An investigator asked him if he would talk.

They talked for hours, Hughes said, and she finally asked the question he'd been waiting for.

Why did you do it?

Hughes is, let's say, a talker. And his pet political issue, the reason for his flight, was to bring attention to campaign finance reform. He wanted to deliver 535 letters, one for each member of Congress, that demanded they rid elections of big money. He started in on how removing contributions caps has corrupted the political process and pretty soon he noticed that the guy taking notes had stopped taking notes.

"If they recorded that, I want a copy," Hughes said. "That's got to be a great, classic recording…. They let me talk about the politics!"

Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine said the man had a backpack and a rolling suitcase, triggering an hours-long lockdown, and a sign that said something about “social justice.”

Robert Bishop of Annapolis, Maryland said he was biking near the steps of the Capitol when the suicide happened.

Bishop didn’t witness the suicide but said there were about 60 people in the area, and that some of them did, including a girl and her mother who immediately began crying afterward.

Bishop said another witness told him and a police officer that the man who killed himself held up a protest sign about taxation just before pulling the trigger.

Explanations remained elusive Sunday for what may have helped drive the man, identified in police documents as Leo P. Thornton, 22, to commit suicide — and to do so in one of the nation’s iconic places.

A man who answered the phone at the address police listed for Thornton in Lincolnwood, Ill., declined to comment. An incident report from D.C. police recounted that shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday, “witnesses reported that a lone male subject pulled out a gun, then shot himself in the head.”

Thornton had a brown carry-on bag full of clothes and a sign that Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine said touched on “social justice.” A witness said people who saw the sign told him it read “Tax the one percent.” (snip)

“We often look to external cues, which are absolutely important. But we have done that at the expense of identifying the more internal mental health changes that are taking place that are actually amenable to treatment,” Moutier said. “The fact is that millions of Americans believe different political positions, or lose their job, or get bullied, and don’t actually entertain the idea of suicide. There must be some underlying mental health and cognitive risk factors at play.”

What those might be remained unknown Sunday.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday ignored a White House veto threat and passed legislation to repeal the estate tax that hits inherited assets worth $5.4 million or more.

By a mostly partisan 240-179 vote, the Republican-backed bill will be sent to the Senate, where Democrats are expected to use procedural hurdles to try to block it. Even if it passes the Senate, it would likely fail to achieve a two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. (snip)

Few Americans pay the 40 percent tax on assets above the $5.4 million exclusion amount. About 5,400 estates, equal to 0.2 percent of taxpayers, will owe such taxes in 2015, according to the JCT.

What kind of a society have we become? A man decides to commit suicide as an act of political courage, and is dismissed by both the police and media as unworthy of further examination?

When a man in Tunisia set himself on fire in protest of the draconian taxation and intimidating police enforcement of the state (not unlike in Ferguson and most American racially and financially motivated policing toward black Americans) it led to the Arab Spring.