DENVER — The Justice Department has confirmed that the man who attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs last week is part of a sprawling network of deranged individuals acting entirely on their own.

Psychotic hermit Robert Dear is facing first-degree murder charges in Friday’s attack that left three people dead and many injured. While some observers jumped to conclusions by claiming that the incident was tragic but ultimately isolated, others were quick to realize that Dear was acting in concert with other solitary nutcases.

“This terror network represents a new type of threat, hitherto unclassified as a network because nobody would have gone along with it, but now the political climate is just about right,” said Larry A. Genda, the Justice Department’s newly appointed expert on single-member domestic terror organizations. “Each cell is composed of one individual who acts independently of any central command, whom he never meets anyway, and from whom he receives no orders.”

Erica Neigurck, a local woman who designs connect-the-dots coloring books for children, says that people who identify as pro-life obviously play a central role in the terror network and should be charged as accomplices to the attack.

“If you publicly say that you believe abortion is wrong, and some crazy person you don’t know starts shooting random people in a family planning center on the other side of the country, then you must be held responsible,” she said. “In fact, every time a lunatic violently lashes out on his own, we must ask ourselves, who’s been recklessly talking within earshot of this person, and how can we prevent such talking in the future?”

“Ideas and opinions need to be monitored and controlled,” she added. “Lest they fall into the wrong hands.”