7 Comments »

1. 1 Rudi666

   January 1, 2008 @ 4:06 pm CET

   The far Left in America today is the anti-trade anarchists, not the SDS or Weatherman of the 1960’s. By most accounts Moore was mentally unstable and a fringe follower of the SLA, where is the resurrection of the SDS, and a War on Xmas, coming from?

2. 2 Lynx

   January 1, 2008 @ 4:37 pm CET

   I don’t think there is anything special about the current political climate for producing radical crazies of one sort or another. Both ends of the political spectrum have their fringe extremists. A certain proportion of those extremists are going to be highly disturbed people, and a few of those will snap. I think that in the particular case of US politics, there is no greater number of crazies on either side. You can be a far-right militiaman who thinks the government is out to get you and blow up a federal building, like Timothy McVeigh, or be a far-left radical and think that the government is out to get you and try to kill the president, like this woman.

   Certainly all ideologies are not equal in their concentration of people willing to kill. I think that it’s clear that Islam is far more likely to produce homicidal maniacs than Christianity, at least in their current incarnations. Somehow though, the left and right sides of US politics don’t seem to have any such distinction.

   What has occurred to me reading this is the likelihood that Moore got out early in part because of being a woman. I have a hunch that had the name of the would be assassin been Jason, and not Jane Moore, the liberation might not have happened. My feeling is that juries and judges are more likely to assume that a female killer is simply deranged, while a male killer is evil.

3. 3 Rudi666

   January 1, 2008 @ 8:12 pm CET

   Lynx - It isn’t a gender issue but Federal laws(from the time of her incarceration) that allowed for her release. She’s a 77 year old woman, probably in poor health, who is going to harm?

   http://www.mercurynews.com/alamedacounty/ci_7855629

    Under federal parole rules for inmates serving life terms, Moore was eligible for parole 10 years after she was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, now 85 and still hearing cases in the San Francisco federal building. Conti could not be reached for comment Monday.

   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/01/MN2UU7JA4.DTL

   Moore was released under a federal law that makes parole mandatory for inmates who have served at least 30 years of a life sentence without getting into trouble, according to Thomas Hutchison, chief of staff of the U.S. Parole Commission.

   Fromme, now 59, is serving a life sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas. Hutchison said he had no knowledge of any parole hearing for Fromme.

   Under legislation enacted more than two decades ago, federal prisoners who committed offenses after Oct. 31, 1987, are no longer paroled. That was more than 12 years after Moore secured a spot in California’s Rogues’ Gallery with her attempt to kill Ford.

4. 4 Tully

   January 1, 2008 @ 8:29 pm CET

   Rudi nailed it. I doubt if anyone has anything more to fear from Moore. While she is (or at least was) a certifiable loon, her half-assed attempt to stalk and shoot Ford was the only violent incident in her life. At 77, she’s not likely to be a menace to society, and if she’s going to stalk Ford some more she’s going to find it awfully boring.

   Squeaky Fromme is a different story, but she’s not eligible for mandatory parole under the 30 year rule. She’s been in trouble pretty much full-time since going to prison.

5. 5 Rudi666

   January 2, 2008 @ 12:23 am CET

   Tully - In reading up on the loon I came across this tidbit. Local police and the Secret Service arrested her earlier in the day with another gun.

   n fact, San Francisco police had dealt with Moore in the past, and viewed her as a potential threat to the president.

   Two days before the attempted assassination, they arrested her on the street with a .44-caliber revolver in her handbag and boxes of ammunition in her car.
   http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-ford1jan01,1,2916191,full.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

   Police alerted the Secret Service, who interviewed her and released her. Less than 48 hours later, she purchased her .38 from a friend, stationed herself outside the St. Francis in a crowd of several thousand and tried to shoot her way into history.

   She shouldn’t have been released. After this, why didn’t anybody notice her in the crowd?

6. 6 Tully

   January 2, 2008 @ 1:18 am CET

   They didn’t have the communications technology thirty years ago that we have today, Rudi, and catching someone with a gun in their handbag (it was actually two days before, not the same day) wasn’t and still isn’t that unusual.

   Nor did presidential security tighten up to anything even resembling today’s levels until after Hinckley shot Reagan. She was interviewed, they kept her gun and released her. If they had tried to lock up every raving bugnutty in the San Francisco area in the mid-70’s they’d have had to confine half the city.

7. 7 Rudi666

   January 2, 2008 @ 2:44 am CET

   Tully - Moore was a nut case playing both sides, the FBI and her SLA friends. If Squeaky didn’t try to kill Ford earlier I’d by the lax security. Just pointing out incompetence that could have resulted in Ford’s death. A loaded .44 and over a 100 rounds isn’t a trivial matter, not being a tin-hat nutcase.

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