Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands boiling with the same hatred that Mr. von Brunn was consumed by.
They are literally unable to sleep because of who the president is - and their delusions have been fed by sections of the media, Fox and Limbaugh are stand-out examples.

I worry about Obama's safety every single day.

"The responsible white separatist community"

Oxymoron!

"but letting your entire self become warped into pure hatred. As his ex-wife says: this sort of thing eats you alive. And he let it."

In fairness, this is how many mental diseases work. They just eat you, and there really is nothing to stop it. I would never condone what this man did. But I can understand it. People who don't have mental illness don't really get it. They think we could just regain control of our minds if we could just calm down or something. It's not like that. And delusions solidify themselves and produce more delusions. And the delusions make sense in the context of the previous delusions. This isn't some daydream gone bad, it's really real. You think the world around isn't really real, so you create your own and start believing it. It's really scary if you've been there.

This guy is in that place. As hateful a person as he is, and as much as I'd like to see him dead, he needs another way. The guy is seriously crazy, he should have been institutionalized decades ago. And that's what he needs now.

If the US considered various hate groups - such as neo-nazis and fanatics like Dr Tiller's murderer - to be terrorists, which is what they are, authorities would keep a better eye on them. We would be more secure, and the mentally ill among them might get help.
The macroscopic bias of our nation tends to lenience regarding anything Christian or white, winking at even openly murderous intent until it explodes.
Imagine what Fox news would call a Muslim or black who was a longtime member of hate groups and perpetrated such a crime. "Terrorist" - instantly.

Someone on TPM made the comment that the lines between ideology and mental illness are becoming quite blurry.

In the old days schizophrenics had the hallucinated tall dark shadowy figures telling them that God wanted them to kill certain people, usually without making any sense.

Today, when a person with deep-seated hatreds learned from their parents, then presents as bi-polar or schizophrenic as an adolescent, they have the added stimulation of wise-cracking wedge-driving media stars to tell them that indeed their are people out there in mainstream society that should be the object of hatred. So, they've got their extreme prejudice, plus hallucinated voices urging them to kill, plus real voices from the mainstream making it clear who their "enemies" are. Not to mention easy access to guns and ammo!

It is a dangerous mix.

I object to the attempts that are being made to characterize these folks as terrorists. If, by terrorist, you mean to refer to highly organized groups dedicated to the destabilization of societies through violence, then I think the two recent highly publicized killings in the US don't qualify for the term. These two persons are probably very disturbed individuals, but for me they qualify for nothing more than the established processes of the police and the courts. I think it's a mistake to attach the terrorist label to these people, and I'm suspicious that a lot of people here are doing it as some sort of get-even with recent republican-inspired rhetoric about the dangers of foreign terrorists being brought to US soil for incarceration.

This guy wrote about hating the Bush administration and the neocons. He believes in the 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Sounds like he listen to Jeremiah Wright more than Fox news.

These two persons are probably very disturbed individuals, but for me they qualify for nothing more than the established processes of the police and the courts.

You mean, like a terrorist?

To Boronx:
Yes, in way, if you prefer the simplistic label to apply to every kind of group down to the individual level. But then, every person who hits some kid with a baseball bat is a terrorist, isn't he/she ?

Read fostert's comment at 3:50 again. This time substitute "Rupert Murdoch" for "many mental diseases" and "watch Fox News" for have mental illness". You might think you are reading about a converted Republican.

The question I would have about Roeder and Von Brunn is how much of their influence is internal, and how much is external. In any case, thank you fostert.

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."

One wonders what amongst all the violent revolutionary rhetoric the white separatists use would make them look good.

They are literally unable to sleep because of who the president is - and their delusions have been fed by sections of the media, Fox and Limbaugh are stand-out examples.

And Charles Krauthammer praised Fox for its mission the other day.

Condolences to the guard's family. He was a hero who died protecting others. I'm glad the shooter was caught to face the consequences of his actions, not the least of which is revulsion and rejection by all decent people.

yeah, one wonders why someone like this or the assassin of dr tiller weren't under surveillance following their previous arrests/activities. esp when you know of the resources squandered for the rootin' tootin' national security state to infiltrate the quakers and other non-violent -- but anti-war -- groups.

kinda like the questions about why local law enforcement never secured dr tiller's clinic and allowed the harassment and vandalism there to fester.

hmmmm...

I think the damage done by the Bush administration, the killings and murders, raping and torture, the devastation of the environment and communities in Iraq and Afghanistan, rivals anything various domestic hate groups do. We shudder in horror when a madman shoots up the lobby of the Holocaust museum. Yet our Air Force kills dozens of innocents in an Afghan wedding party and it's a collective "Meh". Of course everyone is in agreement the life lost by a U.S. citizen at the hands of a white supremacist or prolife zealot is a more valuable life than any in Iraq or Afghanistan. Right?

Let's start the blame game.
The catalyst to such horrible event is Fox news.
Their one sided outrageous views make some poeple fell that we are on the brink of totalitarism.
Fox news Talking head are responsible, the must realise that distorting reality has a price

steveduncan,
I don't get your point there. We shudder in horror at both those things, don't we? Everyone is not, of course, "in agreement that the life lost by a US citizen at the hands of a white supremacist or a prolife zealot is a more valuable life than any in Iraq or Afghanistan." But there is, of course, a difference in the way we calculate the shock and horror value of a life lost in a war zone and a life lost in a peaceful city not experiencing war time bombing.

