One of the most important reasons for detaining terrorists (suspected or otherwise) is to obtain information about future terrorist attacks that may save lives and prevent future bombings. To procure this information, can the government dispense with the usual constitutional and legal safeguards against coercive interrogation? Should it be able to subject Roeder to enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding and other methods, to determine whether Roeder knows of any other persons who are likely to commit violence against abortion clinics or against abortion providers in the future? Would your answer change if you believed that an attack on an abortion provider or a bombing of an abortion clinic was imminent? [my emphasis]

My assumption is that the government may not do any of these things. Roeder lives in the United States. He should be treated according to the ordinary criminal process. We should not be able to strip him of his rights simply by calling him a suspected terrorist, and it should make no difference whether he is a Muslim or a Christian, whether he is white or brown. And pro-life organizations, like Muslim charities, have rights of freedom of association that governments should protect lest we effectively criminalize political association and belief in the name of national security.

The difficulty is that our national deliberations on terrorism have largely proceeded on the assumption that all terrorists are non-Americans and/or non-Christians who live in or come from distant lands. They are not part of the American community, they are not "people like us" and therefore do not deserve the rights and protections of "people like us." We can detain them indefinitely, and even subject them to interrogation procedures that we would never apply to "real Americans." [my emphasis]

The infamous late-term abortionist who revels in his notoriety for providing women easy abortions had 19 misdemeanor charges filed against him on Thursday.

Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison announced that he has dismissed 30 previous criminal charges against abortionist George Tiller, and in their place filed charges against Tiller for failing to obtain a second opinion for late-term abortions from a doctor financially separate from his practice. ...

“While we are happy that charges are being filed against Tiller, we are guarded about this because we believe that these charges are the weakest against Tiller,” said Troy Newman, president of the Christian pro-life activist organization Operation Rescue.

The 30 original criminal charges were filed by former pro-life Attorney General Phill Kline before leaving office. The allegations accused Tiller of performing illegal late-term abortions outside the boundaries set by Kansas laws. [my emphasis]

Late-term abortionist George Tiller was acquitted on 19 charges of illegal abortions.

A jury of three men and three women reached the not guilty verdict on Friday in less than an hour, disappointing pro-life groups that were closely watching the trial of one of the nation's few late-term abortion practitioners. ...

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman noted that the 19 charges Tiller faced this week were "only a small fraction of the illegal activity" that believe occurs at Tiller's Wichita abortion clinic. Moreover, those 19 were "the weakest charges that could have been brought by the state."

"On behalf of the pre-born children wrongly killed by Tiller and his associates, we vow to press on until Tiller is finally held accountable to the law and his late-term abortion mill is permanently closed," said Newman, who attended the trial. [my emphasis]

A joint FBI-Homeland Security intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press said officers found maps to Jewish organizations, a child care center, a Baptist church, a post office and military recruiting centers in the southeastern U.S. and New York and Philadelphia.

Abdulhakim Muhammad, 23, of Little Rock told investigators he wanted to "kill as many people in the Army as he could" and had the weapons to do so, police said. Muhammed pleaded not guilty to Monday's deadly shooting in a suburban Little Rock shopping center. Authorities said he targeted soldiers "because of what they had done to Muslims in the past."

In documents released Tuesday, authorities said they recovered Molotov cocktails, three guns and ammunition from Abdulhakim Muhammad's truck after the attack Monday in a suburban Little Rock shopping center.

Muhammad, who was known previously as Carlos Bledsoe, acted alone and was not part of a larger plot, said Cassandra Davis, a spokeswoman for the Little Rock Police Department. She said Muhammad previously lived in Memphis, Tenn., and Nashville and had recently moved to Little Rock.

Iftikhar Pathan, the president of the Islamic Center of Little Rock, said Muhammad had never worshiped at the center's mosque.

"This man who claims to be a Muslim has never been seen in our Islamic center," Pathan said.

Here are a few of the excerpts from Little Rock homicide detective Tommy Hudson's report:

• "Mr. Muhammad stated that he was mad at the US Military"

• "Mr. Muhammad stated he fired several rounds at the soldiers with the intent to kill them" from arrest report released this morning

• "Mr. Muhammad further stated that he would have killed more soldiers if they had been on the parking lot."

