Rachel Maddow covered this the other night, Ted Cruz's joint announcement with Operation Rescue of their endorsement of his candidacy for president and what that means for the presidential race when you legitimize groups such as these.

Less than a week later a lone gunman would leave three people would be dead and nine injured in a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs. Debunked videos made by Operation Rescue against Planned Parenthood are already being linked to the increased violence.

Source: Right Wing Watch

In a press release yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz announced that he had received the endorsement of Troy Newman , the radical anti-choice activist who runs Operation Rescue, saying he was “grateful” for the endorsement of Newman, who “has served as a voice for the unborn for over 25 years.”

“We need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice,” Cruz added.

It is remarkable that Cruz is touting the endorsement of one of the most radical anti-choice activists in the country. In a movement that has increasingly embraced softer rhetoric about “women’s health” in order to pass incremental measures restricting abortion rights, Newman is a holdover from the no-holds-barred activism of the so-called “rescue” movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

Much as Cruz recently tried to court an extremist pastor who believes the government should execute gay people, he is now hailing an activist who authored a book criticizing the U.S. government for failing to treat abortion providers as murderers who should be put to death.

Newman argued in his 2003 book, “Their Blood Cries Out,” that the biblical duty of government “rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people.”