In Brief:
Terrorism is not an ideology. When Joe Stack flew his single-engine Piper Cherokee into an IRS building in Austin, it was an act of terrorism. But reporters and government officials have been reluctant to call what Stack did terrorism. On Fox, Catherine Herridge made a distinction between Stack's act and "Terrorism with a capital T." It's certainly fair to point out that Stack was not acting as part of a larger terrorist conspiracy. In the same way, many pro-life activists were unwilling to condemn Scott Roeder's assassination of Dr. George Tiller as an act of terrorism, even though Roeder targeted Tiller as part of his opposition to abortions.
