Johnstone Strait Orcas: The Video

This is my latest video from my recent trip to Johnstone Strait, B.C. -- on the northeastern side of Vancouver Island. It's a bit of a break from my traditional slide show. Instead, this is video footage of whales passing by (unfortunately, my only good footage on this trip came from shore at my camp at Kaikash Creek; my attempts to video from my kayak didn't pan out this time). The best part is that you can hear them breathing, something missing from my slideshows.

I've added the sounds these whales made passing by the camp as a secondary soundtrack, so you can get an idea of what was going on underwater at the same time. Enjoy!

Immigration Hangout: A Chat About 'Border Security' and the Minutemen

Here is our conversation earlier today discussing the Minutemen and the "border security" scam, featuring:

• Juanita Molina from the Border Action Network in Tucson, Arizona, will discuss how these groups and personalities shaped the debate over immigration reform in her state.
• Julieta Garibay from United We DREAM will explain how that discussion led to a growing push to militarize the border.
• Frank Sharry from America's Voice, who moderated.

 Hope you find this enlightening. Many thanks to Frank Sharry, Matt Hildreth and Joe Sudbay for making the hangout happen.

Along the same lines, be sure to check out the interview I did with David Kortava at The Mantle in which some of the same issues are raised:

I think a lot of people really underestimate the influence and power and impact of these kinds of groups on the mainstream right. They tend to have a gravitational effect on conservatives, pulling them farther towards the right. A lot of the positions we’re seeing bandied about now as normative—particularly within the Tea Party—were the views of radical militia types back in the 1990s.

Rightwing extremism has broader impacts on society. It’s true that only something like 8 or 9 percent of hate crimes are committed by members of hate groups; the vast majority are committed by people who are otherwise considered mainstream normal kids, usually young men. But something like seventy percent of these crimes are accompanied by verbiage associated with hate groups. In other words, you have people picking up on cultural cues from the extremist right and incorporating them into their worldview, even if they aren’t necessarily adopting the broader ideology.

Anti-immigration organizations like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) hand out these pseudo-academic studies suggesting that immigrants are using up taxpayer money, bringing in disease, and committing crime. While none of this true, it does produce a toxic effect on the conversation about immigration. Instead of focusing on the problem—antiquated laws—we focus on the supposed criminality of people who are themselves victims, victims both of those laws and of the economic forces compelling them to make these death-defying crossings through the desert.

Finally, you should check out my interview with Matthew Filipowicz, who as always manages to find the humorous vein in all this.

Why the Right-Wing 'Border Security' Fetish is a Sham Concocted by Criminal Nativists

Here's my op-ed at America's Voice:

Back in the days when he was a media darling appearing on every network – before everything would collapse in an appalling heap of criminality – Chris Simcox would promote his border-watching “Minuteman” movement as an essential component of national security because of the ominous threat that terrorists might cross over the border into the USA from Mexico.

“It is frightening to think that just one terrorist hiding among thousands of illegal immigrants who come across the border each day could easily carry chemical, biological or even nuclear materials into the U.S.,” Simcox told a reporter in 2005. “At this point, it’s not a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when.’”

Naturally, this was the entire purpose of his organization. “While officials are talking, Minutemen are acting,” said Simcox pronounced. “They need to put our money where their mouth is, and start doing something about our borders.”

Simcox also had something of a paranoid streak about the borders: “Take heed of our weapons because we’re going to defend our borders by any means necessary,” he told an audience in 2003. “There’s something very fishy going on at the border. The Mexican army is driving American vehicles — but carrying Chinese weapons. I have personally seen what I can only believe to be Chinese troops.”

For Simcox and the Minutemen, the rubric of reason for the “citizen border watches” they organized all revolved around “national security” – at least when the TV cameras were on. When they were off, it was a different story: Minutemen border watchers were fond of explaining in private to people they thought were fellow participants that the best solution to stopping “the invasion” (as they liked to call it) of Latino immigrants they hoped to catch in the act was to start shooting one or two of them.

One of them even explained it on camera once: “No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem,” he told a reporter. “After two or three Mexicans are shot, they’ll stop crossing the border. And they’ll take their cows home, too.”

Of course, we're still hearing the same excuses from the right:

“Border security” was just a verbal rubric pasted over the real source of these nativists’ anxieties. It was a coded phrase for the underlying intention: “Keep out the brown people.”

Seven years down the road, that reality hasn’t changed a bit. What has changed instead is an electoral landscape where it’s becoming increasingly clear that the need for comprehensive immigration reform has become inescapable, but when faced with legislation to achieve it, those same nativists and their Tea-Partying cohorts in Congress continue to revert to the same old saw: “We need to secure the border before we can pass reform.” And it still means the same old thing.

What, exactly, do they mean by “border security”? It’s hard to pin down the exact definition of a “secure border” – reflective of the fact that it is a coded phrase – but in the hands of various Congressional Republicans, what emerges is a fantasy portrait of a militarized fortress-style border with Mexico secured by a towering fence and the constant buzz of manpower patrolling it. In the immigration-reform bill passed by the Senate (but still bottled up in the House), the legislation requires construction of 700 miles of new double-walled border fence and 20,000 more Border Patrol agents to man it.

Notably, these proposals all envision such a facility along the 1,954 miles of border the United States shares with Mexico. No such fence is envisioned for 5,525 miles of border that we share with Canada – even though, when it comes to national security, we already know which border terrorists are likely to cross. And it’s not the southern one. Of course, building a second fence two and half times as long as that proposed for the Mexico border would be outrageously expensive – especially when the latter already fits that description.

Go here to read it all.

As the Need for Immigration Reform Grows, Congress Grows Less Likely to Act

[Note: Crooks and Liars will be hosting a Google Hangout on Thursday discussing immigration reform on live video with a special panel of experts, including Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice; Juanita Molina, Executive Director, Border Action Network and Julieta Garibay from United We DREAM, and C&L's own David Neiwert, author of And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border. Be sure to tune in at 10 am PDT!]

The WaPo's Ed O'Keefe has an excellent piece looking at the real-world consequences of Congress's mishandling of immigration reform so far, from the point of view of people who actually live along the border:

They say that lawmakers should instead consider the economic benefits of legal immigration. About 20 percent of the $500 billion traded annually between the United States and Mexico passes through ports of entry along this part of the border, and locals say the numbers would climb dramatically if trucks carrying goods could cross faster.

More than 100,000 jobs in the region rely on the lawful movement of people, goods and services between the two countries, and officials predict that even more business and jobs would be created if Congress made it easier for guest workers to cross, or if illegal immigrants could come out of the shadows.

“It would seem to me that the key to immigration reform is providing some type of work visas to shuffle out those who are just here to work and many times want to go home,” Wiles said. “They want to come, work, support their families and eventually go home.”

Yet the cold reality is that the Tea Party faction controls Congress, and as long as that's the case, there will be no immigration reform bill to emerge from the black hole of negativity it has become.

The public agrees. According to Rasmussen, only 28 of the American public thinks immigration-reform passage is likely this year -- even though a substantial majority favor it.

Most voters still want the emphasis on border control, and with this in mind, fewer than ever think Congress is likely to pass immigration reform this year.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Likely U.S. Voters favor a reform plan that gives legal status to many of those now here illegally as long as the border is really secured to prevent future immigration. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% are opposed to this plan even with the guarantee of stricter border control. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

As Rep. Pete Gallego observes in the WaPo piece, this doesn't say anything very flattering about the anti-democratic forces that are overwhelming our political process:

“If immigration reform doesn’t happen, that doesn’t say good things about our democracy, that everybody wants it but Congress couldn’t pass it,” Gallego said during a recent dinner meeting with constituents.

