Regarding Bill O’Reilly’s campaign against George Dr. Tiller, as reported by Gabriel Winant at Salon, a recent precedent exists for a civil lawsuit against O’Reilly.

If you have read the book A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America by Elinor Langer, you’ll no doubt agree with her (though no white power advocate, she) that the godfather of American white power, Tom Metzger, was railroaded. But this Wikipedia passage accurately explains in brief how he was convicted:

The group was eventually bankrupted as the result of a civil lawsuit centered on its involvement in the 1988 murder of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college. In 1988, white power skinheads affiliated to WAR [White Aryan Resistance] were convicted of killing Seraw and sent to prison. Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against him, arguing that WAR influenced Seraw’s killers by encouraging their group East Side White Pride to commit violence. At the trial, WAR national vice president Dave Mazzella testified on how the Metzgers instructed WAR members to commit violence against minorities. Tom and John Metzger were found civilly liable under the doctrine of vicarious liability, in which one can be liable for a tort committed by a subordinate or by another person who is taking instructions. The jury returned the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time—$12.5 million—against Metzger and WAR. The Metzgers’ house was seized, and most of WAR’s profits go to paying off the judgment.

More at Memeorandum.