POLITICS: Calif. Man Busted for Threat to Kill McDermott!

A California man has been arrested for making threatening phone calls to Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott over his stance on extending tax cuts. "Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or George Washington—if any of them had ever met Jim McDermott, they would all blow his brains out. They’d shoot him in the head," Charles Habermann said in a late-night call last month to the lawmaker's Seattle office, according to an FBI transcript. Helpfully, he stated his real name and address at the start of the calls, officials noted.

Habermann—who has a $3 million trust fund and a history of threatening lawmakers—accused McDermott and other Democrats of wanting to take his money and give it to "losers," the Christian Science Monitor reports. "I’ll round them up,” he said, according to transcripts. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill his friends, I’ll kill his family." FBI agents say the arrest was in the works long before the Tucson shootings. Habermann, who told agents he had been drinking when he made the calls, faces one count of threatening a federal official.