The editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, the largest newspaper in Michigan and the largest city newspaper owned by Gannett, has called for the murder of Michigan GOP state legislators for the “crime” of voting to fund charter schools.  Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has the shocking details:

[Monday] Michigan’s Republican legislators voted to bail out Detroit’s abysmally run schools with $617 million in taxpayer funding. The same bill also fought efforts to constrain charter school choices in Detroit. Prior to the vote, Stephen Henderson wrote on his editorial page:

We really ought to round up the lawmakers who took money to protect and perpetuate the failing charter-school experiment in Detroit, sew them into burlap sacks with rabid animals, and toss them into the Straits of Mackinac.

After noting that charter school advocates support charter schools, he doubled down on the violent rhetoric:

It is every bit deserving of an old-school retributive response.


A sack. An animal. A lake.


No lover of actual democracy could weep at that outcome.

If there were any doubt about his call for life-ending violence, he tweeted out the editorial with these comments:

GOP House harlots deserve worse than hanging for selling out #detroit kids on #DPS bills. https://t.co/zbPajL81qq

— Stephen Henderson (@SHendersonFreep) June 3, 2016

There is no question that Detroit’s public schools are failing.  Hemingway cites some of the recent evidence:

Detroit’s public schools are failing academically and nearly insolvent, the New York Times wrote in January. The Detroit News wrote in March that “the statewide opinion of K-12 education is downright ugly.” That poll showed residents didn’t think throwing money at public-union-controlled schools was the answer, with 63 percent saying it takes more than money to improve education.

But defending the unions that benefit from these failing schools is apparently worthy of violent rhetoric.

Henderson, challenged on Twitter, is not backing down, but rather defending his violent rhetoric:

.@EdWhelanEPPC get your head out of those Rand books, and join the world of lit where hyperbole, especially historical hyperbole, lives.

— Stephen Henderson (@SHendersonFreep) June 7, 2016

.@seanmdav @freep column covered it in a hyperbolic, historical example. Oh ... right, your rag stripped out context in its "criticism"Lol.

— Stephen Henderson (@SHendersonFreep) June 7, 2016

.@EdWhelanEPPC @freep not hiding. Right here in front of you. Just not moved by your "outrage," and not apologizing bcuz I'm not sorry.

— Stephen Henderson (@SHendersonFreep) June 7, 2016

In my opinion, Henderson has crossed a serious line.  Gannett should fire him immediately.  Pulitzer never acknowledges its errors and so can’t be expected to revoke his prize.  After all, they awarded a Pulitzer to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent who collaborated with the Stalinist regime in covering up the deliberately induced famine in Ukraine and other crimes.