The rats really are scuttling out of the woodwork: last week, it’s a right-wing anti-abortion hater gunning down a doctor, and this week, we get a white supremacist opening fire in the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Fortunately, no one has died in this incident, but a security guard and the gunman were wounded.

They really are afraid and desperate, and violence is all they have left.

(via Greg Laden)

In case you’re wondering about the motives behind this attack, they’re rather obvious.

The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.

Von Brunn served six years in prison on federal attempted kidnapping, assault and firearms charges after what he called a “legal, nonviolent citizens arrest” of members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

On his Web site, “Holy Western Empire,” von Brunn said he was “convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge.”

It’s about time the US law enforcement agencies recognized that the real terrorist groups in this country aren’t populated by people with funny arabic names: they’re homegrown, and they’ve got European names like von Brunn and McVeigh and Roeder…and even Terry and O’Reilly.

The guard who was shot, Stephen T. Johns, has died, making von Brunn a murderer.