The shocking terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon yesterday will transform American life in ways we cannot yet imagine, another assault on our freedom as Americans.
Until now, America has lived in a bubble, figuring that we would never face what Israel, Great Britain, India, Iraq and Afghanistan have faced, as we have been fortunate in stopping terrorist attacks on our homeland in the years since September 11.
It now means that at every sporting event and major public gathering, there will be a need for more security, some of it infuriating in nature, because of the evil forces among us who wish us harm.
We should not, however, rush to conclusions as to the source, as it could be Islamic terrorism, but could also be militia group related, reminding ourselves of the Oklahoma City terrorist attack of 1995, on nearly the same date as this one!
So in order to fight terrorism, sadly, we are forced to give up a lot of our freedom, an alarming development with no easy solution or alternative!
Excellent post Professor.
At least one of the two improvised explosive devices loaded with shrapnel at Monday’s Boston Marathon was packed into a pressure cooker. A 2010 release from the Department of Homeland Security said pressure cookers “frequently have been used in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Pressure cookers are common in these countries, and their presence probably would not seem out of place or suspicious to passersby or authorities.”
At least two previous terror plots in America included pressure cookers. One of the explosives Faisal Shahzad left in Times Square was a loaded pressure cooker, the DHS release said. And in 2011, Army Pvt. Jason Naser Abdo told investigators he planned to pack gun powder and shrapnel into pressure cookers as part of an attack on a restaurant popular with personnel from Fort Hood. When he was arrested, Abdo had a copy of Inspire magazine and explosive supplies and two pressure cookers. Sources: (http://www.investigativeproject.org/3972/boston-marathon-bomb-probe-focusing-on-pressure) (http://info.publicintelligence.net/DHSpressurecookerieds.pdf) (http://www.investigativeproject.org/3706/former-us-soldier-sentenced-to-life-in-fort-hood) (http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1617.pdf#page=3) (http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/375.pdf)
I suspect it’s going to turn out to be domestic terrorists. Why? Because of the date. This week marks the anniversaries of the Oklahoma City bombing and the Waco raid.
I agree with you, Princess Leia, and intend to write precisely on this later today. If it was Islamic terrorism, they would be taking credit for it, but right wing domestic terrorists are cowards who try to keep their identity secret!
@Ron: All terrorist are cowards, right, left,center, green, Islamist jihadist or whatever.
List of terrorist attacks within the US since 1960
1960’s
1960: The Sunday Bomber sets off a series of bombs in New York City subways and ferries during Sundays and Holidays, killing one woman and injuring 51 other commuters.
1968 April: Students at Trinity College hold the board of trustees captive until their demands were met.
April 23, 1968 – April 30, 1968: During a student rebellion at New York’s Columbia University members of the New Left organization Students for a Democratic Society and Student Afro-American Society held a dean hostage demanding an end to both military research on campus and construction of a gymnasium in nearby Harlem.
1968 November: Officials of San Fernando State College held at knife point by students.
1969 January 1 – 1970 April 15: 8200 Bombings, attempted bombings and bomb threats attributed to “campus disturbances and student unrest”.
1969 February: Secretary at Pomona College severely injured by bomb.
1969 March: Student critically injured while attempting to bomb a San Francisco State College classroom.
1969 August 7: Twenty were injured by radical leftist Sam Melville in a bombing of the Marine Midland Building in New York City.
1969 August 8: United States Department of Commerce Offices in New York City damaged by bombing
1969 September 18: The Federal Building in New York City is bombed by radical leftist Jane Alpert.
1969 October 7: Fifth floor of the Armed Forces Induction Center in New York City devastated by explosion attributed to radical leftist Jane Alpert.
1969 November 12: A bomb is detonated in the Manhattan Criminal Court building in New York City. Jane Alpert, Sam Melville, and 3 other militant radical leftists are arrested hours later
99% committed by the radical left in the 60’s. PLUS 8200 incidents between 1969 January 1 – 1970 April 15! All committed by the New Left or far left.
1970’s
1970 April: At Stanford University over a period of several nights bands of student radicals systematically set fires, break windows and throw rocks.
