A Modest Proposal: Ban the Interstate Travel of Kansans

/26 Comments/in /by

It may be that Kansas is actually one of the most dangerous hives of terrorist activity in the US today.

Consider the case of Adam Purinton, who allegedly shot three men on Wednesday night outside of Kansas City, believing two of them — who are actually engineers from India — were Middle Eastern.

Details are emerging of what happened in and around Austins when a man known to some bar staffers became disgruntled in the patio area, spouting racial slurs at two men of Indian descent and then shooting them and another regular who stood up for the two.

At least one witness reportedly heard the suspect yell “get out of my country” shortly before shooting men he reportedly thought were Middle Eastern. Both men, engineers at Garmin, appear to be originally from India.

[snip]

The suspect fled on foot as police descended onto his neighborhood just behind Austins. Purinton eventually left the Kansas City area.

About five hours later, he was having a drink at the Applebee’s at Clinton, Mo., when he told a bartender he needed a place to hide out because he had just killed two Middle Eastern men.

The bartender called police, and he was arrested without incident.

The FBI is investigating whether this is a hate crime, but it falls squarely into the kind of crime that Trump wants to treat as terrorism in order to defend his Muslim ban.

More serious still is the attack that three conspirators on the other side of the state plotted against Somali refugees — a plot the FBI broke up not long before Election Day last year. The men (at least one of whom is a Trump supporter) called themselves the Crusaders. They had already scoped out a mosque, churches that sponsored refugees, and an apartment complex where many Somalis live. They were both trying to make their own bombs, as well as trading drugs with an undercover officer to get help building a fertilizer bomb. They spoke of the Somalis as “cockroaches” and planned to launch a “bloodbath” to take “this country back.”

The only fucking way this country’s ever going to get turned around is it will be a bloodbath and it will be a nasty, messy motherfucker. Unless a lot more people in this country wake up and smell the fucking coffee and decide they want this country back…we might be too late, if they do wake up…I think we can get it done. But it ain’t going to be nothing nice about it.

In 2014, Frazier Glenn Miller killed three people at two Jewish sites near Kansas City. Like Purinton, Miller didn’t succeed in targeting his desired type of victim; all of his victims are Christians. A former Klan member, Miller had also previously conspired with MLK parade terrorist Kevin Harpham.

In 2009, Scott Roeder assassinated abortion provider George Tiller in his church in Wichita, Kansas. Roeder conspired with a network of other anti-abortion terrorists, and he continued to call for violence even after being imprisoned.

In 1994 and 1995, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols carried out most of their preparation for the Oklahoma City bombing in Kansas.

Under Trump’s logic, the best way to deal with spiking violence such as we see in Kansas is to wall it off, to prevent it from infecting the rest of the country.

I realize this will create a lot of undue hardship for the people of Kansas. I realize, too, it will prove to be a royal pain in the ass for anyone trying to drive across the vast expanse in the middle of the country, particularly long haul truckers.

But we have to keep our country safe.

So Kansans will have to be cooped up in their violent state, along with the dangerous whackjobs that mean to do them harm, until we can figure this out.

Update: Fixed spelling of Purinton. Thanks to DFDG for reminding me about the Tiller assassination. Thanks to KG for reminding me that McVeigh prepped the Oklahoma City attack in Kansas.

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26 replies
  1. jerryy says:

    If that happens, Kansas will lose all of that lucrative income from I-70 (it is a toll road). So how will Trump get Sam Brownback to pay for it?

  2. Ed Walker says:

    I don’t think the people of Kansas will complain. Their primary concern is their personal safety, and their elected leaders, who know best and deserve a chance to prove it, will tell them it will keep them safe. Anyway, it will keep outsiders from polluting their financing experiments under their Blessed Leader Sam Brownback.

  4. SpaceLifeform says:

    OT: Cloudflare, Cogent, ew.n server

    As Rayne can tell you: “chewy”

    But, I still suspect more.

    First, CF acks a problem.

    https://blog.cloudflare.com/incident-report-on-memory-leak-caused-by-cloudflare-parser-bug/

    But, I have seen more suspicious internetworking anamolies since cf in use.

    Back-to-back-to-back captchas.

    Posts disapearing into the ether.

    Anyone else see these symptoms?

    EW, is traffic going to you via cf and then cogent and then to your server?

    Do some traceroute from your end.

  5. SpacelifeForm says:

    So, they are calling it cloudbleed.
    This link highly recommended.

    https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/serious-cloudflare-bug-exposed-a-potpourri-of-secret-customer-data/

    [Some snips]

    In our review of these third party caches, we discovered data that had been exposed from approximately 150 of Cloudflare’s customers across our Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.

    [What about a 4th party? If you (cf), can not find it, well that means zilch. A 4th party could have ‘collected it all’,, but since they do not have a public search function, how do you know? Answer: You (cf) do NOT KNOW]

    [Rayne, is this chewy or what?]