It does, however, underscore the need to get the House out of the hands of the Tea Party.


Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

The White Supremacists Are Coming Out of the Woodwork

A lot of people have noticed that it's become more common for right-wing talkers to be openly racist on the airwaves and the intertoobs, and then when confronted on it to double down and claim that there's nothing wrong with it. More and more, the "mainstream media" are letting them get away with it. And there's a consequence for that.

When this happens, the closet and not-so-closet racists start coming out of the woodwork. They see these signals as indications of implicit approval for their worldviews, and so they become emboldened to speak out and eventually to act out. Like the ex-Canadian who wants to create another all-white enclave in North Dakota.

This was his plan:

Until political control were established, there would be the slight possibility that new local regs designed to limit our expansion might be tried. We could oppose those if that happenstance were implemented. The numericals are absol-utely miniscule. However, dedicated, hard-working folks are needed. Imagine strolling over to your neighbors to discuss world politics with nearly all like-minded volk [sic]. Imagine the international publicity and usefulness to our cause! For starters, we could declare a Mexican illegal invaders and Israeli Mossad/IDF spies no-go zone. If leftist journalists or antis come and try to make trouble, they just might break one of our local ordinances and would have to be arrested by our town constable. See?

Of course, this is all reminiscent of previous efforts in the wide-open West to create a far-right enclave. We all remember the Aryan Nations, don't we? Their plan was to create a "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest. That didn't turn out so well.

Credit: David Neiwert photo

The Aryan Nations church and compound near Hayden Lake, Idaho, in 2000, shortly before it was bulldozed. It had been established in the mid-1970s.

Likewise, we also had Bo Gritz's would-be militia enclave in the 1990s that called itself "Almost Heaven". Again, it didn't end so well.

There is even an ongoing effort in Benewah County, Idaho, though there has been a notable silence from these folks in recent months, which is usually a good sign.

Similarly, it seems the North Dakota plan isn't working out so well:

Cobb, 61, a self-described white supremacist, has purchased about a dozen lots in the community about 60 miles southwest of Bismarck. Over the past year he's invited fellow white supremacists to move there and help him to transform the town of 16 people into a white enclave. No one has come.

Most likely a blip on the radar. Of perhaps more ominous note was this recent surfacing of a neo-Nazi with a cache of weapons:

Federal agents were tracking Ohio resident Richard Schmidt’s imports of counterfeit sports jerseys when they stumbled upon his arsenal of 18 guns, more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, and bulletproof body armor. Besides the arsenal, he had lists of Jewish and black leaders in Detroit, MI. He is also an ex-felon who killed a Hispanic man and wounded two others 24 years ago.

And let's not forget that sovereign-citizen couple in Nevada who were planning to abduct, torture and kill police officers:

Las Vegas authorities may be looking for additional suspects, likely members of the antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement, after the arrest this week of a couple allegedly planning to kidnap, jail, torture and kill police officers.

Convicted sex offender David Allen Brutsche, 42, and a woman described as his roommate, 67-year-old Devon Campbell Newman, are in the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas on charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted kidnapping.

Police describe both as being “sovereign citizens”.

“Blood or no blood – it doesn’t matter,” Brutsche told an undercover officer in July, according to the arrest report, the Las Vegas Sun reported Thursday. “I will kill anyone that tries to stop the cause of liberty,” Brutsche is quoted as saying in the police reports, adding, “I have no qualms about it.”

Pretty soon, we'll be seeing these folks show up for sympathetic interviews on Fox.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Missouri Gun 'Nullification' Law A '90s Militia Fantasy Come True

It's been fascinating to watch Republicans in Missouri attempting to pass "nullification" laws intended to negate federal authority on gun control -- because in doing so, they are demonstrating themselves fully in the thrall of the far-right "Patriot"/militia movement of the 1990s, and are indeed enacting some of its fondest fantasies.

The New York Times has the story, though of course not the whole story:

Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here. A Missourian arrested under federal firearm statutes would even be able to sue the arresting officer.

Lawmakers are considering whether to override a veto of a gun bill by Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri, who considered the bill unconstitutional.

The law amounts to the most far-reaching states’ rights endeavor in the country, the far edge of a growing movement known as “nullification” in which a state defies federal power.

The Missouri Republican Party thinks linking guns to nullification works well, said Matt Wills, the party’s director of communications, thanks in part to the push by President Obama for tougher gun laws. “It’s probably one of the best states’ rights issues that the country’s got going right now,” he said.

So this is an official Republican effort. And sure enough, the story eventually gets around to hinting at where this is all coming from:

Still, other states have passed gun laws that challenge federal power; a recent wave began with a Firearms Freedom Act in Montana that exempts from federal regulations guns manufactured there that have not left the state.

Gary Marbut, a gun rights advocate in Montana who wrote the Firearms Freedom Act, said that such laws were “a vehicle to challenge commerce clause power,” the constitutional provision that has historically granted broad authority to Washington to regulate activities that have an impact on interstate commerce. His measure has served as a model that is spreading to other states. Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down Montana’s law, calling it “pre-empted and invalid.”

A law passed this year in Kansas has also been compared to the Missouri law. But Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, disagreed, saying it had been drafted “very carefully to ensure that there would be no situation where a state official would be trying to arrest a federal official.”

Longtime Orcinus readers may recall just who Gary Marbut is. He first popped up on our radar here in 2009, when he appeared on a Glenn Beck show on Fox promoting these same "nullification" concepts (see the video above). But he has been on the radar of people who monitor far-right extremists for many long years, because he is in fact one of the founders and earliest proponents of the "militia" concept:

Marbut, you see, has been a fixture on the far right in Montana for many years. He's never actually been elected to any office at all, though he has run numerous times, because Montanans are all too well aware just how radical a nutcase the guy is.

For instance, Marbut in the 1990s tried organizing Patriot neighborhood watches:

Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA), outlined the basics of his plans in an message distributed by the Militia of Montana's e-mail list. He suggested that when "patriots" form groups they shouldn't call themselves gun clubs. Instead they should adopt the label of neighborhood watch. Marbut said this title will not "raise nearly as many red flags" in communities. Neighborhood Watch could also be used for "organizations formed for RKBA [right to keep and bear arms] political-action."

Marbut, a frequent contributor to MOM's e-mail list, didn't stop with just gun issues. He said firearms, along with "communications, organizations, and supply" could also be incorporated into Neighborhood Watch. Within Marbut's concept, being a good neighbor appears to takes on a certain level of survivalist mentality. Marbut urged people to coordinate these activities with the local sheriff. Randy Trochmann, one of the militia's co-founders and the moderator of MOM's e-mail list, said Marbut's suggestions were "good advice."

MSSA has promoted several other interesting ideas over the years. In 1994, MSSA proposed an initiative to revitalize the Montana Recall Act. The act would have allowed voters to "throw the rascals [public officials] out" in Marbut's words. MSSA was trying to recall Sen. Max Baucus because of his support for a ban on certain assault weapons. Later that year, MSSA suggested Montana secede from the United States because the federal government had banned the possession of assault rifles by civilians. In 1995, MSSA supported a resolution that would have legalized "unorganized militias," another term for groups like the Militia of Montana. MSSA's public battle against Baucus returned in 1996 when it ran a full-page advertisement in the Helena Independent Record. The ad featured a picture of a saluting Adolf Hitler with the words "All in favor of 'gun control' raise your right hand" printed underneath. The ad then ridiculed Sen. Baucus, inaccurately comparing his position on gun control to Hitler's and asking readers to "Ban Baucus, Not guns."

Marbut wasn't merely involved in the militias -- he also played footsie with Christian Identity activists:

One of Marbut's columns appeared in the January/February issues of The Jubilee. The Jubilee is a white supremacist newspaper which caters to Christian Identity followers. Christian Identity, based on a racist interpretation of the Bible, holds that Jews are the literal children of Satan, and people of color are subhuman "mud people."

