Another Shooting

This time it’s at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. The first news reports say no one was killed, but three people (including the suspected shooter) are being treated for gunshot wounds. The suspect is an 88-year-old man named James von Brunn who has a record of white supremacist writing.

Update:
I’m hearing from MSNBC that a police officer was killed. Terribly sad.

Update: OK, this is weird. You might remember that the DHS report said right-wing groups would likely try to recruit military veterans because of their military experience. The report also said “those with military backgrounds constitute a small percentage of white supremacist extremists.” However, the small number of military veterans who do get mixed up in extremist organizations tend to be among the more dangerous members, which makes it advisable to keep an eye on the small number of military veterans who do get mixed up in extremist organizations. Right-wing pot-stirrers willfully misread the report to mean that all returning veterans constitute a threat to national security and had to be watched, which is not at all what it said. Dave Neiwert explains.

According to this right-wing blogger, Fox News is going on and on about how the shooting vindicates the DHS because the accused shooter is a veteran. He’s a World War II veteran, for bleep’s sake. This is, like, wrong twice. Yeah it vindicates the DHS report, but not because of the shooter’s veteran status.

Update:
Debbie Schlussel is blaming Muslims and 9/11 truthers for today’s shooting. I’m serious. Pardon me if I don’t give her a link.

Update: Malkin is saying the shooter was neither right nor left, just loony. See Dave Neiwert for rebuttal.

Unbelievable

A right-wing blogger, responding to my last post on abortion, wrote,

And this notion of “underground abortion providers” is a myth in the U.S. There are untold clinics in the U.S. providing abortion services.

Let’s see if I can explain this simply enough so that a garden vegetable, or maybe even a rightie, can grasp it.

Abortion is still legal in the United States. So, there is not much in the way of an underground abortion industry here, because women prefer to get abortions in nice, legal clinics and hospitals. In countries where abortion is legal, generally there are little or no “underground” abortion services.

However, in countries where abortion is illegal, abortions are performed by “underground abortion providers.” This was true in the U.S. before Roe v. Wade. It is still very much true throughout Latin America, which has higher rates of abortion than the U.S. even though abortion is illegal nearly everywhere in Latin America.

It is true of all countries in which abortions are illegal. Well, except maybe Ireland, where women can just take a ferry ride to Britain. I’m not sure about Ireland.

If abortion were criminalized in the U.S., there would be a thriving underground abortion industry in no time, just as there was before Roe v. Wade.

I hope that is clear.