Sharron Angle’s Death Panel

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Does Sharron Angle want to set up her own death panel?

Angle, a tea party-backed ultraconservative who’s taking on Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, tried mightily to avoid media scrutiny. But journalists dug up her extreme views and statements anyway. Last week, The Huffington Post found her suggesting that a 13-year-old girl who had been raped by her father make “a lemon situation into lemonade” instead of getting an abortion. Her latest is a real doozy:

[Angle] claimed last night that [77-year-old] Senator Robert Bennett, who was ousted by the Tea Partiers last month, had “outlived his usefulness.”

The Reid campaign and the Democratic National Committee are jumping on the quote. Here’s DNC spox Hari Sevugan, to the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent:

While ‘death panels’ were nowhere to be found in the health insurance reform bill, it looks like Sarah Palin can find a one-woman version of one in Nevada where Sharron Angle thinks people who criticize her political positions should die. Her sentiments are sick, but that fact that Republicans endorse, as their standard bearer in Nevada, someone who wishes death upon her critics and calls for `Second Amendment remedies’ to deal with her political opposition is just as disturbing.

An unpopular incumbent in a state with 14 percent unemployment vs. perhaps the most extreme (and loose-lipped) Senate candidate in recent memory? This is going to be a fun race.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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