Kathleen “Sarah Jane Olson” Soliah, convicted Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist and former Highland Park DFL stalwart and cause celebre, has been released on parole:
Kathleen Soliah, a former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, was released on parole this week from a California women’s prison after serving about six years behind bars for her role in a plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars.
The white-haired convict, who has changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Like most California inmates, Soliah earned credit against her sentence for working while in prison. She served on a maintenance crew that swept and cleaned the main yard of the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, prison officials said.
The 61-year-old Soliah, who was released Monday, must now serve a three-year parole, although prison officials declined to provide the conditions of her release.
In the Soliah camp, there’s never been any doubt as to who the real victim was. And it’s not Myrna Opsahl:
Soliah’s attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, said, “We’re thrilled she’s out and can return to her family. For someone who was not a danger or a threat to society, it was six years too long.”
Saner heads prevailed, at trial and today:
Los Angeles police see Soliah in far harsher light.
She “attempted to murder LAPD officers by bombing two police cars,” said Tim Sands, president of the Police Protective League, which represents the city’s 9,300 rank-and-file officers. “She needs to serve her full time in prison for these crimes and does not deserve time off for working in prison. Criminals who attempt to murder police officers should not be able to escape justice simply because they have good lawyers.”…Soliah pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing a destructive device with the intent to murder and also struck a deal in a separate case, in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for participating in a Sacramento bank robbery where another SLA member killed [customer Myrna Opsahl]. For the murder conviction, she received a one-year sentence. For the botched bombings, Soliah initially was sentenced to five years and four months, but that term was extended to 12 years by a state prison board after the board designated her a serious offender.
I filled in Myrna Opsahl‘s name. The media has troubling tendency to leave here as an anonymous statistic; she was, in fact, a 42 year old mother of four. Indeed, everyone involved, including Soliah’s family, seem to refuse to grant Myrna Opsahl the dignity of having ever existed, much less accept responsibility for her murder.
Last June, Tara McKelvey interviewed Soliah’s husband and daughter, Fred and Emily Peterson. Nary a word of responsibility, of wonder about the life of the woman whose life Soliah helped bring to a gruesome, horrible end, of acknowledgement that Soliah was facing justice (and a fairly benign version of justice at that) for having done something wrong – the evil of destroying one life and family, and actively conniving to destroy more. No – since she’d been a “good person” since her years of bomb-making and bank-robbing and wanton gunfire, they, and their supporters, thought it was all an even trade.
Fred Peterson tried to turn it into a David Lynch screenplay:
“You know, The Fugitive Becomes a Soccer Mom. They’re all stereotypical images of deceit. None of that applies when you’re just living a life and raising kids. People would say to me, ‘How could you accommodate such a depraved criminal mind? How can you live with the knowledge of what happened in the past?’ It captures the American psychodrama. But it was not real.”
I’ll bet the family of Myrna Opsahl begs to differ.
(Via Ed at Hot Air)
Paul,
I neither look at, nor read, every response.. I’ll go look, jeezus.. lighten up.
The Foot deigned to query of Yoss
If I could play MilF golf and drink sauce
It’s a long ways away,
But I’d sure like to play,
I’ll have to check, of course, with “The Girl” boss.
I think it’s clear you don’t ‘get it’ peevish. *shrug*
Is born of myopic verbosity
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
This from a guy who is brevity challenged.
Paul (and Brad),
Short answer, YES, long answer – I rarelly need to, most of the time the posts there ALREADY admit to the double standards of the left. Oh, not all, so please don’t start spewing crap.
Longer answer, I visit damned few blogs. I know Mitch, I freely and frequently condemn the left with the same words I use to condemn the right on CQ, or on DU, or on centrisity.
So, as far as double standards go, no, I don’t think I’m engaging in one. So, Brad, Paul, do YOU condemn the righties here with the same vociferousness you condemn the left? Does Mitch?
It keeps getting better… Peev can’t even write a limerick to the normal form. He has to add extra lines!
😆
I neither look at, nor read, every response.. I’ll go look, jeezus.. lighten up.
I’ve only reposted it twice in this thread.
Now answer it.
NOW.
Before you accuse Mitch of not including a host of unrelated topics yet again.
I decided a while back that Mitch’s opinion wasn’t worth getting upset about
Which apparently hasn’t stopped you from
a) writing an awful lot of upset-sounding stuff
b) leaving 420 comments since this past June 6.
Paul,
BTW, failing to read YOUR, or Brad’s posts – considering the childishness of the commentors, isn’t refusal, it’s squelch filtering out serious questions from the stupidity of the right wing abuse machine.
So, candidly, lets stop calling conduct something it isn’t..mmmkay?
oh, wow, mitch, I comment 1.2 times per day… fling poo and whinge some more.. get a grip.
