Maybe every crazy person isn’t a fundamentalist. Maybe every somebody whose hands shake with rage at the thought of the government isn’t a Republican. Maybe every patriot who wants to rebel against his fellow Americans isn’t a right-winger. It’s possible that it just appears that way.

But the more we learn of Tamerlan Tsarneav the more we see that he was a conservative. No two ways about it.

. . Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence of a new friend, a Muslim convert who steered the religiously apathetic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, family members said.

. . Tamerlan gave up boxing and stopped studying music, his family said. He began opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He turned to websites and literature claiming that the CIA was behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Jews controlled the world.

It’s all right there. Reality had failed Tamerlan. He was angry, withdrawn, bigoted, poorly educated, given to conspiracies, increasingly fundamentalist, and ultimately convinced that violence was the personal and righteous response to a tawdry, immoral world.

Tsarnaev became an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, two U.S. officials said. He read Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate.

Tamerlan loved music and, a few years ago, he sent Khozhugov a song he’d composed in English and Russian. He said he was about to start music school.

Six weeks later, the two men spoke on the phone. Khozhugov asked how school was going. “I quit,” Tamerlan said.

“Why did you quit?” Khozhugov asked. “You just started.”

“Music is not really supported in Islam,” he replied.

Aside from the bombs, and the Good Book, what’s the difference between this guy and Michele Bachmann?

[Ryan Lizza] chronicles Bachmann’s enthusiasm for the extreme evangelical teachings of the late Presbyterian Pastor Francis Schaeffer, commonly regarded as having sparked the 1970s rise of the Christian Right. Schaeffer loved visiting Florence, Italy, where his idea of Renaissance ruin is on full display.

Bachmann also adores Schaeffer follower Nancy Pearcey, a prominent creationist whose recent book is “Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning.” That’s Leonardo as in “da Vinci,” whose famous drawing of “Vitruvian Man” shows a human being inscribed within a perfect circle and a perfect square. The artist made the ungodly error of putting humanity at the center of time and space.

To underscore her right-wing bona fides, here Mrs. Bachmann goes on about global warming:

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

And now, standing on the steps of Congress, she speaks to her Tea Party friends:

You came. And you came to your house. And you came for an emergency house call. And are they going to listen? Oh yeah, oh yeah, they’re going to listen. It was Thomas Jefferson who said a revolution every now and then is a good thing.

This world can not be tolerated any more, you see. But it’s not just that conservatives would throw away humanism and the arts to favor re-making America. It’s also that they routinely reject common reality to favor a cryptic one. The standard we borrow here to measure such irrationality is the conspiracist, Alex Jones.

On his personal twitter feed, [Matt] Drudge predicted that 2013 would be the “year of Alex Jones,” praising his show as “one hell of a broadcast in such homogenized media!” In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Drudge linked to articles on Jones’ website Infowars, including stories that called Boston a “police state” during the manhunt for the alleged perpetrators, and a post accusing the Obama administration of covering up the involvement of a Saudi student who was later declared a victim of the attack . .

Of course. Why not Jones? His Saudi conspiracy/false flag/black ops grifts circulate as the hottest topics among the staunch right. Right up to their government representatives:

A Republican state legislator in New Hampshire is claiming that the United States government is responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing.

State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) posted on conservative talk show host Glenn Beck’s Facebook page Friday that the attack and the subsequent search for suspects was playing out how Beck had suggested. She said the bombings were a plot by the federal government, and included a link to a video from another conservative talk show host Alex Jones, in which Jones also claims the federal government planned the bombing.

And who else was a Jones fan? You know who:

In a bizarre twist befitting a Hollywood conspiracy theory movie, the AP reports today that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was influenced by conspiracy theories, including Alex Jones’ website Infowars, which has been pushing a narrative that the Tsarnaev brothers were patsies set up by a government cabal to take the fall for the bombing.

Tamerlan “took an interest in Infowars,” according to Elmirza Khozhugov, the ex-husband of Tamerlan’s sister.

For Alex’s part, there’s no need to worry. He’s not at all bothered to learn he inspired a mass murderer.

Jones — whose site has peddled conspiracy theories about the Boston Marathon bombing and suggested that Tsarnaev is innocent — conceded that Tsarnaev “may have actually been a listener.”

“He could be a listener,” Jones said. “It could be true. I’ve talked to the family and most of them are listeners. My show is anti-terrorism and my show exposes that most of the events we’ve seen have been provocateured.”