Attributed to the Sierra Times, Marbut's article is about Montana rejecting the Gun Free School Zones Act -- the federal law that made it a criminal offense to travel within 1,000 feet of a school while possessing a firearm. Marbut claims the MSSA drafted a successful bill declaring that the Montana Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms to all law-abiding adults thus exempting them from the federal law. Marbut writes that "the people of Montana remain protected from the silliness of the Congressional act by the intervention of the Montana Legislature." He also said the new law "pulls the rug out from under any would-be federal prosecution."

In February, a column by Marbut was published by the Sierra Times. Based in Nevada, the Sierra Times is the newest project of long-time militia activist J.J. Johnson. In the mid 1990s, Johnson was a regular in militia circles. He was the main force behind the Ohio Unorganized Militia, and, since he is African American, the militia movement uses him to deflect charges of racism.

And he's actively promoted tax-resistance-style jury nullification:

Gary Marbut, founder of the Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA) and Republican candidate for Missoula's House District 69, wants people to educate themselves in anti-government ideology. MSSA now includes a link on its website to the Fully Informed Jury Association, along with a note from Marbut saying FIJA is "the last peaceable barrier between innocent gun owners and a tyrannous government." FIJA promotes "jury nullification." The concept says individual jurors can judge, not just the evidence in a court case, but the constitutionality of law. In essence, it allows jurors to ignore laws they don't like, undermining the judicial system. The Militia of Montana has sold videos by FIJA "experts" like anti-Semite Red Beckman of Billings.

You can also see Marbut in this video:



As you can see, he remains very active in the "Tea Party" front, and indeed uses that platform as a significant way of promoting his extremist ideas into the mainstream.

One of the originators of this legislation in the 1990s was a fellow named Charles Duke, as we explained then:

This legislation is neither new nor innovative. It was first proposed in the 1990s by Charles Duke, then a Republican state senator from Colorado. Duke's blueprint has been picked up by all of these would-be legislative insurgents. If you look, for example, at the Minnesota effort, you'll find that Duke's thinking is guiding them on this.

Who is Charles Duke?

A Colorado electrician turned politician, Charles Duke was truly the militiaman's representative. Serving six years in the state House and almost four in the state Senate, the Republican from Monument was also honorary chairman of the National State Sovereignty Coalition, a Patriot outfit. He wrote a weekly column for a key Patriot publication, The Free American.
CharlesDuke_a3e94.JPG Duke once outraged constituents by asking a crowd how many thought the federal government was behind the Oklahoma City bombing. He told The Wall Street Journal that "an executive order is being prepared by President Clinton to suspend the Bill of Rights." He suggested that GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was involved in bugging his home.
And he tried to broker an end to the Montana Freeman standoff.

Then came an epiphany. After a summer in a cabin hidden deep in the woods, Duke emerged to say "the Lord God almighty" had suggested that he drop out of politics and instead learn "how to survive in a country devoid of freedom."
For a time, he did. But last year, he was spotted at "America's Tea Party 2000," a kind of conspiracy theorists' convention.

As you can see, the "Tea Party" idea isn't exactly new, either. But even more disturbing was how Duke went about promoting his proposals. The Anti-Defamation League has a rundown:

Duke, a Republican State Senator in Colorado, has spoken at rallies of far-right anti-government activists and has made supportive statements about the activities of militia groups. Duke has been described as a leader of the Tenth Amendment Movement, which refers to a provision of the Constitution that addresses the relationship between the Federal Government and the states. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Tenth Amendment Movement is "an amalgam of small-town populists, gun enthusiasts, old Ross Perot supporters and private militias who share a deep distrust, almost a hatred of the Federal government."

Duke has stated: "The few militia people I know practice a policy of nonviolence... not altogether different from a Boy Scout kind of idea."
He has described himself as a "zealot" and a "revolutionary."

At a meeting of far-right activists in July 1994, Duke said: "We need some ability to get some firepower to protect the citizens. I would like to see a militia... [the type] that functions as a sheriff's posse and has sufficient training."

... In March 1995, he was a featured speaker at the Voice of Liberty Patriots conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The event was planned by Rick Tyler, a leader in the anti-tax Constitutionalist movement, who has told listeners of his shortwave radio show that government agencies are "ruthless, they are cunning, they are cutthroat, and furthermore, we are their target."

In June 1994, Duke spoke at a conference sponsored by the Kansas-based "Constitutionists," whose leader, Evan Meacham, is the impeached former governor of Arizona. Duke promoted the formation of militias as an effective way for citizens to protect themselves from the government.

In June 1995, he attended a Nevada Sovereignty Committee conference in Las Vegas, where he harshly criticized the federal government: "The tyranny of King George is alive and well and living in America today."

Most notably, Duke found an ardent following with the white-supremacist Christian Identity movement, appearing on the movement's main shortwave radio program and submitting to interviews with its newspaper, The Jubilee:
Duke was a featured guest on The Jubilee's shortwave program, "NewsLight," when he promoted the Tenth Amendment Resolution. The Jubilee is a bi-monthly newspaper filled with anti-Semitic, racist and anti-government rhetoric. The newspaper is also affiliated with the Identity movement, which identifies whites of European ancestry as the "true chosen people," blacks as "mud people" and Jews as "Satan's spawn."

Duke was scheduled to be a featured speaker at The Jubilee's 1994 "Jubilation Celebration" conference. He backed out at the last minute.

Duke also was brought out to Jordan, Montana, in 1996 during the 81-day FBI standoff with the Montana Freemen to negotiate, since he was one of the few public officials the Freemen trusted. Duke failed, though of course the Freemen eventually surrendered peacefully anyway.

A third major figure in promoting "nullification" has been another far-right legislator named Charles Key, who appeared back in 2009 on Neil Cavuto's show:

Cavuto's segment featured an interview with Charles Key, an Oklahoma legislator who has been similarly involved with Patriot-movement radicalism since the 1990s.

For instance, Key was heavily involved in promoting conspiracy theories in the 1990s that claimed that the federal government was actually behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that was in reality perpetrated by an adherent of Patriot movement ideology. He even convened a grand jury to investigate the matter, and when the resulting investigation completely debunked his theory, he denounced it:

The county grand jury orchestrated by a conspiracy-minded former state legislator and the grandfather of two bombing victims has concluded that there was no evidence of a larger conspiracy in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Even before the report was made public in December, former state Rep. Charles Key was attacking the body he helped to create by leading a petition drive, claiming jurors had ignored evidence of a government coverup. The grand jury found no evidence that federal agents had prior knowledge of the plot; that members of a white supremacist compound in eastern Oklahoma were involved; or that two bombs, rather than one, were used — all key conspiracy theories.

The state attorney general and the local district attorney, who both had opposed formation of the grand jury, welcomed the results, as did the grand jury's presiding judge, William Burkett.

As it happens, these activities were underwritten by a rich right-winger who subscribed to the conspiracy theories.

Now, it's one thing to point out the radical origins of these "constitutional theories." But it's also important to understand where they want to take us -- to a radically decentralized form of government that was first suggested in the 1970s by the far-right Posse Comitatus movement.

They essentially argue for a constitutional originalism that would not only end the federal income tax, destroy all civil-rights laws, and demolish the Fed, but would also re-legalize slavery, strip women of the right to vote, and remove the principle of equal protection under the law.

That's what Missouri Republicans have now aligned themselves with. Indeed, the Patriot movement is being mainstreamed in front of our very eyes, and yet we have a media incapable of recognizing this phenomenon, let alone reporting on it.

