On vacation

I'll be back in a week. In the meantime, here's a video slideshow with orca sounds from the same trip last year.

O'Reilly attacks 'far-left zealot' Rick Perlstein for Newsweek piece on the rabid right

-- by Dave

We knew that Bill O'Reilly had done a nasty segment on Rick Perlstein -- including running his picture -- Tuesday night on Fox News because Perlstein called me shortly afterward and asked:

"Hey, did Bill O'Reilly or someone on Fox do something with me in it tonight?"

"I dunno. I'm recording but not watching. Why?"

"My inbox just started getting deluged with hate mail a little bit ago."

"What time did it start?"

"About 7:30 [Chicago time]."

"Yep, that would be O'Reilly."

"I think they ran my picture. A lot of the mail is about how ugly I am."

I pulled my recording and yep, sure enough, there was a segment attacking Perlstein for his Newsweek op-ed column this week. He invited on his frequent guest, Bernard Goldberg, to talk about it.

As you can see, what set O'Reilly off was Perlstein's characterization of O'Reilly's audience as working-class whites whose more unstable elements sometimes act out violently:

O'Reilly: The most recent Newsweek contains a nasty piece on Sarah Palin that implies she is an intellectual moron supported by poorly educated conservative idiots.

[Hmmmm. Read the piece for yourself. As you can see, it certainly does not use language like that, and in fact discusses to working-class whites in largely respectful tones -- but points out that they don't get much respect among Republican elites. O'Reilly's caricature of the column is actually rather self-revealing.]

O'Reilly: The article goes on to say that these stupid conservatives are influenced by extremist commentators. Quote:

Now [William F.] Buckley is gone, and the most prominent spokesmen -- the Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Becks—can be heard mouthing attitudes once confined to the violent fringe. ... Fox heavily promoted anti-administration "tea party" events this past Fourth of July -- rallies in praise of secession ...

Well, obviously, that paragraph is pure propaganda.

Actually, let's read the whole passage, and you can judge for yourselves. Again, what O'Reilly omits is telling:

Another thing that makes some elite conservatives nervous in this recession is the sheer level of unhinged, even violent irrationality at the grassroots. In postwar America, a panicky, violence-prone underbrush has always been revealed in moments of liberal ascendency. In the Kennedy years, the right-wing militia known as the Minutemen armed for what they believed would be an imminent Russian takeover. In the Carter years it was the Posse Comitatus; Bill Clinton's rise saw six anti-abortion murders and the Oklahoma City bombings. Each time, the conservative mainstream was able to adroitly hive off the embarrassing fringe while laying claim to some of the grassroots anger that inspired it. Now the violence is back. But this time, the line between the violent fringe and the on-air harvesters of righteous rage has been harder to find. This spring the alleged white-supremacist cop killer in Pittsburgh, Richard Poplawski, professed allegiance to conspiracist Alex Jones, whose theories Fox TV host Glenn Beck had recently been promoting. And when Kansas doctor George Tiller was murdered in church, Fox star Bill O'Reilly was forced to devote airtime to defending himself against a charge many observers found self-evident: that O'Reilly's claim that "Tiller the baby killer" was getting away with "Nazi stuff" helped contribute to an atmosphere in which Tiller's alleged assassin believed he was doing something heroic.

At least in the past, those who wished to represent their movement as cosmopolitan and urbane could simply point to William F. Buckley as the right's most prominent spokesman. Now Buckley is gone, and the most prominent spokesmen—the Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Becks—can be heard mouthing attitudes once confined to the violent fringe. For the second time in three months, Fox heavily promoted anti-administration "tea party" events this past Fourth of July—rallies in praise of secession and the Articles of Confederation, at which speakers "joked" about a coup against the communist Muslim Barack Obama like the one against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. "What's going on at Fox News?" Frum recently asked, excoriating Beck for passing out to followers books by the nutty far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen. If you were an elite conservative, you might be embarrassed too.

The difference between "propaganda" and "journalism" is that (ideally, at least) the latter is built on a robust consideration of the facts at hand -- and Perlstein's piece clearly is that. Indeed, his piece brings up a lot of inconvenient facts that O'Reilly conveniently omits.