1970 May: In reaction to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, Kent State shootings, and Jackson State killings a Fresno State College computer center is destroyed by a firebomb. While reaction to these three events was massive, most were peaceful.
1970 August 24: Sterling Hall bombing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in protest of the Army Mathematics Research Center and the Vietnam War, killing one. Bombers Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt claimed the death of physicist Robert Fassnacht was unintentional but acknowledged that they knew the building was occupied when they planted the bomb. Ties to the leftist Symbionese Liberation Army
1970 November 21: Bombing of the City Hall of Portland, Oregon in an attempt to destroy the state’s bronze Liberty Bell replica. The late night explosion destroyed the display foyer, blew out the building doors, damaged the council hall, and blew out windows more than a block away. The night janitor was injured in the blast. The crime remains unsolved, though a number of local anti-war and radical leftist groups of the era remain the primary suspects.
1970: Jewish Defense League linked with a bomb explosion outside of Aeroflot’s New York City office in protest of treatment of Soviet Jews
1971: Jewish Defense League linked to a detonation outside of Soviet cultural offices in Washington, D.C. and rifle fire into the Soviet mission to the United Nations
1971 March 1: The radical leftist group Weatherman explode a bomb in the United States Capitol to protest the U.S. invasion of Laos.
1973 June 1: Yosef Alon, the Israeli Air Force attache in Washington, D.C., was shot and killed outside his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Palestinian militant group Black September is suspected, though the case remains unsolved.
1974 June 13: The 29th floor of the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was bombed with dynamite at 9:41 pm resulting in no injuries. The radical leftist group Weatherman took credit, but no suspects have ever been identified.
1974 Summer: “Alphabet Bomber” Muharem Kurbegovich bombs the Pan Am Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport killing three and injuring eight. He also fire bombed the houses of a judge and two police commissioners as well as one of the commissioner’s cars. He burned down two Marina Del Rey apartment buildings and threatened Los Angeles with a gas attack. His bomb defused at the Greyhound Bus station was the most powerful the LAPD bomb squad had handled up until that time. His personal vendetta against a judge and the commissioners grew into demands for an end to immigration and naturalization laws, as well as any laws about sex.
1975 December 29: The LaGuardia Airport Christmas Bomb kills 11 and injures 75. The bombing remains unsolved.
1976 September 11: Croatian terrorists hijack a TWA airliner diverting it to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, and then Paris demanding a manifesto be printed. One police officer was killed and three injured during an attempt to defuse a bomb that contained their communiques in a New York City train station locker. Zvonko Bušić who served 32 years in prison for the attack was released and returned to Croatia to a heroes welcome in July 2008.
1976 September 21: Orlando Letelier, a former member of the Chilean government, was killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. along with his assistant Ronni Moffitt. The killing was carried out by members of the Chilean DINA.
6 attacks by the far left, 1 Black September Pro-Palestinian ,1 Pro-Craotian, 1 right wing and 3 right wing Jewish
1980s
1980 June 3: Bombing of the Statue of Liberty. At 7:30 pm, a time delayed explosive device detonated in the Statue of Liberty’s Story Room. Detonated after business hours, the bomb did not injure anyone, but caused $18,000 in damage, destroying many of the exhibits. The room was sealed off and left unrepaired until the Statue of Liberty restoration project that began years later. FBI investigators believed the perpetrators were Croatian terrorists seeking independence for Croatia from Yugoslavia, (possibly members of the UstaÅ¡e) though no arrests were made.
1980 July 22: Ali Akbar Tabatabai, an Iranian exile and critic of Ayatollah Khomeni, was shot in his Bethesda, Maryland home. Dawud Salahuddin, an American Muslim convert, was apparently paid by Iranians to kill Tabatabai.
1981 December 7: James W. von Brunn served 6 years in prison for attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. He testified his motive was to raise awareness of alleged “treacherous and unconstitutional” acts by the Federal Reserve.
1982 January 28: Kemal Arikan, the Turkish Consul-General in Los Angeles, is killed by members of the Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide.