Hey Mitch, how many times have you posted? How many comments has Troy, or Terry made, AC?
And you darned well know I play fair with condemning the left, so if you had some class, and balls, you’d stand up to classless idiots like oh, Paul, and tell him pretty straight out that I poke holes in both sides… but, I’ll not hold my breath, or anything.
Paul, go issue demands to the other people in your life you abuse.. asshat, Now I wish I hadn’t answered… damn…
Answer my question NOW Paul, do you criticize the right here? Do you live up to any standards you expect?
I rarelly need to, most of the time the posts there ALREADY admit to the double standards of the left.
Links to examples?
So, Brad, Paul, do YOU condemn the righties here with the same vociferousness you condemn the left?
You’re the one who brought this up, along with charges of sinners casting the first stone. That’s why I hammered you on it, because you didn’t let up.
I also think that you can’t defend Soliah on merit, which is why you are doing everything you can to change the subject by attacking. That’s why you are now asking “So, Brad, Paul, do YOU condemn the righties here with the same vociferousness you condemn the left?”
Care to prove me wrong?
Peev,
So you comment 1.2 times per day… but you do it with rage. Rage! RAGE!!! And hate. Hate! HATE!!! You get so annoyed. Annoyed! ANNOYED!!!
And with poo. (Spouting from your cranium.)
Hey Mitch, how many times have you posted?
On my blog? About 10,500 posts in six years. That’s how many posts I’ve made on my blog. Yes indeedydoo.
How many comments has Troy, or Terry made, AC?
Not nearly enough, in my book!
And you darned well know I play fair with condemning the left
Which is fine, but hardly the point. And the point – that Soliah is in the news – has been pointed out to you over and over.
Since Peev says he doesn’t read me,
I’m hence unfettered to mock him with glee
This has been a great thread.
Not since the slicing of bread
Has something this great come to be.
I’d love to see links to areas where Peev pokes holes in the Left.
it’s squelch filtering out serious questions from the stupidity of the right wing abuse machine.
Considering the logic-challenged, long-winded crap you write, I’ll take that as a compliment.
That should fix the tag problem.
test
This bears repeating:
Peev, Mitch’s visiting Lout
Will type as long as he Pouts
With no end in sight
He’ll continue to write
As poo from his cranium Sprouts
Badda, you wrecked the thread.
Thanks Badda, class act.
Paul, you didnt’ answer my question – and clearly you won’t – because you DON’T criticize the right.
You need me to go link comments from CQ or Centrisity.. jeezus – get a grip.
Finally, I didn’t defend Soliah you dimwit, she’s a terrorist, she deserved jailtime, but I, like JoelR, think the system worked.
The issue is, and was, this, Mitch looks to be crying about an issue that, when weighed against other things he looks over freeley and happily, well, it looks like he doesn’t give a damn, and is just using the family’s loss as his own hype.
If you’re not capable of remembering the numerous times I’ve criticized the left here, well, that’s your problem bud, not mine. I have no interest in proving it to you, because your conduct doesn’t merit it.
In the end though, as normal, you all attacked me personally (as is your norm) rather than discuss the issue – as is your norm. Reagan backed terrorism, where is your anger, where is your hatred?
Nowhere, precisely next to your integrity.
No mitch, the point isn’t that Soliah is in the news.. you could have left it at that.. the POINT you made was to phumper and whinge about the cost to Mrs. Osphal’s family.
THEN the point became the hilarity of such a comment – considering how freely you put Reagan on a pedestal – of how easily you overlook the costs of an ill-considered, and even less well-justified war.
Soliah being in the news may be YOUR point, or rather ONE of your points, but since when are discussions to be limited ONLY to what you want?
BTW – Badda, Paul, go read what Mitch said again if you would. He knows I freely and openly criticize the left, are you seriously vapid enough to think I only do so here? I take on all you knuckleheads, I surely would have no fear in an arena where I’d be better treated, commenting on the failings of the left.. so take your accusations of hypocrisy and … well, an apology would be right, but I won’t hold my breath.
Mitch, you ducked the question, how often does Terry, or Troy, or AC comment? More, less? Are they equally ‘bound up’ by what you think? I try to push you to real discourse, you nearly always run from it – not always, just nearly – but I only do so infrequently because it’s normally fruitless.
That said, I do want to thank you, your comments back to me, for a while now, have been a LOT more civil – and I’ve tried to repay the kindness – with more and sometimes less success, apologies.
Poor Peev continues to flail
It’s like watching a dog try to read braille
He easily provoked
And generally a joke.
How can one man be so full of FAIL?
D’oh! Re-post:
Poor Peev continues to flail
It’s like watching a dog try to read braille
He’s easily provoked
And is generally a joke.
How can one man be so full of FAIL?
