Avowed white supremacist Matthew Hale was sentenced to 40 years in prison Wednesday for trying to have a federal judge killed - the same judge whose husband and mother were murdered five weeks ago by a deranged man with no connection to Hale. Hale, the 33-year-old leader of a group that preaches racial holy war, was sentenced after a rambling, two-hour speech in which he claimed he was the victim and even recited part of "The Star Spangled Banner." He showed no emotion and sat staring at the defense table as the sentence was handed down. Prosecutors argued for the maximum sentence, saying Hale's crime amounted to an act of terrorism, and the judge agreed. "Mr. Hale is not concerned about taking someone's life, but rather how to do it without getting caught," U.S. District Judge James Moody said in imposing the sentence. "I consider Mr. Hale to be extremely dangerous and the offense for which he was convicted to be extremely egregious." Hale was convicted in April 2004 of soliciting an undercover FBI informant to murder U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Chicago in retaliation for her ruling against him in a trademark dispute. In his rambling, arm-waving speech to the court, Hale brought up the murders, despite Moody's efforts to stop him. He compared the FBI to the Gestapo, claimed the news media smeared him, said he had been poorly represented by his former lawyer and ended by reciting the last lines of the national anthem. [more]
Ignoring Real Terrorists- Sweating Black & Brown People
After Sept. 11, 2001, federal authorities shifted their focus from domestic terrorism to foreign terrorist groups, allowing potential homegrown terrorists to slip through the cracks."The bulk of federal law enforcement attention certainly turned overseas," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "There certainly has been a tendency in the last few years to pay less attention than probably is needed." * Consider the case of William Krar of Texas. In 2003, the white supremacist was caught with fully automatic machine guns and other weapons, nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition, more than 60 pipe bombs, remote-control bombs disguised as briefcases and enough sodium cyanide to kill hundreds of people. "You had a domestic terrorist actually having acquired weapons of mass destruction," Potok said. "A guy running around with an unassembled, but still incredibly deadly sodium cyanide bomb. How did that happen?" If Krar had been a foreign terrorist, Potok said, "it would've been shouted from the rooftops in Washington." Krar was sentenced last May to more than 11 years in prison, although he could have gotten a life sentence. "As it was, it was a tiny little press release put out in Tyler, Texas, and nobody noticed it for a year," Potok said. "I would not attack the federal government for turning away from this completely, but I would say it's perfectly clear that the focus has shifted." FBI officials said that their focus did shift after the Sept. 11 attacks, but dispute that they are ignoring domestic terrorism. [more]
- Amnesty Int'l: Racial profiling is undermining national security Racial profiling is a growing problem as the government has
expanded its war on terror, the report said.. As police primarily focus on Arab, Muslim and South
Asian males, it said, they are more likely to overlook terrorists who
are white. [more
] and [more ]
- Pictured above: WHICH ONE?: Former Police chief Charles A. Moose illustrates racial profiling by showing how Martin Luther King Jr. would have been vastly more likely to be stopped in traffic than Charles Manson [more]