Coulter on Sen. Chafee: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln"

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter titled her August 30 syndicated column on the Rhode Island Senate race: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln." The headline is a reference to Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), whom she excoriated throughout the piece -- calling him a "half-wit" and a "silver-spooned moron[] -- while expressing her support for his challenger in the September 12 Republican primary, Stephen Laffey.

This is not the first time Coulter has alluded to killing those she disagrees with:

• Commenting on radio host Melanie Morgan's assertion that if New York Times executive editor Bill Keller were convicted of treason she "would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Coulter said, "I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution." She later suggested that Times staff members should be "executed."
• Coulter said of the media: "Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists."
• Coulter suggested that Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) is "the reason soldiers invented fragging," -- military slang meaning the intentional killing of a member of one's own unit.
• Coulter argued that the national debate during the Monica Lewinsky controversy should not have focused on whether former President Bill Clinton "did it," but rather "whether to impeach or assassinate" him.
• Coulter said of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens: "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens's créme brulée.''

— J.K.

Posted to the web on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 at 08:01 PM ET