it's less of a jump in logic than "it was just some back woods meph cookers", which makes absolutely zero sense

I suppose. I guess I'll wait and see for updates. :)

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad not only targeted a military recruiting center, but a report from DHS says he was also targeting a daycare center, Jewish institutions, a Baptist church, military bases and federal buildings. He seems much more like a religious extremist than anything close to a liberal. If his aim was a broader anti-war statement there's no reason whatsoever to target daycare centers, Jewish institutions, or a Baptist church.

Source

But I appreciate the effort.

Every president gets death threats every day. Threats, protest posters, blog posts.....these aren't on the same planet as actually killing people

Will, does it really matter? what we're really talking about is millions of people trying to draw the one solid line that everyone can agree and say 'this is where it stops'. it's never gonna happen. are there some instances where the perpetrator is an idiot? hell yes. Are there others where the individual just might be totally justified? no doubt in my mind. But that is not a decision that wholly rests in the palms of your hands. It comes down to the individual who contemplates those acts. some of us might think them insane, while others don't. that does not make them any less honorable or reprehensible.

---------- Post added at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:30 PM ----------

not even. the first act of a coward is to denigrate the use of a gun. learn some history before pretending to know something about what drives people and governments.

I believe it does. As a liberal, I'm not in any kind of position to strike at the heart of what I call the ignorant extremist wing of conservatism. I deal with the ignorant extremist wing of liberalism constantly, but they're never the ones going out and murdering people.

You, samcol, aladdin, ace, kirstang, timal, dunedan, etc., etc. are all conservatives, likely active in the conservative community. Remember when I said that what Reverend Wright said wasn't just wrong, it was incredibly stupid? His race baiting was damaging instead of constructive and had no place in intelligent conversation, let alone a massive church. It was bullshit, and I looked past my own ideological alignment to call it what it was. It's time for conservatives to do the same thing. I don't give a flying fuck if someone thinks Jews control the world banks, if President Obama is a communist, nazi, Kenyan Manchurian candidate, if you think the federal government is building concentration camps for overweight, white, middle class people, if Barack Obama is in the Bible as the antichrist, or if you think abortion is genocide. As soon as you start murdering people, you're fucking wrong. Richard Poplawski isn't a brave freedom fighter, he's a cowardly, paranoid murderer. Scott Roeder wasn't saving the lives of fetuses, he's a madman and a villain. James W. von Brunn isn't saving the world from evil super-Jews, he's a racist old fuck that killed innocent people. Don't you see? This isn't your glorious rebellion against the forces of tyranny, these are losers and paranoids with guns going out and killing innocent people.

And yet, here you are insisting that these are somehow connected in drawing the line in the sand to stop a tyrannical government:
...I'm sorry but you're wrong. What they're doing isn't honorable, it's dishonorable.

If you want to fight tyranny, get people to stop watching propaganda and read the Constitution. If you want to fight tyranny, run for public office. If you want to fight tyranny, do it from within the system so that a bunch of innocent people don't have to die. This isn't a movie, it's real life.

See, this is where we part ways. What, aside from self defense, justifies murder? What could possibly justify stringing a 51 year old school teacher up to a tree? Don't go "role of government" on me, and I'm not particularly interested in a legal reading on it either. I'm asking: in your view, morally, what possible motive for THIS murder would be justified?

You forget about groups like the Weather Underground and Black Panthers. They weren't active during the Bush years, but liberal-leaning terrorists

Willravel: The "Glenn Beck" of anti-Glenn Beck sentiment. :D

WTF? They havent been active in years.

You can certainly make a case about homegrown Muslim (al queda wannabees) extremist groups...but it would be a stretch to characterize them as liberal-leaning.

As opposed to the conservative white supremacists groups and libertarian anti-government groups, which in many cases overlap.

These groups pose a much greater threat than any liberal leaning group. And, that is not simply my judgement, it is a growing concern of law enforcement agencies.

Just waiting for someone to say Timothy McVeigh was really a liberal.

What difference does that make? As far as more recent terrorism actions, some of the eco-terrorist groups like ELF qualify.

Yeaaaah, not too many cases of eco-terrorists killing people. Rumor has it they specifically forbid such methods in their charters.

They rely on property damage (arson) to be heard. Such criminal acts may cause death eventually but it is not their intent.

And those damn PETA poopers ruining perfectly good fur coats.

Thats right up there with those white supremacists/neo-nazi/anti-gov types.

If you define the parameters of an argument narrowly enough you can win any argument.

So I guess if you specify that only someone who intentionally killed someone while committing a terrorist act between the hours of 9AM and 5PM from May 1 2009 thru Sept 1 2009 is a terrorist, you can exclude any liberal terrorists.

The reality is that there are both liberal and conservative terrorists, as well as some just plain old terrorists that want to cause a ruckus. All of them should be executed after they are convicted.

you might want to reread my post above. I did not claim to justify this murder, in fact I think I said it was totally unjustified because the man in question was simply a volunteer.

