re: #561 Last Mohican

That’s a horrible story. But are you sure it’s actually true?

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird has a few other comments we should look at…

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird faced a deluge of criticism Thursday for his decision not to hold live town hall meetings on health reform and for his Wednesday comparison of disruptive anti-health-reform demonstrators with Nazis and murderers.

“The congressman should be ashamed and embarrassed,” said Ryan Hart, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party. “Portland police used to bring in extra people when Bush came to town, but I never heard President Bush call people Nazis or Brown Shirts.”

In Wednesday conversations with the Olympian and Columbian, Baird said he’s holding “telephone town halls” instead of live meetings to avoid an “ambush” by people with a “lynch-mob mentality” and “close to Brown Shirt tactics.”

Baird, D-Vancouver, referred to an effigy of a conservative Democrat that was photographed hanging from a noose last month in Maryland.

Two of Baird’s Republican challengers issued news releases on the issue Thursday.

“There appears to be a leadership void on national issues which will impact residents of Southwest Washington,” wrote candidate Jon Russell of Washougal, in announcing a series of town hall meetings he’ll host in late August.

Candidate David Castillo of Olympia, who is black, said he was “disgusted” by Baird’s “lynch mob” remark.

Baird stuck to his rhetorical guns Thursday.

He invites civil disagreements over health reform, he said.

“I’ve had 300 town halls,” Baird said. “That’s more than anyone else I know on either side of the aisle.”

But Baird said a “coordinated national effort” to disrupt public meetings with shouts and demonstrations, which he said Republican leaders were “egging on,” was reminiscent of the kinds of things that drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

“He believed himself to be a patriot fighting against an oppressive government,” Baird said of McVeigh, whose act killed 168.

/Classy