Indeed, here's a supplemental fact that was edited out of Perlstein's piece, and which he provided us:

Then, in July of 2008, a Tennessee man who opened fire on a Unitarian church left behind a note expressing his hatred of 'Liberals in general, as well as gays' and announced as his desired victims 'every Democrat in the Senate & House' and 'the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book.' Golbderg, a frequent guest on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program, is author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37).

Well, at least Goldberg managed to point out to O'Reilly that Perlstein's piece accurately focused on a very real rift within the Republican Party, a point on which O'Reilly chose not to dwell for very long. Funny how that works. All that matters to O'Reilly is that he is "a far-left zealot."

Instead, one evidently becomes an Enemy of the State -- complete with grainy profile shot -- for simply treading on Bill O'Reilly's narcissistic ego.

Perlstein did say that a Fox producer contacted him beforehand and asked if he was willing to go on the show. He declined.

"I told them to send Jesse if they wanted, and here was my address," he added.

I think he's busy practicing the words "Andrea Mackris" as we speak.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

O'Reilly, Carpenter deride Presente Action's defense of Sotomayor as a 'tentacle of MoveOn'

-- by Dave

It's kind of funny how Bill O'Reilly can benignly declare a nakedly nativist organization like the Minutemen, despite a clear proclivity for attracting racists and violent extremists, "in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups" -- and indeed assiduously decline to report on it when the violent evidence at hand makes clear they are much, much more than that.

And then he can turn around, as he did last night on The O'Reilly Factor -- assisted by his "internet cop" Amanda Carpenter -- and attack a relatively benign advocacy organization like Presente Action, a project of Color of Change, whose purpose revolves around providing an effective voice on the Web for minorities.

What has his goat, of course, is their campaign to defend Sonia Sotomayor by pointing out the prominent role played by hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. So he dismisses them as merely a "tentacle" of MoveOn.org and the "radical left."

Funny how that standard is a one-way street in O'Reillyland.

You have to wonder if maybe he, like Jeff Sessions, believes that "Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another".


Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Ingraham puts crosshairs on Planned Parenthood: What are these people at Fox thinking?

-- by Dave

When Laura Ingraham filled in for Bill O'Reilly on Friday's night's O'Reilly Factor, she ran a segment on abortion that was ostensibly an "investigation" into Planned Parenthood. It featured a logo that placed a red set of crosshairs -- the kind you find on a rifle scope -- over PP's logo.

I'd just like to ask one question:

What the hell were these people thinking?

Now, presumably, Ingraham herself did not order up this graphic, or if she did, it at least went through the hands of the show's regular producers and overseers. These are the same people who just went through a well-deserved round of approbation for their role -- in the form of those 28 references to Dr. George Tiller as a "baby killer" -- in the murder of Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic.

And now they're running a graphic suggestive of what Ann Coulter calls "a procedure with a rifle" -- something, in fact, that Coulter has actually encouraged on The O'Reilly Factor.

Really, I'm serious. What are these people thinking?

Of course, we know all too well that O'Reilly and Co. did their best to disavow any culpability in the matter whatsoever -- somewhat less than convincingly. So maybe the continuing demonization of abortion providers on this program is part and parcel of that defiance.

And the same sort of anecdotal demonization that characterized O'Reilly's attacks on Tiller were similarly at play in this segment on Planned Parenthood. It essentially involved an ambush team using a youngish-seeming woman posing as a 14-year-old entering a variety of Planned Parenthood clinics and recording the responses -- most of which, as described by the fake teen here, actually fit the standard response of most properly run clinics in trying to make sure that younger patients feel at ease.

The overriding message, once again, is that these abortion providers are a pack of morally depraved sickos who deserve to be in the crosshairs. Lovely.

I can think of three possibilities here:

1. Someone just thought putting an organization in the crosshairs was the best way to represent that they were under investigation, and the other implications of such a graphic just didn't cross anybody's radar.

2. They thought about it, recognized that it might not be appropriate, but did it anyway, either out of defiance or simply not caring.