Investigators seized more than 500 rounds of ammunition and three guns from the truck that police found Muhammad driving within 15 minutes after the shooting.

According to an inventory list that police submitted to the court, Muhammad had a Lorcin .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun in his waistband loaded with eight bullets as well as 24 more rounds of .380-caliber ammunition in his pants pocket. He wore a green utility belt with room for eight ammunition magazines, though he used only two. He had 13 quick-reload strips of 7.62mm ammunition - 129 rounds total - while the other held 20 Remington .22-caliber rounds.

In addition to the handgun, police seized an SKS 7.62mm rifle and a Mossberg International .22-caliber rifle with a scope and a laser sight. They also found a full-length white laboratory coat, a golf score card, "green crystals," a napkin, an umbrella and another CD with markings in Arabic. They found, too, a blue container of "unknown liquid" and a copy of the Tri-State Defender, a newspaper published in Memphis with a primarily black audience.

According to a petition that Muhammad filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court in April, shortly after he moved to Little Rock, he was not fully satisfied with the name change.

Filed on April 23, Muhammad asked the court to grant him another name change, this time to something closer to his birth name: Abdul-Hakim Bledsoe. In the petition, he wrote that he wanted to drop the "Mujahid" and the "Muhammad" from his name in favor of "Bledsoe" for "religious reasons."

Lindsey Roeder’s focus now is on her son.

"It’s been an absolutely devastating 24 hours," she said late Monday afternoon. "I haven’t slept. My son can’t sleep. ... I can’t imagine, if it’s been like this for us, what it’s been like for the Tiller family."

Scott Roeder’s beliefs also came up in a custody battle in Pennsylvania. In 2003, Roeder sued for the right to visit a girl born the previous year. Roeder said he was the girl’s father.

The girl’s mother and her husband told the court they felt Roeder would not be a good influence on the child.

According to a court ruling filed in 2005, Roeder was earlier diagnosed with schizophrenia “for which he takes no medication, which may pose a clear and present danger to the female minor child.”

The child’s mother also brought up Roeder’s affiliations.

“… Past conduct and association with anti-government organizations is ongoing and poses a risk to her daughter,” the records said.

The child’s mother and her husband — who has raised the girl as his own since her birth — “feared that (Roeder) would kidnap and hide their daughter since he threatened to do so with his son.” [my emphasis]

If you don't accept what he [Tiller's assassin] did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions—not just a few this month, but millions down the line—without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.

Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, is unabashed in saying that the murder could help the antiabortion movement. “This is a teaching moment,” he said when reached by phone Sunday night. “We can talk about what a vile, evil man [Tiller] was, and discuss all the different ways that he killed children. Dr. Tiller was one of the most evil men on the planet. Part of my goal is I’m going to shore up pro-life leaders to not flinch, not fear, not waver.”

Indeed, as if he was following a script written by Levin, Terry complained about the timidity of his movement’s leadership, and said he was about to unveil a 14-part television series with the Latin title, Insurrecta Nex. “It means, ‘insurrection against the slaughter of innocent people,’” says Terry. Whether or not Terry knew about Roeder, he’s clearly gearing up for something.

Tiller was one of just three doctors in the entire US who performed late-term abortions. Now, there are just two. Which means that 36 years of anti-choice terrorism is now just two assassinations away from completely ending late-term abortion in America. Violence has won out -- over the will of the people, over the courts, over the horrific logic of medical necessity. And whenever terrorists win, democracy has lost ...

First Knoxville, then this. Sherilyn Ifill once made the point that lynchings typically occurred on courthouse lawns as a symbol that the mob had overridden the authority of the state and taken justice into its own hands. So what does it mean when right-wing terrorists start gunning down progressives in the pews of their own churches? Two events do not a pattern make -- but if this keeps happening, it'll be clear that there's a message being sent.

I've often said that fundamentalism begins the minute you decide you have the One True Right and Only Way -- and that you have a God-given duty to impose that way on the rest of the world. Because of this, fundamentalists have never been willing to recognize the legitimacy of other faiths. And certain factions on the far right have never had qualms about vandalizing mosques or synagogues in order to harass Muslims and Jews into political and social silence.

But they used to leave Christian churches pretty much alone. The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don't comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act. They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries -- the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple -- Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as "Jesus's Jihadis." [my emphasis]