As for those Missouri Democrats who voted for this abomination, well, as the NYT story says, they have one last chance to redeem themselves:

In Missouri, State Representative Jacob Hummel, a St. Louis Democrat and the minority floor leader, said that he was working to get Democrats who voted for the bill to vote against overriding the veto. “I think some cooler heads will prevail in the end,” he said, “but we will see.”

It will be as fascinating to watch how the mainstream media cover this as it will be to watch the descent of the Republican Party into the abyss.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Johnstone Orcas: A slide show

I recently spent some time in Johnstone Strait with the Northern Resident population of killer whales that populates those waters, camping at a spot not far from Robson Bight, where these whales like to gather and rub on the smooth rocks on the beach there. I paddled near the Bight but didn't enter, as it's a boat-free zone.

Above is a slide show I made of a single encounter the early evening of Aug. 19. As you can hear, these whales were more intent on hunting and so were mostly echolocating instead of vocalizing, though one of them shouted in my hydrophone. Still, you get to hear what it's like to get echolocated by an orca here. (One of them, a female, logged along at the surface for a long time near me, rat-a-tatting the whole way, and shrouding herself in a bubble of water that draped over her head and torso.)

Enjoy. I'll have more shortly.

Orcas on Video: Some wild encounters

I thought I'd share some of the video footage I managed to get during the first couple of weeks of July in the San Juan Islands, including a couple of kayak encounters, while working on my next book (working title: Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us, due out in fall 2014 from Overlook Press). As you can see, developing any video skills is definitely a work in progress. I need to get a directional mike, I probably shouldn't shoot immediately after paddling seven miles, and I shouldn't use a video camera the way I use a still camera.

Still, there are some fun moments here, especially when the campful of 12-year-old girls my daughter was leading got an up-close look. Enjoy.

An Ominous Alliance: Militiamen Showing Up in Wisconsin as Mining Co. 'Security'

Imagine taking a hike in your local woods and coming upon characters toting semi-automatic weapons, dressed in camo and wearing masks. Then imagine finding out they are militia-movement followers hired by a mining operation to protect against "eco-terrorists."

That's what's been happening to people living in northern Wisconsin lately. And these are the kinds of guys people are encountering in the woods:

The first of these goons to show up on behalf of the Florida-based mining company -- Gogebic Taconite, or GTAC -- that wants to rip these woods apart were employed by an outfit from Arizona called Bulletproof Securities. Then they quickly vamoosed when it emerged that they were not licensed to operate in the state of Wisconsin.

In short order, a new set of goons appeared as security for GTAC's President, Bill Williams, in his recent appearances in Wisconsin. And these men were wearing the logos of a Patriot/militia organization called the Watchmen of America -- though true to the "leaderless resistance" model of action these "Patriots" espouse, the Watchmen's organizational leaders are denying any involvement, while in effect conceding that members may be operating in Wisconsin without their approval.

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones has been on the scene and monitoring these developments:

Local activist Rob Ganson, 56, first came upon three heavily armed guards while leading a small group on a hike to view the mining site. (The drilling site is on private land, but the owner has been given a tax break in exchange for keeping it open to public use.) The guards, said Ganson, carried semi-automatic guns, were dressed in camouflage, and wore masks covering their faces. "As you can imagine, it was quite a shock for five middle-aged people out for a walk," he said. Ganson tried to engage the guards, but was "met with stony-faced silence." He was alarmed but managed to grab a few photos of the men. "I was thinking if the worst scenario happened, at least there would be photos on my camera."

After they determined that the guards worked for Arizona-based Bulletproof Security, Ganson and the other activists posted their photos of the guards online, drawing local and national news coverage of the mine, a proposed four-mile-long, 1,000-feet-deep open pit operation in Ashland and Iron counties. In June, the company began exploratory drilling in the region for taconite, a type of iron ore used in steel.

... Last Wednesday, the mining company, Gogebic Taconite—G-Tac for short—a subsidiary of the West Virginia-based Cline Group, pulled the armed guards after finding that the security firm lacked permits to work in the state. A spokesman for the company has said that the Bulletproof guards will be back once they're properly licensed.
"Basically almost every environmental protection and public health protection you could think of is eliminated under this bill."

One of the activists in the area, however, told Mother Jones on Monday that a new group of armed guards—including one whose shirt bore the insignia for Watchmen of America, a militia group active in at least 21 states—was on patrol last Thursday, the day after Gogebic Taconite pulled the Bulletproof guards.

This was followed shortly by heated denials from the Watchmen:

On Tuesday, Mike Freebyrd, CEO of Watchmen of America, told Mother Jones that the new guards are not working for his organization. "The Watchmen of America is not a security company that provides commercial security services and we are not involved in any way in the security operations with respect to GTAC mining operation in Wisconsin, nor do we sanction or approve of any of our members doing so while wearing our patches or logos," said Freebyrd via email. "We sell many promotional materials including T-shirts, stickers, patches, pens, etc. to our public supporters, therefore we have no control if a person wears our logos while conducting activities which are not conducive to our true representation."

These denials are not particularly meaningful. After all, the Patriot/militia movement has been characterized by a "leaderless resistance" strategy that encourages individual "lone wolf" and small-cell action in which organizational leaders can plausibly deny responsibility and thus avoid any consequences for the actions of followers and colleagues.

As Mary Catherine O'Connor at Outside reports, this is all taking place in a context where the mining officials are labeling local protesters "eco terrorists" and using the flimsiest of pretexts to bring in militia-style thugs to intimidate the locals.

Let's hope Americans remember that in Italy and Germany, fascists first gained political traction and moved out of the fringe of politics in the 1920s when they were hired by large landowners and businessmen as thugs to beat up and harass union organizers and land reformers, all under the rubric of calling them "communists". This is an ominous development indeed.

Here's more from local TV station WDIO (source of the above video).

The Arizona Republic has a brief rundown of Bulletproof, the Scottsdale outfit that showed up with the masked guard unit and then fled.

Also, Blogging Blue and Blue Cheddar have more. And a bit hat tip to Indian Country News.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Go See 'Blackfish' Before Sea World Stops You

There's an amazing and gripping new documentary out this week that -- like The Cove -- may prove to be at least a small turning point in how humans treat our fellow animals, wild and otherwise. It's titled Blackfish, and it's well worth your time.

And if the noises coming from Sea World -- the chief target of the documentary -- prove substantive, you may want to see it before it gets pulled from theaters under threat of lawsuit. The New York Times has the story:

In an unusual pre-emptive strike on the documentary “Blackfish,” set for release on Friday in New York and Los Angeles by Magnolia Pictures, SeaWorld Entertainment startled the film world last weekend by sending a detailed critique of the movie to about 50 critics who were presumably about to review it. It was among the first steps in an aggressive public pushback against the film, which makes the case, sometimes with disturbing film, that orca whales in captivity suffer physical and mental distress because of confinement. ...

... It was also deliberating possible further moves, which might conceivably include informational advertising, a Web-based countercampaign or perhaps a request for some sort of access to CNN, which picked up television rights to “Blackfish” through its CNN Films unit and plans to broadcast the movie on Oct. 24.

... Asked whether SeaWorld was contemplating legal action against the film, G. Anthony Taylor, the general counsel, said decisions about any such step would have to wait until executives were able to more closely assess the movie. “Blackfish” made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January and has since screened at other festivals in the United States and abroad.

