MURDEROUS TERRORISTS APPREHENDED BEFORE THEY CAN BLOW UP A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN TEXAS

Ahmet, Muhammed and Ali? Nope, Bubba, Bubba and Bubba

None of them had towels wrapped around their heads; none were named Muhammed or Ali; and, like most terrorists that cause Americans actual problems, all were very much homegrown terrorists. The three teenage would be bombers are part of "a radical Christian activist group" and 2 were caught red-handed trying to ignite an explosive device in a church under construction in north Burleson, near Ft. Worth. The story reminded me of the Republican Christian terrorist groups in that crazy Jesus Camp film who were urging children to worship a cardboard cutout of George Bush and become suicide bombers. If you missed the film-- or if you've forgotten the perverseness of what the GOP base is all about, well, here's how you make a teenage terrorist for Jesus:



These clowns are the grown up versions of the ones in the film. They're from Burleson and now 3 of them, Dayton Lee Calaway, 19, Michael Philip Plaisted, Jr., 18 and Jered Ragon, 18, are in the Johnson County Jail. The first two were arrested when the deacon caught them and they tried to run away and got bogged down in the mud. Two others escaped in a car. Calaway and Plaisted snitched on Ragon who had poured gasoline on his feet while trying to destroy evidence. Calaway, Plaisted and Ragon face charges of arson at a place of worship, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison

Cmdr. Chris Havens, the Police Department spokesman, said the suspects boasted about belonging to a leaderless group of 10 or 15 who share a belief that society has become too focused on self-improvement and self-gratification and has lost focus on the glorification of God.

"They admit to being Christian and being brought up Christian, but they believe there should be one denomination and one church, not multiple denominations," Havens said.

"They did not say they had a name for their group, other than they were a radical Christian activist group. That was the way they explained their group," he said.

The suspects said the group has three levels of involvement: Bible study, consensual fighting and destructive acts. Because one of their beliefs is free thought, however, participation in all three levels is not mandatory, they told police.

The three admitted to being in a core group of seven that created the explosive weapon as a test to draw attention to the demise of society and to see whether the device would work, Havens said.

Yesterday Maha put together a brilliant overview about the state of religiosity in America. "Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans-- most American Christians-- are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up."

I hope you're not shocked that you haven't heard Rudy Guiliani and George Bush screaming about this. It doesn't fit into their own terrorist narrative. The only way they think a Republican can win is by scaring feeble-minded voters into thinking Republicans will protect us from Arabs (although, ironically, no one in the history of America has failed more dismally at that very thing than Bush-- with Giuliani a close second. It was, after all, on their watches and due to their incomptence that 9/11 happened to begin with.)