George Tiller

Blood on Bill O'Reilly's Hands?

Plus, Holder moves to protect abortion clinics.

Yesterday, after the murder of Dr. George Tiller, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to abortion clinics and providers around the country. Also, Tiller’s assassin, Scott Roeder, was arrested once before in 1996 for having bomb-building materials. And at Salon, Gabriel Winant examines the role Bill O’Reilly played in the campaign against Tiller. Since 2005, O’Reilly mentioned Tiller on his program 29 times, calling him “Tiller the Baby Killer,” accusing him of “Nazi stuff,” and saying “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union.” Winant writes, “While he never advocated anything violent or illegal, the Fox bully repeatedly portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities.”