[Update] As one commenter points out below, it turned out there
was no bomb in the backpack. I scanned about a dozen articles for more info and apparently missed the one that added that line! But there's still
cause for concern.
The religious right's lies about the Schiavo case are endangering innocent people, and as usual, the MSM is failing to give this adequate coverage. My mom heard a brief mention on the news about an attempt to kill one of the judges involved in the case, but a search of the Internet news stories turned up only one brief line, repeated verbatim in every story: "A perimeter around the federal courthouse was evacuated during the hearing [by Judge Whittemore on Thursday] after a suspicious backpack was found outside. The hearing was not interrupted, and the package was safely detonated using a remote device."
A friend of mine lives in Pinellas Park, where Terri's hospice is located and this circus is taking place. So I asked him if he knew anything about this, and he e-mailed me a little more information today.
He said the media coverage of the Schiavo case has attracted all kinds of fanatical nutjobs from all over the country. The suspicious backpack was left by a woman who moved there five weeks ago and has been staying in a Salvation Army shelter, and who was arrested on drug charges Thursday night. Also on Thursday, a 20-year-old guy who drove down from Illinois for the purpose of saving Terri was arrested trying to rob a gun store in the nearby town of Seminole.
After the recent murders of a judge and another judge's mother and husband, this makes me really concerned for all the judges involved in this case, especially Greer, who has been on it the longest and ruled against keeping Terri alive the most times, and Whittemore, who went against Jeb and DeLay's wishes and apparently is already being targeted. While the MSM is exploiting this whole situation for the ratings, all of the sensationalism and hype in their coverage are spreading and compounding the lies and hysteria, and they're whipping these people's emotions into a frenzy. Will more innocent blood be shed because of the right-wing agenda? Will an extremist "right-to-lifer" try to kill Michael Schiavo, like they have killed abortion doctors in the past, with the justification that he's a murderer and deserves to die?