Nov 29, 2009 
Dave Neiwert wants to know why national news media aren’t jumping all over the story of an Ohio man named Mark Campano who turned his apartment into a bomb factory.
Police found 30 completed pipe bombs in his apartment along with components to make more, plus 17 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Campano is in an Akron hospital with injuries received when one of the bombs exploded.
Neighbors called Campano an anti-government whackjob, so it’s not much of a leap to suspect Campano might have been planning domestic terrorism. But you know the drill — terrorists don’t make the news unless they’re named Mohammed.
The predictably stupid R.S. McCain writes about this incident, titling his blog post “Incompetent dopehead pipe-bomber as dangerous as al-Qaeda, lefty implies.” That wasn’t Dave’s point, but let’s run with it.
Who is more dangerous — Mark Campano, a whackjob with an apartment full of real pipe bombs and guns, or –
- Iyman Faris, the loser who planned to take apart the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch;
- The conspirators planning to bomb the Sears Tower, who never managed to get their hands on bombs or create a workable plan.
- Jose Padilla, the so-called “dirty bomber,” who didn’t actually have any bombs, dirty or otherwise, and was not thought to be bright enough to make one.
- The five genius pizza delivery guys who planned to attack Fort Dix
- The other geniuses who planned to blow up JFK airport through a plot that was never operational and which most experts said would never have worked.
Each of those cases were taken very seriously, and the plotters pretty much were all convicted of something. But a guy with 30 pipebombs doesn’t need to be taken seriously, according to R.S. McCain. To R.S., a right-wing whackjob with thirty real pipebombs is less dangerous than jihadist whackjobs with lots of non-operational plots but no bombs.
Note to R.S.M., if he drops by here: I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11, so don’t you dare tell me I don’t understand terrorism or appreciate how awful it is. I suspect I appreciate how awful it is better than you do. That’s why I take someone with pipe bombs very seriously.
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