1982 May 4: Turkish Honorary Consul Orhan Gunduz was assassinated in his car in Somerville, Massachusetts by the Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide.
1983 November 7: U.S. Senate bombing. The Armed Resistance Unit, a militant leftist group, bombs the United States Capitol in response to the U.S. invasion of Grenada.
1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack: In what is believed to be the first incident of bioterrorism in the United States the Rajneesh movement spreads salmonella in salad bars at 10 restaurants in The Dalles, Oregon, to influence a local election which backfired as suspicious residents came out in droves to prevent the election of Rajneeshee candidates.. Health officials say that 751 people were sickened and more than 40 hospitalized. All but one of the establishments attacked went out of business. Investigators believed that similar attacks had previously been carried out in Salem, Portland and other cities in Oregon.
1984 July 18: Alan Berg, Jewish lawyer-talk show host was shot and killed in the driveway of his home on Capitol Hill, Denver, Colorado, by members of a White Nationalist group called The Order. Berg had stridently argued with a member of the group on the show earlier who was convicted in his murder.
1985 October 11: Alex Odeh, a prominent Arab-American, was killed by a bomb in his office in Santa Ana, California. The case is unsolved, but it is thought the Jewish Defense League was responsible.
1985 December 11: computer rental store owner, Hugh Scrutton, is the first fatality of the Unabomber’s campaign.
1989 March 1: 1989 firebombing of the Riverdale Press. The Riverdale Press, a weekly newspaper in the Bronx, New York, is firebombed one week after publishing an editorial defending author Salman Rushdie’s right to publish The Satanic Verses, which questioned the founding story of Islam.
2 Islamic terrorist attacks,2 Armenian, 2 Radical Leftist (Unabomber included) 1 Croatian, 1 White Supremacist, 1 Jewish Defense League
I wasn’t born until the 1980s. The ones I’m most familiar with that occurred in the US were the ones in the 1990s – Oklahoma City (right-wing extremists), World Trade Center (Islamic extremists), abortion clinic bombings (right-wing extremists), Atlanta Olympics (right-wing extremist).
1990s
1993 January 25: CIA Shooting: Mir Aimal Kasi opened fire to cars waiting at the stop light in front of CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA killing two and injuring three others.
1993 February 26: First World Trade Center bombing killed six and injured 1,000. The attack was carried out by radical Islamist Ramzi Yousef, a member of Al Qaeda.
1994 March 1: The Brooklyn Bridge Shooting occurred when Lebanese-born Rashid Baz shot at a van of Jewish students that was traveling on the Brooklyn Bridge from a visit to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, killing one and injuring three others.
1994 December 10: Advertising executive, Thomas J. Mosser, is killed after opening a mail package from the Unabomber, being the second fatality of the mailbomb campaign.
1995 April 19: Oklahoma City bombing: A truck bomb shattered the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people-including children playing in the building’s day care center. Right-wing terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted in the bombing.
1995 April 24: Timber industry lobbyist, Gilbert P. Murray, is the third and final fatal victim of the Unabomber’s mailbomb campaign.
1996 July 27: Centennial Olympic Park bombing by Eric Robert Rudolph occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Atlanta Olympics. One person was killed and 111 injured. In a statement released in 2005 Rudolph said the motive was to protest abortion and the “global socialist” Olympic Movement.
1997 February 24: 69-year-old Palestinian Ali Hassan Abu Kamal opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the “enemies of Palestine”. His widow claimed he became suicidal after losing $300,000 in a business venture. In a 2007 interview with the New York Daily News his daughter said her mother’s story was a cover crafted by the Palestinian Authority and that her father wanted to punish the United States for its support of Israel.