And other conservative parallels? The war on women. Tamerlan was an authoritarian asshole: he beat his former girlfriend. The domestic assault charge may have had something to do with his delayed American citizenship. He also demanded his wife obey his wishes, forcing her to reject Christianity and match his Muslim fundamentalism.

Tamerlan was also a religious bigot.

. . so then I had a discussion with Tamerlan. And he was basically — he was very passionate about what he was talking about, which was that the Bible was a cheap copy of the Koran, and that the American government used the Bible as an excuse to invade other countries.

Conservatives charge that the Koran is an evil text, that it makes terrorists of its readers. The argument is so doddering it needs a VFW commission and a cane.

It comes to some people that screamy red-faced conservatism, the type that we see on a daily basis, has been unfairly pegged as a home for certain folks. The kinds of citizens that might like to blow things up, for other than sport. Some people are angry at the idea and may be angry enough to bomb you. So we cut to Perfesser Freedom, in the war room, with the blog I.E.D. hammer:

. . there was a theory behind the madness, the Eliminationist Narrative created by Dave Neiwart of Crooks and Liars about an “eliminationist” radical right seeking to dehumanize and eliminate political opposition. It was a play on the over-used narrative of Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” in American politics.

Which is to say ‘They were CHECHEN!?‘

Well then. How dare you, libtards. Also whew. And, nyah you missed me.

. . The Eliminationist Narrative was aided and abetted by an abuse of the term “right-wing” to include groups who are the opposite of conservatism and the Tea Party movement. . . And the Eliminationist Narrative would fail time and time again:

James Holmes
Jared Loughner
The Cabby Stabber
The “killer” of Bill Sparkman . .

So you want to play silly games? Hey no problem! Let’s pretend you people aren’t crazy lunatics. I have no idea who these guys are and I don’t know why they didn’t do these things nowhere in proximity to America, over never, the last 12 months.

• J.T. Ready.

A border militia leader on Wednesday shot and killed four people at a Gilbert home, including a toddler, before committing suicide, sources said.

Sources identified the shooter as Jason “J.T.” Ready, a reputed neo-Nazi who made headlines when he launched a militia movement to patrol the Arizona desert to hunt for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

• Wade Michael Page.

On August 5, 2012, Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people and wounded four others in a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after he was shot in the stomach by a responding police officer. . .

Page had ties to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, and was reportedly a member of the Hammerskins. He entered the white power music scene in 2000, becoming involved in several neo-Nazi bands. He founded the band End Apathy in 2005 and played in the band Definite Hate, both considered racist white-power bands by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

• Thomas Caffall.

A county constable was one of three people killed Monday near Texas A&M University when a gun nut opened fire from inside a house he was about to be evicted from.

The 35-year-old gunman, Tres Caffall, died after being shot by SWAT officers during a firefight in College Station that involved as many as 30 shots, witnesses and police said.

Facebook likes:

Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, JOHN WAYNE, S. E. Cupp, I will NOT vote for Obama in 2012., Michele Bachmann, Anything About Guns, Fox News Video, National Rifle Association, BERETTA USA, Americans for Prosperity, Bill O’Reilly, Edmund Burke, Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin for President 2012, Tea Party Patriots, Repeal It Now.

• Terry Smith and Kyle Joekel.

Authorities believe that suspect, Kyle Joekel, 29, may have ties to anti-government groups, in particular a loose organization known as Posse Comitatus that generally doesn’t recognize authority above the level of county sheriff. The name of the group means “power of the county” in Latin, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s website.

Group members refuse to recognize various aspects of federal authority, and some refuse to pay taxes. The group has been associated with citizen militias as well as neo-Nazi organizations.

• The Fort Stewart Four (F.E.A.R.).

A state prosecutor said on Monday that four U.S. soldiers had secret roles in a militia that planned to kill President Obama and take over the Fort Stewart Army base in Georgia, according to a report by the Associated Press.

And:

Prosecutors in rural Long County, near the sprawling Army post Fort Stewart, said the militia group of active and former U.S. military members spent at least $87,000 buying guns and bomb components. They allege the group was serious enough to kill two people — former soldier Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York — by shooting them in the woods last December in order to keep its plans secret.

And just this week . .

• Paul Kevin Curtis. He was arrested for sending poison ricin letters to Sen. Wicker and President Obama.

who thinks Ted Nugent should run for President?

