Plane hits IRS building

Normally we treat ‘tax revolt’ news items with some levity, but this one is tragic:

A software engineer furious with the Internal Revenue Service launched a suicide attack on the agency Thursday by crashing his small plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, setting off a raging fire that sent workers fleeing for their lives.

At least one person in the building was missing.

A federal law official identified the pilot as Joseph Stack and said investigators were looking at a long anti-government screed and farewell note that he apparently posted on the Web earlier in the day as an explanation for what he was about to do.

In it, the author cited run-ins with the IRS and ranted about the tax agency, government bailouts and corporate America’s “thugs and plunderers.”

Stack’s full screed is available on The Smoking Gun website.

URLs:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/ap_on_re_us/us_plane_crash_texas

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html#theLink