Article sheds light on insurrection’s past

Thanks for clarifying the conflicting news accounts of Ashli Babbitt’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, violent demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol that resulted in hers and several other’s deaths, in the Southern Maryland News Jan. 14 article, “Insurrectionist’s past tells a very complex story.”

While some politicians have portrayed Ashli Babbitt as some kind of patriotic “Joan of Arc,” these new revelations of her previous aggressive violent behavior seem to negate that innocent image. The accounts of her alleged betrayal of her marriage vows to engage in a prolonged adulterous relationship with a coworker during working hours at the high-security Calvert nuclear reactor was bad enough.

But then this “foulmouthed chick” began stalking and physically attacking her lover’s former long-term significant other. Babbitt was issued a restraining order to stay away from the person, but was acquitted of criminal charges related to the incident. Still, such reck

less streak-of-mean may help explain her aggressive, excessive behavior joining the violent attacks against the peace officers providing security at the Capitol that day. Thus, her joining the frenzied violent demonstration that resulted in a great deal of terror and harm probably contributed to her own death.

As one who many times has visited Congressional offices to deliver requests for specific legislation in that remarkably peaceful and friendly atmosphere, I deplore and deeply resent that harmful violent insurrection of Jan. 6. Just as I feel the same way toward the many other violent demonstrations that year, including

the ones assaulting the White House just months previously during which other peace officers also were severely injured.

Peaceful assembly and petitioning government for redress of grievances is so vitally basic to maintaining our Constitutional Rights, that all such physically and governmentally harmful acts of violence as occurred on Jan. 6, should warrant the severest punishment of the violent perpetrators of physical assault on any legitimate government officials, especially our police forces.

DeForest Rathbone, Leonardtown