Maine Owl

Sean Hannity, NOT good people


Stanford Coins & Bullion, a business of recently-exposed Madoff-style criminal Allen Stanford, was promoted by most worst Hannity in his own voice on his radio show

I'd like to think this isn't an angry blog, but this kind of predation really irks me. From Huffington Post:

"I couldn't believe it when I heard the advertisement," said Michael Levine, a regular Hannity listener from Westchester County, New York.

He called the radio station on Tuesday to inform them Stanford had been implicated in what the SEC termed "massive, ongoing" fraud. "They told me they had no idea what I was talking about," Levine told the Huffington Post.

At the very least this shows the carelessly venal nature of the Hannity enterprise. It shows that Hannity is as unreliable in his commercial offerings as he has always been in his political ones. Maybe some other Hannity listeners will begin to catch on to this fraud like Mr. Levine has.

Meanwhile, Stanford, perpetrator of a $9.2 billion financial fraud, was found on the lam by the FBI in Fredericksburg, Va., and served with court papers.

The Bangor Daily News today ran follow-up pieces on the late James G. Cummings and his wingnut activities collecting materials evidently to have been used for construction of a radiological "dirty bomb."

The second story featured some comments from my former thesis adviser, Dr. Tom Hess of the University of Maine Department of Physics and Astronomy,

The Bangor Daily News reported this week that authorities seized a number of potentially hazardous materials, including uranium and thorium, from the man's home on Dec. 9, 2008, the night he was killed. He also had literature on how to construct dirty bombs.

"If you have a University of Maine invoice, I suppose it's very easy to get materials," said C. Thomas Hess, a physics professor. "But most materials, particularly anything that is made by some sort of chemical reaction [such as uranium], is strictly regulated."

However, the article ended up being a little unsatisfying because it did not address specifically the availability of the much more powerful dirty bomb materials: cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60.

When I worked with Dr. Hess in the 80s, we could get small amounts of solutions containing these radionuclides quite easily. The folks who tested the roofs of University buildings for leaks had even stronger solutions containing cesium-137. According to the reports, Cummings did not actually possess these powerfully radioactive fission products (i.e. nuclear waste material), but rather much-less-radioactive samples of the heavy elements uranium and thorium. I guess that's comforting.

My question for Dr. Hess is, is it now harder to obtain samples of fission products that would make a vastly more powerful and "disruptive" dirty bomb?

Update: Something kinda obvious that should have occurred to me is that to make a really strong "dirty bomb" using enough fission product to cause a lot of trouble, the device would have to be heavily shielded prior to detonation. Otherwise it would be a problem for the bomber, and everyone along the line who might handle the material. You need some sort of "cask" to ship that stuff.

While we're on the subject of wingnuttia and the excellent coverage of it at Orcinus, Sara writes that the extreme nutjob who rampaged with a gun last summer at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee, killing two parishioners, has been sentenced to life.

James Adkisson by all accounts is an extremely angry person, inspired and animated by right-wing talk radio. He managed to put his anger into words in sort of a suicide note/manifesto quoted in the Orcinus piece:

Adkisson: Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them....

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."

I thought I'd do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me....Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

This man seems to be the fruition of the kind of thinking found at Palin rallies last fall.

Posted at Wikileaks: Washington DC Regional Threat and Analysis Center report re Inauguration, 16 Jan 2009: "9 December 2008 Discovery of Radiological Dispersal Device Components, Literature, and Radioactive Material at the Maine Residence of an Identified Deceased US Person"

Quite a front-page story in the Bangor Daily News today:

Report: 'Dirty bomb' parts found in slain man's home
Agency says radioactive materials recovered
in home of man allegedly slain by his wife
By Walter Griffin- BDN Staff

BELFAST, Maine ? James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a "dirty bomb." ...

[An FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center] says that four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were found in the home.

Also found was literature on how to build "dirty bombs" and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups.

Curiously, the report carefully avoids the term "terrorist" when describing the slain man. (His wife has not been charged yet.)

The report fails to distinguish the characteristics of what was found at the site, versus what was in literature there. While beryllium is a deadly chemical poison and uranium and thorium are poisonous and somewhat radioactive, none of those are big radiological dangers.

On the other hand, the stuff mentioned that evidently the guy didn't have--cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60--are extremely radioactive products of fission (i.e. nuclear waste). Tiny amounts of these substances can kill at moderate distance if concentrated enough. But, the guy was only reading about those. I suppose he could not get them from the same sources the other stuff came from. That's comforting, I guess.

Thanks to the Bangor Daily News for giving this story the weight it deserves with a front-page banner headline. As one can read about constantly at Orcinus, the far more important terror/assassination threat in this country comes from right-wing and neo-nazi pseudo fascists. The deceased man was said to be "very upset" when Barack Obama was elected president, according to the BDN report.