WELL, AT LEAST FRAZIER GLENN MILLER WASN'T A REAL TERRORIST ... Y'KNOW, A MUSLIM

First of all, thank you, Yastreblyansky, Aimai, Tom, and Crank -- you did some amazing work while I was gone.

And now I see we've had a series of shootings at Jewish centers in the Kansas City area, with a white supremacist in custody. The Kansas City Star describes the suspect, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., aka Frazier Glenn Cross, as "A 73-year-old southwest Missouri man with a long history of anti-Semitism" -- as if, until now, he's just been a crank with unpleasant opinions, rather than, among other things, the founder of the White Patriot Party, an offshoot of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The New York Times tells us more:

The Southern Poverty Law Center said it sued Mr. Miller in the 1980s for intimidating African-Americans, and he has had several run-ins with the law since then. He served six months in prison after he was held in criminal contempt for violating the terms of the court order that settled that lawsuit. He also served three years in federal prison for weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of the center's founder, Morris Dees. As part of his plea bargain, he testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 trial.

I don't know about you, but I'm really struck by that. Miller has served less than four years in prison for all that? Imagine an Islamist right now getting away with a few years in the pen and a period as a federally protected witness with a rap sheet like that.

And the Times summary is rather bare-bones. Here's more, from Brent L. Smith's book Terrorism in America. As you're reading this, mentally replace the names with Middle Eastern names, and try to imagine what the reaction would be to these activities:

... Miller and a small cadre of Klansmen began stockpiling weapons in the summer of 1984. Stephen Miller (no relation to Glenn Miller) ... and three other White Patriot Party members met with Robert Norman Jones to arrange for the theft of U.S. military weapons and equipment....

Miller used the services of military personnel sympathetic to WPP's cause to assist with pramilitary training. It was, perhaps, Miller's greatest mistake. Morris Dees, the outspoken critic of the extreme Right and the director of The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, filed a lawsuit demanding a Defense Department investigation of the U.S. military's links with WPP paramilitary operations. Alarmed by this use of active duty military personnel, a federal court judge in North Carolina issued a court order prohibiting Miller from conducting any paramilitary training.

Miller's WPP continued to receive stolen military equipment from a man named Robert Norman Jones. He was arrested for trying to buy C-4 explosive from an undercover police officer. But meanwhile, Frazier Glenn Miller and plas continued their paramilitary training. They were charged in 1986 with violating the court order prohibiting this.

When his trial began, Glenn Miller decided Morris Dees had to be killed. WPP member Simeon Davis was told that Dees "a 'thorn' in the side of the White Patriot Party and needed to be 'plucked out.'" Although no immediate attempt was made to kill Dees, WPP members did conduct surveillance on his residence, his vehicle, and the home of the attorney with whom he was staying during the trial. Glenn Miller and Stephen Miller were convicted that summer but remained free pending a series of appeals.

Frazier Glenn Miller -- appealing a conviction and now facing a federal indictment -- went underground with two members of the WPP.

... the three men wrote their own "Declaration of War." ... Miller's document included an assassination point system for the killing of Jews, blacks, and federal judges. Morris Dees' name topped the list. Armed with fully automatic weapons and homemade fragmentation grenades, the band travelled from Louisiana to Ozark, Missouri....

They rented a mobile home and plotted revolution. They mailed their Declaration of War to a local newspaper, which enabled them to be located and arrested.

And after that, Frazier Glenn Miller was able to turn state's evidence and do just three years in the pen. And here he is now, a free man who apparently had no difficulty obtaining a weapon so he could shoot some people at Jewish centers just before Passover. Good thing for him his name wasn't Ahmed.