They weren't active during the Regan years. How is a group that hasn't been active for 30 years relevant to the current discussion?

Well, better to be narrow than to paint with a brush the size of a billboard and make generalizations big enough to fill Yankee stadium.

I think intent is the most important thing in this specific threadjack. I do not put someone who burns down an unoccupied townhouse construction site to protest suburban sprawl in the same boat as someone who blows a truckload of ANFO in front of a federal building downtown to Stick It To The Man. To do such would be a great disservice to our justice system. Check your belly for a star, Sneetches. Let's be civilized... its often all we have left in the end.

Willravel's trying to to make the point that terrorist activity is the fault of conservatives. That's obviously not true, and timeframe is irrelevant.

When the media only has two political parties to choose from (Retardicans or Dumbocrats), then there is a fifty-fifty chance of associating a particular crime with "your" party - regardless of whether the crime's motivations were political or not.

I don't know whether this guy was killed as an anti-census act or not. Neither do any of you right now.

People are really stretching to equate property damage, civil disobedience, and general muckfuckery with KILLING SOMEONE in this thread. This is why no one takes you seriously, conservatives, because all logic goes out the window when you are defending your "cause."

You're moving outside the timeframe of the average tfper's lifetime.
I'm really not. The wingnuts on my side just don't seem interested in going out and killing the people they disagree with. The wingnuts on the conservative side, which may or may not include the case of the census worker, seem more than willing to commit murder.

When I expanded to "clean up your house", it was more about the fact that I don't see conservatives often cop to the fact that they often passively defend or entirely dismiss cases of conservative terrorism. "Oh, he's just one madman" doesn't deal with the issue that the madman was spurred on by the environment of ignorance, hatred, and anti-government sentiment as virtues, as if they're somehow moral. That can't be allowed to continue. It was more of a side conversation, though.

Yeah, nevermind history. Of all the relevant current political issues to address, you pick this non-issue to kvetch about. That is unfortunate. The Conservative Chupacabra seems alive and well in your imagination, breeding out its minions to terrorize the land in a wave of Conservative Madness and Violence. But really, by projecting your fear and loathing (which I believe is a secondary projection originating in unresolved matters paternal) soley onto the conservative set - when any clear thinking person can see that both sides do crazy things on occasion - you exhibit a zealotry and paranoia that I find disquieting.

Will may be an alarmist, but there's no denying the fact that the GOP handlers have whipped their flock into a foaming at the mouth frenzy, and the nut cases are feeling getting more bold all the time.

And "unresolved paternal matters"? Really? You expect to be taken seriously with that crap?

I dont think you attribute the FBI concern as expressed in a report last year on partisan politics or liberal paranoia.

White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11 (pdf)

A report researched and submitted via the SPLC. totally unbiased, right? :rolleyes:

and it's not the GOP faithful people need to be 'worried' about.

If this were a potential case of Islamic terrorism, I doubt you'd call it a non-issue.

I'm not saying this is definitely a case of conservative terrorism, but no intellectually honest, objective party could possibly dismiss that possibility based on current information. I'm not surprised that a few of the conservatives here are uncomfortable with the prospect, but that doesn't make it any less likely.

No....I think you are confusing this 08 FBI report (look at the footnotes, please) with the more recent DHS report that got the wingnuts in a tizzy and which relied on multiple sources, including the FBI, and not just the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Know what, I think I misread your post that I quoted. You were talking about terrorism in the abstract, not about this particular murder.

You're right I wouldn't because one is a relevant issue and the other isn't. What you're trying to do is equate the two and its bullshit (or boredom). Nobody at the United Nations or the G20 is talking about some lone crazy maniac cutting "K-FED" into a census worker in the American South. The media isn't reporting on an escalation of crazy maniacs in the south suddenly carving up governmental workers at the moment now are they. The obsession over this incident is representative of nothing more than delusional paranoia. You wingers have the House, the Senate and the Presidency and it's still not enough! And what is ratbastid doing back in politics after his grandiloquently self-imposed exile!

You're unwillingness to call militant extremism militant extremism is silly and represents a double-standard. I'll tell you what, when your doctor is shot in the face in public because he performs legal procedures, when a museum you frequent is shot up because it doesn't treat the Jewish people as evil, or when a cop friend of yours is gunned down because some lunatic thinks the police state is out to get him, you let me know how it's different from someone getting blown up on a market in Jerusalem or being in a building hit by a plane.

you are correct. my bad.

Will you are missing out on the key fact that liberal terrorist means any democrat in congress and conservative terrorist means the Easter bunny (that is they don't exist). At least that's what i've learned from the last 5 years of fox news.

