Since the AP link has so very little, the NYDN version:
"I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal," Scott Roeder said in one of two phone calls to the Associated Press from prison. He also complained about the "deplorable conditions in solitary," worried about catching pneumonia because his cell was cold and said he needed his sleep apnea machine.[...]Gee, you could be in jail in Texas, where the prisons do not have the A/C. But I guess you are not brown or black and you're saving TEH BABEES!
Roeder, 51, a mentally ill, unemployed anti-abortion activist from Kansas City, Mo., was charged with first-degree murder. On Friday, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Roeder, who had enough money to stalk Tiller for years despite having little or no income, had help from accomplices.[...]
The funeral was protected by 50 American Legion Riders who roared up on motorcycles and formed a shield around Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita to honor Tiller's Navy service.Bikers!
Many wept when Tiller's wife of 40 years, Jeanne, stood before the gathering and sang "The Lord's Prayer." Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado late-term abortion provider who was Tiller's friend and who fears he may be the next target, was one of the pallbearers.[...] A few minutes after 10 a.m., exactly one week after Tiller was shot, the congregation began to pray: "Oh God, we are consumed by grief for what we have witnessed in our community. Come to our aid, walk with us, hold us, strengthen us and give us courage for the days ahead."
Protesters from Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, known for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, held signs and shouted outside the sanctuary.Baptists!
max
['Whiny bastards, bikers and Baptists: we hace the trifecta.']
Silly rabbit torture is for brown people.
No, no, silly rabbit torture is the kind that is most effective on brown people. Sensible rabbit torture is the kind that works on white people.
I rather like sensible rabbit torture.
max at #1: It is probably unfair to most Baptists to refer to Westboro Baptist Church as such. They appear to be a business of a strange and loathsome sort -- they conduct their protests where they are guaranteed to cause the most offense, hoping to cash in on a lawsuit if anyone assaults them. I can't remember where I saw this description of their business model, but its the first thing I've heard about these people that makes some sort of sense. Fred Phelps, the WBC's leader, is a disbarred lawyer.
The bikers referred to in the story may have been part of the Patriot Guard Riders, who specialize in protecting military funerals from interference by Phelps's protests (according to the Wikipedia page on them).
Don't be silly, it's not terrorism if you're white.
(As shown once again when British police raided some white supremacists and found actual ricin, not just what might be precursors for making ricin and the press went in to a collective "whatever".)
7.2 is unsurprising, yet nonetheless depressing.
Why oh why &c.
BTW, surely this is post-worthy:
The flow of money that fueled a radical shift in New York City has ebbed. Misha Calvert, 26, relied on her parents after moving to Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood.
I though 9 was going to link to this at first, having read "shift in New York City" as "shift to New York City".
Net migration from California to Pittsburgh over the past decade!
9: That article is ridiculous. It purports to be about trust-fund babies, but mostly consists of kids who ask their parents for help on the rent when they're behind a month.
11 con't.: And if you read about the young woman in the photo caption Jroth quoted, the body of the article says she no longer takes money from her parents not because of the economic downturn, but rather because "the culture of the area" denigrates people who don't support themselves.
And I am just going to post a third time here because I hate all of the NYT's recession lifestyle articles just that much.
I'm going to be very interested to see whether the investigation into who helped him - because surely someone did - ever turns up anything. Eric Rudolph also obviously (IMO) had help during his years in hiding but similar talk at the time of his capture led to no publicly-available evidence or arrests. Criminals such as these clearly have sympathizers who abet them and I would love to see someone arrested for that.
NYT lifestyle reporting isn't really reporting, but a business of a strange and loathsome sort. They write articles that are guaranteed to generate as much disgust as possible, hoping to cash in on the advertising when outraged netizens link to their story.
9, 11, etc. are more interesting to me because I'm halfway through Richard Price's Lush Life. Underneath the cinematic dialogue it's basically an old-fashioned police procedural. It's set on the Lower East Side, but I suspect the observations on gentrification and the so-called "cafe culture" would ring true in Williamsburg too.
