The Washington Post reports that three people have been shot at the National Holocaust Museum.

A security guard and two other people were shot today inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Washington, authorities said.

U.S. Park Police said a gunman armed with a shotgun opened fire on the security guard and that other security guards returned fire. The gunman was reported wounded.

The shooting was reported to police at 12:52 p.m., and officers rushed to the scene just south of Independence Ave. bordering the Mall.

Details are still sketchy, and we have no idea what was behind this incident, but it’s certainly troubling.

UPDATE 11:07 AM PDT– NBC’s Pete Williams has reported on-air that authorities are identifying the suspected assailant as one James W. von Brunn, whose apparent web site at first glance seems to be um, rather sick. So if you don’t like Jewish-conspiracy right wing nutball supremacist crap, don’t go there.

NBC also reported that von Brunn is believed to have been born in 1920.

UPDATE 1:15 PM PDT–Both MSNBC and CNN have reported on air that one museum security officer has died of his injuries. What a sad and tragic event.

I have an admirer.

State and local bloggers usually don’t get the kind of wingnut honors reserved for big time folks like Kos and Atrios, I’m on cloud nine. That is actually me in the photo, BTW.

The proprietor of Politics is a Blood Sport gets the chance to visit with Dr. Dean at the Clark County JJ Dinner.

Hard core Deaniacs will remember his “What I want to know” speech from 2003. Little remembered from that speech was Dean’s repudiation of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, and the use of coded language to divide the electorate along racial lines. I asked Governor Dean if the 2008 cycle was a direct repudiation of the Southern Strategy, and he agreed, pointing to elections in Alabama and Mississippi that Democrats were winning. In other words, it’s not just the election of Obama that signals the end of the Southern Strategy.

What put the nail in the coffin of the Southern Strategy was the younger generation. They’re multi-cultural, adept with technology, and they reject the politics of confrontation. It’s an astute observation and one that Gen-X’ers like myself need to reconcile with.

Dean’s main focus now, of course, is health care reform. You can check out Stand With Dr. Dean for more info.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHZTyfKseZE[/youtube]

“Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.
No one was saved.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuTiTfbfy7Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

“I watched with glee

While your kings and queens

Fought for ten decades

For the gods they made.”

And fuck this terrorist asshole too. After a full and proper trial of course.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 23-year-old man who police say shot two soldiers, killing one, outside an Army recruiting office here because he was upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “would have killed more soldiers if they had been in the parking lot,” a prosecutor said Tuesday at a preliminary court hearing in the case.

The suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, pleaded not guilty at the hearing, and a district judge ordered that he be held without bail.

So in the course of 24-48 hours the country gets to witness twice the barbarity and delusion that infects certain sectors of religion in this country.

People who claim to speak the one and only eternal truth cannot be reasoned with, period, and there is no reason to be civil towards them or pretend they are only interested in debate. They’re interested in control of society based on their own particular warped views, and once they start advocating or using violence towards that end, any pretense of respect or civility is at an end.

Obviously it’s impossible to stop all lunatics, either Christianist or Islamist, but the goal should be continued high-quality law enforcement observation and investigation of those who repeatedly make violent threats against others. It’s a daunting task, but we should applaud the rank and file FBI agents and police officers who try to keep everyone safe while observing the law themselves. Cowards who engage in rhetoric along the lines of “I’m not saying kill people, but I won’t be sad if people get killed” are a pretty low order of scum and earn only contempt.

Engaging in violence-encouraging speech and actions is outside the bounds of legitimate debate in a democracy, and ordinary citizens need to reject those movements and the politicians who pander to them at the ballot box. Yes, it’s a tough line to draw sometimes, and certain movements have a knack for walking right up to that line and stopping, but that doesn’t excuse such infantile behavior. Responsible media figures and political leaders will realize they have a duty to conduct themselves in an above-board fashion, and citizens have a right to belittle and call on the carpet those who won’t.

“Kansans for Life,” (yeah, I know) says it deplores the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

We value life, completely deplore violence, and are shocked and very upset by what happened in Wichita today.

They should be upset I guess, since by my count there were over 80 references to Tiller in their 24 page spring newsletter (PDF,) including the main front page story. Obsess much?

And you’ll notice the second story in the pdf newsletter is about Kathleen Sebelius. A reader at TPM and Josh Marshall point out that the fact Tiller was a donor to Sebelius was something the GOP tried to make a big deal of during Sebelius’s confirmation hearings.

The subjugation of women movement spent decades demonizing Tiller, and then used Tiller’s support as a justification for attacking Sebelius, so the assassination is not exactly some random, out of the blue event. More like sadly and horribly predictable.

That doesn’t mean the gunman isn’t, at some level, nuts, as someone who would do such a thing clearly has issues. But the subjugation movement will now correctly come under intense public scrutiny for the kinds of tactics and rhetoric they have employed in pursuit of their goals. (And yes, the First Amendment gives one remarkably broad freedom to say many, many things when commenting on public issues, but it also gives everyone else the right to be repulsed and sickened by extremism.)

And pretty soon someone in the traditional media will inevitably demand that liberals be respectful and civil, because nothing earns respect like gunning a doctor down at a church service. I’d say we’re a wee bit past “civility” now.

