False Equivalence

After several incidents of vandalism, and some spitting and verbal attacks, etc (all of which I think were intended as open threats of real violence even if the actions weren't intentionally incited by Repub rhetoric), our own Eric Cantor went to the press with 'news' that his office had also been 'attacked', so of course, it's all even and nobody should blame the Repubs for fomenting violent actions against their political opponents.

Let's take a little gander at what the Richmond Police Dept posted on their website about this 'attack':

The Richmond Police Department is investigating an act of vandalism at the Reagan Building, 25 E. Main St., Richmond, Virginia. A first floor window was struck by a bullet at approximately 1 a.m. on Tuesday, March 23. The building, which has several tenants including an office used by Congressman Eric Cantor, was unoccupied at the time.

A Richmond Police detective was assigned to the case. A preliminary investigation shows that a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman.

The Richmond Police Department is sharing information about the incident with appropriate law enforcement agencies.

At this time there are no suspects.
Posted by RPD at 12:21 PM

According to James (804-646-0607), a Media Relations guy at The Richmond Police Dept, investigators now believe the damage to the building was due to "random gunfire".

There was no attack.

I've had a lot of difficulty tracking down the building's management, who owns it, etc.  It does appear to be a very modest place in the general vicinity of downtown Richmond.   The building's tenants include a political consulting firm (Marcus & Allen), and a direct mail operation (Creative Direct, LLC, owned by Marcus & Allen).  It's probable that Cantor maintains some kind of 'presence' in that space (most likely as a client), but it's certainly not where Mr Cantor hangs out, since his Richmond office is actually several miles to the northwest of where the incident took place.

A couple of guesses: 

1) The Marcus & Allen bunch is part of the Old Boy Network; providing operatives and support services to the Repub machinery, while getting some nice paychecks courtesy of the rubes out there sending in their nickels and dimes.

2) They saw a decent opportunity to offset some of the PR damage the Repubs were taking because of their wingnuts by portraying a mere coincidence as an equivalency.

Just sayin'