{"id":527,"date":"2009-06-08T00:09:16","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T00:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html"},"modified":"2009-06-08T00:09:16","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T00:09:16","slug":"scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html","title":{"rendered":"Scott Roeder and Osama bin Laden…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The abortion doc killer and the 9\/11 “mastermind”…More strange pairings? Maybe not. Bin Laden has been stuck in a cave in Waziristan or thereabouts for a few years, sending out audiotapes of threats periodically when he feels he needs attention–such as when President Obama addressed the Muslim world<\/strong><\/a> from Cairo last week. In that tape<\/strong><\/a>, Osama said Obama “and his administration have sown new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or maybe it’s the opposite, hence the bravado.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to Scott Roeder<\/strong>, who apparently loves to talk to the Associated Press. He called the wire service twice Sunday morning, and in the course of the chats<\/strong><\/a> said he was just the leading edge of a wave of anti-abortion violence:<\/p>\n

\n

“I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal.” <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Roeder<\/span> would not elaborate. Maybe not much to say, actually. Like bin Laden launching verbal darts from the canyons around Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Let’s hope. <\/p>\n

But Roeder was chatty about the “deplorable conditions in solitary” where he was kept during his first three days there. <\/p>\n

\n

Roeder said it was freezing in his cell. “I started having a bad cough. I thought I was going to have pneumonia,” he said. <\/strong><\/p>\n

He said he called AP because he wanted to emphasize the conditions in the jail so that in the future suspects would not have to endure the same conditions. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Roeder also said he wanted the public to know he has been denied phone privileges for the past two days, and needed his sleep apnea<\/span> machine.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not exactly “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”<\/strong><\/a> Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, told The Associated Press that Roeder is “a fruit and a lunatic.”<\/p>\n

I think he meant “fruitcake,” but then that would be redundant. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The abortion doc killer and the 9\/11 “mastermind”…More strange pairings? Maybe not. Bin Laden has been stuck in a cave in Waziristan or thereabouts for a few years, sending out audiotapes of threats periodically when he feels he needs attention–such as when President Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo last week. In that tape,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nScott Roeder and Osama bin Laden... - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scott Roeder and Osama bin Laden... - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The abortion doc killer and the 9\/11 “mastermind”…More strange pairings? Maybe not. Bin Laden has been stuck in a cave in Waziristan or thereabouts for a few years, sending out audiotapes of threats periodically when he feels he needs attention–such as when President Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo last week. In that tape,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-08T00:09:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Scott Roeder and Osama bin Laden... - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Scott Roeder and Osama bin Laden... - Pontifications","og_description":"The abortion doc killer and the 9\/11 “mastermind”…More strange pairings? Maybe not. Bin Laden has been stuck in a cave in Waziristan or thereabouts for a few years, sending out audiotapes of threats periodically when he feels he needs attention–such as when President Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo last week. In that tape,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2009-06-08T00:09:16+00:00","author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html","name":"Scott Roeder and Osama bin Laden... - Pontifications","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-06-08T00:09:16+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-08T00:09:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeder-and-osama-bin-lad.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Scott Roeder and Osama bin Laden…"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/","name":"Pontifications","description":"Catholic Faith and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}