An ex-convict being held in connection with the Sunday night bombing of a Grand Chute, Wis., Planned Parenthood clinic has been charged with two federal crimes, the FBI says.

Francis G. Grady, 50, was arrested Monday evening after investigators identified him based on eyewitness information and video footage from the crime scene. He was charged yesterday with arson of a building used in interstate commerce, and intentionally damaging the property of a facility that provides reproductive health services. He is scheduled to appear in court this afternoon at 1:30.

Authorities say the homemade bomb, which damaged both the clinic’s examination room and Grady’s car when it exploded Sunday evening around 7:30, was fashioned from a plastic bottle filled with incendiary chemicals. No one was injured. ( continue to full post… )

A homemade bomb exploded and caused a small fire last night at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wis. – the second attack on an abortion clinic in 2012.

Authorities say the device, fashioned from a plastic bottle filled with incendiary chemicals, was placed on a windowsill at the clinic. It went off at about 7:30 p.m., causing a small fire that damaged an examination room before burning itself out. No injuries have been reported.

This latest attack comes amid a heated national debate over women’s health care issues, revolving around insurance coverage for birth control and a spate of proposals pushed by state lawmakers to make obtaining an abortion more onerous. ( continue to full post… )

The violent history of a Florida abortion clinic may be repeating itself in a new terrorist act: Anti-choice zealots are suspected of setting a blaze Sunday that gutted the American Family Planning clinic in Pensacola, which was Ground Zero for murders and bombings by vigilantes in the 1980s and 1990s.

A sniffing dog helped investigators at the scene gather samples Tuesday to be tested for fire accelerants, Deborah Cox of the Florida State Fire Marshal’s office told Hatewatch. Investigators already have determined that the blaze started outside the building, she added. Calling the fire suspicious “would be an understatement,” Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons told the Pensacola News-Journal. ( continue to full post… )

The Rev. Donald Spitz has a message for gay-friendly churches, and the murder-endorsing anti-abortion crusader is not mincing words.

In E-mails sent in recent days to an unknown number of churches listed on GayChurch.org, he wrote: “To accept sexual deviancy as normal is a sin. You put your soul in danger of eternal damnation for welcoming unrepentant homosexuals into God’s house. You blaspheme the Name of God. Homosexuality should be criminalized. Homosexuals commit crimes against God, against nature, against the Holy Bible and against the human race. ( continue to full post… )

The trial of a California teen accused of a murdering a gay classmate in 2008 begins today. Brandon McInerney, 17, allegedly shot and killed Larry King, 15, in class after a long history of bullying and fights over King’s sexual orientation. A search of McInerney’s bedroom revealed white supremacist literature in his possession. LGBT people are by far the group most targeted for violent hate crimes.

Colorado Springs police are investigating a possible anti-gay hate crime. A group of individuals, including two soldiers, were allegedly beaten by a group of African-American men who shouted racial and anti-gay slurs.

A North Carolina preacher has been sentenced to 18 months probation for stalking a local abortion doctor. The charges came after Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham passed out “wanted” posters of the physician with his name and photo on it, causing the doctor to fear for his life and safety. ( continue to full post… )

A Wisconsin man arrested Wednesday night after accidentally shooting a pistol  through the door of his Madison motel room faces federal charges for allegedly plotting to kill an abortion doctor and clinic workers.

Ralph Lang, 63, told police that he planned to use the gun to kill the doctor at a Planned Parenthood clinic near the motel. According to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court in Madison, Lang said he wanted to “lay out abortionists because they are killing babies.”

Lang suggested to the officers who interrogated him that they look up “Rosary of the Unborn.” The website, which sells rosaries and anti-abortion literature and paraphernalia, includes messages supposedly from Jesus. The divine messages posted this week call abortion “the greatest weapon of mass destruction” and declare that it’s responsible for “economic distress,” natural disasters ravaging the country and resource depletion. “If you will stand corrected, many problems within the heart of the world will be resolved.” ( continue to full post… )

Recent weeks have seen one attack and one stymied attack on abortion clinics around the country. Both have shared a subplot of anti-Muslim extremism.

