Plane Crash In Austin

FAA officials are saying at this hour that the pilot of a Piper Cherokee plane that crashed into an IRS office building in downtown Austin set his house on fire, stole the airplane, and deliberately crashed it.

It's getting very, very crazy.  The owner of the plane, who is at this point assumed to have been the pilot, is a man named Joseph Andrew Stack.

More as updates come in.

[UPDATE 1:45 PM]  Oliver Willis is all over this one.

In relation to the plane crashing into the IRS office in Austin, Texas, this website has a long rambling rant from a guy named Joe Stack with a grievance versus the IRS. If the site goes down the text is here.

And that text is frightening.  Read it. He rails at the IRS and government, the aviation and engineering business, and the capitalist greed that powers it all.  He rails at the system whom he blames for destroying his life over the last 15 years. It ends thusly:

Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but
violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really
big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at
and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over
and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to
stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take
my pound of flesh and sleep well.

And so, he struck his blow.

What a broken world we live in.

[UPDATE 2:20 PM] Adam Serwer with some much needed perspective to temper my anger:

Let's wait for the facts on the texas plane crash before drawing conclusions. Initial reports always have errors.

Truth.  No reports of any fatalities however...yet.  That is the good news.

[UPDATE 3:50 PM] Alternet has this find:

What appears to be a right-wing Facebook group celebrating Stack already has 89 members. The site features the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and the following description:

Finally an American man took a stand against our tyrannical government that no longer follows the constitution and is turned its back on its founding fathers and the beliefs this country was founded on.

Two people have been hospitalized, and one is unaccounted for. A hospital spokesperson says that one person was admitted with minor injuries and  smoke inhalation, while another is in serious condition and being treated for burns, reports the Statesman.com.

Nice. Already a martyr for a violent reaction to the government.  That's the definition of...hmm...what's the word I'm looking for?