Word: oklahomas
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...intense struggle rages in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing--a fight to define exactly what transpired on April 19. Our nation's leaders and our mainstream media have essentially construed the bombing as a frontal assault on the idea of America, a sort of sharp uppercut at the nerve center of our nation. At the same time, however, a 'revisionist school' has emerged, dedicated to stripping away layers of myth and metaphor and understanding the bombing in the context of a series of tragic events, foremost among them, the FBI raid on the Waco compound two years prior...
...best way, perhaps, to gauge the 'mainstream' reaction to Oklahoma is to consider the anti-terrorism bill that on Tuesday passed the Senate in a unanimous 90-0 vote, The bill--originally proposed by the Clinton administration in 1993 in the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing--calls for the hiring of 1,500 new federal agents, the amending of the privacy act in order to allow for more widespread use of electronic surveillance and the changing of immigration law in order to expedite the deportation of aliens suspected of terrorist involvement...
...bill represents a shamefully political reaction to the events of Oklahoma City. Although the content of the bill is, for the most part, not fundamentally objectionable--with the exception, perhaps, of the anti-alien clause--its timing is open to question. On the day of the vote, with teary-eyed relatives of Oklahoma victims standing alongside, senators indulged in the sort of sentimental anti-terrorist rhetoric that is impossible to contradict and so ends up meaning nothing. No self-respecting legislator wants to be soft on terrorists...
...OKLAHOMA BOMBING CASE
Federal prosecutors ran into an unexpected obstacle in their case against James Nichols (the brother of Terry Nichols, who has been charged in the Oklahoma City bombing). Authorities believe James Nichols may know a lot about the April 19 blast, and they had been holding him in jail on unrelated explosive charges in Michigan. But a federal judge expressed skepticism about the soundness of those charges and, finding that he posed little threat or risk of flight, released him into the custody of neighbors, pending trial. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma City, officials demolished the remains of the bombed-out federal building...