— Kevin Curtis Live (@kevincurtislive) May 5, 2012

we the people did not vote him in (nor did we the 1st term) it takes many years (and personal dedication towards TRUTH/JUSTICE)

— Kevin Curtis Live (@kevincurtislive) November 7, 2012

So those dudes don’t exist. But then there are these guys. Given the many many graves, and acres of flesh-and-blood stained pavement, these gentlemen have been impossible to ignore. Yet you read yer typical patriot-blog, and neither their lives nor their achievements seem to be remotely known. At all. Which is odd, to say ‘boo,’ given their ability to espouse really good awesome politics. A conservatism to-be-died-for:

For many years I thought long and hard on these issues and then in 1996 I decided to act. In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington million s of people came out celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best of all games. Even though the conception and purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism, as perfectly expressed in the song “Imagine” by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1996 games — even though the purpose of the Olympics is to promote these despicable ideals, the purpose of the attack on July 27th was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the word for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.

That is Eric Rudolph. He blew up the Atlanta Olympics, killing two and injuring 111.

Rudolph has also confessed to the bombings of an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on January 16, 1997; the Otherside Lounge of Atlanta lesbian bar on February 21, 1997, injuring five; and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998, killing Birmingham police officer and part-time clinic security guard Robert Sanderson, and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons.

And then there’s this guy:

Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly.

It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being.

I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.

That is Timothy McVeigh, or was. He bombed Oklahoma City, killing 168 and injuring 500. And speaking of cool-beans righteous anger, to get a latent nationalism pulsing through the neck of Dear George Washington . .

Insurrection against the local media

Insurrection against the teachers union and their stranglehold over the next generation

Insurrection against keeping quiet at the dinner table or at your church

Insurrection against the elements that no longer keep quiet about their desire to destroy America, and more important, the limits America was founded to restrict against its government . .

How about that? AARGGH. I would tell you which crayzeefear lawyer-lecture-blogger posted that on his site, vowing to wage war against his political enemies throughout all of 2013. But I don’t want the guy to show up at my door with a bunch of Semtex apologies.

YOU PEOPLE ARE DUMB

. . Nor was there hardly any mention on any station or other press entity of even the possibility that Muslim terror was involved in the huge explosion that occurred in West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up Wednesday, just days after the Boston Marathon bombing.

DUMB

Typically, here is how the New York Times described the explosion:

“The blast was so powerful that the United States Geological Survey registered it as a 2.1 magnitude earthquake. It reduced an apartment complex to a charred skeleton, leveled homes in a five-block radius and burned with such intensity that railroad tracks were fused. . .

“By Thursday evening, one day after a fertilizer plant here caught fire and then exploded, no one among the hundreds of local state and federal officials and first responders who converged on this town north of Waco was certain about the cause. They only knew its effect.”

IT’S NOT A MYSTERY

This intentionally “clueless” rendition of the likely cause of the blast continues to this day, despite the hard fact that fertilizer bombs are commonly used in the Middle East, were employed in the massive Oklahoma City federal building explosion – for which there was evidence that former Iraqi Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein played a role (I brought a lawsuit against Saddam Hussein and Iraq for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing) – and that the blast occurred in West, Texas, the former home of none other than former President George W. Bush . .

THEM AGAIN

And here we find Boston Marathon bomber suspect number two, currently holed up somewhere in Watertown, and soon to die I assume, on MyLife:

That first name is a tell. He’s almost certainly a Chechen. Though it’s possible he’s someone whose parents only greatly admired the breakaway Chechen Republic’s first president, Dzhokhar Dudaev.

After a controversial referendum in October 1991 confirmed Dudaev in his new position as president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, he unilaterally declared the republic’s sovereignty and its independence from Soviet Union. In November 1991, the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin dispatched troops to Grozny, but they were withdrawn when Dudaev’s forces prevented them from leaving the airport. Russia refused to recognize the republic’s independence, but hesitated to use further force against the separatists. From this point the Chechen-Ingush Republic had become a de facto independent state.

Dudaev is seen as a great hero among Eastern European peoples, particularly those in the former Soviet republics and those who are Muslim. He considered himself a David fighting the Goliaths of Communism and Russian imperialism.

Why would Chechens bother with the United States? Why would they want to come here and kill us? One guess. Revenge.

Dudaev was killed on 21 April 1996, by two laser-guided missiles when he was using a satellite phone, after his location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted his phone call. The telephone homing equipment was supplied to Moscow by the USA National Security Agency.

