forum for a fight over rights of personhood for unborn children. There are two issues here. The first is whether Scott Roeder did or did not murder George Tiller. The second is whether abortion should or should not be legal. The first is a criminal-justice issue, and the second is a public-policy matter. If those two questions are not resolved in separate arenas, the rule of law becomes the real victim.
This puts Stanek in a bit of a spot, since she previously praised Cunningham for writing an "absolutely fabulous, must read letter" in support of using graphic images of abortion during protests of President Obama's speech last year at Notre Dame; Cunningham had written that Notre Dame students who voted for Obama "must not be allowed to graduate in comfort" and called Obama a "serial-killer."
Interestingly, Stanek has yet to respond to Cunningham, either in her column or on her blog. Meanwhile, a similar letter by Cunningham to anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry got a much different response -- derision and scorn from another extremist, George Offerman.
So, any chance Cunningham can pen a letter to Jack Cashill?
