Via Mediaite, David at Crooks and Liars flags this:
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano is insisting that it was "not domestic terrorism" for a white supremacist to shoot seven people dead at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin....Forget the legal definition for a second. Let's think about this logically. Is Napolitano saying that if the 9/11 plotters had sent one plane rather than four, and flown it into the Pentagon, or into just one of the Twin Towers (or the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building or the Golden Gate Bridge), and killed hundreds or maybe a thousand people -- is he saying he would not consider that terrorism? Seriously? Because it wasn't two or more acts? Is he willing to go on Fox and say that?
"The legal definition of terrorism is two or more acts of violence intended to change the policy of the government, by scaring the population or by scaring the government," Napolitano told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Tuesday. "That does not appear to be what happened in this case."
Besides, as David points out at C&L,
The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives."Nothing about "two acts" at all.
Back to Napolitano:
"Page appears to be -- appears, he's dead -- appears to have been a disgruntled nut job who hated Muslims, didn't know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims and thought by killing the Sikhs he was somehow going to eliminate the Muslim population. It is an absurd, tortured way of thinking but it is not an act of domestic terrorism."At this point, do we have any evidence that Wade Page thought Sikhs were Muslims? The SOB hated everybody who wasn't of European descent. And whatever group he thought he was attacking, how is what he did not (to use Nspolitano's own words) "scaring the population" of that group? How is it not intimidation?
[Napolitano] continued: "On the other hand, the Ft. Hood shooter [Nidal Malik Hasan] who killed military in the place where they worked while damning and condemning the behavior of the government -- the employer of the people that he killed -- the government refuses to call that an act of domestic terrorism."Except that that's not true:
The shooting rampage at a U.S. Army base in November was "an act of terrorism," an Obama administration official said on Friday....That was a couple of months after the shooting -- but Napolitano uses the present tense. He says the administration "refuses" to use that designation. The administration does not refuse. (And, of course, it's apples and oranges, because the federal government hasn't officially designated the Wisconsin incident as terrorism.)
Napolitano starts the quoted spiel at 39 seconds into the clip posted below. The end of what's quoted comes at about 1:32.
A lot of lies, stupidity, and misinformation in less than a minute.
4 comments:
Look on the plus side, Steve - this imbecile is gainfully employed in a job where he probably does less harm than if he was using the same critical thinking skills while driving a hack in NYC; or spinning pizza dough, waiting for the guy who's smart enough not to pour the hot sauce and cheese down his customer's shorts, to handle the actual making of the pies; or being the janitor at a school, where he's liable to mix two chemicals together that would create an explosion that would make what Timothy McVeigh did look like a bad day for the kids in the chemistry lab at the HS.
Yes, he works at FOX, where he does some damage - but it's limited to people who are already stupid, ignorant, and hateful enough to stay on that channel, despite having a remote control, and hundreds of other choices of what to watch - and who probably think they need a new TV set when the batteries in their remote need changing.
Shorter Napolitano: It can't be terrorism if a white guy did it.
Bingo, Kathy; got it in one.
I don't get that two or more thing, either.
But who says that attack at Ft Hood qualifies under the quoted definition?
Was coercive intent somehow established?
I don't recall, but despite what Fox would have you think not every act of violence by an irregular in a war is a terrorist act.
Sometimes you're just killing your enemies.
No doubt just what that Ft Hood guy thought he was doing.
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