The Daily News

Via KMBC of Kansas City, MO, here's video from the scene of Dr. George Tiller murder suspect Scott Roeder's arrest -- including the little-reported detail that Roeder had a handwritten Operation Rescue phone number on his dashboard:

So whose number was on Scott Roeder's dashboard?

It turns out the number belongs to Operation Rescue senior policy advisor Cheryl Sullenger, who was convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in 1988. Justin Kendall of The Pitch has the details:

The phone number is written on an envelope with the name "Cheryl" and "Op Rescue." Cheryl is Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue's senior policy adviser, who in 1988 was convicted of conspiring to bomb a California abortion clinic. She served two years in prison.

Kendall spoke with Sullenger, who says she hasn't spoken with Roeder "recently."

"No, he hasn't called me recently," Sullenger said. "No."

"You know, he's somebody who's been around. My name is on the Internet. It's on every press release. My phone number is on every press release it. It's all over the internet. I don't know. He probably has lots of people's phone numbers. You know? So I don't know. I don't have any more comment other than that."

To recap: The man accused of killing George Tiller had on his dashboard the phone number of convicted abortion clinic bomber Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy adviser for the very same organization that has been all over the airways today to saying that they are a strictly non-violent group.

According to Sullenger, who in 2006 was Operation Rescue's outreach coordinator, Roeder is "sombody who's been around." She says he hasn't called her "recently," whatever "recently" means to her.

Meanwhile, Operation Rescue has claimed the organization has had no connection with Roeder other than comments on their website.

At this point, the more we learn about the relationship between Roeder and Operation Rescue, the more questions there seem to be.

by Amanda Marcotte

Because fuckheads who don’t know what they’re talking about are beginning to blather about how they think they know better than actual doctors about the realities of late term abortion, I thought I’d put up a video that we made explaining the facts.

RH Reality Check: Late Term Abortions from RH Reality Check on Vimeo.

It’s interesting that Republicans have used the occasion of a new Supreme Court nomination to denounce the quality of empathy.  You know, the quality that genuinely decent and brave people like Dr. George Tiller had in spades, while moral cowards like Megan McArdle suffer a massive deficit.

Rewatching that, I feel particularly weird about the line I wrote about how using late term abortion as a political football is dangerous.  In my head, I was thinking about the women who need to have safe abortion available for dangerous pregnancies.  Now I realize that it’s also dangerous in terms of riling people up so they commit hate crimes.