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A gunman opened fire at U.S. Congressmen and others who were gathered at a practice this morning for the Congressional Baseball Game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and at least four others were reportedly injured. The gunman, who has been identified by unnamed sources as James T. Hodgkinson III, was taken to a local hospital where he died from his injuries:
A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire Wednesday at a park in Alexandria, Va., as Republican members of Congress held a morning baseball practice, wounding at least five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.).
The suspected gunman is James T. Hodgkinson III, 66, from Illinois, according to multiple law enforcement sources. President Trump announced that the gunman, who was wounded in a shootout with officers, has died at an area hospital.
The wounded also included two Capitol Police officers and a congressional aide, according to one law enforcement official and witness accounts.
Congressman Scalise was shot in the hip and is in stable condition.
Hodgkinson's motive may have already been identified by the media:
A Facebook page belonging to a person with the same name includes pictures of Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and rhetoric against President Trump, including a post that reads: "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co."
Charles Orear, 50, a restaurant manager from St. Louis, said in an interview Wednesday that he became friendly with Hodgkinson during their work together in Iowa on Sanders's campaign. Orear said Hodgkinson was a passionate progressive and showed no signs of violence or malice toward others.
Also at LA Times, Reuters, The Atlantic, The Hill, and CNN.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday June 15 2017, @04:00PM
You obviously have had very limited dealings with state governments. Basically, all of the stuff you see going wrong at the federal level are even worse at the state level, and often even worse than that at the county and local level. Corruption and incompetence are both common and have surprisingly little effect on electoral success.
It's not all that surprising when you think about it: There are about 550 federal office-holders, a couple thousand state-level office-holders, and hundreds of thousands of local-level office holders. At each level, your chance of advancing in power and salary by getting a better political office is fairly low, because there just aren't any spaces above you in the food chain to fill, and the simple fact that you're already in office helps you tremendously electorally so there's very little threat of losing your office. So instead of trying to work up to being governor or something, many, especially those who have reached their level of incompetence, instead try to boost their earnings via corruption.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.