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8:27 pm EDT 65°F (18°C) in Middlesex, PA
Calendar of Updates | Early Thursday morning, 25-year-old Robert F. Weiler, Jr. surrendered to Maryland State Police at a rest area along Interstate 68 in the western part of that state. The night before, several of his friends had tipped off the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to Weiler’s plans: he was going to use a homemade pipe bomb (in other words, an improvised explosive device (IED), for those of you who deny this is terrorism) and a .40 caliber handgun to bomb a Greenbelt, MD (just northeast of Washington, DC) abortion clinic and “shoot doctors who provide abortions.” The bomb went off and burned half of a Riverdale, MD (about halfway between Baltimore and Annapolis) home owned by a friend of Weiler just after Weiler’s arrest; the gun was found in Weiler’s car when he was arrested. (Aside: Weiler must have known the shit was about to hit the fan, if he got all the way to Garrett County before calling the ATF to surrender. If you’re not familiar with Maryland geography, Garrett is the westernmost county in the state, deep into the Appalachian Mountains along the non-Potomac River part of the border with West Virginia. The rest area in question is some 190 miles (305 km) from Weiler’s parents’ home in Forestville, MD, a southeastern D.C. suburb, and considering D.C. traffic, that probably had to be at least a 3½-hour drive. If he was going there from the friend’s house in Riverdale, that was undoubtedly four hours or more. One hell of a hike, in any event.) This is Christofascist terrorism in action, plain and simple, my friends. (Don’t believe me? The Baltimore Sun article linked to in the last paragraph references a letter written by the terrorist’s father, Robert Weiler, Sr., listing the elder Weiler as a member of the Knights of Columbus, an ultra-conservative Catholic men’s group.) The media won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, because the Christofascists will hue and cry about some non-existent “anti-‘Christian’ bias” if they do, but Weiler’s friends, the ATF, and the Maryland State Police are just as heroic for doing their part in fighting terrorism as our soldiers are. Thankfully, Robert Weiler, Jr. is now in jail, and if our legal system does its job properly, he, like (his obvious hero and inspiration) Zarqawi, will never menace civilized society again. This part of the war on terror truly will last for generations. As so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’” begin to realize that the King Chimpy mis-administration is playing them and their anti-Christian prejudices for a bunch of fools, they will turn rabidly violent. The inalienable, God-given right for a woman to have complete freedom over her body will be seriously assaulted and possibly even made extinct if we progressives, the true lovers of freedom, do not take firm control of the direction of this country. We will be burying thousands of future Matthew Shepards if religiously-motivated beatings and murders of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are not severely punished and fiercely condemned by those in positions of power and influence. It will take many years to defeat the Christofascist terrorists, but we cannot — must not — let up in this fight. We must not let the Christofascist terrorists win. I’m being sent back home to Michigan to get the other 90% of my truck-related belongings. After taking care of all of those and delivering a load there Monday morning, I will once again be headed back out to the road for a while. |