We supplied the imperialists with the means to kill him. That could be motive.

Places named in honor of Dudaev

Turkey – After Dudaev’s death, various locations in Turkey were renamed after him, such as “Şehit Cahar Dudaev Caddesi” (Martyr Dzhokhar Dudaev Street) and Şehit Cahar Dudayev Parki (Martyr Dzhokhar Dudaev Park) in Istanbul/Ataşehir-Örnek, Cahar Dudayev Meydanı (Dzhokhar Dudaev Square) in Ankara and Şehit Cahar Dudaev Parkı (Martyr Dzhokhar Dudaev Park) in Adapazarı, Sakarya. Şehit Cevher Dudaev Parkı – Sivas
Bosnia and Herzegovina – A street of Ulica Generala Džohara Dudajeva in Goražde.
Chechnya – Chechnya’s war-ravaged capital has been called Dzhokhar-Ghala (later Dzhokhar) by Chechens in 1997 during its de facto independence. After the Second Chechen War Djokhar were renamed to Russian called Grozny again. It is notable that Chechens in general refrain from using the name Groznyi (which is Russian for terrible, and considered demeaning), either calling the city Dzhokhar or by its other Chechen name, Sölƶa-Ġala.
Estonia – A large room in the Barclay Hotel in Tartu, once used as Dudaev’s office, is now called the Dudaev Suite. In the Nursipalu urban warfare training polygon of the Estonian Defence Forces, Johhar Dudaev Street crosses with Basayev Street.
Latvia – From 1996, there is Dzhokhar Dudaev Avenue (Džohara Dudajeva gatve) in the Latvian capital Riga (In the light of the upcoming Parliamentary elections in Latvia several initiatives have been undertaken to lobby for the renaming or preserving the name of the avenue by pro-Moscow and anti-Russian political parties respectively).
Lithuania – Dzhokhar Dudaev Square (Dzocharo Dudajevo skveras) in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.[citation needed]
Poland – On 17 March 2005, a roundabout in the Polish capital Warsaw was named Rondo Dżochara Dudajewa.
Ukraine – Also in 1996, a street in Lviv was named after him (вулиця Джохара Дудаєва), later followed by Ivano-Frankivsk.

No point in waiting for the sumbitch to die:

George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal philanthropist dies at XX
By Todd Eastham | WASHINGTON, XXX | Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:41pm EDT

(Reuters) – George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheeling capitalism that made him billions.

So continues the greatest week in the history of journalism.

The FBI has leads on two suspects. Suspect one:

Suspect two:

“Suspect two set down a backpack at the site of the second explosion just in front of the Forum restaurant.”

Plenty of people know these two. WHITE guys, incidentally. So it’s up to you, whoever you are. 1-800-CALL-FBI.

The great Ron Fournier. Karl Rove’s quivering pen pal. Who publicly and proudly transformed the Associated Press from a neutral to a partisan observer (Everybody Likes Fox News!). The man who shoved the Washington bureau into his own McCain pressure-cooker during the ’08 election, blanching the outlet and its reputation.

New Journalism Ron Fournier. No longer with the AP. Now dimming another outlet:

Why Boston Bombings Might Be Scarier Than 9/11
April 16, 2013 | National Journal

Call it “terrorism” if a label helps you make sense of this madness. Find who did it and squash him—or them—with what President Obama called “the full weight of justice.” But in the broad scheme of things, such loose ends matter less than this: Life in America changed with the Boston Marathon bombings—again, and as with past attacks, for the much worse.

What a breezy paragraph. Call it “terrorism”? It is terrorism, so I’ll call it that. If it makes “sense”? The truth makes sense, to me. “Squash him”? He will not be a bug but a killer on the run — who writes like this? And about the “loose ends”: solving the crime, capturing the terrorists, and dispensing American justice, which all prevent future terrorism. Whatever. Good Morning Mr. Featherweight. Tell the Kardashians I love whatever show it is that they do, on the television.

Just when we need it least, we have apparently come across the equivalent of an Op/Ed reality episode. Where a performer features his insubstantial self for the purpose of entertaining you. You weren’t in the mood, I know, but you’re not the only American with wants and wishes. Ron’s got a thing, too. What was that again? “Life in America changed with the Boston Marathon bombings—again, and as with past attacks, for the much worse.”