3. They did it with full intent, understanding full well that the suggestion of violence against Planned Parenthood was present, and in fact designing the graphic with that in mind.

Of the three, I think the second is the most plausible. But it's only slightly less appalling, for different reasons, than the other two.

Look, despite what the O'Reillys and Glenn Becks and Laura Ingrahams like to claim, no one is trying to "silence" them for expressing their opinions. This is about being responsible with that big media megaphone they hold. Promoting a violent mindset toward abortion providers, as we have already seen, is profoundly irresponsible. It's long past time that it stop.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Sheriff Joe's rabid supporters spew hate: 'Kill any man, woman or child who comes across the border illegally'

-- by Dave

Well, we've seen plenty of recent evidence that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the nativist law-enforcement chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, attracts genuine extremists in support of his cause.

This recently released YouTube by Humanleague makes the case even more starkly. Its centerpiece is the opening comments by an avid supporter of the Minutemen and Sheriff Arpaio named Brandi Baron, who opines thus:

Baron: I say, give orders to shoot to kill, and kill any man, woman or child who comes across the border illegally. I'll bet you, you kill enough of them, right off the bat, people will stop coming over that way.

[Questioner]

That's what I just said. Personally, I think a minefield would be good. Why build a fence when you can plant some mines?

Q: You just said that you would kill kids.

Baron: If they're being drug across the border, hell yes. The difference between those people and us -- Our country is No. 1. Theirs? Pffft!

This sort of inhuman callousness and disregard for human life is part and parcel of why nativist movements like the Minutemen -- and the mainstream embrace of such factions by public figures like Arpaio -- inevitably spawn violent offspring like Shawna Forde and her gang of killer Minutemen, who gunned down a family in cold blood because they mistakenly believed the father was a big-time drug dealer with cash on the premises. There's a powerful continuum between gangs like Forde's and "mainstream" nativists like Arpaio and his supporters.

As Jill Garvey at Imagine 2050 observes:

This is exactly why Shawna Forde felt justified in breaking into a Latino family’s home and murdering a little girl and her father.

While some of the individuals featured on this video may be unstable or exhibit strange behavior, they are not crazy. These are functioning adults who are perfectly capable of behaving in a reasonable manner. They choose not to. They choose hate over tolerance. They choose to advocate violence over rational dialogue. Violence against immigrants occurs because bigots in positions of power (Sheriff Joe) set the stage and provide an atmosphere that make it acceptable.

Incidentally, sentiments such as these are nothing new to the Minutemen. In the video below -- featuring Minuteman leader Chris Simcox -- you can watch one of his Minuteman cohorts opine similarly:

No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem. After two or three Mexicans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.

This is what I'm talking about when I talk about eliminationism.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

The militia extremists of the '90s are back, and organizing quietly in the woods

-- by Dave

A couple of months ago, a newly formed militia reared its head in a familiar place -- the Panhandle of Northern Idaho. Sisyphus at 43rd State Blues had a full description:

Sporting a photoshopped image of the Statue of Liberty with the torch replaced by an assault rifle, as well as displaying the flag from the "Republic of Idaho", another newly formed Idaho militia crawls out from the wilderness to register their displeasure with the status quo yet offering no solutions other than vague grade school platitudes and a thinly veiled threat of revolution. As is their wont they invoke the civil war cry of state sovereignty. ...

The General applied to be a sniper with them, and got a positive response. Kewl!

But it's not just northern Idaho. It's occurring across a broad swath of the Northwest, mostly in rural precincts, as a Missoulian story recently explored:

“It's the old Freemen days,” Anderson said. “That's what we're seeing here again. And it's not just Lincoln County.”

Lincoln County Detective Capt. Jim Sweet agrees that “there's an uprising of anti-government groups that's definitely connected to the election of the Obama administration.”

Law enforcement agencies throughout the multi-state region, Sweet said, are “talking about the patterns. It's obviously bigger than Lincoln County.”

People are afraid of losing gun rights, he said, and they're stockpiling weapons and ammunition, and they want a sheriff who will stand up to federal agents.

