Man flies plane into IRS office in Texas
When Joseph Stack intentionally killed himself by crashing his small plane into a Texas office building — killing another person and injuring others — a New York Times opinion writer questioned whether Stack was “The First Tea-Party Terrorist?”
Robert Write wrote that, “given the apparent momentum of the Tea Party movement, it would be nice to know if Stack’s kamikaze mission was a not-all-that-shocking emanation from it — whether, as some claim, more than a few Tea Partiers are unhinged.”
He didn’t appear to have any tea party connections, and actually wrote favorably of communism.
Census worker hanged in 2009
When Census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead in Kentucky — apparently hanged naked — with the words “Fed” scrawled across chest, it was questioned whether tea partiers had been responsible.
A Time magazine article noted that, “Speculation has run rampant that the Sparkman case may be related to the vitriol” of the tea partiers, calling it “a time when talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings have fanned antigovernment sentiment.”
Authorities ruled that he hanged himself, likely staging his death so his family could collect life insurance.