Oh bullshit you twerp. You think we can’t see what you’re trying to pull? Anyone can play doomsayer after the brutality: WE’LL NEVER BE THE SAME. You could say the same after going to the dentist. Cut it with the Nostradamus masquerade, it’s cheap.

There’s a bottom line: Three people are dead, not 3,000. And Ron Fournier is a coward. Which places him in stark contrast with, oh, everyone else in the country right about now, terrorists excluded.

There’s no reason for you to be aware of any of this. But Thursday is my birthday, so it’s something I’ve unfortunately come to know. It first became apparent about 20 years ago.

The few days every year between April 14th and 21st are the darkest days on the calendar. Evil people, every couple of years, for whatever reasons, do unspeakable things this week. Hundreds and hundreds of Americans have died previously on these few days. It’s like a gauntlet of hell. Tell me, why can’t you murderous lunatics keep it together around my birthday? Why must you continue turn it into a coast-to-coast wake? I’ve only been trying to have a bit of lighthearted fun here. But thanks to you, no doing.

• April 19th, 1993: The Waco siege ends.

50 days after an initial gun battle, FBI agents once again move on David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. A fire results, consuming the building and the cult. 76 people die, including 25 children.

• April 19, 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing.

The Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City is blown up by a large truck bomb assembled by Timothy McVeigh. 168 people die, including 19 children age six or younger. 500 more are injured.

• April 20, 1999: The Columbine High School shootings.

Armed with 9mm weapons, shotguns and improvised bombs, Eric Harris and Dylan Kleebeold attack their classmates at Columbine High in Colorado, shooting 33 and killing 12. As police descend upon them, they committ suicide.

• April 16, 2007: The Virginia Tech massacre.

Armed with a 9mm and 400 rounds of hollow point ammunition, Seung Hui Cho marched from classroom to classroom at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia, shooting 49 students, killing 35 of them. He later committed suicide. It remains the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

• April 15, 2013: The Boston Marathon bombings.

Two bombs explode 12 seconds apart near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Patriot’s Day. Three are killed and 150 more are wounded, including several people who suffer amputations.

I wish I could lie to you about this fact: I lived in dread that something would happen this year. When nothing evil goes down for a couple years, the tension begins to creep up on me. I figured it would be the North Korea/April 15 thing, but it was far worse. And I’m not superstitious in the least, it’s just that the horrors have happened so many times in the past that I expect them to happen again. There’s something at work in the world beyond my ken, and that’s just the way it goes. For my part I’m guessing the crazy gets wound up over Winter, maybe with spiraling cabin fever. The sun comes out and, next thing you know, it’s another bloodstained shot to the gut.

If you expand the event field a bit, unfortunately, there are more:

• April 3, 2009: The Binghamton immigration center shootings.

Jiverly Wong barricades the back door of the American Civic Association of Binghamton, New York. Then he enters the front door and shoots virtually everybody he sees, killing 13 and wounding four, before killing himself.

• April 2, 2012: The Oikos University shootings.

One L. Goh orders nursing students at a Korean Christian college, Oikos University, to line up in front of the class. He shoots 10 of them with his .45 caliber handgun, killing seven.

And then there’s this: April 5th, 1994, Kurt Cobain commits suicide. He pulls his driver’s license from his wallet and stabs it into the dirt of a nearby flowerpot. Then he places the end of a 20 gauge shotgun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

That one stayed with me for months. Why it is that nothing, incidentally, ever seems to happen between April fifth and fifteenth, you tell me. I’m only begging to get through the week without any more headlines. A cupcake and a fresh Coke would be nice also, thanks.

ADD: Sigh. April 17, 2013: West Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion.

• A fertilizer plant situated about 18 miles north of Waco, Texas, suffers a chronic fire that can not be extinguished before the nitrogenous chemicals ignite, sending the facility up like a small atomic bomb. A local television station, KWTX, reports — and I am pulling for New-York-Post quality journalism here — 60 to 70 people die in the explosion.

Ow, my insides hurt. I can’t watch any more coverage of the bombings. I’ve seen too much already. And I don’t ever again want to see videos of the explosions, or hear recordings of them, or see depictions or drawings of them or anything else. I don’t see how people can watch them knowing that people keep dying over and over. It hurts.

I would go into media blackout mode, which would be sensible, but for these, the non-sensible:

The fools. The New York Post in this instance. During times of crisis, conservatives descend to their true nature, which is “AAAUUGH.” Notice that the coverage has actually been updated without correction or bothering to maneuver ’50′ into a relationship with ‘more’ to make it decipherable outside of the Eskimo/Sumatran dialects.

