Parsing Mr. Wilson’s Apology

By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times
Published: September 11, 2009


Let’s take a moment to rejoice in our country’s infinite capacity to surprise.

I’d have been willing to bet that we had a national consensus on the undesirability of a congressman yelling out “You lie!” during an address by the president of the United States. But no. It turns out there are quite a few people who think this is a good idea.

Joe Wilson, who will be forever known as the “You lie!” congressman, unless he does something even weirder in the future, has a lot of fans this weekend at the Taxpayer March on Washington. This is an anti-Obama demonstration organized by FreedomWorks, the group that helped bring us the summer town hall meeting protests.

Those were, of course, the events where we learned that we did not actually have a national consensus on the inadvisability of bringing loaded weapons to places where the president is speaking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/opinion/12collins.html?em

would have used those weapons on any Congressman who had shouted "You lie!" at Bush during an address of the Joint Session of Congress. I'm getting more concerned about this lunatic, racist fringe. They seem to feel themselves more powerful whenever they get away with doing something like this.