Why phrase it as though its another form of racism to value the life lost when a white supremacist or a prolife zealot terrorizes the nation? You make it sound as though its a kind of self indulgence on the part of jews, or blacks, or women to mourn the murder of their own and the attack on their community. What do our feelings for afghanistan and Iraq, whose many crimes against their own people, as well as our crimes against them, many of us have been fighting and protesting for years? You make it sound like left wing protests against the surge of right wing violence is just a form of "white woman kidnapped by shark" TV hysteria. Its not.

aimai

Um, aimai, when was the last time the networks or cable news shows interrupted regular programming to convey the horror and tragedy of a bombed Iraqi wedding party?

"We shudder in horror at both those things, don't we?"

I think your use of the preposition "we" is arguably liberal when gauging the reaction of the U.S. citizenry to atrocities committed against foreignors by the United States. We can't even muster a consensus there should be hearings and trials of Bush officials for their possible crimes. The very man we elected to office promising transparency gets away with backsliding on his committments and it elicits a collective shrug of the shoulders. And why do we shrug? Because we're told publishing the evidence would get in the way of our soldiers' ability to go about more killing. No, we don't give a damn about anything beyond our borders unless it interferes with our buying Budweiser and Marlboros for the weekend and grilling burgers. Oh, and buying gasoline. Otherwise all you brown and black people "over there" can go to hell (and we'll do what we can to help with the trip).

Okay, where are all those main-stream critics of Napolitano's report on right-wing domestic terrorists? The critics should be out there making public apologies to her & encouraging their looniest supporters to seek medical attention.

The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com

I'm ready to believe in the existence of people like this -- as many posters said, they're mentally ill.

"When his ex-wife met him in the mid-1960s, he was a wine swiller consumed by hatred.

This is the part that gets me. This is what she saw when she met him, and then she married him? Maybe this is selective memory after a divorce.

This week's shooter has 'gone out in blaze of glory', in his mind. At 88 he has committed suicide and probably didn't think he would live through the attack. Suprise! He's going to court when he recovers. I hope there's a suicide watch at the hospital.

Fear and and hatred are paths to the dark side...so when does Darth Cheney redeem himself by throwing George down a hole?

Just a couple of weeks ago several prominent conservatives were telling their followers that Sonia Sotomayor is a "racist." Now that we've seen the genuine face of racism I'm waiting for these people to retract their groundless insults to her reputation and apologize.

. . . Newt? Rush? Whaddaya say?

[crickets]

White people are protected by the First Amendment -- its all right there:

Congress shall make no law respecting people of color, or preventing white males from owning, carrying or discharging guns in any manner they like. Everyone one else is on their own. And Government is the enemy.

I didn't know the Constitution said these things, but I was mistaken.

Ah, that "responsible white separatist community" - Just love their bake sales - Their lebenkuchen can be marvelous - Plus, they volunteer to walk the elderly safely across street crossing. Their Glocks do deter speeders.

Allen K writes "This is the part that gets me. This is what she saw when she met him, and then she married him?"

Well, in the 1960s, the ex-wife would have been in her 20s, and maybe was overly impressed by a fun-loving, anti-hippie dude in his 40s. With time, she came to realize that he was, in fact, a dangerous whackazoid.

Just one theory. Women do stupid things when they think they're in love. It's documented.

Chrenson, you make an excellent point. Unfortunately, institutionalization isn't available these days, thanks to a well-meant but unholy alliance of civil libertarians and conservative budget cutters in the 60's and 70's. The advent of new anti-psychotic medications convinced some optimistic people that mentally ill people could now be returned to society as long as they took their meds. Trouble is, left to their own devices, a lot of them didn't take the meds. They ended up dumped on city streets and homeless shelters to survive as best they could. I'd like to give the Atomic Wedgie award for stupidest idea of the 20th century to Thomas Szasz, a so-called "psychologist" who claimed that mental illness doesn't really exist, and that people with bizarre behaviors and hallucinations should just be left alone, unless they commit crimes, in which case they should go to prison. The result is that the responsibility for dangerous mentally ill patients is now being dumped on institutions that were never designed to handle them. Remember the guy who killed Kendra Webdale? He had a long history of mental illness, had just been released from jail with $5 in his pocket and no place to go, and an hour later he threw a young woman under a subway train. And there you have our fine American medical system in action when it comes to mental illness.

"When his ex-wife met him in the mid-1960s, he was a wine swiller consumed by hatred.

"[It] ate him alive like a cancer," said the 69-year-old woman, who did not want her name used. "It's all he would talk about. When I questioned him, he would get angry and abusive.

So then she married him.

Women do stupid things when they think they're in love.

To be fair, this should be "people do stupid things when they think they're in love"; there is nothing particular to "women" about that.

This kind of thing is variety of religious mania, where the measure of your belief is the intensity of your rejection of others.

The important thing is he believes in 'belief'.

If, by terrorist, you mean to refer to highly organized groups dedicated to the destabilization of societies through violence, then I think the two recent highly publicized killings in the US don't qualify for the term.

By your definition, the majority of the suicide bombings in Israel don't count as terrorism, either, because most of the perpetrators were not members of highly organized groups. They were generally outsiders who were used by the group for the mission but were not members themselves.

Unless you're trying to claim that there is no white supremacist or anti-abortion movement in this country, so therefore both of these murderers were lone gunmen with no connections to highly organized groups, your construction makes no sense.