Mitch, you ducked the question, how often does Terry, or Troy, or AC comment? More, less?
Who cares?
Are they equally ‘bound up’ by what you think?
Who cares?
I try to push you to real discourse
Sometimes? Sure!
This thread? Demanding that I account for Bush Administration foreign policy in a post on Kathleen Soliah? That’s not “real discourse”, that’s monomaniacal pointillistic absurditymongering.
So, Brad, Paul, do YOU condemn the righties here with the same vociferousness you condemn the left?
Yes, but not as much here as on my own blog. You see, there’s the major difference. I don’t hijack someone’s comment section if I have thoughts/opinions which do not relate to the topic of a post.
Peev wrote:
” . . . does Oliver North have blood on his hands?”
Twenty years in the marines, combat tour in Vietnam, silver star, bronze star, two purple hearts. I certainly hope he has blood on his hands.
the point isn’t that Soliah is in the news.. you could have left it at that.. the POINT you made was to phumper and whinge about the cost to Mrs. Osphal’s family.
You mean the mother of four who was murdered, whose existence, as I showed in the Marie Claire piece, the Petersons cant’ seem to acknowledge?
Yeah. Such “phumpering”.
you could have left it at that..
Yeah, when I need a copy editor, you’ll be the first person I call.
Finally, I didn’t defend Soliah you dimwit,
My point, yet again, is that you didn’t, you nitwit. Keep reading:
If you’re not capable of remembering the numerous times I’ve criticized the left here, well, that’s your problem bud, not mine. I have no interest in proving it to you, because your conduct doesn’t merit it.
Thanks for proving me right:
I also think that you can’t defend Soliah on merit, which is why you are doing everything you can to change the subject by attacking. That’s why you are now asking “So, Brad, Paul, do YOU condemn the righties here with the same vociferousness you condemn the left?”
Then there’s this:
If you’re not capable of remembering the numerous times I’ve criticized the left here, well, that’s your problem bud, not mine. I have no interest in proving it to you, because your conduct doesn’t merit it.
Or because you can’t.
In the end though, as normal, you all attacked me personally (as is your norm) rather than discuss the issue – as is your norm.
Who was it that said this way back at the beginning of the thread:
Where is your screed about the crimes of Eric William Rudolph? Or Timothy McVeigh? Or where are your screeds about the secret bombings of Laos, of our support for Contras, or the Salvadoran (or Chilean) army’s executions of civilians?
Who completely avoided discussing the issue of the Soliah release?
And what’s this “as normal?” I rarely respond to your fact/logic/ethic/brevity challenged posts simply because they are a waste of time. Want to show me where I avoid discussng the issue of a post and simply thread-jack like you are doing?
I hammered the late, unlamented Doug for his constant thread-jacking so often that he made the laughable accusation that I was stalking him in the comments.
Write consisely Peev, using facts and logic, and stick to the topic at hand. Then you won’t be the laughingstock you’ve made yourself to be today…and on past threads.
So, since you decided to bring up terrorism, and it’s price..
How do you feel about the families murdered by Contras – how do you feel about the fact that we are involved in a war, supposedly about GWOT, fighting an enemy (AQI) that didn’t exist before we came, and will die when we leave?
How do you feel about the fact that Colin Powell fatuously presented materials to the UN to justify that war? How do you feel about the 150,000 Iraqi civilians who’ve died , with the blood on our hands?
Are you now, or have you ever been, able to connect the dots between these kinds of over-arching issues? Soliah represented a childish teenager’s/young adults decision to get ‘involved’ in standing up to ‘the man’ about Vietnam. She got into something she probably didn’t originally intend to, but that’s no defense. She helped do something criminal, including being complicit in a murder – how is that so different from Oliver North – how is it so very different from someone like McVeigh deciding he hates the government so much (due to the Branch Davidian incident) that he ‘has to take the law into his own hands?’ The short answer is, it isn’t.
The tougher issue is, one person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. We back things like the Contras, because we despised David Ortega (if memory serves). We choose to embroil ourselves in localized strife, including arming ‘irregulars’ and engaging in ‘non-traditional warfare’ and then bitch when it’s used against us. While Soliah was wrong, she’s a pimple on the world’s ass in terms of the problems we face. We have sewn a bed of issues which we can’t simply shoot our way out of – our allies will hold us up to a pretty strong glare, and will no longer believe our protestations of ethics. So Mitch, the issue isn’t one little SLA bimbo who decided to show ‘daddy’ by tossing a bomb during another stupid and unjustified war… the issue isn’t that simple, and myopic hyperfocus on it doesn’t make it that simple, no matter how many times you want to try to constrain the debate to it.
The issue is that if you fail to live up to the standards of conduct you set, you rapidly become the monster. If you want to bitch, you might want to take the monster mask off first, that’s all I’m sayin.
