Jon H - March 5, 2010 | 9:59 am · Link

It’s like clockwork whenever a Democrat is President.

MattF - March 5, 2010 | 10:01 am · Link

I’m trying (and failing) to figure out how anyone thought that a lone gunman opening fire at the main entrance to the Pentagon would be anything but very fatal to the lone gunman.

Why oh why - March 5, 2010 | 10:05 am · Link

If white Christian men kill more people in the US for political reasons than Al Qaeda, does this mean we won the ‘War on Terror’?

calling all toasters - March 5, 2010 | 10:07 am · Link

@General Egali Tarian Stuck:

Read where he was a Bush hater and a libertarian.

Well, they all claim that since January 2009, don’t they? “Oh, Bush spent too much! He wasn’t a real conservative!” A wingnut’s a wingnut, and this guy is another one.

calling all toasters - March 5, 2010 | 10:09 am · Link

@MattF:

I’m trying (and failing) to figure out how anyone thought that a lone gunman opening fire at the main entrance to the Pentagon would be anything but very fatal to the lone gunman.

Here’s hoping they all get into their private planes and go after the Nimitz.

General Egali Tarian Stuck - March 5, 2010 | 10:14 am · Link

@calling all toasters: Kind of sounded like a Paulite to me, if anything. Or, just a nondescript nutjob.

Redshirt - March 5, 2010 | 10:16 am · Link

Glad this was not terrorism. No need for me to start peeing my pants. Yet! The day is young!

John S. - March 5, 2010 | 10:17 am · Link

Left-wing extremists chain themselves to trees, vandalize property and sneak into labs to release monkeys. Right-wing extremists go paramilitary – blowing up buildings and shooting people.*

*Troll repellent: As pertains to expressions of extremism that are driven by political ideology.

priscianus jr - March 5, 2010 | 10:18 am · Link

The great thing about this is that it finally proves what all responsible commentators have been trying to get across for years—that only homicidal maniacs doubt the official account of 9/11. Case closed.

L Boom - March 5, 2010 | 10:18 am · Link

@MattF: I believe the expression is “suicide by cop.” I think the crazies like this are so used to feeding their own sense of persecution/victimization they’re just hoping they can take out a few people then die as a martyr to … something or other. Government tyranny? The refusal of armed government agents to stand there and get shot at without retaliating because the taxpayers are paying their salaries?

Sadly, I think it’s working. It’s a pretty straight thread from the guy who crashed the plane into the IRS building to this guy, and some kind of feedback loop seems inevitable as more people want to get in on the action and one-up each other.

geg6 - March 5, 2010 | 10:18 am · Link

Glad to see the Truthers/Paulites getting into the act.

PeakVT - March 5, 2010 | 10:21 am · Link

and spent weeks driving to the Capital area from the West Coast

Was he driving a Model T or something?

SpotWeld - March 5, 2010 | 10:25 am · Link

@PeakVT: Depending on his personal level of paranoida he could have been avoiding major highways and expressways to avoid toll cameras and fast pass systems

Jon H - March 5, 2010 | 10:29 am · Link

@Zifnab: “Can we get some sort of “Countdown to Ruby Ridge / Waco / Olympic Park Bomber” thing going?”

I think you mean “Countdown to OKC”.

Then again, we’ve already had an attempted mini-9/11, so such a countdown is probably pointless by now.

calling all toasters - March 5, 2010 | 10:38 am · Link

@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Yes, well Paulites are right wingers. Remember who won the straw poll at CPAC?

eric - March 5, 2010 | 10:43 am · Link

This is evidence that the term “populism” is, by itself, empty. Guys like this can be aroused into killing rages with seemingly populist rhetoric about the “Government” top-down running the country by fiat in opposition to the will of the populace. Yet, what grows out of organic populist movement depends on the seed and the soil. There are hippie populist who will hear the same rhetoric about Wall Stree and K Street and seek to organise and to lobby for laws that protect the populace from their “betters.” Individualists hear that rhetoric and seek, not simply to petition the government, but to attack their government as traitorous to the nation. Thus, when we all speak of “Wall Street” as evil, we have to remember that for many, that translates to “jewish bankers,” or the like. This is not to say that we are to blame, no. We just have to remember that the same objective event will give rise to competing impulses and that some of the impulses will always be violent.

The real bad guys here are the right wing manipulators that want the anger to resonate loud and strong without a care for whether things turn violent. They do not pull the trigger, but they seduce these nuts with songs of dire straits and the coming political calaclysm of soshulism.

eric

eric

Erik Vanderhoff - March 5, 2010 | 10:53 am · Link

I guess we can add “well-dressed and well-armed nutcase” to the list of Things that come from Hollister. A list that really only includes hippies and agricultural workers.

MSNBC discloses that he was ‘well educated’. Did he go to Harvard?

Compared to most people in this country, my Labrador retrievers are “well-educated.”

Belafon (formerly anonevent) - March 5, 2010 | 10:59 am · Link

@Brick Oven Bill: And so are the teabagger leaders and the al Qaeda leadership.

Remember November - March 5, 2010 | 11:04 am · Link

@Jon H: yeah funny about that- actual police agencies catching the guy and getting confessions out of him sans waterboarding….as a person working not far from Ground Zero I have new respect for NYPD.

Eric U. - March 5, 2010 | 11:09 am · Link

Just like to point out that Ruby Ridge and Waco were products of the Bush I era. Ruby Ridge was over by the time Clinton was in office, and Waco started a month after Clinton took office.

mds - March 5, 2010 | 11:17 am · Link

These sorts of things wouldn’t happen if Pentagon police officers were allowed to carry guns.

