Ken Aden is running as a Democrat for Congress in Arkansas' third district. Recently his campaign manager, Jacob Burris, returned home from a short outing with his children to find their pet cat, a Siamese mix, dead on their front doorstep with the word "liberal" painted across its body. The cat's head was bashed in so severely that one eye was hanging out of the socket. Burris' five year old son was the first to find the cat. Here is what he saw:
This kind of action is, in Aden's words, "unconscionable... part of the worst of humanity." Aden's race with Republican incumbent Steve Womack has been "tense," although Aden said he does not think Womack's campaign is directly responsible for this horrific crime. But it is all too typical of the kind of political climate that we live in today, and especially the kind of threatening and sometimes violent rhetoric tossed around by the right, that can easily inspire despicable acts of terrorism and intimidation like this.
An innocent cat, a family pet that had nothing to do with a political campaign, lost its life, and Mr. Burris' children lost a beloved pet in the ugliest, most traumatizing way imaginable, because of some ignorant cowardly yahoo's desire to scare and intimidate a political opponent.
PETA is reportedly offering a $5000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever is responsible for this crime. The blog Blue Arkansas is speaking out against this terrorist act, on behalf of the Aden campaign and Mr. Burris and his family, and is asking for campaign donations for Aden's progressive congressional campaign.
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