  7. bloopie2 says:

    [spoken in Boris Badenov voice] What is this place “Kansas” you are referring? Here on East Coast, I have no knowledge of this. But wait—I remember now–is place with people hiding underground, where house came down from tornado, no? Why ban travel, much easier to weld Bilco doors shut so can’t get out. Cheap too, no need big wall.

  8. Peterr says:

    Marcy, you’ve got things backwards with at least a couple of these.

    Frazier Glenn Cross is from Missouri, and crossed into Kansas to shoot up the Jewish Community Center and neighboring retirement home in the burbs on the Kansas side of metro Kansas City.

    Scott Roeder lived on both sides of the MO/KS state line, with his last address before killing George Tiller being Kansas City MO.

    In fact, folks in Kansas will tell you that their birth as a state took place in the midst of Missourians crossing the border and shooting the place up. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, folks in Missouri did not react well:

    Nebraska was so far north that its future as a free state was never in question. But Kansas was next to the slave state of Missouri. In an era that would come to be known as “Bleeding Kansas,” the territory would become a battleground over the slavery question.

    The reaction from the North was immediate. Eli Thayer organized the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which sent settlers to Kansas to secure it as a free territory. By the summer of 1855, approximately 1,200 New Englanders had made the journey to the new territory, armed to fight for freedom. The abolitionist minister Henry Ward Beecher furnished settlers with Sharps rifles, which came to be known as “Beecher’s Bibles.”

    Rumors had spread through the South that 20,000 Northerners were descending on Kansas, and in November 1854, thousands of armed Southerners, mostly from Missouri, poured over the line to vote for a proslavery congressional delegate. Only half the ballots were cast by registered voters, and at one location, only 20 of over 600 voters were legal residents. The proslavery forces won the election.

    On March 30, 1855, another election was held to choose members of the territorial legislature. The Missourians, or “Border Ruffians,” as they were called, again poured over the line. This time, they swelled the numbers from 2,905 registered voters to 6,307 actual ballots cast. Only 791 voted against slavery.

    The new state legislature enacted what Northerners called the “Bogus Laws,” which incorporated the Missouri slave code. These laws levelled severe penalties against anyone who spoke or wrote against slaveholding; those who assisted fugitives would be put to death or sentenced to ten years hard labor. (Statutes of Kansas) The Northerners were outraged, and set up their own Free State legislature at Topeka. Now there were two governments established in Kansas, each outlawing the other. President Pierce only recognized the proslavery legislature.

    [snip]

    As the two factions struggled for control of the territory, tensions increased. In 1856 the proslavery territorial capital was moved to Lecompton, a town only 12 miles from Lawrence, a Free State stronghold. In April of that year a three-man congressional investigating committee arrived in Lecompton to look into the Kansas troubles. The majority report of the committee found the elections to be fraudulent, and said that the free state government represented the will of the majority. The federal government refused to follow its recommendations, however, and continued to recognized the proslavery legislature as the legitimate government of Kansas.

    There had been several attacks during this time, primarily of proslavery against Free State men. People were tarred and feathered, kidnapped, killed. But now the violence escalated. On May 21, 1856, a group of proslavery men entered Lawrence, where they burned the Free State Hotel, destroyed two printing presses, and ransacked homes and stores. In retaliation, the fiery abolitionist John Brown led a group of men on an attack at Pottawatomie Creek. The group, which included four of Brown’s sons, dragged five proslavery men from their homes and hacked them to death.

    Things have only marginally improved since then.

    Sam Brownback’s tax policies have gotten all the press, but folks are missing how much the KS GOP has pushed a very extreme Second Amendment position. The KS legislature recently pushed through a law to prohibit state facilities from prohibiting those with concealed weapons permits from carrying their weapons unless the facility has airport-like security gates at every entrance. This means that every building on the campus of the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and a host of smaller schools are now faced with having to allow weapons on campus. A number of faculty have noted that there’s enough tension around when you flunk a student, that now adding the possibility of weapons to the mix is not something that makes anyone feel safer. Phrases like “Professor, I’d like to make an appointment to see you in your office to discuss the F you gave me on that paper . . .” are now worrisome to more than a few faculty. This law also applies to the major University of Kansas Medical Center campus, right on the state line in metro Kansas City. The staff there is likewise appalled that the GOP thinks allowing guns in a hospital makes folks safer.

    If there’s a parallel to be drawn here, it’s likely the other way: Brownback will build the wall himself and demand that Missouri pay for it. Given that the loons have taken over the MO legislature and governor’s mansion and are hellbent on adopting every bad idea the Kansas GOP ever tried, I’d give good odds that Brownback could get Jeff City to send him a check.

     

    • jerryy says:

      Who is going to pay for the ‘extreme vetting’ that will need to happen for those wanting to immigrate to/from the place?

    • emptywheel says:

      I’ve been persuaded to add NC, based on this (and it forgets that Wade Michael Page was radicalized there). You’re saying I should add MO too?

      And I was waiting for a John Brown reference. One of the good terrorists.

      • lefty665 says:

        We sometimes call Carolinians with shotgun racks in the back windows of their pickups WaWahabbis for where they get their donuts and gas on the way to church. Some have mules and are geehawdis for sure.