Here are the eight points Sea World raises -- along with the filmmakers' responses. As you can see, Sea World's arguments are made out of some pretty thin gruel. For example, they try to pretend that orcas live as long or longer in captivity than they do in the wild -- an outrageously laughable claim:

SeaWorld Assertion 2
The assertion that killer whales in the wild live more than twice as long as those living at SeaWorld. While research suggests that some wild killer whales can live as long as 60 or 70 years, their average lifespan is nowhere near that. Nor is it true that killer whales in captivity live only 25 to 35 years. Because we’ve been studying killer whales at places like SeaWorld for only 40 years or so, we don’t know what their lifespans might be—though we do know that SeaWorld currently has one killer whale in her late 40s and a number of others in their late 30s. 


Film Response
In the wild, average lifespan is 30 for males, 50 for females. Their estimated maximum life span is 60-70 years for males and 80-90 years for females. In captivity, most orcas die in their teens and 20s and only a handful have made it past 35.The annual mortality or death rate for orcas is 2.5 times higher in captivity than it is in the wild. These are not controversial data. In the film, we depict what seems to be a deliberate attempt by SeaWorld to misrepresent these well documented data to their visitors.

The film's director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, observed in an interview with Salon that the facts just aren't on Sea World's side, so it is trying the usual right-wing tactic of creating an alternative reality in which they are:

And yet it did surprise us that they would want to take on the facts. Anyone who knows anything about SeaWorld knows that this has always been a losing battle for them; the facts are indisputable. Their intention is to cast a shadow of doubt right before the film goes nationwide. We expected it. But I didn’t know they would’ve taken this tactic. It’s not one they tend to win.

But they have been good at shutting down and mucking up investigations of their operations, including those by local and federal animal-welfare authorities, and they've been expert at throwing up lots of fog about what they do and the nature of their "zoological facilities" -- which are, as Cowperthwaite observes, really entertainment venues that generate multibillon-dollar revenues for their ownership.

And let's not forget just who those owners are: None other than our right-wing friends at the Blackstone Group, well noted for their attempts in cahoots with the Koch Brothers to astroturf such campaigns as "Social Security reform", and whose CEO notably compared President Obama to Hitler for having the audacity to raise taxes on him and his fellow 1 percenters.

But more important, as the Times review observes, the film's power is driven by the immense charisma of the animals themselves -- and the growing realization on our part that tiny concrete tanks are no place for six-ton giants with powerful brains:

Calmly and methodically countering SeaWorld’s contention that whales benefit from captivity — the Web site “Orcas in Captivity” places the current total at 45 — Ms. Cowperthwaite questions the advisability of exploiting mammals whose brains, the neuroscientist Lori Marino suggests, may be more complex than our own.

“When you look into their eyes, you know somebody is home,” one of the trainers says. Perhaps that’s why SeaWorld’s most well-known show was called “Believe.”

Blackfish isn't showing everywhere this weekend; it's coming out in staggered releases nationally. Check the film's screen schedule for a complete rundown.

UPDATE: Andrew O'Hehir has a great piece about Blackfish at Salon.

The Final Nail in the Minuteman Coffin: Simcox Busted for Child Molestation

Via Stephen Lemons, a story that will surprise exactly no one familiar with the history of Chris Simcox and the Minuteman movement he cofounded:

Simcox's new home is Maricopa County's Lower Buckeye Jail, where he is being held nonbondable on several charges related to child molestation, attempted child molestation and sexual conduct with minors.
Phoenix police say the three victims are all under 10 years of age. According to Arizona's statute regarding dangerous crimes against children, any adult convicted of sexual conduct with a minor who is under 12 years of age "may be sentenced to life imprisonment."

Otherwise, the sentence for one count could be 13 to 27 years. The law also calls for consecutive sentencing in four out of the five counts listed for Simcox on his court paperwork. Meaning they would run back-to-back.

Details of the allegations were released this morning in the Phoenix Police Department's probable cause statement.

During a forensic interview with detectives, one of the girls, victim number two, refers to Simcox as "dad," and is identified as one of Simcox's daughters.

Victim number two mentions that her "sister was in the shower with her" during the time of one of the alleged incidents.

Apparently, victims number one and number three are not related to Simcox.

The first victim states that Simcox touched her while they were both in the kitchen of his home. This, as his two daughters were outside playing. She also alleges that Simcox showed her pornographic movies on his computer.

"She has been shown the movie more than one time," reads the summary. "The victim stated that these movies give her bad nightmares."

The third victim does not allege touching, but says Simcox asked to see her underwear and then what was beneath.

Of course, this is a disgusting coda to the already-depraved saga of the Minutemen, who collapsed in a heap in 2010 after the horrifying 2009 murders of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their Arizona home by a onetime movement leader named Shawna Forde and her white-supremacist cohort, a tale I describe in considerable detail in my book And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border.

As if that weren't bad enough, the tale of Arizona's vigilante border watchers took a similarly ugly twist last year when neo-Nazi border watcher J.T. Ready massacred his girlfriend and her family before taking his own life. Most observers agreed that by then, the Minuteman movement was officially finished.
But this latest arrest should be the final nail that manifests once and for all what many observers said at the time (despite media fanfare to the contrary) -- that the Minutemen were a huge magnet for extremists, racists, mentally unstable people, and psychopaths.
It was also something that was long foreseeable, given Simcox's erratic behavior and volatile personality. I described this in some detail in And Hell Followed:

When Chris Simcox first arrived in Tombstone in 2002, he found work as one of these [Showdown at the OK Corral] actors. It was a way of staying afloat until he could get his feet on the ground. He had been drawn by the myth, and now he was on a mission to transform it into a kind of living reality.

A few months before, he had thrown away his previous life as a schoolteacher in California, moved out to the Arizona desert, and had an epiphany, all because of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Traumatized by repeatedly watching the collapse of the Twin Towers, Simcox had sold off his belongings and moved out to camp in the Sonoran desert, where he witnessed all kinds of human and drug trafficking – or so he was fond of repeatedly telling reporters in later years. Concluding that the porous nature of the Mexican border posed a post-9/11 security threat to America, he had decided to pour all his efforts into doing something about it. That was his basic story, and it eventually became a kind of mythos unto itself.

In reality, Chris Simcox's life had been falling apart for awhile. Simcox grew up in rural Illinois and Kentucky; after high school, he moved briefly to New York in pursuit of a baseball career, then moved out to California with his first wife, Deborah Crews, who harbored ambitions as an actress, and their daughter. Simcox himself would later suggest he had tried his hand at acting too, but he also went to school, getting a degree in education from L.A.'s Pacific Oaks County.

Eventually, he found work as a teacher in Los Angeles – first in a gang-infested high school in South Central L.A., before he found more sedate work as a kindergarten teacher at a prestigious private school called Wildwood. He also divorced Crews and married an African-American woman named Kim Dunbar, who later gave birth to a son. He was a popular teacher, but his colleagues at Wildwood recalled Simcox as something of a condescending know-it-all who prided himself on being updated on the latest educational techniques and letting everyone else know it too: "He had this real holier-than-thou attitude, like he was so far above the other teachers they should be grateful he was even discussing his methods with them," one of them told a reporter. "He was insulting."

Some of them also witnessed a dark side to his sunny public persona. His then-teenage daughter from his first marriage came to live with him in Los Angeles in 1998, and Simcox got her a babysitting gig with one of his Wildwood colleagues. One night, she showed up suddenly at the colleague's house, visibly upset, seeking shelter: She claimed her father had tried to sexually molest her. Simcox later claimed he had just tried to give her a leg massage and she had gotten the wrong idea. No charges were filed. She returned to New York and her mother and broke off contact with her father.

Gradually, it all crumbled. Convinced of his own superiority, Simcox left Wildwood to start up his own tutoring business. But Dunbar said he was also displaying symptoms of a mental breakdown. According to her sworn depositions in their eventual divorce, she had to endure episodes of Simcox's violent rages, followed by numb, glass-eyed staring sessions mumbling to himself. He refused professional help. And he abused and threatened their then-4-year-old son. After ten years of marriage, Dunbar testified, "the only thing I could do was file for divorce."