I thought they called conservative terrorists "patriots"

I don't have a problem calling anything what it is. You conflated the Glenn Beck non-issue maniacally out of proportion and you're doing the same here with another isolated non-issue. This was one freakin incident! If a bear shits in the woods, is that a form of eco-terrorism against the insects and microbacteria crushed underneath? If a drunk slips and falls into a river and tumbles over a waterfall to his death is that corporate-distillery terrorism? If a cop tazes me for causing a public disturbance and I die of a heart attack, is that state terrorism? You call this an incident of "conservative terrorism"...now why is that? Why that exact phrase? Why not "lone crazed psychotic terrorism", or "southern inbred meth-head terrorism"? People here have given you multiple examples of criminal behavior carried out by avowed leftists but you either ignore it or patronize them into apathy (or at least a lack of further discussion). I thought it was the left who chuckled under their breath at the very idea of terrorism. Now all of the sudden Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, David Axelrod and the rest of the Dems currently in power are using the term terrorist and the leftwingers are suddenly embracing the concept of terrorism. Go figure!

9/11 was one incident.

It's conservative terrorism when the intent of the terrorist is directly based on modern conservative/neoconservative/libertarian conservative ideologies. If, in this case, the murder of the census worker was in fact spurred by Michelle Bachmann's anti-census idiocy (and I'm fine saying that's a big if), then this is another case. That'd be 6 cases of conservative terrorism involving murder since April, and yet you insist that they're not only entirely isolated (without demonstrating why, of course), but they're not even remotely related to political ideology.

On what planet do you live?

oh boy

The killer lives on Planet Tractor.

Just to reiterate... nothing was carved in the guys chest... it was s felt-tip pen...
can we atleast agree on that point since it's in the official coromer's report.

Now how did we get off track talking about all this left-wing extremism like neo-nazis and the black panthers? Oh wait... because one racist seperatist militant group is black and the other white, we get to say one is right-wing and the other is left-wing. Except for skin color I see no difference. So which is it? A bunch of right-wing nuts like the Panthers? Or a bunch of left-wing nuts like the neo-nazis? The most evil people in the world were progressive leftists... Mao, Stalin, Hitler...
just roll on down the list of evil bastards ... leftist progressives... yep... evil.

Otto... Hitler was not of the left. He was decidedly of the right.

If you are looking for examples of conservative oppression just look to South and Central America and the myriad juntas and dictators that have left their marks on that collection of nations (need I say that most were supported covertly and/or openly by US interests).

Yes. You can point to Stalin and Lenin but I can just as easily point elsewhere for other flavours of despotism. It's a rube's game. Why bother? The fact is, that no US government, not this one or any one prior to this one, has come close to being despotic, dictatorial or totalitarian.

To suggest otherwise is to display a level of ignorance that is shocking and embarrassing.

Hitler was a leftist? Gez man crack a book.

Actually, Hitler tried a few things on the left (hell, he even tried runeology), which is where the confusion lies. It's only when you look at what he carried out that you realize he was indeed on the far-right.

Think of it this way: he likely used left orientation to lure people into his trap. But we all should know what he was ultimately: a far-right extremist. He was simply resourceful and willing to try anything to gain power.

You guys are thinking about this too much. Hitler was a socialist, a national socialist. All socialists are lefties. And he was a facist, like Obama, who was a fascist, like Hitler. Fact. Science. QED.

Luring people with socialist propaganda isn't the same thing as being a socialist.

SA/Roehm faction: Socialists, leftists, VERY gay, and highly agitated at the rightwards swing of the;
SS/Hitler: Fascists, semi-rightist, VERY anti-gay and, after the Blood Purge, the dominant power within the Nazi party.

The Nazi Party began its' life as an explicitly leftist organization under the leadership of Earnst Roehm, whose followers were beginning to split with the Hitlerite faction over the orientation of National Socialism. Hitler and Himmler decisively put a stop to that sort of dissent, mostly by executing or assassinating almost the entire SA during what we now call the Night of Long Knives, or in Germany the Blood Purge. This established the Nazi party as firmly in the Fascist camp and led, among other things, to more formalized alignment with the Fascists of Italy, who had -always- been rightists, and who had previously been put off the Nazis by the leftist and openly homosexual mores of the Sturmabteilung and their leadership.

And being socialist in name while for the most part settling on various aspects of the right isn't the same as being socialist either.

the s.a. were hardly a left political organization. that, like so many other conservative-specific left=right "arguments" is empirically false.
national socialism has nothing to do with democratic socialism. never had. never has. never will. unless you make shit up. which is fine if you're writing fiction.

it is obvious that bill sparks is being taken as a canary in the mineshaft. ambient neo-fascist style populist conservative mobilization around "issues" on the order of the census. a census worker ends up lynched with FED carved into his chest. the linkage at the media-event level is obvious.
it's not surprising that conservatives would want to swat this away. it's a Problem for them. it's the sort of association that marks the neo-fascist style agitation for what it is. what's funny is the lengths to which conservatives will go in order to swat it away. funny, even.

at the same time, the fact is that we collectively still don't know what happened exactly.
but that doesn't make the symbolic linkages any more or less pertinent.

