AP: KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Knoxville's police chief says the man accused of a shooting that killed two people at a Tennessee church targeted the con
July 27, 2008

AP:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Knoxville's police chief says the man accused of a shooting that killed two people at a Tennessee church targeted the congregation because of its liberal social stance.

Chief Sterling Owen IV said Monday that police found a letter in Jim D. Adkisson's car. Owen said Adkisson was apparently frustrated over being out of work and had a "stated hatred of the liberal movement." The church is known for advocating women's and gay rights and founding an American Civil Liberties Union chapter. Read on...

Adkisson is obviously a very disturbed person, regardless of his political views. We will most likely learn more details in time, but the picture that's developing is one of a typical, uninformed Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Wiener-Savage fan -- an angry white male who has been brainwashed into thinking that everything wrong in America and around the world is the fault of the evil liberals. As with the church shootings in Colorado last December, the right will find some way to spin this story and turn Adkisson into an anti-Christian liberal whack job and blame it on the liberal media.

In response to the tragic church shootings in Colorado, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins naturally pointed the finger of blame at the "secular media." The senseless massacre of several deeply religious people by one of their own reflected, he claimed, "hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians." Of course, Perkins has it almost exactly backwards. Whether concerning abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement to right-wing terror is a very short one.

John Amato: I wrote this a while ago. Why isn’t the 24/7 cable News playing up the Rudolph conviction?

White Supremacist ties and anti-Semitic values. 250 pounds of dynamite just waiting for the fuse to be lit. There should be hundreds of protesters camped outside the Atlanta courtroom lashing out at judges and prosecutors for not seeking the death penalty. James Dobson should be on FOX News declaring that "the whole legal system is out of control and are derailing our judicial system. We have the death penalty for a good reason. How could any civil minded judge go along with this plea bargain anyway?" I can see signs held up amid the gaggle of the press that reads: "God said an eye for an eye!" Oh wait, sorry....he's an anti-abortionist. He believes in the culture of life. He hates gays too. Sorry, my mistake.

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