What a terrible day.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the man in police custody in connection with the assassination of Dr. George Tiller had a “brush with the law” in the 1990’s.

Scott P. Roeder, the man who was detained by Johnson County officials as a “person of interest” in the Sunday morning killing of George Tiller, has a brush with the law in his past.

He was convicted in 1996 of criminal use of an explosive after police discovered a blasting cap in his car when his car was pulled over because his car was not registered. Roeder served time in Kansas prisons before an appeal was granted on the basis of the search of his car being unlawful, according to court of appeals records.

The article goes on to quote court documents saying that Roeder’s convictions for driving offenses were sustained, and mentions that they were somehow related to the “Freeman Group.” It’s not completely clear if the reporter means the “Freemen,” the nutjobs who holed up in Montana during the last Democratic administration.

At any rate, the killing of Tiller was a political assassination as vile as any assassination. The American Taliban had hounded Tiller for decades, and Tiller had even suffered right-wing attacks previously, having been shot in both arms and enduring a bombing of his clinic. The former attorney general of Kansas, Phil Kline, had relentlessly harassed Tiller and the women of Kansas with legal maneuvers until even Kansans said “enough” and booted Kline from his state post.

While details are still emerging, the pro-subjugation-of-women movement is trying to scramble for political cover.

“For the movement, it could not come at a worse time,” the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, which lobbies against abortion, said of the killing.

“If they make it seem that people who embrace the pro-life movement are kind of this extremist violent group, that could diminish some of the passion and energy on confronting Sotomayor.”

Nice sensitivity there. Don’t let the family grieve or anything.

I don’t know why anyone would think violence is part of the pro-subjugation strategy, other than say, all the violence. Weird how so much of it happened during the last Democratic administration. I’m sure that’s just an unhappy coincidence and has nothing to do with intemperate and inflammatory comments made by political leaders and media personalities.

There’s no discussing things with people who think they have exclusive insight into the supernatural and wish to impose their beliefs on all of society. They either follow the law or they suffer the consequences, and any bastard who thinks he has the right to be judge, jury and executioner needs to feel the full force of a real jury, judge and well, life in prison.

The death penalty is killing after all.

UPDATE 8:45 PM PDT–McClatchy just moved a story with some interviews of people who knew Roeder.

Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.

“I know that he believed in justifiable homicide,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. “I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn.”

The McClatchy article also discusses Roeder’s association with right wing extremists.

Morris Wilson, commander of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, said he knew Roeder fairly well.

“I’d say he’s a good ol’ boy except he was just so fanatic about abortion,” said Wilson, who now lives in western Nebraska. “He was always talking about how awful abortion was. But there’s a lot of people who think abortion is awful.”

Yep, it sure sounds like an assassination, although those of us who believe in the rule of law and democracy must hasten to add that Roeder is presumed innocent until he has had a trial by a jury of his peers or pleads guilty, something that Tiller was not afforded at church this morning.

From the Young Conservative Anthem.

“Phase me, make me, into something that ain’t me

Serious c… can’t nobody shake me

great like the Gatsby, poppin posers like acne

Don’t matter if your gay, straight, Christian or Muslim

There’s one thing we all hate, called socialism.

It’s loathsome, and America ain’t the outcome,

Raise taxes on the people,

And you’re gonna feel symptoms, problems

I gotta message for a young con:

superman that socialism,

waterboard that terrorism”

See the video at HuffPo!

Adding, it’s very novel for students at an Ivy League college to lecture people about hard work and playing the hand one is dealt. Not saying people there don’t work hard, but if you’re going to an Ivy League school you’ve got a pretty good shot at a decent life. As with seemingly all conservatives, the sense of victim hood is palpable, constant and—hilariously absurd.

Likely these two will be installed on Wall Street in a few years, where they can dream up innovative financial products so another generation gets to enjoy the benefits of derivatives.

(Props to Aneurin for noticing this bit of strangeness.)

Hard to re-brand the GOP when its elected officials step in poo like this. From The Columbian:

A proposal by County Commissioner Tom Mielke that Clark County should withhold some public health services from people without valid Social Security numbers has inflamed some Latino civil rights advocates.

At a hearing Wednesday, Mielke said he was “concerned about the service that we give to illegals, and the cost.”

“If we don’t have those Social Security numbers, I would like to know who those individuals are who we are serving that are here illegally, and why we serve them and help them in their health,” said Mielke, a Battle Ground Republican. “I think Sheriff Lucas is very interested in who they are.”

To their credit, Republican Sheriff Gary Lucas and Republican County Commissioner Marc Boldt rejected Mielke’s idea out of hand, as did Democratic Commissioner Steve Stuart.

Tough economic times always put resentments in sharp relief. You could wipe out all public health spending in Clark County and it wouldn’t make much difference to the economy one way or the other. Unemployment is high in Clark County not because of illegal immigration but because the local economy was so heavily depending on construction and endless growth. And coming on the heels of the swine flu stuff, it’s a pretty asinine proposal by Mielke.