1999 December 31 An arson fire causes one million dollars in damage and destroys the fourth floor of Michigan State University’s Agriculture Hall. In 2008 four people that the government claimed were Earth Liberation Front members were indicted for that incident
4 Islamic-Palestinian terrorist attacks, 2 Unabomber (left), 2 far right, 1 Eco terrorist (left)
2000s
2000 October 13, Firebombing of Temple Beth El (Syracuse) _ Islamist
2000: 2000 New York terror attack Three young men of Arab descent hurled crude Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in The Bronx, New York to “strike a blow in the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine”. – Islamist
2001 May 21 The Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington burned. Replacement building cost $7 million ($9,076,000 today). Earth Liberation Front members pleads guilty. – Eco-Terrorism
2001 September 11: September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 civilians, and were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists using hijacked commercial airplanes to damage the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, ultimately destroying both 110-story skyscrapers. The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., was also severely damaged. Building 7 of the World Trade Center was also destroyed in the attack. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach its target. – Islamist
2001 September 18 – November: 2001 anthrax attacks. Letters tainted with anthrax kill five across the U.S., with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets. On July 31, 2008 Bruce E. Ivins a top biodefense researcher committed suicide. On August 6, 2008, the FBI concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks, and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro-choice views. – Leftist
May 2002 Mailbox Pipe Bomber: Lucas John Helder rigged pipe bombs in private mailboxes to explode when the boxes were opened. He injured 6 people in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Iowa. His motivation was to garner media attention so that he could spread a message denouncing government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana, as well as promote astral projection. – Pro-Pot anti-government nutjob!?
2002 July 4: 2002 Los Angeles Airport shooting Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, kills two Israelis and wounds four others at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport. The FBI concluded this was terrorism, though they did not find evidence linking Hadayet to a terrorist group.- Islamist
October 2002 Beltway sniper attacks: During three weeks in October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and critically injured 3 others in Washington D.C, Baltimore, and Virginia. The pair were also suspected of earlier shootings in Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Washington state.No motivation was given at the trial, but evidence presented showed an affinity to the cause of the Islamic jihad. -Islamist
2003 Ohio highway sniper attacks A series of over 24 sniper attacks concentrated along the Cap-City Beltway I-270 in the Columbus Metropolitan Area causing widespread fear across Ohio and leaving one dead. – Paranoid schizophrenia
2006 March 5: Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured 6 when he drove an SUV into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world”. – Islamist
2006 July 28: Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, Naveed Afzal Haq, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, kills one woman and shoots five others at the Jewish Federation building in Seattle. During the shooting, Haq told a 911 dispatcher that he was angry with American foreign policy in the Middle East. – Islamist
2008 February: In the first reported incident of animal-rights extremists physically assaulting the family members of animal researchers, six masked activists attempted to force their way into the home of a University of California, Santa Cruz, researcher and injured the researcher’s husband. – Animal Rights
2008 March 3: Four multimillion-dollar show homes place in Woodinville, Washington, are torched. The Earth Liberation Front is suspected.- Eco-terrorism
2008 March 6: A homemade bomb damaged a Recruiting Office in Times Square. – Left
2008 May 4: Multiple pipe bombs exploded at 1:40 am at the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse in San Diego causing “considerable damage” to the entrance and lobby and sending shrapnel two blocks away, but causing no injuries. The F.B.I. is investigating links between this attack and an April 25 explosion at the FedEx building also in San Diego- .Unknown
2008 July 27: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting: Jim David Adkisson enters the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee with a shotgun, killing two and injuring several congregants before being tackled to the ground. Adkisson stated to the police and in a manifesto that he desired to kill Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals. Adkisson pled guilty to the crime in February 2009 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Right
2008 August 2, August 3 University of California-Santa Cruz molecular biologist David Feldheim’s home was firebombed. A car belonging to another researcher from that university was destroyed by a firebomb in what is presumed to be related. FBI is investigating incidents as domestic terrorism related to animal rights groups.-Animal Rights
2009 April 8: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, intruders left malware in power grids, water, and sewage systems that could be activated at a later date. While the attacks which have occurred over a period of time seem to have originated in China and Russia, it is unknown if they are state-sponsored. – Anarchist or Left