Citizen_X - March 5, 2010 | 11:18 am · Link

Let’s do an accounting of recent “terrorist” cases. (With the possible exception of the antiabortionist, these are all lone attackers, so we might be stretching the term.)

The Vietnamese guy who shot up the immigrant center in upstate NY didn’t seem to have any particular political alignment; we’ll leave him out.

(Very loosely defined) left-wing examples:
The guy who shot up a recruiting office (In Missouri?)
The Army officer who shot up Fort Hood

Clear, self-proclaimed, right-wing examples:
Dr. Tiller’s murderer
The Holocaust Museum shooter
The Pittsburgh idiot who killed 3 cops
The Knoxville killer of Unitarians
(Did I leave any out?)

Now, the Pentagon guy, and the IRS bomber, may have belonged politically in a gray, paranoid, Alex-Jones-ruled area that stretches out from Libertarianism to include a few Anarchists. So, arguably, that gives us two cases that don’t fit all that comfortably in with the right.

Still: considered as white guys paranoid about the evil gubmint, they fit very solidly in with the right-wing group. And that’s six angry white killers that popped up in the Age of Beck; only one of them—the Knoxville case—attacked before Obama was in office. Explain that to me, BoB.

Cerberus - March 5, 2010 | 11:19 am · Link

@Zifnab:

I’m pretty sure that ship has already sailed. We’ve already had open planned assassinations (Dr. Tiller), holed-up shoot-outs with the Police ala Ruby Ridge (the guy who thought Obama was going to take his guns away who shot up a bunch of cops), and an OKC style old-fashioned terrorism attempt (IRS 9/11 re-enacter).

I’m not sure what “real” incident we’re waiting for. I mean, yeah, it’ll continue to be bad and I’m just hoping we can stave off the inevitable assassination attempt of the president himself, but the right-wing terrorism machine has been going full tilt since day one, we’ve just grown so used to it in this country that it barely registers anymore. Oh yawn, more dead doctors, shoot-outs, and right-wing bombers.

Bob L - March 5, 2010 | 11:21 am · Link

White male gunman = obvious NOT a terrorists rule still applies I assume.

So the guy is a Bush hater. Hmm So, in the ultimate expression of his rage over Bush admin policies he goes kamikaze on the government after Bush is out of office? This makes no sense. Maybe I am just not white and male enough to understand.

celticdragonchick - March 5, 2010 | 11:28 am · Link

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the truthers started getting in on the shootings.

This kind of thinking leads to the same place as it does for people who think that abortion providers are actually committing genocide.

Your act of murder and terror is preventing murder and terror…see?

I am dreadfully afraid that the next major terror attack in this country will be from this kind of Glen Beck/Alex Jones insanity.

gbear - March 5, 2010 | 11:43 am · Link

Sorry to dump this and run. There’s a link to it on Washington Monthly in one of their ‘roundups’.

edit: everything below is from the news article (formatting fail):

The House adopted a resolution labeling the Feb. 18 suicide plane attack in Austin, Texas, terrorism.

The resolution condemns the attack on a building that housed offices of the Internal Revenue Service, and it honors the IRS employee killed and other workers injured, as well as rescue workers.

The wording of the resolution is notable in light of the debate about why the Obama administration didn’t call the event a terrorist attack, in part because of the lack of connection to international terror groups such as al Qaeda.

The resolution passed H. Res. 1127 on a 408–2 vote, with “no” votes from GOP Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Don Young of Alaska. The offices of Paul and Young didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, whose Texas district includes Austin, introduced the resolution, along with 27 other lawmakers.

Darkmoth - March 5, 2010 | 12:42 pm · Link

@calling all toasters:

This.

I could care less who the guy “hates”. Tell me who he voted for.

The Moar You Know - March 5, 2010 | 12:45 pm · Link

(Very loosely defined) left-wing examples:
The guy who shot up a recruiting office (In Missouri?)
The Army officer who shot up Fort Hood

@Citizen_X:

Left wing? The guy who shot up Fort Hood?

You must be fucking kidding me. What the fuck is LEFT WING about a religious fundamentalist shooting a bunch of people?

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, Muslims aren’t fucking liberals. Just because we don’t want them waterboarded doesn’t mean they’re on our side. Fuck!

Talk about buying and selling right-wing framing.

This is the most disheartening post I’ve ever read here, not because of your stunning ignorance, but because the entire commentariat didn’t jump down your throat and tell you you’re an ignorant bastard.

THIS IS WHY WE FAIL.

Origuy - March 5, 2010 | 1:41 pm · Link

The Mercury News is reporting that he had been an engineering student at San Jose State.

Ogami Itto - March 5, 2010 | 2:35 pm · Link

@John S.:

Left-wing extremists chain themselves to trees, vandalize property and sneak into labs to release monkeys. Right-wing extremists go paramilitary – blowing up buildings and shooting people.*

You forgot to mention the giant paper mache puppets. Left-wing protesters extremists love those damned things. :-)

liberty60 - March 5, 2010 | 2:36 pm · Link

Yes, if only those cops had been armed, this sort of crime would never have occured.

“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” « From Pine View Farm - March 5, 2010 | 4:52 pm · Link

[...] the bus and the subway at the Pentagon subway station in Arlington, Va., where yesterday some yahoo with a gun cut [...]