The biggest post on Memeorandum . .

Also the Post, also wrong:

Boston police commissioner Edward Davis denied reports a suspect is being held after the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

“Those reports are not true, there is no suspect in custody,” Davis said at a press conference.

Nonetheless CRISPY ARAB BOMBER UNDER HOSPITAL LOCKDOWN

Investigators have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.

Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.

Fox News reported that the suspect suffered severe burns.

Ever heard of a serial bomber who lingered over one of his creations? Me neither. Ever heard of a shrapnel I.E.D. that scalded people, like napalm? Me neither. The Post isn’t even making sense, except to the senseless. Post number three:

The potential suspect was questioned by the FBI and local police yesterday at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was under heavy guard while being treated for shrapnel injuries to his leg sustained in the blast . .

The sources said that, after the man was grabbed by police, he smelled of gunpowder and declared, “I thought there would be a second bomb.”

He also asked: “Did anyone die?”

He smelled like gunpowder. He wondered if there were more devices, and if anybody got killed. I wonder if any other bomb victims were scared, from the bombing, or smelled like a bomb. The Post are nothing if not predictable. Speaking of Pam Geller:

JIHADI ARRESTED IN HORRIFIC BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING
Posted by Pamela Geller on Monday, April 15, 2013 | Atlas Shrugs

Jihad in America. 2 dead, 80 injured. My deepest condolences to their loved ones. Monstrous.

20 year-old Saudi victim = Monster brings jihad to America. Which might not be true, so my deepest condolences to Pamela. Oh and also fuck you people:

UPDATE: The Boston police are not confirming the New York Post story, and the Twitter hyenas are rushing to blame Robert Spencer and me, as if we originated the idea that a jihadi did this. Spencer has this: “CBS and other sources say that police deny that they have a suspect in custody, but CBS also says that they’re questioning possibly someone linked to the attack. The situation is unclear at this point, but despite the chorus of denials and numerous Leftists and Islamic supremacists crowing on Twitter, the New York Post story about the “Saudi national” has not been changed or taken down. I will keep you posted.”

Unless he really is a victim, which only means there’s another Arab out there somewhere . .

Jesus Christ.

Again?

The Korean crisis has now become a strategic threat to America’s core national interests. The best option is to destroy the North Korean missile on the ground before it is launched. The United States should use a precise airstrike to render the missile and its mobile launcher inoperable.

Again with the trembling. But instead of plotzing over scared-up A-bombs, this time we’re scared of actual words. Maybe, too, a missile, targeted for the ocean. Our national interests being constructed of butterfly tears, it’s time for you to die. Sorry. When you’re a citizen of the planet’s pre-eminent superpower, you can’t expect to live for too long.

President Obama should state clearly and forthrightly that this is an act of self-defense in response to explicit threats from North Korea and clear evidence of a prepared weapon. . . And he should explain that this is a limited defensive strike on a military target — an operation that poses no threat to civilians.

Shorter: They’re a nuclear power with a missile, so let’s attack them. Lord.

Rand Paul addresses the students of Howard University. As brilliant as he is, he confesses he can’t figure out why the GOP has a certain reputation regarding race.

What gets lost is that the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights. Because Republicans believe that the federal government is limited in its function-some have concluded that Republicans are somehow inherently insensitive to minority rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Perhaps Rand is on to something. Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding over philosophy. The drive to limit the scope of government makes it look as if conservatives don’t care, as if they don’t want to extend a hand to the unfortunate. Victims of racism, for example. The perception has made for some bad public relations.

My father was a die-hard conservative actually. Back in the 80′s, when he learned there would be a Martin Luther King day in January, he asked, “Why did they give that n*gger a holiday?” Meaning, “Another federal mandate that will encumber business and squander taxes.” To the untrained ear, rhetorical flourishes like these are easily misconstrued.

Ronald Reagan once made a similar argument. He’d been asked to veto the MLK holiday legislation by limited-state activist and good friend Governor Meldrim Thomson:

Mr. Thomson called Dr. King “a man of immoral character whose frequent association with leading agents of communism is well established.”

Reagan was similarly daunted by the implications for government. Employing a familiar Libertarian argument, he replied:

“I have the same reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on image, not reality.”

