New Right-Wing Strategy?

Yesterday morning, members of a forum for assault weapon
enthusiasts hacked the well known progressive website, www.buzzflash.com, which had been rallying support for a ban on .50 caliber machine guns capable of taking out commercial airliners. later, the home address and phone number of buzzflash's ceo, mark karlin, was posted on the Bigger Hammer forum.

As the discussion grew increasingly heated throughout the day, one forum member wrote, "there are a few hitmen in the chicago area." A statement that is more than a veiled threat to be certain!

As a result, buzzflash's staff (a few editors live just blocks from the lefkow family) has been receiving threatening phone calls and emails all day. My sense of the episode is that it's just another case of empty right-wing eliminationist rhetoric and it
will subside shortly, but in the current climate that seems to be emerging in the wake of the lefkow killings, can anything be taken for granted?

However, is this the new right-wing attack plan... smear and then threaten the lives of liberals, progressives, and other thinking people who oppose the agenda of the right?