Reichminister Albert Speer, who was actually there, disagrees at great length and in some detail. I refer you to "Inside the Third Reich."

i've read it, dunedan.
remember the source, hmm?

maybe make another thread if you want to debate this question?

I wanna see the history books Otto has been reading.

I'll give the right this much--their brainwashing may be more effective than any other mass misinformation campaign in history.

Gee... I'd hate be misinformed. Please enlighten me regarding history and brainwashing. Specifics, if you don't mind. I consider mysef reasonable and open-minded.

So, ok, Hitler is debateable. What about Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao?

Best I can tell, neither of them killed the census worker either.

hahaha

take a bow :thumbsup:

Im sorry, but there is no debate about hitler being extreme right wing. Of course, if you don't believe me go to your nearest neo-nazi rally and ask them what they consider themselves.

As far as Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao, if you reduce the whole gamut of political positions to a flat left-right line, sure they are on the left. But it would be a huge stretch to try to associate them with any relevant leftwing political party in the west in the last 20 years. Most, if not all, modern left parties are founded on the ideas of the sort of people that Stalin himself persecuted. Kautsky, Polanyi, Trostky, Otto Bauer, Anthony Giddens and Keynes, who are, to a greater or lesser degree the intellectual founding fathers of most current left parties, were also among the first to combat stalin, hitler, support the Hungarian uprising, and so on.

If will's idea of what happened is real, the link between this murder and positions defended by actual members of the republican party is direct and unequivocal. Stalin in this discussion is a red herring.

Good one, but I dunno...if we follow the logic here, this event was directly caused by The Republican Party. Or Hitler himself, if we extrapolate.

I don't get it.

but were they on the grassy knoll?

roachboy has a very interesting point.

a) we still don't know what happened
b) the imagery of the event suggests a connection to the shit being stirred up by certain factions in the Republican Party or the tea bag types.
c) there is a mad scramble by conservatives to distance themselves from this connection.

I won't make a judgment and say the connection is concrete but the imagery is what it is regardless of who or why this murder was perpetrated. As it stands, the imagery is an extension of the more bombastic language used by some of the more extreme tea-baggers, birthers and media critics. It doesn't look good.


On another note, what part of "rube's game" didn't you get? There is no point in bringing up which side of the political spectrum has the greatest number of dictatorial leaders. There is no winner and there is no point. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the political situation we are currently facing. Move on or start another thread.

Something along the lines of Chimpton R. McBushitler. I was just having a sarcastic moment.

We could all be completely wrong. It needs emphasis here, I think.

---------- Post added at 02:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:46 PM ----------


Don't you know that a Liberal is anyone a conservative doesn't like? Same with Communist, Socialist, etc. Really dude, get your facts straight... Ideology be damned

The truth doesn't fit the storyline you have invested in, but here it is:
Investigators: Kentucky Census Worker Killed Himself

see, I told you it wasn't me.

The saddest outcome is the disappointment felt here by the lynch-mob hoping some hick-teabagger killed the poor guy. These are dangerous times my friends.

Disappointment? You think I wanted the most obvious answer to be that some hateful madmen murdered an innocent man? It was and remains the most likely explanation for what happened, even if it's not what happened. While I make no apologies for following the evidence, I will say that my only real response to this is sadness for his family and concern over what apparently actually happened.

I think there were alot of people out there, not just on this board, that looked forward to being able to bring as much heat as possible on Beck, Bachman, and anyone else that used alot of inflammatory rhetoric towards the Dems and Obama.

Will, I believe you are truly sorry for the man and his family. But I can't help sensing that some here are more upset that it was a suicide rather than a politically motivated hate-crime. Some of the conspiracy rhetoric in this thread is highly disturbing.

I hope we can all continue to ignore how idiotic and desperate it is to attempt to start an argument about the horrible things that folks who aren't even present may or may not think.

yes, let's all do that.

I'm actually very relieved it wasn't a redneck murder. It could be that the righty-idealogue broadcasters don't have their fangs in too deep yet. Obviously it compounds the tragedy for the man's family and friends, though.

I'm curious why he would have done this. I guess trying to ascribe logical motives to someone committing suicide may be a fool's game, but why stage it to look politically motivated? What do you think he was trying to make happen? Did we all get suckered into his game?

Also.... one SURE way have a death get proven to be suicide is to have two insurance companies scrambling to keep from having to pay out. They did the work the cops couldn't, it seems. :rolleyes:

I can't stand Beck and Bachmann, they're terrible human beings and in their quests for power they fan the flames of hate in such a brazen way that I'm surprised they've not yet been found guilty of inciting violence. My opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with who they attack, though, and I'm not alone in that. I feel that I can speak on behalf of most if not all other progressive members here on TFP in that they and I would be equally frustrated with Beck and Bachmann regardless of who they were attacking with lies and hatred. It's the attacks, the lies, the race-baiting, the ignorance, and the downright disloyalty we take issue with.

