April (gun) Showers

Ah, April.

Time to break out the breezy floral prints, shine up the white Mary Janes, dye some eggs and . . . reinforce the barbed wire on the electrified fence surrounding your split-level Cape Cod.

April is a dangerous month, and not just because of the thunderstorms, floods, and tornadoes. In middle America,it's raining gun-crazed Teabaggers. Call it Spring Fever, but history shows that April is the preferred month for the beer-bellied Bubbas to go all Jesse James and start piling up assault weapons, ammo, MRE's and Bibles in their backyard bunkers while flailing their arms and raving about their misguided message of the day. It may be Obama's assault on the Second Amendment; or the filthy Democratic trick that banned God, The Bible, and His commandments from the courtrooms and classrooms; or the illegal Liberal Socialist confiscatory income tax; or the minorities and/or illegals who are ruining (White) America -- taking our jobs and corrupting our good Christian women;and they're especially unhappy about the Ungodly Homosexuals who are lurking in our military, our schools, our YMCA locker rooms, forcing their full-frontal Gay Agenda assault on the Constitution and random unsuspecting, innocent straight white men everywhere.

So, in these last precious, safe days of March we learn that the FBI raided a nest of religious militants in Michigan over the weekend, you know it's time for the rest of us average American citizens to break out the Kevlar. According to CNN,

"Nine suspected members of a militia group were charged Monday with seditious conspiracy and related charges [including] attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence . . .The five-count indictment unsealed Monday charges that since August 2008, the defendants, acting as a Lenawee County, Michigan, militia group called the Hutaree, conspired to oppose by force the authority of the U.S. government. The Hutaree group proclaims on a Web site it is "preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.'"

Hmmm . . . sounds like the goal of your average Fox "News" fanatic or typical Sarah Palin worshipper who loves her rockin' website with its map of the US with the fancy gun-sight targets on all the states with Democrats up for reelection. (She's so bitchin' hot in her tight leather jacket, shootin' animals and stuff from her helicopter).But where is Glenn Beck and his magic white-board when you need him? I don't speak "Christo-fascist" and need an interpreter. Because of my misunderstanding of these organizations, it never fails to amaze me how they can read the Bible and receive the divine message that their Savior, their Lord Jesus Christ . . . wants them to stockpile automatic weapons and shoot up a church.

I'm sure the FBI gave some consideration to the timing of the raid: do they wait until after the dreaded mid-April danger zone so as not to inadvertently inspire other sleeper cells of knuckle-dragging kooks to arm up and start shooting normal people, or do they strike now and deactivate this group of goons before they fulfill their McVeigh fantasies? For the Feds, it had to be a tough call.

Historically, how scary is April if you haven't yet thrown in with the locked-and-loaded lunatics? The kind folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center have created a handy guide to the most infamous right-wing domestic terror attacks against the United States. Ever notice, it's never the eeeevil libruls who scour Home Depot circulars for sales on fertilizer and empty aluminum tubes and stockpile copies of The Turner Diaries in those clammy apartments they infest in the basements of their parent's homes? But, I digress . . .

We all know the April 19, 1993 siege on Waco has become the High Holy Day for these militia maniacs, Here's just a smattering of other notable April events and arrests in the Dangerous Wing Nut Hall of Fame (the complete list can be found here):

April19,1995 On the anniversary of Waco, anti-government, right-wing militia sympathizer Timothy McVeigh drove an explosive-laden Ryder truck to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The explosion wrecked much of downtown Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, including 19 children in a day-care center. Another 500 were injured.

April 11, 1996
Anti-government activist and self-described "survivalist" Ray Hamblin is charged with illegal possession of explosives after authorities find 460 pounds of the high explosive Tovex, 746 pounds of ANFO blasting agent and 15 homemade hand grenades on his property in Hood River, Ore. Hamblin is sentenced to almost four years in federal prison, and is released in March 2000.

April 12, 1996
Apparently inspired by his reading of a neo-Nazi tract, Larry Wayne Shoemake kills one black man and wounds seven other people, including a reporter, during a racist shooting spree in a black neighborhood in Jackson, Miss., then sets a restaurant on fire and kills himself. A search of his home finds references to "Separation or Annihilation," an essay on race relations by neo-Nazi National Alliance leader William Pierce, along with an arsenal of weapons that includes 17 long guns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, and countless military manuals.

April 26, 1996
Two leaders of the Militia-at-Large of the Republic of Georgia, Robert Edward Starr III and William James McCranie Jr., are charged with manufacturing shrapnel-packed pipe bombs for distribution to militia members.

April 22, 1997
Three Ku Klux Klan members are arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas refinery outside Fort Worth, Texas, after local Klan leader Robert Spence gets cold feet and goes to the FBI. The three, along with a fourth arrested later, were hoping to kill a huge number of people with the blast -- authorities later say as many as 30,000 might have died -- which was to serve, incredibly, as a "diversion" for a simultaneous armored car robbery.

April 23, 1997
Florida police arrest Todd Vanbiber, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance's Tampa unit and the shadowy League of the Silent Soldier, after he accidentally sets off pipe bombs he was building, blasting shrapnel into his own face. He is accused of plotting to use the bombs at Disney World. Disney World!Released in 2002, Vanbiber within two years is posting messages on neo-Nazi Internet sites boasting that he has built over 300 bombs successfully and only made one error, and describing mass murderer Timothy McVeigh as a hero.