Even as his tutoring work spiraled away because of his erratic behavior, Simcox was also becoming increasingly xenophobic and paranoid. He later told a reporter that he was dismayed by the way Hispanic gangs and students who couldn't speak English were overwhelming Los Angeles schools, and at the same time he was becoming increasingly fearful of the prospect of a terrorist attack. "You could see it coming," he said. "And then Sept. 11 hit, and that was it."

The 9/11 attacks convinced Simcox that he was right in his paranoid belief that Los Angeles was primed to become a terrorism target, and he freaked out. He called Kim Dunbar two days after the attacks and left a series of voice-mail rants about the Constitution and the impending nuclear attack on L.A. and how he intended to give his now-teenage son weapons training: "I will begin teaching him the art of protecting himself with weapons," he said. "I purchased another gun. I have more than a few weapons, and I intend on teaching my son how to use them. … I will no longer trust anyone in this country. My life has changed forever, and if you don't get that, you are brainwashed like everybody else."

Simcox also called his son and ranted at him over the phone. Kim Dunbar recorded the conversations and submitted them in court proceedings as evidence of his mental instability. On the tapes, you can hear Simcox angrily challenge the boy to become "a man and a real American."

"You better stop playing baseball, buddy, and you better do something real, 'cause life will never be the same," Simcox shouted. "I'm going to go down to the Mexican border and sign up for the government for Border Patrol to protect the borders of the country that I love. You hear how serious I am."

Simcox indeed applied to join the Border Patrol, but was rejected because, at age 40, he was too old. So he sold off his belongings and headed out to the Sonoran desert, camping for three months on the wild Arizona border and, he claimed later, witnessing all kinds of criminal border activity. He had his epiphany while camping at Organ Pipe National Monument and seeing drug traffickers: "At that moment, it clicked," Simcox recalls. "The borders were wide open. Terrorists could come through."

He eventually took up permanent residence in Tombstone, getting part-time work as a shootout-show actor – playing, aptly enough, one of the ex-Confederate "Cowboy" gunmen who died in the showdown. ("I always got killed," he wryly observed to a reporter.) Responding to an ad for an assistant editor at the Tombstone Tumbleweed – a local weekly/shopper that made its living with classified ads – he was hired on the spot.

The Tumbleweed was that kind of paper. It didn't really have a reporting staff or try to cover local news. Mostly it ran a hodgepodge of free material from local contributors around the edges of its twenty pages or so of local classifieds. It was run out of a little hole-in-the-wall office just off the town's main street. And like a lot of such papers in dusty rural locales in 2002, it was having a hard time staying afloat, and its then-owner wasn't merely desperate for an assistant editor – hell, he wanted a buyer. Sure enough, a few months after Simcox had been hired, he cashed in his personal reserves – at one time, Simcox told reporters he had liquidated his son's college fund, but in later versions it was his own retirement fund – and bought the paper himself for $60,000 in August of 2002.

Simcox's epiphany had given him a focus for his new career: Within short order, the Tumbleweed became all about illegal immigration a la Roger Barnett and his nativist cohort, from whom he later acknowledged he had received his inspiration. The headlines shouted: "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! A PUBLIC CALL TO ARMS! CITIZENS BORDER PATROL MILITIA NOW FORMING!"

He initially called it the Tombstone Militia, but shortly changed its name to the much more broadly marketable Civil Homeland Defense Corps. At its first gathering in December, Simcox told reporters he expected about fifty people to participate, but only a handful, about five or six, actually showed.

They may have been discouraged by the official resolution opposing Simcox's plans for border militias passed by the city council of the nearest big town, Douglas. The city's mayor, Ray Borane, authored the bill, writing: "Douglas is a bicultural and binational community, and the majority of its residents do not wish to encourage, be involved with or associate with these types of people, nor do they want our relationship with Mexico compromised by outside, xenophobic groups perpetuating hatred of humanity."

When Simcox held a border-watch training event for his militia in January 2003, all of two volunteers showed up to take part. Four reporters were there to cover them.

That was pretty much how it went for Simcox's militia for a couple of years: At best, the actual border watches would attract a handful of volunteers, many of them of dubious background at best. But there were always journalists of various kinds to be found: TV reporters, newspaper scribes, documentary filmmakers. They became Simcox's target audience.

It's certain that he wasn't making many inroads with his neighbors in southern Arizona. The city councils in both Douglas and Tombstone, along with the Cochise County Board of Supervisors, passed resolutions condemning efforts to form citizen-militia border-watch operations.
"We want the citizens of Tombstone, Cochise County and Arizona to know that the city of Tombstone doesn't agree with the vigilante approach he's taking," said Tombstone Mayor Dusty Escapule. "It can't end in a good situation. It's gonna get somebody hurt or killed."

There were pragmatic aspects to officials concern as well – namely, that adding amateur firepower to a complex and dangerous situation was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Cochise County Supervisors Chairman Pat Call pointed out that Simcox's armed civilians were in way over their heads: "The Border Patrol is facing fire power greater and more sophisticated than anything they carry," he said. "Right now, every evening, there are armed, nervous Border Patrol agents walking around in the dark, armed and nervous drug smugglers, people smugglers and armed and nervous residents. To add to this mix nervous, armed or poorly trained civilians, it just isn't good."

Locals in Tombstone pretty quickly adopted a view of Simcox very much like that of his former colleagues at Wildwood. "He's got an ego problem," said Bob Krueger, himself a relatively recent transplant. "He's got some kind of psychological need to be important and be recognized. This has more to do with him than with the real problems on the border."

Douglas Mayor Ray Borane also made his disdain for Simcox unmistakable: "That asshole is nothing but a media-publicity hound. He re-creates himself all of the time; he resurrects himself, and he will affiliate himself with anybody who can get any attention."

Joanne Young, a bartender at the Crazy Horse Saloon in Tombstone, observed: "Simcox doesn't have 10 people in this town on his side." Noting Tombstone's reliance on tourism, she said in 2003 that "visitors are down this year from last. People are calling and saying, 'I don't want to bring my children there; it isn't safe.' "

Sheriff Larry Dever tried to discourage them too: “Unfortunately, this kind of circumstance and these kinds of cries for forming posses invite fringe associations and agendas we don't need. They think it's a game or a sport.”

Around the corner from the Tumbleweed, Pete Tiscia was watching it all develop from the vantage point of his pawnshop, which specialized in buying and selling guns. "I think it's a big accident waiting to happen," he said. "Somebody's gonna get 'cowboy crazy' and shoot somebody."

Given this bunch, it might even be themselves getting shot. Especially if the guy leading them was sticking a gun down the front of his jeans.

It probably didn't help when, out on a Civil Homeland Defense patrol on January 26, 2003, Simcox wandered onto the Coronado National Monument, which prohibits guns within its boundaries. He was ticketed by the park ranger and his gun confiscated. Police also found the following among Simcox's possessions: a document entitled "Mission Plan," a police scanner, two walkie-talkies, and a toy figure of Wyatt Earp on horseback.

The last we heard of Simcox before this was in 2010:

Chris Simcox, who briefly flirted with a primary challenge to Sen. John McCain in 2010, has largely vanished from public view since April 2010, when his estranged wife, Alena, obtained a protection order against him after Simcox "brandished a gun and threatened to shoot her, their children and any police officers who tried to protect them."

Simcox was skilled at fooling people with a pleasing first impression, embodied in the makeover he made in 2006 at the hands of a group of Beltway media consultants he hired, after which he made public appearances trying to soothe people into believing the Minutemen were a benign organization. Here's a photo from his appearance that spring before the Bellingham Human Rights Commission:

As I say, he cleaned up real well. It was, of course, a con job.