Edit: I feel it needs to be said, before anyone goes jumping to conclusions, the evidence that this is suicide is that the letters were not written in the way that a majority of people write them ("bottom up") and there don't seem to be any concrete signs of a struggle. While this is clearly more than any insurance company would want to deny life insurance, the fact of the matter is that it's hardly conclusive, in fact it demonstrates really shoddy logic. If the man were on his back when the letters were written and someone was standing or sitting over him on the head side, that could very easily explain why the letters were written from the bottom up, and without that piece of evidence, the "no evidence of a struggle" thing is meaningless.

As I said before:
The evidence, when reviewed objectively (something insurance companies are incapable of), all seems to point in the direction of some crazy asshole or assholes doing this, even though I wish it weren't the case. So maybe there shouldn't be feathers in caps about this just yet. Or at all, because a man fucking died.

We eagerly await mea culpas from those who blamed the suicide of Bill Sparkman on Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Robert Taft, and Father Coughlin. A few blogs to watch in the coming days:

MyDD

"No Suicide: That's the one thing we know for certain now in the case of the Kentucky lynching….But the most worrying possibility - that this is Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts - remains real. We'll see.”

Andrew Sullivan

The gruesome lynching of this Census worker seems to bear a disturbing similarity to some of the worst hate crimes committed across this country. Regardless of what the motive for the killing may have been, why would a murderer(s) take such pains to so blatantly convey anger, fear, and vitriol towards a Census employee? Perhaps because some on the right have created an impression that Census employees are terrifying.

Earlier this summer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) waged a high-profile, wildly-dishonest campaign against the Census.

ThinkProgress

Others, namely the type to kill a Census worker and string up his body as message to the government, may call it a retraining camp run by the "Feds."

This is the kind of violent event that emerges from a culture of paranoia and unsubstantiated attacks.

Huffington Post

From this profile of the cancer survivor and volunteer, it appears suicide is unlikely. We'll find out. But at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence. That's what Pelosi was worried about.

Andrew Sullivan

Send the body to Glenn Beck…Is it possible that the time has come for the FCC to consider exactly what constitutes screaming fire over the publicly owned airwaves? And what if Mr. Sparkman’s murderer(s) is never found? How many other lunatics will be emboldened to make their own anti-government statement as the voices of Beck, Limbaugh and Dobbs echo in their ears?

Nobody ever intended our public airwaves to be turned over to irresponsible voices. Maybe the time has come for the FCC to worry a bit less about wardrobe malfunctions and a whole lot more about those who would use our airwaves to make a name for themselves at the expense of the public they are suppose to serve–particularly when the expense comes in the form of blood.

True/Slant

Back in September, The Washington Post reported that in Kentucky "Residents of impoverished Clay County say most people harbor no resentment for agents of the federal government, and they're baffled by Sparkman's apparent killing." What a bunch of hillbilly rubes! A week after the suicide, from his apartment in Washington, DC, Atlantic blogger and forensic investigator Andrew Sullivan had the case almost cracked, writing that "Suicide does not seem to me plausible, but motives for the murder are still under investigation."

But, how did he die? If his feet were on the ground he didnt hang himself.

how interesting that the cosnervative set is reduced to trying to find some kind of vindication for their politics in this particularly sad affair. i remember saying myself in this thread that the fact was at the time that no-one knows exactly what happened.
i am still not sure that we collectively know what happened--we know what was decided.

fact is that for a while the american neo-fascist right was creating a political environment in the context of which such actions appeared logical.

if anyone should apologize for anything, it's the conservative media apparatus for creating such a context.
but i don't see them tripping all over themselves to do that.

strange how this all works isn't it?

Only there's basically no real evidence of a suicide, and Glenn Beck are Michelle Bachmann are monsters that fuel hatred and ignorance. You'll get no false confessions from the news sources you found, because they were acting on the best information available instead of jumping to defend that while still appears likely.

Conversely, I expect no mea culpa from Beck or Bachmann, or any of the conservatives here that valiantly defended their ideological biases from reality. It would be contrary to the nature of a conservative to feel remorse, because for them nothing ever changes.

Do not fret, Will. There is still hope that Beck and Bachmann will be named in his suicide note as having shamed him into suicide.

Speculation about motivation is nothing more than avoidance of the issue. I suspect some on the left are motivated by self-hatred, envy, and inmaturity, but saying so is not provable and doesn't advance my argument.
For those of you that realize you are prone to ad hominem argument and you would like to replace it with a productive manner of debate, I highly recommend C.S. Lewis' The Abolution of Man.

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Will wrote, "It would be contrary to the nature of a conservative to feel remorse . . ." Way to stick to the subject, Will. Way to make TFP a friendly place for debate. You should be proud. No ad hominem attacks here. Never.