2009 May 31: Assassination of George Tiller: Scott Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller in a Wichita, Kansas church. Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who believes in justifiable homicide of abortion providers, was arrested soon afterward. Roeder was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2010. Tiller, who performed late-term abortions, had long been a target of anti-abortion extremists; he his clinic was firebombed in 1986 and Tiller was shot and wounded five times in 1993 in a shooting attack by Shelley Shannon. Anti-Abortion
2009 May 25: 17-year old Kyle Shaw sets off a crude explosive device at a Starbucks at East 92nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, shattering windows and destroyed a bench at the coffee shop. There were no injuries. The attack was a “bizarre tribute” of the movie Fight Club, in an attempt to emulate “Project Mayhem”, a series of assaults on corporate America portrayed in the film. Shaw took a plea agreement and was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in November 2010. – Nutjob
2009 June 1: Arkansas recruiting office shooting: Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and killed one military recruiter and seriously wounded another at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army/Navy Career Center in an act of Islamic terrorism. Muhammad, a convert to Islam, had vised Yemen for 16 months, where he spent time in prison and became radicalized. Muhammad, said he was part of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and upset over U.S. killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. – Islamist
2009 June 10: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting: 88-year-old James Wenneker von Brunn, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., shooting and mortally wounding Stephen Tyrone Johns, a security guard. Von Brunn was wounded when other museum guards immediately returned fire and on January 6, 2010, von Brunn died of natural causes at a hospital near where he was imprisoned awaiting trial. -National Socialist
2009 November 5: Fort Hood Shooting: Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army Major serving as a Psychiatrist, open fires at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 29. – Islamist
9 Islamist terrorist attacks, 2 Eco-Terrorist (left) , 2 Animal rights (left), 1 National Socialist (Nazi), 1 Anti-Abortion, 1 right, 1 anarchist or leftist, 2 nutjobs
2010–present
2010 February 18: The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on when Andrew Joseph Stack III, flying his Piper Dakota, crashed into an IRS office complex in Austin, Texas killing one person besides himself and injuring thirteen. – Leftist
2010 September 1: Discovery Communications headquarters hostage crisis: James J. Lee, armed with two starter pistols and an explosive device, takes three people hostage in the lobby of the Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland before being killed by police. After nearly four hours, Lee was shot dead by police and all the hostages were freed without injury. Lee had earlier posted a manifesto railing against population growth and immigration. – Eco Terrorist (leftist)
2011 January 6: Three packages detonate in the mail rooms of two Maryland state government buildings, causing minor injuries to the fingers of two government workers. Unknown
2012 August 5 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting: 6 killed, 3 injured including a police officer who was tending to victims at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Wade Michael Page age 40 killed himself after being shot by police. The shooting is being treated by authorities as an act of domestic terrorism. While a motive has not been clearly defined Page had been active in white supremacist groups.-White supremacist – Nazi
2013 April 15: Boston Marathon bombings: Two bombs detonated within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Another suspected device was intentionally exploded in Copley Square. 3 dead and 183 injured – Unknown so -far
2 leftist, 1 White Supremacist, 1 Unknown
Thanks, Juan, for the very detailed list, which I was starting to investigate, but my teaching duties intervened, and I still wonder how you have so much time in your law practice to be able to do this on short notice! Amazing!
I’ve got crazies to the left and crazies to the right. That’s how I know I’m in the middle. 😉
That is funny, Princess Leia! LOL
Ron: Copy pasting from Wikipedia during my lunch break doesn’t take that long really…LOL!
Oh, so that is what you did! 🙂 hahaha Glad to hear that you are actually working hard as an attorney! LOL
So Ron and Leia , apparently and sadly for both of you I suspect and for the left and the media for sure, this last terrorist attack was not perpetuated by “domestic right wing white men”. Apparently once again we were hit by radical Islamist, Chechans but Islamist radicals nonetheless. I wonder what is going through Chris “give me another drink” Mathews head?
Juan, you seem to spend your life being bitter and vengeful, out to destroy opposition viewpoints, and gloat, something I have NEVER done. It does not reflect well on your character, sorry to say.
There is still, with all of the weaponry out there, and the militia groups which hailed Oklahoma City in 1995, a danger from the right wing, as well as from the left wing nuts. And there are religious terrorists of all religions, who wish to destroy opposition faiths. We live in a sick world, but there is no triumph in gloating over which type of terrorist is engaged in any specific action.