On Sept. 2, in the small central California city of Madera, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the local Planned Parenthood building, the first such attack suffered by the clinic in its 20 years of operation. Following the bombing, local news reports described burnt blinds on the front lawn and boarded-up windows. “I believe it’s extremists who want to make a statement,” said Patsy Montgomery, the clinic’s public affairs director.

Federal agents did not have to travel far to investigate: The FBI was already in Madera looking into the late August vandalizing of a mosque involving bricks and anti-Muslim graffiti. The mosque attack was just one incident in a wave of bias-motivated violence that has been building momentum all summer. ( continue to full post… )

Militant anti-abortion activist Michael Bray is reaching out to Kenyans on a new website targeting abortion providers and gay rights activists with ties to the country. In his endorsement of ProjectSEE.com, he rejects the view of “racists” who thought Africa was “hopelessly backwards because it was occupied by an inferior racial group.” Rather, Bray argues, the West’s cultural superiority resulted from its embrace of Christianity, which was only later introduced to Africa. “It [is] perhaps Africa which shall be the beacon for the world in the new century as Christianity’s influence is increased in contrast to its departure from the west,” he wrote. “ProjectSEE.com [SEE stands for Stop Exporting Evil!] exhorts Kenyans to resist the evil influences of an apostatizing West which has abandoned the Lord of Glory, the King above all kings.”

Bray’s rejection of racism might raise eyebrows in light of his appearance two years ago as a guest on “The Political Cesspool,” a shamelessly white nationalist radio talk show that often denigrates those of African descent. Prior to Bray’s interview, Cesspool host James Edwards had, for example, called blacks “heathen savages,” “subhumans” and “black animals” while discussing violent black-on-white crime. In an April 4, 2007, debut on CNN, Edwards told host Paula Zahn that “crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go.” In the month before Bray’s Oct. 12, 2007, “Cesspool” appearance, the show featured favorable interviews with former Klan attorney Sam Dickson, Holocaust denier Mark Weber, and former Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke, a “Cesspool” regular whom Edwards on his website described as “a Christian man above reproach.” ( continue to full post… )

A leading anti-abortion webmaster who is widely known for his extremist tactics is behind a new Internet site taking aim at gay and abortion rights supporters with ties to Kenya.

Neal Horsley — best known for his “Nuremberg Files” website targeting physicians who provide abortions — now controls ProjectSEE.com. (“SEE” stands for Stop Exporting Evil!) Horsley’s latest website features “Not Wanted” posters with the photographs and, in some cases, contact information of purported gay rights activists and abortion providers working in Kenya. It lists the names of others, along with an appeal to “send us INFO!” The website encourages readers to print out the posters and distribute them in the United States and Kenya. (Abortion laws are highly restrictive in Kenya and homosexual activity is illegal. In recent weeks, Kenyan activists have reported a rash of anti-gay violence, including the Feb. 12 beating of a man outside a health center that provides HIV/AIDS services, according to Human Rights Watch.)

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A Wichita, Kan., judge has denied Scott Roeder’s bid to use a “necessity defense” when he is tried for the murder of late-term abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller. Sedgwick County Judge Warren Wilbert pointed out Tuesday that the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in a previous case regarding blocking an entrance to an abortion clinic that the necessity defense cannot be used.

Roeder told the Associated Press last month that he shot and killed Tiller at the doctor’s church on May 31 because “pre-born children’s lives were in imminent danger” and there was “the necessity to defend them.”

Roeder’s own attorney had already said that a necessity defense — sometimes called the “choice of evils” defense–was not a viable option when Roeder personally filed a lengthy motion seeking to rely upon it at his trial, scheduled for Jan. 11, on charges of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

Prosecutors also asked the judge on Tuesday to bar Roeder’s attorneys from claiming his alleged actions were justified because they were in the defense of another, in this case the unborn. Wilbert said he will consider arguments later on that argument. He also delayed ruling on a defense request to move the trial outside Wichita because of pretrial publicity. Wilbert said he was optimistic that an impartial panel could be picked, but said he would revisit the issue if that proved to be difficult.