evolution

Just when you were getting used to the quiet: George Tiller, legendary (or infamous, depending) Wichita late-term abortion provider, was shot and killed this morning. Due to the many internal conflicts and contradictions I have about this man, this issue, and this place, this is going to be a disjointed post, with updates interspersed throughout as I collect my thoughts, and possibly take a break to go and shout at some inanimate objects.

UPDATE [13:21] It appears from the available information now that Tiller was inside the church when he was shot. It might have been a member of the church. A physical description of the perp, with a description of the car and a license plate number, is all over Creation now. Hopefully it’s just a matter of time before the perp is found.

UPDATE [13:54] The J-W is claiming that he was serving as an usher for the service when he was shot, confirming part of the above. Also, for some reason, I descended into the comment thread there to read it. It’s more or less what I expected: out of every 100 commenters, one troglodyte shows up to congratulate the shooter, four poor souls mutter some other pablum because they’re just as conflicted as (and more able to keep quiet than) I am, and the other 95 dial the drama up to “Andrew Sullivan”, compare Christians to terrorists, declaim against the clinic bombings that occur every day, and then go home. O to be on another planet for the next few months…

UPDATE [14:09]: Operation Rescue finally learned some media savvy and is looking for the deepest hole they can find to hide in. They put out a statement on their Web site denouncing the killing, and now it’s unavailable. I’d guess that there are a number of people in every newsroom on Earth who thinks it was one of them. Maybe it was. But I’d also bet there’s quite a number of those folks who would like a few minutes alone with the shooter before the Wichita cops and Kansas Highway Patrol get to him.

UPDATE[14:14]: Eagle Twitterers say that the suspected shooter has been caught. No details.

UPDATE [15:04]: Bad news: This site crashed for 45 minutes. Good news: Nobody’s reading it, so nobody missed anything.

Police have left the church where Tiller was shot; attention has apparently been turned to the man the Eagle and others say is in police custody.

And one more thing: You think, and I think, that the person who shot George Tiller was probably at one point an anti-abortion activist. There are a whole bunch of people who are going to look dumb if he wasn’t.

Another old Kansan speaks from another place. On days like this I wish I was in another place too.

UPDATE [15:26]: The CBS affiliate in Wichita says that the suspected shooter was caught — in Gardner, KS, which is in western Johnson County outside the KC metro area. That’s about four hours’ drive from Wichita on I-35 and about 30 minutes from Lawrence. The arrest took place about an hour and a half ago.

UPDATE [15:32]: This is going to be one of those “clear, bright line” moments that I’ve spoken of before. Most of the time I think those are good things… most of the time. This wouldn’t be one of them.

UPDATE [15:50]: This is getting weird. The Eagle Twitterers posted a video that shows Tiller’s clinic being searched by dogs. Something may not be quite as it seems here.

Also, some more thoughts: Regardless of how you feel about Tiller — I am on the record in plenty of places on this site — this most likely was a calculated act of political terrorism, period. There does not and cannot exist any justification for it.

In what some might find to be the irony to end all ironies, such an act will render the suspect eligible for the Kansas death penalty. I’m not an advocate for that, either, but considering the enormous political pressure that will be brought to bear, the shooter might find out just how much he has lost this war.

UPDATE [16:32]: The Eagle’s story has been updated with some details about the shooter, a 51-year-old male, who was driving a vehicle registered to someone in Merriam.

UPDATE [19:38]: The suspect that was arrested in Johnson County and returned to Wichita has been identified by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department as one Scott Roeder.

Charles Johnson of LGF did some digging, and found a creepy post from two years ago under the suspect’s name on an Operation Rescue forum, among other things. It looks like that hole’s not quite going to be deep enough or dark enough. Thus does everyone — leftists and abortion opponents alike — have their fantasies come true…

UPDATE [20:39]: Time to call it a night. I don’t believe there will be too many more facts to come out at least for now, and what’s to come in the immediate future, particularly in the cacophony of idiots called “the blogosphere”, will be both fact-free and insufferable to watch.

I might have more to say on this topic tomorrow. If I can stand it, that is.

MORE:The above link is to the J-World.. Here are some others:

• The Topeka Capital-Journal.
• The Wichita Eagle. The Eagle is also Twittering.
• MSNBC.
• If you’re a blog fan you should probably look at memeorandum, but I didn’t and don’t plan to. I just don’t want to know. Here’s the link.

Previously on evolution:

• All mentions
• All previous posts on abortion politics.
• Abortion opponents did it to themselves (1 | 2)
• A counter to what you’re going to be hearing and seeing in the next few days. [UPDATE 15:39]: J-W via AP, the first of many to run it up the flagpole.

The song Total Eclipse of the Heart and the good ship evolution have a long (and some would say unhealthy) history together. If you don’t remember the song, the singer’s name is Bonnie Tyler; YouTube it, or just think back to every shitty Karaoke bar you went to in the early Nineties. Some Danielle Steel fan was up there singing it, I’ll guarantee you.

We may have a new challenger for best updated take on this song. The current champ is of course the version by Norwegian band Hurra Torpedo, which also wins the award for “best use of asscrack in a music video”.

This one, a literalist interpretation of the original music video rather than a straight-up cover, may take the crown:

[Inherited from: Hot Air.]

So I broke down and got a Facebook page. E-mail me if you want it, or look me up under my full name if you’re too lazy to do that.

McSweeney’s. Now there’s
a career that will put food
on the table, yo.

[Composed somewhere west of Lawrence while traveling east on U.S. Route 40.]

O my Chipotle
burrito, we will not be
together for long.

There is nothing quite so formulaic and predictable as political blog commentary, except perhaps political blog commentary on the appointment of a Supreme Court justice.

This particular bit of Kabuki theater does not interest me in the least. All parties to this have the same goal: to find a way to bend the words of the Constitution into a shape that grants them power. The only possible objection any of them have is that it isn’t their candidate.

It almost doesn’t matter who fills the seat anymore.

I almost got a Facebook page and a Twitter account. I “get” the former much more than the latter, but for a moment this weekend among all the chaos of the activities I was involved in.

Then I sobered up. Facebook will not do much more for me than provide answers to questions I don’t necessarily want to know the answers to. And, despite the fact that a psychiatrist would have a field day with me, I am not OCD enough to need to perform public brain dumps 140 characters at a time every three minutes.

No, anyone who wants to keep up with me will have to come here. Never mind the plastic dust covers on the furniture.