What about the red herring of posting about news organizations that responsibly reported the news instead of discussing the subject at hand? Does C.S. Lewis have a parable for that?
I was responding in kind, and you know it. The veiled "I'm waiting for mea culpas" premature declaration of victory was fallacious and dishonest. The facts are here before us and don't fit with the life insurance investigation's findings as well as you and the Fox News article you linked would have us believe.

This discussion is not over. Evidence still suggests that murder was a possibility.

Will, your post is just another personal attack. Not only is it "beyond my nature to feel remorse," now you proclaim me "dishonest." You are quickly losing ground, friend. At long last, have you no shame?

What we're being lead to believe is that census worker Bill Sparkman hung a noose around his neck, opened his shirt and wrote "FED" on himself, duct taped himself to a tree, and allowed himself to hang to death, all this despite the fact that he had no motive to commit such a bizarre suicide and the area is known for drug trade and violent crime.

His family will not get his life insurance and will not be getting gratuity payments from the government.

This is the evidence I have for believing it was a suicide: State police, the FBI, the medical examiner's office and the Clay County coroner agreed with the suicide conclusion. Perhaps more importantly, the prior Saturday, Sparkman had told a friend of his plan to hang himself near a cemetery in Clay County.

Posted on Wed, Nov. 25, 2009
Lexington Herald-Leader
Police: Census worker made death look like homicide to get money
By Bill Estep

FRANKFORT — A part-time U.S. Census worker found dead near a secluded Clay County cemetery killed himself but tried to make the death look like a murder, authorities have concluded.

Bill Sparkman, 51, of London, apparently was trying to preserve payments under life insurance policies he had taken out, one as recently as May, which paid benefits if he died as a result of murder or accident, but not suicide or natural causes, police said.

Sparkman had survived a bout with cancer a few years ago, but he told a friend he believed the cancer had returned and that he would die, police said.

However, there was no indication Sparkman's cancer had recurred, said Cristin Rolf, deputy state medical examiner.

In a two-month investigation, police marshaled a number of reasons to conclude Sparkman ended his own life. Among other things, only Sparkman's DNA was found on evidence at the scene, and he had told a friend details of his plan that matched what happened, police said at a news conference Tuesday.

Police interviewed potential homicide suspects but ruled them out and found no evidence pointing to any conclusion except that Sparkman killed himself.

"We do believe that we have everything we need to rule out homicide and accidental" death, said state police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski, who helped direct the investigation.

The benefits under Sparkman's two insurance policies totaled $600,000. Police declined to say who would have gotten the money, though Sparkman's son Josh, 20, has said he was a beneficiary.

Bill Sparkman was last seen on Sept. 9, a Wednesday. The prior Saturday, he had told a friend, whom police did not name, of his plan to hang himself near a cemetery in Clay County.

The friend said he didn't think Sparkman was serious and so didn't tell anyone about the conversation before Sparkman died, said state police Detective Donald Wilson, the lead investigator.

Sparkman's body was found Sept. 12 in a clearing near a family cemetery. People visiting the hillside cemetery saw the body.

Sparkman was wearing only socks, and there was a rope around his neck tied to a tree. The word "fed" was written on his chest with black marker in letters 12 to 14 inches high, and his census identification card was taped to his head.

Sparkman died at that spot as a result of asphyxiation. Police say he staged the details to try to make it appear he was murdered because he was a federal employee.

He succeeded in some quarters.

In addition to causing a firestorm of media coverage, the bizarre details led to widespread speculation on the Internet, including that someone angry at the federal government attacked Sparkman as he gathered census information door to door.

There has been a long-running federal public-corruption investigation in Clay County, and Sparkman mentioned that to his friend, said FBI spokesman David Beyer.

Many people felt the speculation and coverage of the death played on Appalachian stereotypes and gave Clay County an undeserved black eye.

"Everybody was saying, 'It's bad, but why are they saying this without letting the investigation go forward?' " said state Sen. Robert Stivers, a Republican who lives in the county.

Many in the media owe the county an apology, Stivers said.

The census suspended some work in Clay County after Sparkman's death. The agency has been notified of the findings in Sparkman's death and plans to resume normal operations, Beyer said.

If there had been no writing on his chest and his identification hadn't been taped to him, police could have concluded more quickly that Sparkman's death was a suicide, Rudzinski told the Herald-Leader.

Instead, it took considerably more investigation to rule out homicide. Investigators even analyzed the writing on Sparkman's chest to see how the letters were applied and determine whether he wrote on himself or someone else wrote on him.

Forensic tests showed that the letters were applied from the bottom to the top — not the way an assailant facing Sparkman would write them. Police concluded that Sparkman wrote on himself, Rudzinski said.

Authorities cited a number of reasons supporting the conclusion that Sparkman killed himself.

For instance, there was no evidence that Sparkman had struggled with anyone. There were no defensive wounds on his body and no trauma such as a blow to the head, authorities said.

