The Domestic Terrorists You’ve Never Heard Of
by digby
Nothing to see here folks, just move along …
Marion County jurors on Wednesday condemned Woodburn bank bombers Bruce and Joshua Turnidge to die by lethal injection for the 2008 murders of two police officers. The decision will send father and son to nearby Oregon State Penitentiary, the only cop killers on death row.
That’s where they belong, said Police Chief Scott Russell, who lost a leg in the explosion that ripped through the interior of a West Coast Bank branch in the town he’s sworn to protect.
[…]
More than 100 witnesses testified at the trials, which stretched from the first days of fall to the beginning of winter. Jurors heard a tale of two sad, dispirited men who were vocal in their contempt of government and police and thought the Obama administration would put increased restrictions on their right to bear arms.
The Turnidges were perpetually strapped for cash, facing yet another business failure as their biodiesel company bled money.
[…]
Prosecutors argued that the two men would pose a continuing threat to society — even in prison. Their crimes give them instant status in prison, they said, and other inmates might try to put their bomb-making knowledge to use once they were on the outside.
The state said the Turnidges’ views — described as racist, anti-government and anti-authority — were reasons to sentence the men to death. And they described the bombing as Bruce Turnidge’s “Timothy McVeigh moment.”
I hadn’t heard about this one. But you can add it to the growing list of domestic terrorists that nobody wants to acknowledge. But that’s just because they only hate black people and the government so it’s not like they’re “foreigners” or Muslims or anything scary.
It is ironic, however, that they were under tremendous financial pressure because their alternative energy company couldn’t get off the ground. Evidently, they were long time anti-government, gun nuts who were frustrated that they couldn’t make a buck on something that was promised as a big money maker by the lefty environmentalists these same people accuse of destroying their freedoms. Let’s just say that the confusion and panic among Americans is growing. Unfortunately, we have a demagogic right wing that’s appealing to people’s prejudices and fears and the results of that are sadly predictable.
(In case you’re counting, the right wing violence tally is well into double digits. But there was that nut who shot up the Discovery channel because he didn’t like overpopulation and thought all those Quiverfull and multiple birth shows were bad, so we’re supposed to think it’s even.)
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