12: Why won't oudemia stop talking about the body of the woman in the picture? I mean, unless she has more pics to share of the lovely Ms. Calvert?
RE: cafe culture:
AB & an old classmate were visiting the landmark planned community of Chatham Village the other day. There's a little strip of commercial spaces on the ground floor of the apartment building that ostensibly provides a bit of a focal point for the community, but the spaces have been largely vacant and moribund for ages - the community thrives but isn't large enough to support its own dry cleaner, pharmacy, etc.
But there's now a nice little cafe, complete with panini and such. Apparently it even serves the surrounding community, from which CV has always been isolated. AB was wondering about why this should have come about, and here's my theory:
20 years ago, cafe culture started to spread around the country, mostly with independent cafes in college-type locales. Then came Starbucks, famously using the independents as de facto market testers. But Starbucks' inexorable expansion has led them to ubiquity in high-traffic, but decidedly non-collegiate, locales. So now Americans are accustomed to cafe culture, and look for it everywhere. But Starbucks doesn't want to be in low-traffic, marginally-profitable locations, so there's a place for independents after all. You still need a core of SWPL types, but you no longer need enough to actually sustain your business by themselves; nearby non-SWPLs will happily avail themselves of good (albeit expensive) coffee, wi-fi, pastry, and nice sandwiches.
Hmm. I should pitch this to my editor as a non-review piece.
I have to say I'm opposed to rabbit torture of any kind.
Rabbit torture is an ancient American tradition, just like bear baiting, internet trolling, and the luge.
If IIR is against the luge... I can't even imagine such a thing.
IIR will pry the luge from around my cold, dead Olympian.
Roeder, 51, a mentally ill, unemployed anti-abortion activist from Kansas City, Mo., was charged with first-degree murder.
Isn't the mental illness something that will or will not be established during the trial? I mean, clearly the guy has issues, but isn't the legal bar for relevant mental illness set a little higher?
Oh, I see it's the NY Daily News. While better than the Post, it's not exactly the Paper of Record.
I have to say I'm opposed to Olympians of any kind.
26: I'm sort of partial to Athena and Thetis, myself.
Not that Thetis was an Olympian as such....
Hey, question: how much overlap is there between Hesiod's list of Nereids and Homer's? My copy of Theogeny transliterates while Fagles semi-translates, so I've no way to tell.
Westboro Baptist church is really tiny. I think that it consists primarily of Phelps and members of his family.
Westboro Baptist church is really tiny. I think that it consists primarily of Phelps and members of his family.
Yes, almost all of whom are lawyers according to that manuscript for a book about them that floated around the internet a few years ago.
I have to say I'm opposed to Olympians of any kind.
Oh, come on. You don't want to give these guys a hand?
7: Don't be silly, it's not terrorism if you're white.
(As shown once again when British police raided some white supremacists and found actual ricin
Er, say what you want about the British police, but I don't think you can accuse them of not taking swipple-terrorism seriously. There was the whole PIRA thing, you see.
33 misunderstands what 7 wrote: (As shown once again when British police raided some white supremacists and found actual ricin, not just what might be precursors for making ricin and the press went in to a collective "whatever".)
See, editing is good, but overenthusiastic cropping reduces a clear statement to incomprehensibility.
The press is as usual being completely cowardly about this incident. Not only is the murderer of Dr. Tiller a part of a much larger movement of harassers, stalkers, and terrorists, but he also has tacit support from people all the way up the chain to those who get to sit at the table when the GOP platform is decided.
Roeder had assistance in his stalking of Dr. Tiller from a senior member of Operation Rescue. There is a continuum between the purely politics oriented anti-abortion activists and the violent ones, each step along the way having slightly fewer members, down to the point where the people who commit acts of face to face violence are numbered in the low single digits. To me that suggests the number of people who might be tripped into the latter category given the right circumstances probably numbers in the low tens, perhaps even low hundreds. Much more disturbing is the fact that the number of people who might provide assistance to one of these men is probably very large - thousands if not tens of thousands.
