Everyone’s favorite “libtard”-hating, potty-mouthed police chief is about to lose his job – but not without a few last jabs before he loses the limelight that has made him something a celebrity in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.

The borough council of Gilberton, Pa., voted 6-1 on Thursday to fire Mark Kessler, who has since been given a termination notice. Kessler faced disciplinary action after he posted videos of himself firing automatic weapons that were owned by the borough and cursing about gun control last summer.

While the notice of termination comes just weeks after Gilberton voted to suspend Kessler indefinitely, it is not yet the final chapter. According to The Patriot-News, Kessler has the right to challenge the firing with a public hearing, which could occur in as few as 10 days. ( continue to full post… )

A self-styled militia leader in Nevada who set off homemade bombs in the Arizona desert and bragged about wanting “to go to a nursery school and use kids for target practice” has pleaded guilty to a federal firearms violation.

Steven Matthew Fernandes, 19, who said he was a member of the Southern Nevada Militia when he was arrested by the FBI in September 2012, pleaded guilty this week in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to possession of an unregistered firearm.

Two other federal charges he was facing – illegally making firearms and transportation of explosive material – are expected to be dismissed as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. They are expected to recommend an 18-month sentence when Fernandes is sentenced in December. The charge carries a maximum of 10 years and a $10,000 fine. ( continue to full post… )

Two days after a 15-year-old black girl died in a fiery crash along a rural Mississippi road in 2009, someone using the anonymous online identity “GENERAL_LEE” began posting rants on the racist, anti-Semitic Vanguard News Network (VNN) website. One of the crash victims, Dijonaise Rutledge, died when she was thrown from the vehicle. But General Lee, in his online musings, seemed less concerned with the tragedy and more concerned with the girl’s “weirdest nigger name.”

“Dijonaise. Get it? ‘Dijon’ as in mustard + ‘Aise’ as in mayonaise = Dijonaise. Cute yes?” General Lee wrote. He continued: “Well, Dijoinaise Rutledge, along with three fellow nogs met his [sic] final fate on the highways of Wilkinson County, Mississippi. So, we’re four niggers short.” ( continue to full post… )

Anti-LGBT activist Scott Lively is known both for his bizarre theories – notably his long-running thesis that gays were responsible for the Holocaust – and for his ability to stir up anti-gay sentiment abroad, particularly in places like Uganda, for which he eagerly claims credit.

His latest claims and theories fit the pattern: Lively now claims that he inspired Russian President Vladimir Putin – whom he warmly describes as “the only world leader capable of standing up to the West … championing the traditional marriage and Christian values” – to sign a ban on “homosexual propaganda” into law. Oh, and by the way, President Obama seems also to probably be the Antichrist.

NBC News’ Tony Dokoupil interviewed Lively recently, and Lively repeated his previous claim that he inspired the spate of anti-LGBT legislation that has been enacted in Russia in recent years. “Yes, I think I influenced the Russian law,” Lively said.

The NBC report noted that there is some substance to the claim. Boris Dittricht, the chief LGBT advocate for Human Rights Watch, notes that there was no shortage of homophobia in Russian culture before Lively arrived, but observed that “the American pastor appears to have given shape to that free-floating hatred.” Dittrich noted that public bans on homosexual propaganda followed shortly after Lively would pass through those regions, preaching and promoting just such a solution by meeting with politicians and appearing with them in public. Before Putin made it a national standard, more than a half-dozen jurisdictions had passed such bans. ( continue to full post… )

Shocking news! By mid-October, President Obama plans to destroy the United States by creating federal regions that eliminate individual states.

Even in the overheated conspiracy world of the antigovernment Patriot movement this claim stands out as outlandish. “California to be absorbed into Mexico by October” is the headline on the advertising e-mail sent out this week by the Townhall website on behalf of Wall Street Daily, a financial publishing company. The far-right Internet tabloid WorldNetDaily sent out a similar e-mail titled “The America you know and love could look completely different in a matter of weeks.”

Townhall is a popular website where Tea Partiers and the Patriot movement intersect with conservative celebrities, media pundits and Republican Party operatives. WorldNet Daily is generously described as in a similar orbit, but the outlet typically features the more zany right-wing conspiracy theories. ( continue to full post… )

The South Carolina chapter of the League of the South has a new chairman, Michael Cushman, who comes complete with neo-Nazi ties for the neo-Confederate hate group.

This past weekend, the chapter’s board of directors voted to replace former Chairman Lourie A. Salley with Cushman, 36, of Aiken, S.C.

Cushman, who has been heavily involved in a new wave of LOS demonstrations against what the group calls “Southern demographic displacement,” hopes to buff up the group’s image. ( continue to full post… )

If you didn’t know it already, this is Constitution Week across the country. Smack dab in the middle in Ohio, the Daniel Cooper chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) wanted to do something special this year to commemorate the 226-year-old document. But what? The group wasn’t exactly sure. “I haven’t read the Constitution since high school, many decades ago,” chapter head Betsey Taylor told Hatewatch.

Probably most Americans could make the same confession, so the women of the Daniel Cooper chapter decided to take a 12-week Constitution course and invite everyone in their Dayton, Ohio-area community — from teenagers to grandparents — to join them. But it isn’t the traditional civics-class version of the Constitution course they hope to share. The class Daniel Cooper has signed up for and is promoting is a highly controversial lecture series offered by the far-right Institute on the Constitution (IOTC). ( continue to full post… )

Missouri recently narrowly avoided a dubious distinction: becoming the first state to enact a law drawn directly from the fantasies of the far-right antigovernment “Patriot” movement of the 1990s.

By only a handful of votes, the Missouri state Senate last week failed to override a governor’s veto of a bill that would have ostensibly “nullified” federal gun laws and their enforcement in the state, and would have directed local authorities to arrest federal officers who tried to enforce them. GOP leaders in the state cited concerns about hindering local law enforcement and infringing on free-speech rights.

The Missouri legislation was only the foremost example of a nationwide movement among conservative states to “nullify” federal laws with which those officials disagree — most notably, gun-control laws. A number of states have already passed gun laws that challenge federal power, led by Montana’s Firearms Freedom Act, which exempted guns manufactured in the state from federal regulations. ( continue to full post… )

Larry Klayman, the addled former Justice Department prosecutor who specializes in filing ridiculous lawsuits against his political enemies, has taken his hatred of “the half-Muslim, anti-white, socialist fraud in the White House” one step further.

After “indicting” President Obama in one of his completely bogus “citizens’ grand juries” in May, Klayman, who heads an extreme-right outfit called Judicial Watch, this week suggested that he will bring “millions” of Americans to Washington in November who “may think about chanting: ‘Mr. President (to use the term loosely), put the Quran down, get up off your knees and come out with your hands up!’” ( continue to full post… )

The Constitution Party, a small third party that has been around in one form or another since 1992, says its goal is “to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions.” As a practical matter, that has meant that it opposes abortion and most immigration, seeks to drastically reduce government spending and end the income tax, and works toward a noninterventionist foreign policy that requires dropping out of international organizations and treaties.

What it has not done, despite serious flirtations with radical anti-abortionists and antigovernment militias, is get into open racism. Not until now, anyway.

Enter Peter Gemma. ( continue to full post… )