Suspect arrested
From Stan Finger of The Wichita Eagle:
WICHITA – The suspect in this morning’s fatal shooting of George Tiller is in custody, according to emergency dispatchers.
Authorities have yet to release more information about the arrest. Wichita police have scheduled a 4 p.m. news conference to discuss the case.
[h/t Discordian Stooge]
Some more from CNN on the assassination and still more from Dana Houle, faux pity from The American Catholic, an O’Reilly video at True Crime Report, and Steve Benen.
UPDATE: More links:
A google cache of the now offline George Tiller – Revealed! website
How hard have the wingnuts been working at getting Tiller killed?
La Shawn Barber’s reports this murder by calling Tiller Dr. Infanticide
From “liberal loon filled Chicago” Chicago Ray is also happy
The Crusty Curmudgeon: Good riddance.
George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his sould to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.
Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.
BradBlog reports on what’s known and how the right consistently pointed for this outcome, and in the Argus Leader a few weeks ago a letter writer points out that Kathleen Sebelius took $23,000 in contributions from Tiller. Is Sebelius being targeted for assassination as well? Given how tightly knit the “pro-life” community is, I hope the Secret Service is dispatching agents to Sebelius’ home.
UPDATE: Mike Hendricks is the first newspaper columnist to weigh in, and you really should check out the comments he’s getting. Apparently murdering abortion doctors in Kansas is like catching the winning touchdown pass in the Super Bowl.
mninexile, a Strib commenter, sees a pattern:
May 2009 A man kills a high profile abortion provider in Kansas. April 2009 A man worried about his guns being seized by President Obama kills 3 police officers in Pennsylvania. [link]
February 2009 An anti-immigrant republican activist kills 2 Chilean students and wounds 3 others in Florida. [link, link]
August 2008 A man who recently lost his job shows up at the Democratic Party Headquarters and kills the party chairman in Arkansas. [link]
July 2008 A man targeting a Unitarian Church for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, kills 2 people in Tennessee. [link]
Given this growing tendency of conservative nuts to gun people down, maybe talk radio and fox news should turn down the rhetoric and stop inciting violence.
I just scrolled through eight pages of Strib comments and I’ve got to say the left is way angrier than the right. Some of the rightwing commenters seem to appreciate that years of calling Tiller “the Killer” may have set the stage for this brutal in-church slaying.
Which is not to say there isn’t plenty of crap like this boiling up in the more recent comments:
leave it to liberals
to take the murder of one person by one person and turn it into a major conspiracy and call it a terrorist attack, and further blame an entire group of people. And the liberals have the gall to call conservatives “wing nuts”. The ignorance and stupidity is sure showing on here today. It is unfortunate that ignorance isn’t painful!
posted by prolixity
Every mob in history was innocent: only the actual killers are the killers. Expect a lot of this crap, especially from the morally numb who see no conflict between distancing themselves from Tiller’s assassin while wishing pain on liberals. Or the even more revealing: “He’s been killing humans for years. Now the shoe’s on the other foot. Doesn’t bother me in the least.”
And lots and lots of comments equating murdering a doctor with PETA and ELF property damage. Then again, to the Christian right women are property….
Things are just SCREWED up!!!
If a woman wants to go kill an innocent child, especially late term…she should have her legs permanently CLOSED!!!!
posted by amao41
Glad to see the Strib’s hard at work cleaning up these comments.
UPDATE: The suspect’s vehicle was registered in Johnson County (Kansas City). Here’s a map showing how far this guy drove to shoot Tiller.
I’d say the fact this seems to be a “Kansas” thing speaks volumes about the hyper-radicalized Kansas right-to-life movement.
