Congressman gets death
threat

Washington (AP) - A North Carolina congressman who supports an overhaul of the health care system had his life threatened by a caller upset that he was not holding a public forum on the proposal, his office said Friday.

Democratic Rep. Brad Miller received the call Monday, one of hundreds the congressman's office has received demanding a town-hall meeting on the health care proposal, said his spokeswoman, LuAnn Canipe. She said the callers were "trying to instigate town halls so they can show up and disrupt."

"We had one of those kind of calls that escalated to what we considered a threat" on the congressman's life, said Canipe. "These are some strong-arm tactics, and we are trying to deal with and trying to talk to people in good faith about health care reform."

Miller never had plans to hold a town-hall meeting during the August recess, Canipe said. Instead, he was sitting down with smaller groups of people to discuss the plan. During one of those smaller gatherings on Friday, hundreds of people from a group called Triangle Conservatives peacefully protested at Miller's Raleigh office.

The threatening caller, when told by a staffer that Miller was not planning a meeting, claimed the congressman didn't want to meet with people face to face because he knew it would cost him his life, according to Canipe. The staffer then asked if the caller was making a threat. The caller, said Canipe, replied that there are a lot of angry people out there.

The U.S. Capitol Police confirmed Friday they were looking into a threat against a congressman, but wouldn't provide further details.