Current Events

This week’s Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 249 has a nice roundup of recent domestic terrorist incidents perpetrated by Christian Terrorists within the United States. They gathered the list to contrast with the silly drum-banging that the Bush Administration did recently about the so-called Muslim terrorist cell from Miami — the guys who had no actual weapons, plan, finances or connections and who could no more have bombed the Sears Tower than I could armed with a shovel.

But check out this big fat list of blood-thirsty, fully armed killers, all of whom have at least one thing in common — they hate the hell out of me.

2001: According to the Feminist Majority Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, Over 170 abortion clinics and doctors’ offices in 14 states and the District of Columbia received threatening letters claiming to contain anthrax. The envelopes had return addresses from the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Marshall Service with postmarks from Atlanta, GA; Knoxville, TN; Chattanooga, TN; or Columbus, OH. The envelopes were also marked, “TIME SENSITIVE: Urgent Security Notice Enclosed.” When opened by clinic staff, all letters contained a white powder with a letter stating, “You have been exposed to anthrax. We are going to kill all of you. Army of God, Virginia DARE Chapter.”

2003: A nurse has been charged with firing a shotgun at an abortion clinic in Asheville before it opened on Thursday, according to police. Brenda Kaye Phillips, 44, a registered nurse, was charged a misdemeanor count of damage to property for shooting at the Femcare Women’s Clinic. The same clinic was the target of bomb four years ago.

2003: Klan leader David Wayne Hull was arrested at his Washington County, Pennsylvania, home on February 13 for allegedly planning to blow up an abortion clinic. Federal prosecutors charged Hull, a forty-year-old Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a small Pennsylvania-based group, with receiving, manufacturing, possessing and transferring a destructive device in violation of the National Firearms Act. At a preliminary hearing in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh on February 18, prosecutors accused Hull of trying to buy hand grenades from a witness cooperating with the FBI. According to an unsealed criminal complaint, Hull told the informant he was “going to blow up abortion clinics.” Authorities say that Hull told the informant he made his car a “suicide bomb on wheels.” In July 2002, Hull attended the “Aryan Nations World Congress,” convened by the Pennsylvania faction of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations. He is also a follower of Christian Identity, a racist and anti-Semitic sect whose adherents believe that white people are God’s chosen people, descended from the lost tribes of ancient Israel, and that minorities are soulless “mud peoples.”

2004: A man who was accused of plotting to firebomb abortion clinics, churches, and gay bars was sentenced yesterday to five years in federal prison. Stephen John Jordi, 36, pleaded guilty in February to a single charge of attempted arson of an abortion clinic. Prosecutors had asked Judge James Cohn to sentence Jordi under a federal terrorism law and sought seven to 10 years. Cohn refused, saying federal sentencing rules require that plots have an international component to be considered terrorism. “This crime was strictly domestic and in no way transcended national boundaries,” Cohn said. Jordi and a government informant bought gasoline cans, flares, starter fluid, and propane tanks the day he was arrested last November after casing several South Florida abortion clinics and talking about bombing one in Macon, Ga., according to the FBI. Prosecutor John Schlesinger said he “respectfully disagreed” with the judge’s decision not to sentence Jordi as a terrorist.

2005: A 24-year-old Shreveport woman and her 18-year-old boyfriend have been charged with attempting to bomb an abortion clinic. Authorities say Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe were arrested and booked into City Jail. Hughes was charged with manufacturing and possession of a delayed incendiary device. Dunahoe was charged as an accessory. Hope Medical Group for Women wasn’t damaged when someone tossed a Molotov cocktail at it about 10:45 the night of December 12th.

2005: A suspicious fire damaged an abortion clinic, and federal agents launched an investigation, authorities said Tuesday. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined local authorities in the investigation of the blaze late Monday at the Presidential Women’s Clinic. No one was injured. Details on the extent of damage were not immediately available. It appeared that lighter fluid or some other accelerant was used to start the blaze, fire department spokesman Phil Kaplan said. A July 2004 fire damaged another Palm Beach County abortion clinic and a 2003 blaze damaged one in neighboring Broward County.

2006: Evidence teams plan to put on protective gear and seal the room as they search for any clues left behind on a contraption that investigators are calling a “weapon of mass destruction.” Technicians will be looking for fingerprints and any other evidence that may have been left on the device, which was pumping a mix of water and a caustic chemical into a sex shop when neighbors found it Sunday morning, detectives said. The evidence crew will be breathing the air inside the room, but won’t have any unprotected contact with the plastic jugs, duct tape, and hoses that make up the device. In Waldo, people have held prayer vigils and protests aimed at an adult bookstore along US 301, trying to keep the “Cafe Risque” from opening its doors on time.

2006: A man who told police he made a pipe bomb to attack an abortion clinic was arrested Thursday, shortly before the device went off in a friend’s home while authorities tried to disable it, according to court documents. … Weiler faces four federal counts including making a destructive device and possessing an illegal handgun. He was being held Thursday. Phone messages left at Weiler’s home were not returned. A car in the driveway had a frame around the front license plate that read “Choose Life” and “God is pro-Life.”

Notice that emphasized quote above — according to our federal government, a plot has to have an “international component” to be considered terrorism. WTF?!?!

Why? Any political act designed to terrorize a group of people is terrorism, including all the above incidents, all of which meet the definition far better than a bunch of disgruntled Miami dudes who basically sat around talking smack and not much else.