It is standard procedure for the anti-abortion crowd to engage in harassment, physical intimidation, threats, and vandalism. They routinely use rhetoric that equated people like Dr Tiller with monsters of history that nearly everyone outside the hardest of hardcore pacifists agree should have been killed, such as Mengele and Pol Pot. Some of the people who created the environment in which Roeder could see his action as a moral imperative have a seat at the GOP leadership table. This needs to be pointed out over and over. They are the forced-birth lobby's Sayyid Qutb(s).
I think it would be an interesting legal paradox if there were certain crimes, the very commission of which demonstrated that you were mentally ill. If there were such a category, surely stalking an abortion provider for years and then murdering him in cold blood when he was at church would fall into it.
27: Too much popping fully-formed out of other people's heads.
Why is this fucking piece of shit being allowed to make vanity calls to journalists on the telephone?
I have to say I'm opposed to Olympians of any kind.
Fuck you too.
You're from Washington? Or have a bronze in archery you haven't told us about?
I think I'm on record acknowledging the former. South Puget Sound represent and all that.
Isn't the mental illness something that will or will not be established during the trial?
A diagnosis of some kind of mental illness can certainly be put forth at trial, but we don't need a legal hearing to determine it. Otherwise every psych eval in the country would have to be run through with the courts. (Maybe you're thinking of "Not guilty by reason of insanity," which as I understand it is a plea that is available in some form in some states.)
Accusations can be tossed around without much evidence, but in this case I'm satisfied by his family's statement to a local newspaper:
In a statement to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Roeder's brother Dave Roeder said:
We are shocked, horrified and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller and the circumstances surrounding it that may have involved Scott Roeder. We know Scott as a kind and loving son, brother and father who suffered from mental illness at various times in his life. However, none of us ever saw Scott as a person capable of or willing to take another person's life. Our deepest regrets, prayers and sympathy go out to the Tiller family during this terrible time.
The same paper spoke to Roeder's ex-wife, who said that Roeder had undergone a mental health evaluation in the mid-1990s, and that though he didn't believe himself to be mentally unstable, "everyone else did."
being allowed to make vanity calls to journalists on the telephone?
Good question. I didn't catch that on first read-through:
Scott Roeder called The Associated Press on Sunday from the Sedgwick County jail where he's being held on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the death of Dr. George Tiller.
Either that's sloppy writing, or they're being a little disingenuous. It's not like you can look the AP up in the phone book, generally. In order for him to call them, he'd have to have a business card for the local stringer, or something. Probably the press has been calling/visiting the jail nonstop, trying for comment. I'm not sure why the officials decided to let him make one, though. Maybe it's SOP.
I don't know if jails are like prisons. If so, phone calls are very expensive and generally have to be made collect. That's a question too.
43: AP stringer visits jail, annoys a staff member juuuuust enough to get them to accept a business card and pass along a "tell Roeder to call me collect."
And, 38, this fucking piece of shit is being allowed to make vanity calls to journalists because it's not cool to hold suspected criminals incommunicado*, even if they're almost certainly fucking pieces of shit.
* Offer does not apply to brown skinned foreigners, obv.
Possibly he's mostly a hapless crazy guy and the real fucking pieces of shit are the people who pointed the crazy guy at Dr. Tiller, but likely he's not all that crazy by legal standards.
Of course, crazy by legal standards has very little relationship to severe mental illness -- it's a weird standard with no medical validity. My guess is that Roeder is legitimately very crazy. and 46 is right.
Crazy perhaps, but undeniably effective.
The family of slain abortion provider George Tiller said Tuesday that his Wichita clinic will be "permanently closed," effective immediately.
Oh, man. Realizing there are women, right now, who had appointments to get abortions they needed who won't be able to get them... that incredible fucker.
48: Hardly news that terrorism can be effective.
Doesn't targeting late-term abortion providers imply that you do in fact think that a fertilized cell is not as much of a human as a full term baby is?
Yeah. That's a point of dishonesty that drives me batty. If what you really care about is post-viability abortions, we can talk about all 100 of them annually. If the issue is conception on forward, then lay off the poor people with tragically ending pregnancies.
imply that you do in fact think
Or maybe just that you're practicing wedge politics.