I wonder if Lou Dobbs will do a segment. Well, no, actually, I don't.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

All orcas all the time

I've been up in the San Juans, working on my next book. Here are the results from the first week. Enjoy!

Manly Idaho Sheriff Cuts Ties To Scouts Over Scary Gay Boys

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

As a fourth-generation Idaho native, I used to proudly wear a T-shirt promoting my home state. It read: "Idaho -- Where the Men Are Men and the Sheep Are Nervous".
Of course, I also at one time sported a bumper sticker that read, "Welcome to Idaho -- The Tick Fever State!" But that was mostly intended to dissuade all those Orange County folks (and other fellow Californians) who were fleeing the brown people up to the lily-white pastures of rural Idaho. Unfortunately, it didn't work.
The T-shirt, though, was a way of making fun of the manly men who populated the state even then, by suggesting that the whole facade might just be a cover for a broad variety of not-so-manly manliness in private. And it contained a wry observation about the unspoken anything-goes sexual ethos that was always part of the reality of life for those rugged mountain men and chap-slappin' cowboys later celebrated by much more self-righteous people who don't know any better.
Of course, nobody falls for that stuff quite like my fellow Idahoans, especially the kind who decorate their camper trailers with giant murals of eagles and bears and still read Louis L'Amour novels. And they also -- more notably in recent years, thanks in large part to all those ex-Orangeites -- sucker avidly for right-wing politics and its embrace of a much stricter sexual ethos than what really prevailed in the ole pioneer days. It is a deep red state, much more so than it was thirty years ago.
Which is why, no doubt, the whole shift permitting gay teens into the Boy Scouts has wrapped their knickers into a tight little knot in places like Idaho. I remember growing up in the Scouts in Idaho -- the whispers about some leaders, or more pointedly, the whispers about other boys. They're, um, very uptight about this subject.
So much so that, in Kootenai County, the local (Republican, of course) sheriff is threatening to cut off any ties between his office and the Scouts. This is evidently either a display of manly manliness, a legalistic attempt at purification, or a religious meltdown. Or, most likely, all three.
From Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

Kootenai County, Idaho Sheriff Ben Wolfinger threatened on Friday to drop his department’s sponsorship of a Boy Scout troop because “[i]t would be inappropriate for the sheriff’s office to sponsor an organization that is promoting a lifestyle that is in violation of state law.” Just in case there was any ambiguity regarding what “lifestyle” Wolfinger was referring to, he also sent a copy of an anti-sodomy statute that is still on the books in Idaho to an official for the Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts of America’s National Council voted last week to stop discriminating against gay scouts, although they will continue to exclude LGBT people from scout leadership.

As Millhiser observes, Idaho does have an anti-sodomy statute on the books, but it has been superseded by federal court rulings that such laws are unconstitutional.
Not that it matters to a Republican sheriff like this clown. He just assured himself re-election, after all.
And those boys in his troop? Well, they can go off and find someone better to be an example than this self-righteous homophobe.
I would suggest they try a nice Methodist troop like the one my brother and I both enrolled in growing up in Idaho. I know they won't be turning away any gay boys, either.
Because that's the real Idaho. Sometimes clowns, even crowds of them, obscure that reality, too.

The Weather-Manipulation-for-Evil-Political-Purposes Theory: Straight Out of Militialand

It's like they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Especially when it comes to right-wing extremists.

As Karoli reported yesterday, now the conspiracy theorists are claiming that President Obama deliberately created the killer tornadoes that swept Oklahoma last week, with Alex Jones (of course) leading the way.
It's not just Jones. Some Oklahoma versions of Truther nutcases, as Alexander Abad-Santos reports at The Atlantic, are also jumping aboard with a variation on Jones' theory:

So, yes, the Oklahoma tornado truthers claim the administration whipped up a storm that killed 24 people through HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, in Alaska. Here's a screen grab of a contributor post on Before It's News, a citizen journalist website that's home to many of these conspiracy theories, from a contributor who says this is "compelling evidence" that HAARP is at work:

Credit: Courtesy Atlantic Wire

As Gawker's Ken Layne writes, the "stated goal of HAARP is to study the ionosphere and how the spectrum of radio waves works within these upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere." Essentially, HAARP researches communications. But there are budding conspiracy theories that HAARP could be ultimately used to disrupt the ionosphere, and manipulate weather patterns.

As one Redditor pointed out, one of the permutations of the conspiracy theory in Moore is that the left-wing financier George "the Sorcerer" Soros is behind all of this.

Actually, the HAARP theory has been around since about 1994, when it was being avidly promoted by Militia of Montana founder John Trochmann. Here's how he explained it to his audience at a militia meeting in western Washington in 1995, as I reported it in my first book, In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest:

Trochmann then turns on the overhead projector and puts on the cover page. It reads: ``Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: Part I -- The Problem.’’ A few words: ``You’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to fly right through this, because it takes about an hour and a half.’’ He flips to the next sheet. It’s the cover of a military journal with a story about international armed forces cooperating under United Nations auspices, and the cover illustration shows a number of nations’ flags, including the Stars and Stripes, all subordinately positioned beneath a U.N. flag.

So begins a sojourn for the audience that comes closer to two hours in length, as Trochmann treads through 190 pages of "documentation," each page a strand in a web the bearded man spins, all pieces of a puzzle Trochmann claims proves there’s a conspiracy to destroy the United States.

The New World Order, he says, is a shadowy one-world-government group that conspires to put an end to the U.S. Constitution by subsuming it under the "Communist" United Nations. Conspirators include the President, the Speaker of the House, and most financial and political leaders around the world.

The new world government Trochmann envisions would be a population-controlling totalitarian regime. Guns will be confiscated. Urban gangs like the Bloods and the Crips will be deployed to conduct house-to-house searches and round up resisters. Thousands of citizens will be shipped off to concentration camps and liquidated, all in the name of reducing the population.

The conspirators’ evil designs, he says, already have surfaced in numerous key ways, including:

* Gun control. ``What is it about the word `infringe’ they don’t understand?’’ Trochmann asks, referring to the Second Amendment, which he believes completely protects people’s guns rights.

* The botched police raids at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. "These things prove our government is out of control," he says. Moreover, Trochmann claims they are harbingers of a future government crackdown on law-abiding citizens.

* Troop and equipment movements throughout the country. Trochmann flashes pictures of armored vehicles, tanks, missiles, all kinds of military hardware -- some marked with U.N. symbols or lettering, some with red Russian stars. These pictures are sent in from all over the country, Trochmann says, and the government can’t explain them.

* Black helicopters. They’re being used for training now, says Trochmann. What they’re training for: rounding up citizens to put them in concentration camps.

* "Unconstitutional" executive orders. These range from the inclusion of U.S. troops among U.N. forces in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia under Presidents Bush and Clinton to seemingly innocent preparations for disaster under the Federal Emergency Management Administration. All, says Trochmann, are meant to undermine the U.S. Constitution.

* Floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Government conspirators are manipulating the world’s weather (using, Trochmann claims, technology at an Alaska project called HAARP), causing all these horrible weather patterns that affect crop production around the world. The intent, he says, is to induce food shortages, which will become a pretext for imposing martial law. Then, he says, they’ll start rounding people up.

"It's going to end up like this -- the most mild and calm of scenarios will be: `Would you like to eat today? Give me your guns. Would you like your children back from school today? Give me your guns.' That's the mildest of versions you'll see."