Tests ruled out any theory that he was drugged and unconscious when he was tied to the tree, making the lack of signs of a struggle more significant.

Sparkman's glasses were taped to his head with duct tape. The question that raises is why a killer would care whether Sparkman, who had poor vision, could see what was going on.

Police say Sparkman taped the glasses to his head to make sure he could see as he prepared to kill himself, Rudzinski said.

Also, Sparkman was not dangling from the tree the way people commonly perceive hanging.

His legs were bent at the knees and his knees were less than six inches off the ground, authorities said.

The rope was thrown over a limb and tied off to another tree. Sparkman leaned forward, which would have put the weight of his body on his neck and caused him to lose consciousness, authorities said.

At some point, however, Sparkman could have stood up, taken the pressure off his neck and not died, said Mike Wilder, head of the state medical examiner's office.

Sparkman's hands were bound by duct tape, but loosely, allowing him to move them shoulder-width apart, Rolf said.

The significance of that is that Sparkman, acting alone, could have created all the conditions found at the scene, Rudzinski said.

"We do not believe he was placed in that position" by someone else, Rudzinski said.

The final piece of evidence police wanted in order to reach a conclusion in the case were the results of DNA testing. The results, received last week, showed there was no DNA other than Sparkman's on the rope, the rag in his mouth or a similar rag found near his body.

Authorities say they don't think there was any single event that triggered Sparkman to take his own life, but rather a combination of problems. He had significant debt and didn't have a full-time job, Rudzinski said.

In addition to the insurance considerations, Sparkman might have been trying to spare his family from thinking he killed himself, Rudzinski said, though he left no note so there is no way to know exactly what he was thinking.

"Every suicide is that person's way of saying good-bye, ending their life," Rudzinski said.

Josh Sparkman, whom Sparkman, a single father, adopted and raised, declined to comment Tuesday. He earlier had said he didn't think his father killed himself.

Investigators said they were confident in their findings. State police, the FBI, the medical examiner's office and the Clay County coroner agreed with the suicide conclusion.

"We did a thorough and complete investigation of all aspects surrounding Mr. Sparkman's death," Rudzinski said.

Police: Census worker made death look like homicide to get money - Latest News - Kentucky.com

Anyone who blamed Sparkman's death on conservatives should man up and apologize.

Will, i'm a bit mystified about your stance....well, maybe several peoples stance on this. Numerous times I will raise questions about 'official' explanations for things that just are not right and i'm readily dismissed as a cop hater, yet why is this case now different for you?

I don't really see the point in apologizing for doing something entirely justified. The thread revolves around two main things, the death of Bill Sparkman and how it may or may not relate to the recent politically motivated killings committed by those that are of the modern conservative movement (Fox News et all). The only new part of this worth any bit of consideration is this mysterious confession from an anonymous "friend". FTA:
This is almost no information. Did this friend tell the police early on and they decided to sit on it, or did it take well over two months for this friend to put two and two together? Was this a very short conversation or did Bill Sparkman detail how he was going to set up anti-government folks? Did Bill Sparkman have a history of being anti-anti-government? Did he have a problem with Michelle Bachmann?

Means, motive, opportunity. Did he have the means? Kinda, though if this was a suicide it was one of the more elaborate ones to ever take place. Opportunity? Sure, Bill Sparks had opportunity to kill himself. But what's the motive? How does some vagueity about cancer lead someone to write "FED" on your chest in some elaborate plot to frame anti-government people?

This still doesn't add up, and demanding apologies isn't going to get us anywhere but a closed thread and I don't want this thread closed yet.

And for the record, law enforcement agreeing on something is not evidence of something.
The police make mistakes. Unless they have evidence they're still withholding for whatever reason, this recent development appears to be a case of jumping the gun (ironically, the same thing I did in the OP when I misinterpreted "scrawled" for "carved", certainly mea culpa for that).

I'd never, ever shoot at the police. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind until the insurrectionist threads on TFP. If they ever did cross the line with me, which doesn't seem likely because I'm a white guy, I hope I'd survive to press charges and get bad cops put behind bars, but we have vastly different philosophies regarding personal defense despite our agreement that there are crooked cops out there and they need to be taken off the streets. In this case, though, I suspect if there is any intentional fudging it's more political than anything else. The real problem is that if this was a murder, as it seems, there are murderers out there free to kill again.

A very, very elaborate suicide.

If there are indeed monsters fueling hatred and ignorance, perhaps those who promote the irresponsible fantasy of some "Great Tea-bagger Menace" should take a hard look in the mirror. How are your voices are any less dangerous? "Light them torches and throw a rope over a tree branch… we gonna hang us some tea-baggers tonight!"


The purpose of the OP was blatantly divisive. The author assumed he must insert his propaanda in an undeveloped breaking story. How could he pass up the opportunity to exploit a mysterious death of an innocent civil servant set in the back-woods of Kentucky? ... Yellow journalism is alive and well.