But we need to have it understood that the victims of terrorism have a right to expect the nation to help them through their massive loss of life and limb, and we need MORE taxation to protect our nation from all who hate government and wish it destroyed. Otherwise, everything you claim to believe is exposed as hollow propaganda!
Ron: I am not gloating. I believe I am the one who wrote “All terrorist are cowards, right, left,center, green, Islamist jihadist or whatever” when you seem to suggest that right wing terrorist contrary to Islamist terrorist were cowards. I just do not jump to conclusion nor do I wish any terrorist attack to be of one political/religious ideology or another for political advantage. It is those on the left who “pray” that be a “right wing nut white guy” so as to advance their agenda. That is what is really bitter and vengeful. This article by Kevin Williamson explains it much better than I can.
An Answer to Liberals’ Prayers
“Who says that prayers are not answered? David Sirota led the Liberal Tabernacle Choir in beseeching the Almighty that the Boston bombers should turn out to be a couple of white guys, and, lo and behold, we end up with a couple of literal Caucasians.
Unfortunately for Mr. Sirota et al., a pair of Chechen Islamists is not precisely what they had in mind. The prayer of a righteous man availeth much, the Good Book says. I suppose we can each draw our own conclusions from that. But consider Mr. Sirota’s concerns:
If recent history is any guide, if the bomber ends up being a white anti-government extremist, white privilege will likely mean the attack is portrayed as just an isolated incident — one that has no bearing on any larger policy debates. Put another way, white privilege will work to not only insulate whites from collective blame, but also to insulate the political debate from any fallout from the attack.
“Privilege†is one of those handy rhetorical markers that is in itself devoid of substantive intellectual content and identifies its user as suffering an identical condition. But voguish language aside, Mr. Sirota is making a strange complaint: that it is difficult for him and his allies to use a white American terrorist to further their political agenda, whereas a foreigner or a Muslim (never mind, for the moment, his implicit conflation of “white†and “non-Muslimâ€) is of no use to him politically. What’s the good of a terrorist bombing without some political benefit? That is an odd way to think about a terrorist attack.
Odd thinking on the left has been abundant during this episode. Dina Temple-Raston of National Public Radio, apparently relying on the highly placed sources that speak to her via radio transmissions into her dental fillings, opined: “The thinking, as we’ve been reporting, is that this is a domestic extremist attack. . . . April is a big month for anti-government and right-wing individuals. There’s the Columbine anniversary, there’s Hitler’s birthday.†(Who could forget all those annual celebrations of Hitler’s birthday that spread so much mirth across the fruited plains each year?) An employee of the U.S. Forest Service — a public-relations representative, ironically enough — suggested via Twitter that the Tea Party might be behind the bombs. Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore tied the attacks to Tax Day and Patriots Day.
Of course, it could have been a right-wing extremist. It also could have been a professor at Columbia University, which obviously has a soft spot for murderous left-wing terrorists. But that possibility did not crop up very much at all in the media narrative. Why not?
The unpleasant fact is that the Left has been for many years attempting to use the acts of terrorists and other criminals to discredit legitimate domestic political opposition. Timothy McVeigh, to take one example, was omnivorous in his nuttery, his political and religious views all over the map, with interests ranging from Area 51 to what he viewed as U.S. war crimes during Operation Desert Storm. But Bill Clinton blamed the allegedly incendiary rhetoric of his own political opponents for McVeigh’s crime, and then on the fifteenth anniversary of the bombing updated his remarks to suggest that Tea Party rhetoric was a likely source of terrorist violence. We all remember Brian Ross’s gleeful attempt to link the Aurora shooter to the Tea Party. The list goes on. The tangible desire of the Left for their political rivals to descend into violence is grotesque and unseemly.
What we ended up with in Boston is familiar: suspects with a fondness for Islamic radicalism and sympathy for worldwide jihad, roots in a jihadist hot spot, etc. None of which is of any use to David Sirota. Or Barack Obama.”
As for your insistence on more TAXATION I will just repost my comment from yesterday. Some facts which I suspect you will not answer to.