Oops, should have been:
Then there’s this (again):
Caligula named his a horse as a Senator
Vincitatus, as I recall. I wonder what Sara Jane Kathleen Soliah Olsen would think about That?
Peev just continues to yammer
To babble, carp, grumble and stammer
It staggers my belief
People respond to the queef.
When what he needs is to be whacked with hammer.
*with A hammer.”
I’m losing my touch.
Paul, you didnt’ answer my question – and clearly you won’t – because you DON’T criticize the right.
If the topic were about Bush’s amnesty approach for illegal aliens or
The Incumbency Protection ActMcCain-Feingold or Bush’s Tax Rebate withour cutting spending for a few examples, I would criticize the right, and have done so.But that’s not the topic of this thread, is it?
Paul,
You haven’t hammered me one whit..
Let’s see..
“Since he can’t defend Soliah credibly, he has to attack to draw attention away from her guilt.”
That implies that, if I could find a credible defense, I would do so.. Bullshit, unproven conjecture, and worse. I haven’t for a moment tried to draw attention away from her guilt.. I tried to point out the guilt of others whom you don’t give a crap about.
Your admission that I didn’t defend her was shrouded in a totally unsubstantiated accusation that somehow I wish I had the words.. not so, and not close, and you certainly weren’t behaving well by the admission that I didn’t defend her – I replied to you based on your tone as well as your words. You confer ill intent where there was none, and without proof.
Further, go ask Flash or Ed if ‘leftout’ or ‘penigma’ have criticized the left. I pilloried Mark Ritchie – whom I personally confronted last weekend about his dishonesty.. and frankly pissed him off..
So, go suck an egg asshat – I live up to what I say, Mitch doesn’t – he demands conduct from others he won’t live to, but I try.. I fail too, but I do try..
You, otoh, accused me of something you have no proof of – none – and then did it again – if you seriously think I’m going to go back to CQ to look back at a blog I stopped posting on a more than six months ago.. get a freakin life.. jagoff
The issue is that if you fail to live up to the standards of conduct you set, you rapidly become the monster.
Too bad you didn’t apply that to yourself today.
Oh, I get it Paul, the FAR right is never wrong..therefore, it never deserves criticism I guess, huh? I mean, FISA wasn’t violated, the 2nd amendment DOES mean that NO law can ever infringe, and IS incorporated, and Reagan NEVER gave guns to Iran.
But you’re right, none of those were Mitch’s point, and maybe, just maybe, you can see, that’s the point. The right is blind to its flaws. Wilfully.
Sure Paul.. sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.
Then you can go tell yourself that you had even a shred of proof that I don’t criticize the left, yet you made this thread about that for 20 plus posts, and in the end, when in fact you were wrong, you didn’t have the balls or class to admit it.
but you sure shredded me.. boy, I’m smartin now.
Peev,
Read my comment again. I simply asked for a link. I never said you don’t call the Left hateful, gay-bashing, hypocritical, etc., etc., etc.
(You’re too defensive… again. You’re also in need of a quote from “Stripes”… again.)
shred of proof that I don’t criticize the left
For the third time: Granted, AND irrelevant.
Limerick fun aside, I have to say. . . Peev is barking insane today.
Paul,
Here’s a question for you, outside of your rampant duplicity at hijacking this thread about a false, ugly and unproven allegation…
Do you think that our conduct in Iraq will lead to a lasting peace? If so, why, based on what evidence? Iraq is more stable today than a year ago, and certainly than two years ago, but compaared to 2003 (summer or fall), it’s FAR less so.
What evidence exists that the low intensity warfare we now face – mostly not directed at us – will subside further? (By the way, that’s the easy one)
What evidence exists the Shiites, who have time on their side and hold all the cards, will willingly give up power? ( I think expecting them to is whistling in the wind)
What will happen when the Shiites grow impatient?
The point, Paul, is simply this – we set loose Blackwater, for a time the Shiite Militias, etc.. in Iraq. They engaged in conduct which CANNOT be prosecuted in the formers case, and won’t be prosecuted in the latter’s. The Shiites without doubt or question setup our troops for murder – kinda like Soliah’s attempts to kill cops, eh?
Where is our outrage at setting up Blackwater as an extralegal entity?
When our adversaries (not to mention our allies) need to go find justification for terrorism, they don’t need to look much further than those kinds of things. Our hubris has caused far more harm than we want to admit – but – I should be upset that Kathleen Soliah is out of prison.. yeah.
Hey, wasn’t peev in the army? I wonder how many babies he killed to make him all crazy like this.
Mitch , irrelevant to you.. and granted it is..to you, but not to bloviating Paul.
Badda.. I’ll go get one, jeez.. you ask a lot you know :).