This is basically Mielke representing the Limbaugh wing of his party, and the more astute politicians are figuring out citizens are beyond tired of that particular vintage.

Oy.

Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.

Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.

The issue isn’t really whether horrific images are made available to the public, the issue is whether the leadership of the Democratic Party has the moral fortitude to do something to make sure this can’t happen again.

And that will require something like a Church Committee. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that a large formal inquiry is warranted.

If the position of the Democratic Party is “we don’t like torture but we’re just going to forget it ever happened,” then we’re no better than the Republicans. This is bigger than partisan politics anyhow, it goes directly to what kind of civilization we supposedly are.

If top Democrats wind up being embarrassed or worse, then they have whatever is coming to them as well. We already know the Republicans will screech about “criminalizing politics,” as if all this is just some unfortunate accident rather than the result of deliberate policy. This wasn’t soldiers losing control in combat, this was systematic torture of defenseless people, executed with gleeful savagery.

The Obama administration has a choice to make, and for the sake of future generations, it better find a way to deal with this ugly episode in American history and give the people a full accounting of what was done in their name. A government that abides barbarism undermines its claim to being of, by and for the people it represents, a flaw similar to those of European tyrants that prompted the creation and growth of this noble experiment in the first place.

Some Republicans seem to think having empathy is a bad thing. This explains a lot.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaP9eiWuX3s[/youtube]

It would have been a pretty scary Supreme Court. Personally I think they must have been working for the DNC.

The nomination of Palin had to be part of the same plan. There’s no other explanation.

The RNC has apparently reached an internal compromise on how much to call us socialists. Instead of “rebranding” us, they are going to claim we wish to pursue “socialist ideals.” The original resolution was sponsored by Washington state RNC member Jeff Kent.

The GOP’s willful ignorance and inability to distinguish between regulated capitalism and socialism must really make them proud. Let’s see if we can give a simple example in hopes they can finally understand the difference, with the caveat that there are all sorts of variations and degrees of capitalism and socialism. As many others have pointed out, most systems contain elements of each. But you have to write slowly for conservatives.

Let’s say you buy a clock. You have a reasonable expectation that the clock will work, but you generally get what you pay for. Caveat emptor and all that.

The free market has provided you with nearly limitless options for time pieces, so you generally don’t want the government making clocks or telling companies how many clocks to make each year. As long as the clock doesn’t catch on fire when you plug it in, and is otherwise safe, society has little justification to intensely regulate the production of ordinary consumer items.

Now let’s say you also wish to purchase electricity to run your new clock. You may live in an area with a public utility, or maybe it’s a private one, but you have a reasonable expectation of reasonably priced, reliable power.

Now let’s say the free market for electricity is being distorted by a corporation engaging in monopolistic and criminal practices. Let’s call the electric utility company “Enron.” Now imagine their traders are deliberately causing brownouts and blackouts in your area, so when the power is off your new clock doesn’t work. You don’t really have to imagine this, because it really happened under Republican rule, and the GOP response was basically to applaud it.

Is it “socialism” to regulate key industries to prevent monopolistic practices, and all industries for basic consumer safety? And please, when conservatives get all up in arms about the government taking over failed companies, they act like it was some long-term deal instead of what it actually is, a desperate attempt to clean up the gigantic economic mess created during Republican rule.

Now suppose you wanted to buy a mortgage, or some stock mutual funds for retirement…I think you get the point, if you’ve made it this far.

Democrats don’t want socialism, we want to prevent the criminal greed-heads from ripping everyone off and causing economic meltdowns. Because for people who claim to be such hard-headed realists about human nature, conservatives often seem to overlook the fact that some percentage of people will always be criminal greed-heads who would sell their own mothers to make a lousy buck. If you want a perfect free market, contemporary examples include Somalia and the trade in illegal opiates, both of which are completely unregulated in any meaningful sense.

This makes Democrats the party of law and order, and no matter how many silly little resolutions the RNC passes, everyone knows they’re the party of the criminal greed-heads who broke the economy.

It’s gonna be pretty hard to re-brand that. Neener neener neener.

Progressives have often argued that superb law enforcement and intelligence work, performed by often unheralded but dedicated officers from multiple agencies, is one of our best lines of defense against terrorism. Now here’s further evidence.

Four men arrested after planting what they thought were explosives near a synagogue and community center and plotting to shoot down a military plane were bent on carrying out a holy war against America, authorities said Thursday.

The suspects were arrested Wednesday night, shortly after planting a 37-pound mock explosive device in the trunk of a car outside the Riverdale Temple and two mock bombs in the backseat of a car outside the Jewish Center, a few blocks away, authorities said.

—snip—

The defendants, in their efforts to acquire weapons, dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.

If you read the full article, it sounds like three of the accused may qualify for the label “homegrown fanatics.”

Just as in the case of would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, it was front-line law enforcement workers who thwarted the criminals, not twisted old politicians with Torquemada complexes.

I guess we don’t know yet if anyone was waterboarded in this case, although one would tend to think not, since the case relied upon clever deception. Waterboarding would have kind of been a sign that we’re on to them, you know.

Maybe now the torture fetishists like Dick Cheney will STFU for once.