I also encountered Trochmann's beliefs in weather manipulation when I interviewed him in Montana:

Federal conspirators, he said, had already put the mechanisms in place for the big coup. "Most of this Emergency Powers Act that's we've been studying that they put together ... They have to have a replacement for war to get down to those levels and still retain the legitimacy of power. What might that be? Catastrophes to deal with? We know that electromagnetically, they control our weather now. There's all kinds of documentation of that. We've got documentation right from the United Nations that say that people have to get a permit to change the weather somewhere."

On the big-screen TV behind us, pictures from a national broadcast showed a hurricane slamming into Florida, and an announcer displayed the storm’s path on a map.

Trochmann looked at the owner of the cafe, and they exchanged knowing glances. "See the hurricane?" John asked him. "Boy, that's really late, isn't it?" The owner nodded.

You mean, I asked, this is part of the weather-control pattern?

"Sure," Trochmann said. "Naples, Florida, got hit at the same time Naples, Idaho, did."
Coincidence, maybe?

"Yeah, right," he said. "And I have another bridge for sale for you."

Most right-wing extremists aren't as imaginative in their paranoia as John Trochmann. Mostly, they just recycle old conspiracy theories that were cooked up liked the Mad Men of MOM.

 Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Waitaminute. Isn't The IRS Supposed To Watch Out For Tax Cheats?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

As if it weren't already clear that the so-called "IRS scandal" is nothing of the sort, now it's becoming even clearer that it's a just another bit of that down-the-rabbit-hole-up-is-downism in which conservatives have come to specialize in recent years.

The Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights -- which, among other things, monitors the far-right extremists who have been filling the ranks of the Tea Party -- has an excellent takedown of the IRS nonsense:

The Tea Party and the IRS “Scandal”:
The Actual Facts of the Case

While it is well-known that the so-called IRS scandal has been used by Tea Partiers to bash the IRS, less well known are the actual facts of the case.

Some of the flagged groups did have their tax-exempt status delayed or did face some additional scrutiny, but not a single group has been denied tax-exempt status.

A May 14 draft report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that none of the 296 questionable applicants had been denied, “For the 296 potential political cases we reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two election cycles).” (p. 14)

In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to recently have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan nature disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

The Inspector General’s report found that in the “majority of cases, we agreed that the applications submitted included indications of significant political campaign intervention.” (p. 10). In fact, only 91 of the 296, roughly 31%, of the applications reviewed for the report did not have “indications of significant political campaign intervention.” In other words, more than two thirds of those flagged for processing by a team of specialists had those indications.
That sort of political campaign intervention would normally disqualify a group from 501(c)(4) status, but the deluge of Tea Party applications combined with the politicization of the process has allowed them to slip through. A closer look by IREHR at the activities of some of the Tea Party groups that are currently under review or have received non-profit status from the IRS, reveals a difficult and dangerous situation.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

As the report concludes:

Rather than the so-called scandal cooked up by Tea Party groups, the real criticism of the IRS may be that it has let so many of these groups get away with what are apparently egregious violations.

That's what all the yelling's about. It's to keep people from seeing the plain truth: Many of these people really are tax cheats trying to game the system for partisan advantage.

Seattle and the NBA: Time to Just Walk Away

Chris Hansen's problem is that he isn't a big enough scumbag.

You see, the reason the NBA this week turned away Hansen's bid to buy the Sacramento Kings and move them to Seattle was that he was honest about his intentions. If he had followed the established NBA model, he would have gone about this thing entirely differently.

Clearly, the chief reasoning of NBA owners for declining to add Hansen and Steve Ballmer to their list of owners was that they were from Seattle. When the NBA ripped their team of 41 years out of Seattle back in 2007, it was intended as an object lesson for the rest of the league: Unless you bow to our extortion demands, you will lose your team.

Sacramento, obviously, got that lesson. After teetering on losing the Kings because of the failure to build a new arena, the city gave up every ounce of its soul in its desperate effort to keep the NBA in town. The new arena deal requires the taxpayers to foot about 60 percent of the tab.

So of course the NBA was going to reward the city that gave in to their extortion demands. And it would continue to punish the city that insists on limiting the taxpayers' role in enriching billionaire owners and their exposure to ever-ratcheting arena costs.

You see, Seattle thought it had done everything right for years. Its fans always supported the Sonics -- even when they sucked, the team still averaged 15,000 a game -- and were among the most rabid and knowledgeable in the league. (I was myself a season ticket holder for over a decade.) There's a reason so many NBA teams are populated with players from Seattle high schools: It is a basketball-saturated town.

We even bellied up to the bar in the 1990s on the arena demands -- spent $100 million tearing apart and renovating the old Seattle Center Coliseum, three-quarters of which was paid for by Seattle taxpayers. When it reopened in 1995, David Stern came and proclaimed the new facility as state-of-the-art for the next generation.

Six years later, it was no longer good enough for the NBA. Or so said then-owner Howard Schultz, who demanded a whole new arena from city, state, and regional leaders. Those folks, of course, were still paying off the bonds for the supposedly state-of-the-art arena they had just refurbished, not to mention their new football and baseball stadiums, and weren't exactly eager to take Schultz's extortion demands seriously -- especially since, in the early part of the decade, much of the town was hurting economically.

So Schultz -- who to this day is the least popular billionaire in town -- threw a fit of pique and sold the team to Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett. Everyone immediately understood that Bennett intended to move the team to Oklahoma. But Bennett, wide-eyed and innocent, proclaimed piously that this was not the case.

Bennett, as documents later unearthed during the departure debacle disclosed, is a prodigious liar. At the same time he was telling Seattle fans all they had to do to keep their team was step up to the plate and deliver on their new arena plan, he was telling his business associates that moving the team to OKC was a done deal.

And that arena plan was a doozy. Bennett proposed building a $500 million arena in the relatively remote southern suburb of Renton, right next to the two worst traffic intersections in the state. Oh, and his investors were only willing to pay $100 million, at the most, for their share of the building. Of course, the state Legislature knew when it was being gamed and declined to play along. Soon the moving trucks had backed up and our team was playing in Oklahoma City for an ownership group comprised of proven liars and scumbags.

Clay Bennett, of course, was then named to head up the same relocation committee that was summarily slapped down the Seattle bid this time. Because that's the kind of league this is.

If Chris Hansen had really wanted to be part of this league, he should have understood that. If Hansen had really wanted to succeed in getting a team back to Seattle, he should have followed the established NBA model. Clay Bennett's model.\

He should have bought the Kings and lied about it. He should have claimed that he wanted to try to keep the team in Sacramento and was willing to work with locals. Then he could have proposed building a new arena in Davis and soaking taxpayers for 80 percent of the tab. And when they balked (as anyone sane would) Hansen and Co. could have packed up stakes and moved them up to Seattle.

That's the established NBA model. Which raises the question: Why would anyone want to get in bed with a business that toxic and dysfunctional in the first place?

We really don't want to be the NBA's Los Angeles -- the extortion threat the league can hang over every other city. Having just been the NBA's bitch, there's really no appetite here to be its tool as well.

This just-finished episode has just reminded everyone in Seattle what they were first taught eight years ago: The NBA is a malignant, dysfunctional entity that preys on cities people's normative civic pride and exploits that for the sake of enriching a few millionaires, who are the real owners of these teams. Cities don't own them, and Seattle was always intended to remind everyone else of that.

Thanks to David Stern, the NBA today is by, about, and for the 1 percent, while suckering the 99 percent into thinking it's about them. Quite a game, really. And when you see that from the outside, as Seattle basketball fans must, the desire to get back in just melts away.

It's time to just walk away from the NBA. We can still be a hoops city. It will be harder, but the foundation is already well in place. And we can find other diversions as well. How about those Sounders, eh?

The NBA can come back some day. But it has to be on our terms. It has to be our team, not something stolen from another city. By then, David Stern will be long gone. And so, perhaps, will be the scumbag ethos that rules the league.