"Those few abortionists were shot, or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure with a rifle performed on them. I'm not justifying it, but I do understand how it happened.... The number of deaths attributed to Roe v. Wade about 40 million aborted babies and seven abortion clinic workers; 40 million to seven is also a pretty good measure of how the political debate is going."

(I wrote about this at the time, for those who want to get into this in detail, and the sourcing for the quotes can be found there. The above was originally reported by journalist Adele Stan.)

Speaking at the 2008 Values Voters Summit, a national religious right political conference in Washington, DC sponsored by, the Family Research Council and other top religious right groups, she stated that doctors were being murdered -- because the courts have taken democracy away, by which she meant that the Casey decision did not sufficiently reduce the number of abortions, which she says drove people to violence.

For two decades after Roe, no abortion clinic doctors were killed. But immediately after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, after working within the system did not work, produced no results... for the first time an abortion doctor was killed. A few more abortion clinic workers were killed in the next few years. I'm not justifying it, but I understand when you take democracy away from people, some of them will react violently. The total number of deaths attributable to Roe were seven abortion clinic workers and 40 million unborn babies

She issued her latest justification for murder in response to the Tiller assassination, in her recent nationally syndicated column. Her column is  based at the conservative weekly Human Events, where she is "Legal Correspondent." (Yes, this is a lawyer, engaging in thinly veiled justifications for major crimes.) It is distributed to newspapers by the Universal Press Syndicate.

Borrowing from and inverting some prochoice language she writes:

I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.

Then, appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, as reported by Politics Daily, she repeated her argument:

"I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester."

When pressed by O'Reilly on this statement, Coulter replied,

    "I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others."

So that's four times in the past year and a half that she has coyly or not so coyly justified political assassination: Before prominent religious right audiences; in a nationally syndicated column, and on national television.

I think this is an extraordinary opportunity for the common grounders (suchas the ones I discussed here) to demonstrate their commitment to rancor reduction in the abortion debate. In this instance, to acknowledge and denounce the inflammatory rhetoric of a major political pundit and instigator of the climate of threats, hate and fear that have contributed to the three decade crime wave against abortion providers, staff, and patients.

Could they make a study of and take action against Ann Coulter and her enablers such as Human Events, the Universal Press Syndicate, and for that matter Bill O'Reilly and Fox News? Or perhaps they can explain why they should turn a blind eye to all this?