{"id":178238,"date":"2019-01-31T19:10:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T00:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/31\/clearly-the-fbi-will-save-us-from-putin\/"},"modified":"2019-01-31T19:10:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T00:10:00","slug":"clearly-the-fbi-will-save-us-from-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/31\/clearly-the-fbi-will-save-us-from-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Clearly, The FBI Will Save Us From Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"
But who will save us from the FBI<\/a>?<\/div>\n

A domestic terrorism briefing the FBI gave to law enforcement agencies in 2017 warned them about the threat of \u201cpro-abortion extremists.\u201d That would be fine, except\u2014as the FBI\u2019s own briefing materials subsequently admit\u2014violent pro-abortion extremists barely exist, and in no universe do they constitute an organized domestic terror movement. The existence of this briefing was uncovered by Property of the People<\/a>, a government transparency group that uses Freedom of Information Act requests to shed light on the workings of the government.<\/p>\n

To make the extent of the non-problem clear: Only one person could be fairly described as a \u201cpro-choice terrorist\u201d (he indeed described himself that way<\/a>), and that is Theodore Shulman, who went to prison in 2012<\/a> for harrassing and threatening to kill two leading figures in the anti-abortion movement. (Shulman served 41 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.) The only known death of an anti-abortion protester is Jim Pouillon, who was shot and killed in September 2009<\/a> while holding a gory sign and protesting outside a Michigan clinic. Harlan James Drake, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, was severely mentally ill, according to his lawyers<\/a>. He also killed a gravel pit owner the same day, reportedly believing both men had wronged his mother. According to evidence presented at trial, Drake shot Pouillon not because he was a radical pro-choice activist, but because he was offended that Pouillon was holding a disturbing sign in view of school children. <\/p>\n

Anti-abortion groups, meanwhile, have harassed doctors and clinics who provide abortions for decades, leading to arson, constant death threats, a wave of bombings throughout the 1990s, and the murders of some 12 people<\/a> between 1993 and 2012, all either clinic staffers or physicians. The nature of these constant threats, combined with consistent state and federal-level legislative efforts to curtail abortion or ban it outright, has changed the nature of abortion access in America.<\/p>\n

And yet the FBI\u2019s briefing to law enforcement agencies appears to be based on the idea that there are threats, particularly dangerous lone wolf-type extremists, on both sides. <\/p>\n

Gunita Singh, the staff attorney at Property of the People, told us, \u201cIt should strike any reasonable person as astounding, irrational, and even offensive to see the words \u2018pro-choice extremist\u2019 strung together. Yet, in this FBI document we see this configuration appear in an Abortion Extremism Reference Guide, juxtaposed alongside \u2018pro-life extremists,\u2019 as if they\u2019re somehow two sides of the same coin.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The FBI is still the misbegotten child of J. Edgar Hoover, and if you view them with anything other than suspicion, you are a fool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But who will save us from the FBI? A domestic terrorism briefing the FBI gave to law enforcement agencies in 2017 warned them about the threat of \u201cpro-abortion extremists.\u201d That would be fine, except\u2014as the FBI\u2019s own briefing materials subsequently admit\u2014violent pro-abortion extremists barely exist, and in no universe do they constitute an organized domestic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[551,364,526],"class_list":["post-178238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-abortion","tag-evil","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}