Domestic terrorist targets Detroit-area mosque

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As The Detroit News is reporting, a 63-year old California man, an Army vet, has been "charged with one count of a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of explosives-possession of bombs with unlawful intent after Dearborn police arrested him Monday outside the Islamic Center of America, one the largest mosques in North America."

The news media won't do it, but it's pretty easy to connect the dots here, isn't it? The right has stirred up an enormous amount of anti-Muslim sentiment in recent years. (Just think back to the Park51 or "Ground Zero mosque" nonsense, with leading conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin agitating for bigotry and a willing mob of bigots targeting not just that community center but all Muslims collectively.) And here we have Roger Stockham explaining himself on his MySpace page:

Proud of my kids. Happy with how much I've lived. Ready for it to be over, but have a policy I contend with often: So long as I am alive, I can't play dead.

And preparing to commit an act of terrorism against a significant Islamic target.

As with Jared Lee Loughner, I'm sure the right will claim that this guy's insane and that there's no connection whatsoever between its anti-Muslim rhetoric (and activity) and this planned act of terrorism.

And I'm sure the media will treat this as an isolated event. Just keep moving. Nothing to see. Mind your own business.

But we know better, don't we? It hardly takes an expert in string theory to figure this out.