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Leftist terrorists strike at Indiana University?

By Scott Tibbs, March 16, 2005

The Indiana Daily Student reports that the Indiana Memorial Union when someone called from a pay phone to say that a bomb had been planted in Alumni Hall, where the IU College Republicans and the Monroe County Republican Party were holding an "inaugural ball" to celebrate the re-election of President George W. Bush.

Franklin Andrew, who organized the event, said "It seemed rather suspect that the bomb threat was in the room in which we were holding a Republican event."

Indeed, it is suspicious, especially because this is not new. At a College Republicans mass meeting in 1996, someone pulled a fire alarm in the Business School when U.S. Rep. John Hostettler was about to give a speech. Hostettler had been the target of protests, and was in the midst of a heated re-election campaign.

A year later, "environmentalists" protested logging by bringing a chainsaw into the Bloomington office of Representative Hostettler and running it in the doorway of his office. In 2000, things got worse when the Earth Liberation Front attempted to burn down Republican Party headquarters to protest Representative Hostettler's support of Interstate 69.

It is not yet known if the bomb threat was made with political motivations. It may have been a coincidence that the bomb threat targeted the room where the Republican event was being held. However, if the bomb threat was made to disrupt a political event, it rises above a criminal act and qualifies as a terrorist act.

A bomb threat is serious business:

  1. It wastes valuable police resources that could be needed at a real emergency.
  2. It creates a potentially dangerous situation as people rush to leave the building.
  3. It contributes to a "boy who cried wolf" attitude that could cost lives in a real emergency.

Such acts of terrorism are unacceptable and inexcusable. Whoever did this must be hunted down, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.