Jacob Burris, campaign manager for Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden, came home Sunday night to find his family cat murdered on the front porch. As the photo illustrates, “LIBERAL” was written on the carcass.

ThinkProgress reports:

On Blue Arkansas, blogger ARDem, who spoke with Burris after the attack, points out that the event took place the same night that Gabby Giffords, another survivor of “a heinous act of violence,” announced her resignation from Congress. “To think of something happening here like what happened in Arizona, the possibility of that happening to Ken or to someone on his campaign team, is frightening beyond belief.”

Especially considering that many connected Giffords’ attack to a map that political celebrity Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook page with crosshairs over an image of Giffords’ face and the phrase “Don’t Retreat — Instead, RELOAD!” written underneath. Calls for attack — especially when colored with violent imagery, no matter how subtle — have real power.

ARDem suggests that Congressman Womack and his family may be somewhat culpable. Womack’s father, who owns a local radio station, has given out out names, phone numbers and addresses of members of Aden’s team “several times.” Aden’s former press secretary “got a death threat in the mail soon after her name was mentioned on the program.”

Another staffer confirms via comment: “[They] gave out my name, address and even spelled my name with an admonition to ‘watch my back’ … this has also happened to other people who write letters critical of Womack by his father on the air … with the same phrase, ‘watch your back,’ being used.”

The Womack family has not yet spoken out against the incident, which makes one wonder how their PR people are dealing with the news. The good news — if you can call it that — is that the child who found the dead cat was “too young to be able to read.”

While we’d never accuse Burris of faking the attack — and there’s certainly no evidence suggesting it — a politically motivated incident like this calls to mind the Pittsburgh woman who in 2008 carved the letter B (for Barack Obama) in her own face and filed a false police report, inventing a mugging.

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