That the want to check federalism looked exactly like racism was a tragedy. Reagan apologized to Dr. King’s widow, then he played a round of golf at whites-only Augusta National. Which was misunderstood as well.

Unfortunately, the beat goes on. Only today I read a piece by Larry Elder, the self-proclaimed “Sage of South Central.” In it, he goes to great length to reacquaint the misty minded with Richard Nixon’s civil rights resume:

In the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., records show considerable handwritten notes and correspondence between Nixon and King. This includes a 1957 letter from King acknowledging their previous meetings, which thanked Nixon for his “assiduous labor and dauntless courage in seeking to make the Civil Rights Bill a reality,” and praised him for his “devotion to the highest mandates of the moral law.”

But what’s your race-impression of Nixon? Probably nothing good.

Never mind that in 1956 Nixon revealed he was an honorary member of the NAACP. Or that Nixon pushed for passage of the ’57 civil rights bill in the Senate. Or that Time magazine wrote that Nixon’s support for civil rights incurred the wrath of one of his segregationist opponents, Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga., who sarcastically called Nixon the NAACP’s “most distinguished member.”

Who knew? Not you. And the upshot?

But the GOP-is-racist meme can be heard nightly on MSNB-Hee Haw and in political science and history classes all over the country.

Very sad, oh my. But permit me? Perhaps this tragedy of historic perception arises from something like disbelief. A well-earned unease. A suspicion among African Americans that Republicans are rarely what they pretend to be. Example.

In earlier tapes released by the National Archives, Nixon told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, “Henry, let’s leave the niggers to Bill and we’ll take care of the rest of the world” while working on his first presidential address to Congress. Nixon repeatedly referred to blacks as “niggers” and “jigaboos” in other conversations with Kissinger. Nixon later complained to Erlichman that Great Society programs were a waste “because blacks were genetically inferior to whites.”

The Nixon tapes bore the suspicion out. With Donald Rumsfeld:

“The second point is that coming out — coming back and saying that black Americans aren’t as good as black Africans . . most of them, basically, are just out of the trees. Now, let’s face it, they are.”

That Elder would try to lionize Nixon reaffirms the need for skepticism. That he would do it while the internet is still up and running speaks to stupidity, or disrespect. Perhaps we should say, regarding matters of race, that Republicans would prefer to be philosophically awkward or misunderstood. But they’re worse than that. To be kind.

New York Times.

WASHINGTON — As North Korea hints at new military provocations in the coming days, the United States and South Korea have drawn up plans to respond more forcefully than in the recent past, but in a limited way intended to prevent an escalation to broader war.

Thomas Sowell in the National Review.

Yet there on the front page of the April 8 New York Times was a story about how unnamed “American officials” were planning a “proportional” response to any North Korean attack. This was spelled in an example: If the North Koreans “shell a South Korean island that had military installations” then the South Koreans would retaliate with “a barrage of artillery of similar intensity.”

Well that’s just crazy.

Back before the clever new notion of “proportional” response became the vogue, our response to Pearl Harbor was ultimately Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Japan has not attacked or even threatened anybody since then. Nor has any war broken out anywhere that is at all comparable with World War II.

All the Japanese did was sneak-attack one of our islands. And what did we do? Retaliate with nuclear weapons. Now they’re our friends. The lesson there: ‘Don’t fool around with your enemies when you can crush them.’ Also, now would be a perfect time to start making friends with the North Koreans wink.

Which policy is better? There was a time when we followed the ancient adage “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The track record of massive retaliation easily beats that of the more sophisticated-sounding proportional response.

This is quite odd, I must say. I know virtually nothing of war theory, but I must have heard about “Just War” 25 years ago. There, the “proportional response” idea plays a central role, both in the cause for war and in its proper dispensation (if such a thing is possible). I much later came to know it was something Augustine discussed around 400 A.D. Wikipedia says its roots can be traced back a thousand years before that.

These are fundamentals of Western warring traditions. I can’t imagine any decent West Point education that doesn’t discuss at some length Just War Theory and proportional response. So what’s the point of Sowell’s rant? Is he laughably ignorant? Or is he merely in the mood for an all-out conflagration?

North Korea is a mandatory conscription state. Its government spends between one-quarter and one-third of its budget on the military. Accounting for the home guard, there are something like 9 million North Koreans ready and willing to go to battle on any given day. Would Sowell like to become aware of any of this? Or would he prefer to fight fire with fire, vis a vis the enemy’s well known sophistication?