[Update]: A statement about the hate crime from Katon Dawson, SC GOP Chair:

“This cowardly attempt to intimidate our conservative Republican reform team here in South Carolina will motivate our volunteers and activists to work that much harder for our candidates up and down the ballot. The destructive actions of these vandals should be taken as a sign of desperation. They clearly lack the energy, ideas and candidates to compete in this election – and are running scared.”

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[Vandals strike York County GOP headquarters](http://www.heraldonline.com/109/story/877049.html)

By Matt Garfield

Vandals spray-painted the words “Republican means slavery” on the door of the York County GOP campaign headquarters overnight Friday.

Party volunteers called police after discovering the message when they arrived at the office on Rock Hill’s Oakland Avenue. The vandals also stole about 45 candidate signs from the front yard and spray-painted over a banner that carried a picture of Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Their messages included lettering and symbols sometimes used by gangs.

Well, at least they weren’t using firearms to make their points.

Yet.

Moe Lane

PS: I’d just like to note for the record that, grammatically speaking, “Republican” is either an adjective (which means that it cannot be properly equated with “slavery,” which is a noun), or it is a proper noun (which means that it cannot be properly equated with “slavery,” which is a abstract concept [no, really: there are no slavery atoms]). I mention this just to point out to our Democratic colleagues that they’re apparently doing just as well with the public education system as they did with the subprime mortgage industry.

[Note by Jeff:] An even more basic educational deficiency, Moe, could be the fact these upstanding citizens apparently never learned in school which party’s President issued that pesky old Emancipation Proclamation…