“It's a power thing,” Anderson said. “They want the power to buck the fed and federal gun laws.”

Anderson said he traveled recently to Kalispell for an “intelligence meeting” with several federal, state and local jurisdictions - including the FBI, county sheriffs and city police - to discuss “this radical response to Obama's election, and to make sure we all know what's going on.”

And Sweet said he likewise met with authorities in northern Idaho to discuss the same “resurgence of the radical right. It's not something you can ignore at this point.”

Certainly, Anderson said, people have the right to gather and debate and prepare, but authorities similarly have an “obligation to try to stay ahead of the game, so things don't get blown out of proportion like they did before.”

Sweet believes the Eureka petitioners are likely “harmless in and of themselves,” but he worries that opportunists - more dangerous elements with increasingly radical anti-government sentiments - might be attracted to the activity in Lincoln County.

“Our fear is that, once it fails, their recall petition won't be good enough for them,” Sweet said. “We have people tied to the Freemen trying to take over the sheriff's office. We'd be foolish not to pay attention.”

At its most extreme, this same tide of paranoia and fearfulness is also washing up more bona-fide hate groups on our shores -- particularly our old friends the neo-Nazis from Aryan Nations:

[media=8965 embeddl]

"Six months ago, I had four contacts a month, wanted information and membership applications," O'Brien said. "Now it's up to four or five a day."

...

"It means that white America is waking up," O'Brien said. "That's what it says to me that people are starting to get involved and understand the plight of our race.

The KOMO piece also contained a real nugget of wisdom from an experienced voice:

Eradicating the hate can be a long road.

"You never, never decrease the problem by ignoring it," said Tony Stewart of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Nazis in the U.S. military: SPLC will ask Congress for action

-- by Dave

In his "about me" section, "SoldatAMG" describes himself as a "Sergeant in USMC stationed at Camp Lejeune. I recently returned from my 3rd trip to Iraq. I fight every day to stem the tide of multicultturalism and to ensure that my children have a better world. SIEG HEIL!" -- Stars and Stripes

Why, it feels like only yesterday that every right-wing talker on the planet -- from Michael Savage to Greta Van Susteren -- was denouncing the Department of Homeland Security for supposedly "smearing our veterans" by issuing a bulletin for law-enforcement officers warning that right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis intended to recruit members of the military and returning veterans.

Well, we've already seen just how prescient the bulletin actually was -- after Richard Poplawski, Scott Roeder, and James Von Brunn all proved its point.

Now Stars and Stripes is reporting on just how far, indeed, neo-Nazis have infiltrated our military ranks:

It is Facebook for the fascist set, and the typical online profiles of its members reveal expected tastes.

Favorite book: “Mein Kampf.”

Favorite movie: the Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will.”

Interests: “white women.”

Dislikes: “anyone who opposes the master race.”

But there’s one other thing that dozens of members of newsaxon.org, a white supremacist social networking website, have in common: They proudly identify themselves as active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Montgomery, Ala.-based watchdog group that tracks extremist hate groups, has compiled a book containing the online user profiles of at least 40 newsaxon.org users who say they are serving in the military, in apparent violation of Pentagon regulations prohibiting racist extremism in the ranks.

The military has been shrugging this off. So the SPLC is going to take the matter up with Congress:

On Friday, the SPLC will present its findings to key members of Congress who chair the House and Senate committees overseeing the armed forces and urge them to pressure the Pentagon to crack down.

“In the wake of several high-profile murders by extremists of the radical right, we urge your committees to investigate the threat posed by racial extremists who may be serving in the military to ensure that our armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists,” Morris Dees, SPLC co-founder and chief trial counsel, wrote to the legislators. “Evidence continues to mount that current Pentagon policies are inadequate to prevent racial extremists from joining and serving in the armed forces.”

Added Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, a magazine produced at the law center: “The Pentagon really has shrugged this off and refused to look at this in any serious way.”

We've been reporting on this trend for some time now, and have discussed especially the ramifications of this development.

