At Examiner.com Tuesday, I wrote a very challenging article dealing with the contribution that extreme groups may have played in the shootings in Wichita and Little Rock on Sunday and Monday that claimes two lives.  Here’s an excerpt and you can read the whole piece at Examiner.com.

As May ended and June begins, in the span of two days, two terribly twisted souls took up arms and snuffed out the lives of others.  According to early indications, their violence was a manifest desire to punish targets each man felt was deserving of death.

Dr. George Tiller, a frequent target of extreme anti-abortion groups, was gunned down by alleged assailant Scott Roeder Sunday morning in the foyer of his Wichita church.  If the allegations are correct, Roeder is a man filled with a wicked delusion of righteousness that somehow permitted him to rise above the laws of the nation and impose vigilante justice on his fellow man.  The excellent investigative work of Little Green Footballs has uncovered an alarming pattern of comments Roeder has made to extreme anti-abortion websites that fall just short of making blatant threats against Tiller’s life.  His association with the known radical right-wing group known as the “sovereign citizen movement” as well as his appearance on an Anti-Defamation League watch sheet of those active in militias are also well-documented by that web site.  No information has been found to suggest that Roeder was not acting alone.

Privates William Long and Quinton Ezeagwula, soldiers performing duties at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army/Navy recruiting center, were struck by assault rifle fire when Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (a.k.a. Carl Bledsoe) is alleged to have opened fire from his vehicle while driving by.  Pvt. Long died as a result of his wounds and Pvt. Ezeagwula was critically wounded but is expected to make a recovery.  According to CNN.com, early interviews reported have led police to believe that Muhammad was acting on his own but with the express intent of targeting military personnel.  Little Rock police told USA Today indicated that Muhammad implied that his motive for the shooting was a hatred of the American military.  It was also disclosed that he had made a recent conversion to the Islamic faith.  From the USA Today article:

“This individual appears to have been upset with the military, the Army in particular, and that’s why he did what he did,” Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said in a phone interview.

“He has converted to (Islam) here in the past few years,” Hastings said.

The two men had different targets, different motivations, but they shared a twisted sense of purpose; an ethical Möbius strip that defies sane comprehension.  And still, there have been many moments of disgust in the hours since Tiller’s shooting, time spent reading comments on Twitter and blogs of all political stripes.  Some pro-lifers openly rejoice in the commission of cold-blooded murder, others  quietly condemn the taking of a life in this way but claim that a practitioner of late-term abortions had it coming and they are glad he’s gone. 

Read the rest at Examiner.com.

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UPDATED: Michelle Malkin is also writing today about the lack of White House response to the shooting, despite the opportunity presented by President Obama’s speech regarding his choice for a new Secretary of the Army, Representative John McHugh (R-NY).

Related Articles:

Hot Air | Breaking: Soldier murdered in Arkansas; Update: Shooter a Muslim convert, opponent of military; Update: “Studied” in Yemen?

Michelle Malkin | And now this: Shooting at military recruiting center; 1 dead, 1 wounded; suspect is anti-military Muslim convert

Little Green Footballs | Suspect Arrested in Arkansas Recruiting Center Shooting

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