News & updates

April 25, 2013 By 17 Comments

Somebody hacked into the Twitter account of the Associated Press, no less, and put out word that there were explosions in the White House that injured the president.  That sent the stock market into a tailspin, but it recovered when the story turned out to be a hoax.

Charges have been dropped for the Elvis impersonator who was accused of sending ricin-laced letters to the president, a senator, and a judge.  Investigators have another suspect, a rival of the first one.

The surviving Boston Marathon bomber was charged for the federal crime of using weapons of mass destruction.  He will not be treated as an enemy combatant.  He was read his rights.  The charge indicated that he may face the death penalty.  (Massachusetts does not have the death penalty–though state legislators unsuccessfully tried to re-instate it for the bomber–but the federal government can still execute people.)

Filed Under: crime, Law, terrorism Tagged With: , , , 17 Comments
About Gene Veith

Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.

  • SKPeterson

    Here is a quote from VP Biden:

    “The purpose of terror is to instill fear,” he said. “You saw none of it here in Boston. Boston, you sent a powerful message to the world.”

    A complete shutdown of the city and house to house searches with police in full body armor unnecessarily evacuating people isn’t a fearful reaction? The whole thing was an exercise in overreaction and fear.

  • Jon

    About the Elvis guy–he sure seemed like a nice guy in the TV interview. But what about what “they” said about him before his arrest, that he was a “well-known letter writer”? Was that also not him?

  • Tom Hering

    “Well-known letter writer” is no different than “commenter on a public blog.” Such activity is good reason to suspect someone. (Everyone here take note!)

  • fjsteve

    Trying to make sense of Biden’s bloviations is really useless. It’s worse than useless, actually, because you’re putting more thought into what he says than he does.

  • DonS

    SKP @ 1: +1

  • Carl Vehse

    Excerpted from the Jersey Journal news report, “Jersey City man arrested on train with bombs 8 days before Marathon bombings: cops“:

    More than a week before three people were killed and more than 175 people were injured in the Boston Marathon bombings, a Jersey City man was arrested at the train station in Hoboken while carrying two home-made bombs, authorities say.

    Police also found explosive devices in the Newport Parkway home of Mykyta Panasenko, 27, Jersey City police said today. According to a criminal complaint, Panasenko is charged with having “two destructive devices, specifically improvised explosive devices (IEDs) constructed from a cylinder containing Pyrodex (black powder)” on April 5, the criminal complaint says.

    Although the arrest was made more than a week ago, it was not reported by authorities. The Jersey Journal learned about the incidents when Panasenko appeared in Central Judicial Processing court to hear the charges Wednesday.

    Hmmmmm…

  • Tom Hering

    Here’s the story:

    http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2013/04/jersey_city_man_arrested_on_tr.html

    He appears to be this Mykyta Panasenko (there’s only one listed for the U.S. and Canada):

    http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mykyta-panasenko/21/4a3/92

  • SKPeterson

    Deport all the mathematicians!

  • Tom Hering

    Deport all the mathematicians! (@ 8)

    Yes!

  • http://www.cyberbrethren.com Rev. Paul T. McCain

    Watch out for those Elvis impersonators….they are really serious about this stuff.

    : )

  • tODD

    Okay, that’s a bit rich. After right-wingers spent considerable effort digging up info on the previous suspect in the ricin case, noting how he was a Democrat and how the media was ignoring that angle … whoops.

    Turns out the new suspect is a former GOP candidate for the Mississippi House of Representatives named J. Everett Dutschke. Number of those same right-wingers I’ve heard mention this or correct their previous assertions: zero.

    So that doesn’t smell so good.

  • SKPeterson

    Todd @11 – I haven’t been following the ricin story much. Is this more a case of professional animus or some other motive?

  • Carl Vehse

    As previously noted, Boston Mayor Tom Menino gave aid and comfort to the Islamoterrorrists in getting land for their Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) mosque.

    Now excerpted from Bombers’ Mosque In Boston A Factory For Terrorists:

    USA Today, on the other hand, did look at their mosque — the Islamic Society of Boston — and found “a curriculum that radicalizes people,” according to a local source quoted in the paper’s investigation. “Other people have been radicalized there.”

    In fact, several ISB members and leaders have been convicted or suspected of terrorism, including:

    • Abdurahman Alamoudi, the mosque’s founder and first president, who in 2004 was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism as al-Qaida’s top fundraiser in America.
    • Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT scientist-turned-al-Qaida agent, who in 2010 was sentenced to 86 years in prison for planning a New York chemical attack.
    • Tarek Mehanna, who in 2012 was sentenced to 17 years for plotting to use automatic weapons to murder shoppers in a suburban Boston mall.
    • Ahmad Abousamra, an ex-mosque official’s son, who fled the country after the FBI charged him with conspiring with Mehanna to kill Americans.
    • Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a mosque trustee and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader banned from the U.S. after issuing a fatwa that OK’d killing U.S. soldiers.
    • Jamal Badawi, a former ISB trustee who in 2007 was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a plan to funnel $12 million to Palestinian suicide bombers.

    The election and re-election of this traitor as mayor of Boston since 1993 dilutes any sympathy that one may have for the electorate regarding whatever has resulted from Menino’s treachery.

  • tODD

    Carl Vehse (@13): more upset at the election of a Democrat than at hundreds of bombing casualties.

  • http://www.lesbiansinmysoup.com/ Katy Anders

    1. I suppose it should concern us all that the stock market (too often seen as an indicator of national economic health) is so fragile that it can be thrown off by a tweet. This reminds me of the computer glitch that led to the brief crash in 1987 – or the bad day for stocks in 1992 that was blamed on then-Vice President Dan Quayle spelling potato wrong.

    2. If the Boston bomber guy was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction, does this mean that the Defense Department could have said “We told you so” if a pressure cooker had been found in Iraq?

  • Carl Vehse

    Katy Anders: “If the Boston bomber guy was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction, does this mean that the Defense Department could have said “We told you so” if a pressure cooker had been found in Iraq?”

    Pressure cooker IEDs were reported to have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  • tODD

    Carl (@16), before or after we invaded? If after, you’re missing the point.


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