It’s a serious question. You’d think a crude thug who thinks assassination is the way to solve the world’s problems would not be gainfully employed as a columnist anywhere, but no—he’s still pumping out the stupid schlock.

I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?

So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

you’d think Assange, super-whistle-blower of the international left, would be a greasy stain on the Autobahn already.

I think Assange is an asset. I wish we had serious journalists who were willing to ask serious questions and confront the public and the government with the truth — once upon a time, I had the delusion that that was what principled journalists were supposed to do. I still have the idea that knowing the truth is always a better guide to productive action than propaganda. If our military in Afghanistan is worsening the problem, if it is killing civilians and creating new terrorists faster than it is containing them, I want to know that, so I can tell my government that I want them to change policies. Building plans on false fantasies is always a bad idea.

I also think that we’ve got a lot of problems in the United States that can be easily personified and reduced to a scattering of figureheads who fuel the fires of our own destruction. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin…even Jonah Goldberg. But I do not advocate their murder. I don’t think it would solve the problems they cause (or more accurately, represent), and trying to resolve conflicts like that with blood just leads to more and more destruction. If someone shoots Glenn Beck, then someone else will feel justified in shooting Rachel Maddow, and the insanity will proceed until someone shoots Goldberg, and they retaliate by shooting me.

Assassinations don’t change the truth. It’s not an answer.

And calls for murder by lard-ass militaristic conservatives who dream of someone else doing their dirty work for them are nothing but rabble-rousing cowardice.

So why is the Chicago Tribune publishing the violent fantasies of a jingo-chanting coward?