Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano is insisting that it was "not domestic terrorism" for a white supremacist to shoot seven people dead at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, but a Muslim U.S. Army major killing 13 coworkers at Ft. Hood was.
Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that the FBI was investigating Wade Michael Page's deadly rampage at the Wisconsin Sikh temple as possible domestic terrorism. The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives."
"The legal definition of terrorism is two or more acts of violence intended to change the policy of the government, by scaring the population or by scaring the government," Napolitano told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Tuesday. "That does not appear to be what happened in this case."
"Page appears to be -- appears, he's dead -- appears to have been a disgruntled nut job who hated Muslims, didn't know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims and thought by killing the Sikhs he was somehow going to eliminate the Muslim population. It is an absurd, tortured way of thinking but it is not an act of domestic terrorism."
He continued: "On the other hand, the Ft. Hood shooter [Nidal Malik Hasan] who killed military in the place where they worked while damning and condemning the behavior of the government -- the employer of the people that he killed -- the government refuses to call that an act of domestic terrorism."
"While hailing Allah," Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade noted.
"If that's not a case of terrorism then nothing is a case of terrorism," Napolitano agreed. "I think that what's playing here is politics. I think that there's a political ramification to calling something terrorism. It scares people. We look at it more closely. But if you call something 'workplace violence,' as horrific as it is, it doesn't scare us as much as it does with the word 'terrorist.'"
(h/t: Mediaite)