“For the FY 2012 the Federal Government spent $2.9 billion on FBI counter-terrorism and $46.9 billion on Homeland Security. But we also had at least $19 billion in wasteful spending during 2012. And I am not talking about SS, Medicare or Medicaid! There is a collection of 100 examples of wasteful spending for 2012, among them;
-subsidizing phone service at a cost of nearly $1.5 billion a year.
-NASA spends $1 million each year on developing “the Mars menu.â€
-A $325,000 grant for the development of “Robosquirrel†– a robotic rodent designed to test the interaction between rattlesnakes and squirrels.
– An estimated $70 million loss for producing pennies
Nearly $700,000 from the National Science Foundation to a New York-based theater company so it could develop a musical about climate change and biodiversity. “The Great Immensity†opened in Kansas City this year. Along with the songs one reviewer described as sounding like “a Wikipedia entry set to music,†the audience was also able to experience “flying monkey poop.â€
And more: See http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=b7b23f66-2d60-4d5a-8bc5-8522c7e1a40e
Just think about it. $19 BILLION vs $2.9 BILLION for the FBI counter-terrorism unit! That’s more than 6 TIMES what is spent on counter-terrorism! $19 BILLION v $46.9 BILLION on Homeland Security! That’s almost half of what is spent on Homeland Security. You could increase Homeland Security’s budget by 50% if government didn’t throw our money away! And all you can think of is a new Terrorism Tax?! Good grief!”
Again all your mind kind come up with is more taxes???????
You refuse to recognize that we are the lowest taxed democratic western nation in the world! We paid, and the elite paid, much higher taxation under Ike, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton, but you continue to say we are high taxed, when it has been the lowest in modern times since the 1940s! And we spend less on domestic needs, other than the paid for by taxes Medicare and Social Security, which are NOT entitlements in the ordinary meaning of the word!
Domestic terrorism is terrorism practiced in your own country against your own people. Considering that they’ve lived in the US since they were kids, I would say that they qualify for being domestic terrorists.
Islamic extremists are considered to be conservatives, so that makes them right-wing.
They are white guys and not Arabic-looking.
Ron: You are only taking into account Federal income taxes.
Well, Florida and Texas and Tennessee and the other states that do poorly in education need to be required to have a state income tax, to take some pressure off the federal government. And still, even counting a few very high state tax collections, we are still the lowest taxed of any nation in the western world!
Princess Leia, I agree with you. They lived in this country for 10 years. If that’s not domestic I don’t know what is.
The radical Islamic extremest hates the US government. The right wingers in this country hate the government.
Juan, we Liberals were not praying the killers would be white right wing knuckle dragging gun toting gov’ment hating religious bigots. We were too busy praying for the victims of the bombs and their families and the people of Boston! We were also praying no more bombs would go off and that the bombers would be caught very quickly. Don’t rush to judgement.
Well said, Maggie! 🙂
Maggie: Tell that to the David Sirota crowd at Salon (http://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/lets_hope_the_boston_marathon_bomber_is_a_white_american/) , Dina Temple-Raston of National Public Radio (http://www.npr.org/2013/04/16/177507493/boston-marathon-bombing-case-gains-momentum) , the U.S. Forest Service public-relations representative (http://twitchy.com/2013/04/16/us-forest-service-pr-rep-blames-boston-bombing-on-tea-party/) and of course the hateful idiotic of Michael Moore (https://twitter.com/MMFlint) . I’m not saying most “liberals” were praying for the victims as the majority of Americans were, as a matter of fact I am sure they were just as you were. But what I’m saying is that undeniably there are always people on the left, either in the media, politics or faculty, that just can’t help it and always try to politicize any tragic event to forward their agenda.
A view we will never get from the media in the US.
“Boston bombs: Obama lulled America into false confidence over terror threat. The war on terror cannot be fought at an arm’s length – and the attacks on Boston have brought uncertainty back to American streets, writes Peter Foster at The Telegraph (UK)” : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10007190/Boston-bombs-Obama-lulled-America-into-false-confidence-over-terror-threat.html
Well said Maggie! 🙂