You see him every once in a while, playing the demented scary psychopath. Stripped of his followers, he is a shell of his former murderous self. At the murder trial of Charles Manson, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi summed up the evidence that condemned the con man killer to death. Like a brick layer, Bugliosi methodically placed one piece on top of the other until a rock hard wall of circumstance and motive overwhelmed any reasonable doubt.

Manson and his crew were convicted. The sentence was death. Eventually the penalty was commuted to life in prison as capital punishment briefly was set aside. One of the most bizarre aspects of the case was the motive. Inspired by a combination of the Bible, a stray Beatles song, racist convictions, and a hatred for pretty much everyone, Manson had convinced himself and his "family" that murder would lead to world domination. The plan, such as it was, involved killing random white people, members of the establishment, in order to begin a race war. In such a war, all white people would be wiped out, as the Manson family hid. But black people would be incapable of self government. As Manson emerged from hiding a desperate population would turn to him for white guidance.

The idea of fomenting violence is nothing new. Nero blamed a minor cult whom he called Christians for setting the fire that burned down much of Rome, allowing him to quell growing dissatisfaction with his strange rule. He had members of the cult burned alive to light his gardens. Hitler blamed Jews for a Reichstag fire that burned down the German Parliament, allowing him to come to power. Al Qaeda attacked mosques in Iraq and succeeded for a while in setting Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims at each others throats.

But the Manson family seemed exotically weird in their demented plans. It is still unclear whether they expected enraged whites to attack black people, or if they expected oppressed minorities to become so inspired by the murders that they would follow Manson's example. In the end, Bugliosi had him pegged, a prison refugee running a jailhouse con on a bunch of impressionable kids: a real life Lord of the Flies.

This week, the FBI caught up with the ninth member of a small Christian Militia. The plan, as revealed by prosecutors, was to kill a police officer. Then, at the funeral of the fallen officer, bombs would kill police and families as they mourned. As with the deadly insanity of decades ago, the result was supposed to be a violent uprising, as good conservative Christians attacked police everywhere, overthrowing President Obama and his satanic minions.

The FBI has not revealed if they know of more such terrorists at large. There is no cry from conservatives to water board the nine to find any potential ticking bombs, or that they be tried in military courts, or jailed outside US borders. We have yet to hear anti-Muslim bigots tarring all Christians as evil and violent. This time, we may be spared the extremist rhetoric. After all, these terrorists are home grown followers of the Prince of Peace.

Possible such acts which were discussed included killing a member of law enforcement after a traffic stop, killing a member of law enforcement and his or her family at home, ambushing a member of law enforcement in rural communities, luring a member of law enforcement with a false 911 emergency call and then killing him or her, and killing a member of law enforcement and then attacking the funeral procession motorcade with weapons of mass destruction.

... "Captain Hutaree" identified specific law enforcement officers in a community near his residence, and one officer in particular, as potential targets of attack.

 - - Federal Grand Jury (pdf), March 29, 2010
     in a five-count indictment

Pretty much everyone found one thing (for some folks the only thing) to like about the Affordable Care Act just signed into law. It will outlaw denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It is hard, even among those who hate the idea of Health Care Reform to find anyone who thinks that someone who loses a job, or has their insurance canceled by some company bureaucrat, or was born with a disability should be penalized for something entirely beyond anyone's control.

But insurance companies can't just sell insurance without some conditions. If they do, folks would wait until health deteriorates before getting coverage. It's called adverse selection. That's why you can't get fire insurance at any price when your house is ablaze. You get it before you need it or not at all. So the only way society can insist that denial of coverage be outlawed is by removing adverse selection. You have to require everyone to have health insurance, just as all drivers must have auto insurance.

But those who work in low end jobs have a hard time making ends meet now. Those who are laid off have an impossible time affording much of anything. So you pretty much have to help out those folks who can't afford the insurance they will be required to have.

And once you eliminate pre-existing conditions, require everyone to have insurance, and provide help for those who have a hard time affording insurance, you have something close to the Health Care Reform legislation that just became law.

The first folks who will be protected from pre-existing conditions will be children. Insurance companies will still be able to deny coverage to adults for a while, but kids will able to get insurance within the next few months.

Except insurance corporations are now saying they have found a loophole. They interpret the law differently from the way lawmakers intended. You see, children must be covered for pre-existing conditions if an insurance company wants to sell a policy that will cover the child. But the law does not require them to sell coverage for any child.

Got that? You must sell coverage for a child if you decide to sell coverage for a child. An insurance lawyer puts forth the legal theory. “The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.” Yeah, I suppose that does differ from what was intended. We can only hope a principled conservative court will apply a doctrine of original intent.

Insurance companies have come up with a novel legal approach. They have to cover a child's pre-existing condition, but not a pre-existing child.

Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system.

 - - Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of HHS, March 29, 2010
     In a letter to insurance lobbyists promising to issue tough new "clarifying"
     regulations to force insurance corporations to obey the law and give sick
     children access to their parents' plans.

In a chat room that I have been known to enter from time to time, a lesser light among the room's conservative luminaries once mentioned a visit by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Chicago to march for fair treatment by the city. There was violence on that trip. Dr. King laughed privately with his colleagues about which of them ducked the most.

The chat room right winger saw it differently. King himself had provoked the violence by stirring up trouble in a city that, up to that point, had been peaceable. I asked him what trouble King had stirred up. He mentioned a brick thrown at the marchers. He swore it had struck Dr. King. So I asked him if he felt that King should have been charged with assaulting the brick.

There exists an informal tradition in extremist circles, when one side in a political dispute crosses legal or civil lines, of blaming the other side for provocation. The image of the overweight southern sheriff drawling about outside agitators provoking civil rights murders is no longer as intimidating as it once was. Countless Hollywood caricatures, poking fun, have made the old relic into sort of a cinematic Archie Bunker, harmlessly eccentric.

Eric Cantor, Republican second in command in the House of Representatives, got into some trouble last week, blaming Democrats for inciting violence against themselves. The reasoning went thusly: an atmosphere of violence was caused by Democrats reporting acts of violence. Cantor did mention that violence is wrong. But it wasn't the violence itself, rather it was reporting the violence that was particularly objectionable. Cantor's thesis is that some level of violence pretty much goes with the job, so complaints are ...well... unseemly. He himself had received threats because he was Jewish, but had declined to report them. He was asked by reporters for letters or emails substantiating his claim, but he declined.

That looked a little silly, so he mentioned that a gunman had targeted his campaign office. And that, not his criticism of Democrats for their unmanly complaints, got him into some trouble. There was indeed an incident of gunfire that targeted his offices, except the offices weren't targeted, and they weren't exactly his campaign offices, they were vacant, infrequently used for meetings, and the bullet had come from the sky. The sky? Yep. Police said someone many blocks away had fired a shot into the air, and it fell to the ground, the shooter knew not where. It broke a window in the vacant office, but with so little force by then that it bounced off the blinds.

Cantor defends his magic bullet story. It is an odd defense. He says he did not know at the time that it was a lie. He insists he made the claim without caring to check if it was true. We should take into account the provocative badgering by reporters during the press conference at which he made the phony claim. He is not really responsible.

Outside agitators.

A compilation by ThinkProgress speaks for itself.