Hey, Les.
Do you know about Scott Roeder? Kind of a distant cousin of ours whose will got absorbed into the campaign against abortion. His trial is going on now. I heard that he was a “little bit more” on the fringe than most of the Bible-thumping right-to-lifers, and when I heard that LBM clue I had to look into his qualifications a little bit more. Did you know that he made his own license plates, because he considered himself a sovereign state unto himself? And when he got pulled over because of them, police found materials for a bomb in his car.
This was a decade before he assassinated Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, May 31, 2009. Point blank execution, in the back of his head. In the lobby of Tiller’s church.
Which one was the savior? (Devin Friedman attempts an answer in the new GQ, of all places.)
As Alan “Silky Slim” Reed says, people respect violence.
Yrs,
p.s. The jury didn’t have much trouble separating act from implication. It only took them 37 minutes to arrive at the guilty verdict. Now, I’m just a bit worried about the notion that his defense was crafted to set a precedent for judging other comparable acts of violence. Read this excerpt from the Iowa Independent:
The ruling does not come as a surprise, since Roeder openly admitted he shot and killed Tiller in the hopes of arguing the necessity defense, which would claim that he did so to prevent the doctor from performing abortions. Roeder’s defense was crafted for him by Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach.
Leach’s hope was that the Roeder trial could set a precedent, whether victorious or not, that could then be applied to other acts of civil disobedience against abortion.
“The very existence of legal abortion, and even the existence of this discussion [of the necessity defense], as well as any hope the prosecutor has of convicting Scott, relies upon their success in keeping the slaughter of millions of human beings ‘irrelevant,’” Leach said before the trial’s conclusion. “Political correctness requires that we not care about their shed blood.”
Scary.
Full story by Jason Hancock, 1/29/10.
violence belongs to the state, when people do it, it’s called terrorism
Dear Sage, great to have you back. But I’m confused. You are talking about abortionists and Alec is talking about space bunnies: http://tinyurl.com/yg33tdw
And who is Alan ‘Silky Slim’ Reed.
A rap artist (Arthur Reed) http://www.formaldehyderecords.com/
Or the smooth voiced creator of Yabba-dabba-do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Reed
You guys are confusing me.
Silky Slim tells it like the voice of experience and the streets, not the voice of Bedrock. Lester and I know that abortion stops a beating heart, but so does a .22 to the cranium. Dr. Tiller was a late-term abortionist; Scott Roeder was a full-term, post-partum abortionist. The state sanctions the former (for now) and tries the latter. It’s all violence, and I can’t solve the confusion.
OG
Hi Les, I’m confused too. But at least Sage’s post led me to a new book. Last November Roeder and supporters put up some items on eBay to raise money for his legal defense: http://tinyurl.com/yebbevz
I particularly like this prison cookbook by Shelley Shannon, who shot Tiller in 1993: http://tinyurl.com/ybyrl4w
Can we go back Alan Reed. Interesting guy. Non violent too. His real name was Teddy Bergman. He’d use that name for comedic roles like ‘The Eddie Cantor Show.’ He used his nom de plume, Alan Reed, for dramatic roles like ‘The Shadow.’
Have you listened to The Shadow. Great show:
“The shadow was amateur criminologist Lamont Cranston. He had learned “the hypnotic power to cloud men’s minds so that they cannot see him”. The opening to the show, “Who knows … what evil … lllllurks … in the heart of men? … The Shadow knows! His “friend and companion, the lovely Margo Lane, is the only person who knows to whom the voice of the invisible Shadow belongs”. Together they confront the maddest assortment of lunatics, sadists, ghosts and werewolves ever heard on the air.”
I’m sure the shadow would have taken care of Scott Roeder if he could.
Lester
p.s. Hey Sage, do you remember the Minneapolis band, Lamond Cranston: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lamont_Cranston_Band
The Shadow partners with Silky Slim. Lamont Cranston clouded my mind once or twice when I was a lad insane.
All confusions will be sorted out in the end. Thanks, Lester, for reconnecting me with The Shadow. And let Alec know that no matter how hard he tries, or how much he begs, he won’t get his arms around my copy of Shelley’s cookbook. “He’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
By the way, Roeder once thought about just cutting Dr. Tiller’s hands off. But he realized that the good doctor could still teach others to do the work, so that wouldn’t be a solution.
Yrs, OG
You can listen to The Shadow here:
http://newportvintagebooks.com/otr/mystery/otr_shadow.htm
If you didn’t know, I’m a member of the Twin Cities Old Time Radio Cult:
https://littlebrownmushroom.com/blog/Picture%202.png
I’m watching it/live stream cnn. I’ve read some news from US this week, and I’m gettin USphobic.