4-09-09, 9:35 am

Original source: Beaver County Times Editorial, WEDNESDAY APRIL 8, 2009

Terrorists within: Police officers were victims of far-right hatred and ideology

Pittsburgh police officers Paul Sciullo II, Stephen Mayhle and Eric Kelly weren’t killed in the line of duty.

They were assassinated.

When Sciullo and Mayhle responded to a domestic complaint at the Stanton Heights home of Margaret Poplawski, they didn’t know Paul Poplawski, a 23-year-old juiced up on far-right conspiracy theories, was waiting to gun them down with an AK-47 assault rifle.

When Kelly, who has off duty and on his way home, showed up to back up Sciullo and Mayhle, he didn’t know that when he got to the scene he would be ambushed by a far-right zealot who feared his weapons would be confiscated by the Obama administration.

From the details that are emerging about his life, Poplawski clearly was a troubled young man who had issues with authority and was attracted to violence and the hatred spewed by the far right.

On Saturday morning, Paul Sciullo II, Stephen Mayhle and Eric Kelly encountered Paul Poplawski.

Within minutes, they were dead, the victims of a cold-blooded political assassin.

After a four-hour standoff, Poplawski was arrested. Although he had been shot, his body armor prevented him from being seriously wounded.

We can debate gun control and we can bemoan the economic, social and family conditions that went into creating someone like Poplawski.

But we also need to take a good hard look at the danger that the far right poses to our domestic tranquility.

Except for brief outbreaks of left-wing violence, most recently in the late 1960s and early 1970s, political violence in the United States has been the almost exclusive domain of the right.

The real threat to the American way of life is from the far right (and its enablers, especially talk radio). They are the ones who don’t understand the principles and ideals on which this nation was founded. They are the terrorists within. Sciullo, Mayhle and Kelly are the latest victims in the far right’s war against America.

The bodies of the three slain police officers will lie in state at the City-County Building starting at 3 p.m. today. Pray for them, their families, their fellow police officers and our nation.