875,000 People On Terror Watch List

The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a database – Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) – currently containing 875,000 names. Among them were the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the Boston Marathon bombers. I think the haystack is getting so big it will eventually be impossible to find the needles, and we will be less free as a result.

Boston Marathon Bombing

Homegrown terrorists? Militia men defending the Constitution? Just speculating. Muslim jihadists would have done a more thorough job, I’m sure. More to come. Developing story. Stay tuned.

Amish Crazies

Homegrown Amish religious terrorism, right here in America, carried out by Americans against Americans. When will the hate crimes stop? Religion poisons everything. You heard it here first!

Cutting beards for Jesus.

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Twelve members of an Amish splinter group in Ohio pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges stemming from a spate of beard- and hair-cutting assaults last fall on other Amish.

The 10 men and two women were indicted on seven counts, including federal hate crime charges, for their part in the unusual attacks, which began in September 2011 and generated fear in the tight-knit Amish community.

The assaults were considered especially egregious because the beard is a symbol of a man’s identity among the Amish and women in the community do not cut their hair for biblical reasons.

The courtroom inside U.S. District Court in Cleveland where the 12, all from Bergholz, were arraigned on Wednesday was packed with Amish onlookers.

Seven of the original defendants, including the suspected ringleader, Samuel Mullet Sr., and two of his sons, have been in custody since their arrest in October.

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster denied a request on Wednesday that Samuel Sr., 66, and his 37-year-old son Johnny be released on bond, citing the lack of modern amenities, including electricity, at their house, which makes electronic monitoring impossible.

But the judge released five of the defendants on $20,000 unsecured bonds. Trial has been scheduled to start March 19.