        For a long, long time the 3Rs in Carolina have been Readin’, Ritin’ and the Road to Richmond (That is really four Rs, but this is Carolina we’re talking about and that would be just too confusing to them). Fortunately, many couldn’t figure out how to get across the James river as they approached Richmond so they mostly live in Southside. There is not much there beyond a couple of state prisons, the birthplace of massive resistance in Lawrenceville and abandoned textile mills.

        The Virginia Carolina border is a nice straight line, that would make it an easy place for Trump to practice building a wall. Might be a little more complicated on the southern border due to South Carolina. But, if you included that within the wall you would get Lindsey Graham too. It’s a twofer. South Carolina has long been known as too small for a state, but too big for an asylum. A wall would resolve that conundrum too.

         

        • martin says:

          I always knew there was a reason I left Kansas 2 days after birth. No antiKansas vaccination. emptywheel post subject matter living proof.

          ps. @emptywheel.. you’re welcome re: generalwarrant tweet at you re: Kansas Wall.  Thanks for making post of it. :)

      • Peterr says:

        I would certainly watch MO. Beyond what I said above about the legislature, the newly elected Gov Greitens ran on a platform of transparency and being an outsider (sound familiar?), then turned around and set up a structure for paying for his inauguration that accepted very large donations from corporations but shielded them from any public identification.

        But MO is not as completely ’round the bend as Kansas, at least not yet. As EoH notes below, KCMO’s mayor Sly James is not just sane but great, and some of the Dems who lost statewide elections in November ran some great races that outdid the Trump/Clinton top of the ticket race, and these folks are beginning to figure out how to step up when they are outside the government.

        But after laughing at what’s happening in KS for years, folks on the MO side of metro KC are not laughing any more. We’ve got a bathroom bill in the works, and the trashing of the Jewish cemetery in St. Louis won’t be the last action like that.

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    One of the few sane politicians left on either side of the border is the KC, MO, mayor, Sly James.

  10. spAceLifEfoRm says:

    At death’s door for years, widely used SHA1 function is now dead
     

    https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/at-deaths-door-for-years-widely-used-sha1-function-is-now-dead/

     

    [If you thought you had a long day with cloudbleed, well, look for your long month ahead.]

    Fortunately, certificates to HTTPS-protected websites aren’t likely to be affected. Since the beginning of this year, browser-trusted certificate authorities have been barred from relying on SHA1 to sign TLS certificates they issue

     

    [So, have you generated new certs lately with updated software that does not use sha1?  Do you really trust CAs?  Answer:  CAs are worthless.  You can not trust RSA, you can not know that the CA has gotten an NSL forcing them to reveal the keys.  You can NOT trust https.  Period.  Do not bank online.  Do not do any credit/debit card transactions online.  Cash is king.]

    Consistent with Google’s security disclosure policy, the source code for performing the collision attack will be published in 90 days. That means Git and an unknown number of other widely used services that rely on SHA1 have three months to wean themselves and their users off the insecure function. The best candidates for replacements are the SHA256 and SHA3functions

    [I prefer SHA256.  Does not mean it is safe, but have bad vibes about SHA3]

     

     

    [and the git issue is real serious]

     

     

     

     

  12. spacelifeform says:

    Cf is hacked/backdoored.

    wanted captcha. Never showed it.
    Allegelly posted anyway. Post disappeared.

  14. Daniel Miguel Condónez says:

    If this happens we need to ban driving through Chicago South and West sides as well, and probably through all of Detroit. People of color in those areas get shot much more often than anywhere in Kansas. Black lives matter.

  15. Matt Platte says:

    Kansas legislature recently overrode Brownback’s veto of an Income Tax INCREASE and the Kansas House just passed a bill to expand Medicaid. So… there are signs of spring in this too-early Spring.

  16. Katie Jensen (Peacerme) says:

    Interestingly or boringly enough, my hubby and I spent Tuesday and Wednesday exploring the north east corner of Kansas, and southwest nebraska looking for remnants of the Underground Railroad. We found and drove a section of the California trail. We also visited some caves where the rail road was rumored to operate. It was 70 degrees, top down on the mustang. Good day. For me, nothing creepier than a ghost town. Build the wall!! Build the wall!! Build the wall!!

  18. John Casper says:

    lefty,

    Would invite you to consider that resorting to the “deplorables brand” is wrong. It’s what fueled demonstration against Vietnam. Kids who couldn’t get deferments made up more than their share of the 50,000 dead.

    It’s very secondary, but as a practical matter, it helped sink Democrats in Congressional, state, and local races. Never would have happened with Sen. Sanders at the top of the ticket. Sec. Clinton allowed GOP to brand Dems as “limousine liberals,” and fueled its anti-education agenda.

    If you want to continue running down Americans without education, please use another handle.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quv21Vv4Rfk

  19. Mitchell says:

    If Donald keeps up his attempt to ban Muslims only from seven nations with whom he does not have business interests, he’s going to have to prove that there’s nothing arbitrary or capricious behind any actions any agencies take in response to the EO.
    That is, it would be facts versus fantasy.

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