UPDATE.

Here’s what former spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, attorney Matthew Davis, sent out after the Supreme Court ruled on upholding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, in part:

Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?

In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson’s election was complete. [...]

… America itself was possible only after its people summoned the will to risk their lives and their futures — as well as those of their children — for a freedom they did not enjoy but knew was their gift from God. [...]

If the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified?

God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired.

Please read the rest Michigan Capitol Confidential, here.

How patriotic of him. Especially over something that, you know, keeps people ALIVE.

And Republicans have such short memories it’s uncanny. They keep forgetting it is they who have passed laws that intrude into personal decisions:

States that enacted anti-choice measures in 2011
Photo credit: Courtesy of NARAL/Prochoice America.org

My dear friend Lance Enderle, responded:

For immediate release: June 28, 2012

Lansing – Just minutes after the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, former GOP spokesman Matthew Davis called for armed rebellion.  In a tone more redolent of 1861 South Carolina than 1773 Boston, Davis’s email, entitled “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?,” equated today’s Supreme Court ruling to colonial tyranny, concluding with the vague threat: “God willing, this oppression will be lifted…before the first shot is fired.” 

When called, Davis defended his remarks.  “You can’t [just] have people walking around with lattes and signs.  Armed rebellion is the end point of that confrontation.” 

Lance Enderle, Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 8^th Congressional District, was quick to respond. 

“Reasonable Americans can disagree, vehemently, about political decisions.  But when the rhetoric turns to armed rebellion and violence, it is no longer dissent.  It’s yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, and it’s a crime against the United States.  Inciting violence is not protected by the First Amendment.  The Michigan GOP and the Mackinac Center should immediately condemn Mr. Davis for his violent, dangerous, and frankly illegal conduct,” Enderle said. 

He then pointed out that his opponent, incumbent Mike Rogers, who sits on the Committee for Homeland Security and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, should also be quick to condemn Mr. Davis’s call to arms. 

“If Mike was doing his job, he would be at the forefront, asking for the Department of Homeland Security to open investigations of Mr. Davis and the Mackinac Center for possible seditious conspiracy.”

18 USC 2385 states that “whoever knowingly or willfully prints, publishes…[or] distributes any printed matter advocating…or teaching the propriety of overthrowing any such government in the United States by force or violence…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the next five years.”