After all, the letters F E D were carved in the poor man's chest... CARVED I TELL YOU! (oh sorry, it was from a felt-tip pen). And don't most of those gun-lovin religious nuts who wield their tea-bags all willy-nilly, running amok and possibly potentially maybe might-be some-day killing future probable persons by the thousands… wait !... could be MILLIONS!… don't THEY come from places like Kentucky? Of course they do! It makes perfect sense... just like creating and saving jobs. It all makes perfect sense.


And BTW – what does Beck and Bachmann have to do with any of this? Exactly which deaths are they responsible for? Produce the evidence. It's simply not there. I’d rather hear you explain why your inflammatory speech is less threatening than those you wish to silence. From the tone of this discussion, I’d say more.


Perhaps if this was the 1940's, and I was a Japanese-American citizen, and ... Golly, I need to stop my whining! The suspension of their collective rights as United States citizens was justified because they looked like real Japanese and (at least) a historically substantiated event demonstrated that lots of genuine Japanese really did kill several non-imaginary Americans at the actual un-fake place called Pearl Harbor.

Only that's not what happened. If this is a case of suicide, which is a possibility, it's a very elaborate ruse indeed. His timing coinciding quite well with Bachmann's well publicized attack on the census and the recent conservative-related killings, not to mention the fact that it's becoming common practice on Fox News to basically trying to incite violence. My assumptions did not happen in a vacuum like, say, supposing "Obamacare" would lead to Nazism. Let's not pretend that my hypothesis was somehow baseless.

What surprised me was the unwillingness to admit that it was even a possibility, though. I wasn't asking for certainty, not even I had that, but an admittance that it was possible this was some very sick individuals that were motivated in some way by hate-filled rhetoric.
The "yellow-journalism" started in Bill Sparkman's chest and you know it. If this is just an elaborate red herring, it was not started by the likes of me or Andrew Sullivan, it was hatched in the mind of Mr. Sparks. If that was the case, and I still can't imagine how anyone can be certain at this point, then I'll admit I was fooled, but for good reason.
Yes, I was wrong about that. Fortunately, I've repeatedly pointed out that I was wrong about.
The problem with your sarcastic conclusions are that the facts did point in a specific direction. And no one ever said anything about religion, that has nothing to do with this.
source

Representative Bachmann went on to the most popular conservative television show to an audience that for the most part listens to her opinions and suggested that census workers are trying to put people in concentration camps. These ideas were repeated by Bachmann supporters. Less than three months later, a census worker was found hanged with "FED" written on his chest. It was never conclusive, but it wasn't just compelling but it fit with the pattern of recent killings of an abortion doctor, members of a highly progressive church, the shoot-up of a holocaust museum, and that kid that shot at the police because he was convinced that the president was trying to take his guns. All of these people had one thing in common: they were avid Fox News watchers that ended up committing lethal crimes based on their conservative belief systems.

I never suggested it was an air-tight case, but the fact that the Becks and Bachmanns have been stirring up this idea of revolution by pushing absolute bullshit nightmare scenarios on their supporters very well could motivate something like this, to give direction to someone's sickness.
Do you really think Dr. Tiller would be dead without the hate speech from people like Limbaugh, ORly, Beck, and Hannity? It's about inciting, baiting, and pointing the crazies in just the wrong direction.
Bachmann told a lie wrapped up in hyperbole and fear mongering about how the census would lead people to be interned like the Japanese were during WWII. That kind of trash appears every day on Fox News.

I apologize for believing the media when they described it as a murder. You're entirely right, I should have known better.

"......and Glenn Beck are Michelle Bachmann are monsters that fuel hatred and ignorance" Agreed, this thread is proof of that, but i don't think that's what you meant. Go back and read the first two pages for some proof.

I think my favorite part is the suggestion that conservative media apparatus should apologize for the left desperatly trying to use a what was believed to be a single murder in the backwoods to legally implicate fox news "faux news" in case you've forgotten what fox is), and specifically named individuals.


"Yes, the LEFT are the chief practitioners of unfounded accusations, fear-mongering, and populist witch hunts. Certainly not the right."

With the wisdon of FuglyStick, there's no better place for this thread to be closed, before the tilted left makes themselves look any more ridiculous. Cheers!

..

...or at least Tilted Paranoia. Will, bless your heart...Just admit you jumped to incorrect conclusions based on your own biases and stereotypes. Clinging to this ridiculous position is just silly.

My favorite would be the discussion on California's Prop 8 and the suggestion that consensual relationships between two gay adults would lead to pedophilia and bestiality, with nothing to prevent children and animals from giving consent.

Now that was hilarious....hmmmmm...who said that?

But I agree...anyone of any political persuasion making assumptions based on a "gotcha" mentality, as was the case with this hanging, often end up eating their own words.

Got here late; right when the backpedaling started. Are Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck in jail yet?

Ah Marv, you're like Ustwo without the wit.