Remember When Andrew Joseph Stack Flew a Plane Into a Texas IRS Building?

[Viking12]

It makes sense. If someone killed one of my colleagues, I might think of ways to extract justice...

On February 23, 2010, Robert Wright, writing for the Times' Opinionator blog, looked at "The First Tea Party Terrorist?" His column on the Andrew Joseph Stack incident is chilling in retrospect and in light of the IRS's subsequent decision to begin sorting exemption applications for groups with "Tea Party, "Patriot" "9/12" and other conservative buzzwords in their names for referral to a specialist.

On February 18th, Stack had flown a small airplane into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, killing himself and IRS agent Vernon Hunter and injuring 13 on the ground. Stack left behind a six-page rant against the federal government and the IRS. His conclusion: "I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well."

Readers took issue with Wright's description of Stack as a Tea Party type, leading to him to update the column to note: "When I said in this column that you could in principle follow my logic to conclude that Joseph Stack was a Tea Party terrorist, I should have added the explicit reminder that this logic depended on accepting the somewhat squishy definition of 'Tea Party' ideology that, I argue, is appropriate given the still-inchoate nature of the movement." Frank Rich later took issue with Wright (who, full disclosure, blogged for TheAtlantic.com in 2012), arguing that "Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a 'Tea Party terrorist.'" But writers from other media outlets also piled on, according to a roundup published in the National Review Online, connecting Stack and the growing Tea Party and anti-government movement.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/remember-when-andrew-joseph-stack-flew-a-plane-into-a-texas-irs-building/275887/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Yup

It was an interesting day, was at the Cleveland clinic with dad.

Breaking nooz, so fellow people at the waiting room said Arabs of course, within fifteen minutes we knew, and all talk stopped.

I guess going to war in Texas does not have the same Elán

[Anansi1171]

2. Good one, Nadin, good one!-NT