As an FBI assessment made last year noted:

The prestige which the extremist movement bestows upon members with military experience grants them the potential for influence beyond their numbers. Most extremist groups have some members with military experience, and those with military experience often hold positions of authority within the groups to which they belong.

... Military experience—often regardless of its length or type—distinguishes one within the extremist movement. While those with military backgrounds constitute a small percentage of white supremacist extremists, FBI investigations indicate they frequently have higher profiles within the movement, including recruitment and leadership roles.

... New groups led or significantly populated by military veterans could very likely pursue more operationally minded agendas with greater tactical confidence. In addition, the military training veterans bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of lone offenders to carry out violence from the movement’s fringes.

America has really been fortunate for the past 30 years or so in that the vast majority of right-wing domestic terrorists -- from the militiamen who plotted to blow up a Sacramento propane facility (likely dead: about 3,000) to the cyanide-bomb maker to the would-be dirty-bomb builder -- have proved to be incompetent or catchable; in many cases, we've simply been lucky they were done in by fate. When there have been exceptions -- Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph particularly -- there has also been a military background.

In other words, our luck may be about to run out. And we can thank right-wing yammerers for having delayed and distracted us from dealing with it in a timely fashion -- before it happens.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Fox's Napolitano fears hate-crimes law hurts free speech -- but ignores explicit language of bill

-- by Dave

Judge Andrew Napolitano sat in as the guest host Wednesday on Glenn Beck's Fox News show, and featured a segment devoted to the notion that the hate-crimes legislation currently before the Senate might somehow be abused to undermine Americans' free-speech rights. His guest was David Rittgers of the Cato Institute.

There is, however, a problem right off the bat with their thesis: The bill in question -- the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) -- contains specific language designed to ensure that the bill is never construed in such a fashion:

Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by, the Constitution.

Any honest discussion of this aspect of the legislation would have to bring this language into consideration -- but it's never mentioned by either Napolitano or Rittgers. Rittgers has written about it at Cato -- mostly objecting on the basis of concerns about federalism -- and similarly omits any discussion of the bill's actual language (which also explicitly recognizes the primary role of the states and local jurisdictions).

Watch instead what Napolitano and Rittgers do in the course of this discussion: they bring in a totally unrelated piece of legislation -- the "Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act", which is indeed highly dubious from a constitutional point of view -- as though it were part and parcel of the same hate-crimes legislation issues -- even though the two laws have nothing to do with each other.

And then they return almost seamlessly to the federalism and double-jeopardy issues around the LLEHCPA -- Napolitano just refers briefly to "this legislation," but it's quickly clear they're discussing not the Megan Meier bill, which does not raise such issues, but rather the LLEHCPA. It's all so muddied up that anyone watching the show could easily conclude that they're somehow packaged together.

Moreover, the double-jeopardy problems -- as we've explained in some detail -- are largely nonexistent, or rather simply reflect the ongoing debate over "dual sovereignty doctrine," which involves many more issues than merely bias crimes.

The ACLU strongly supports this bill, despite its usual concerns over double jeopardy, and if you look the bill's actual language, you can see why:

‘(b) Certification Requirement- No prosecution of any offense described in this subsection may be undertaken by the United States, except under the certification in writing of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Associate Attorney General, or any Assistant Attorney General specially designated by the Attorney General that--

‘(1) such certifying individual has reasonable cause to believe that the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person was a motivating factor underlying the alleged conduct of the defendant; and

‘(2) such certifying individual has consulted with State or local law enforcement officials regarding the prosecution and determined that--

‘(A) the State does not have jurisdiction or does not intend to exercise jurisdiction;

‘(B) the State has requested that the Federal Government assume jurisdiction;

‘(C) the State does not object to the Federal Government assuming jurisdiction; or

‘(D) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence.

It also contains this clause:

‘(e) Rule of Evidence- In a prosecution for an offense under this section, evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense. However, nothing in this section affects the rules of evidence governing impeachment of a witness.’.

This is why Caroline Frederickson, Director of the ACLU's Legislative Office, said this about it:

This bill has a provision, that has been in it since 2005, that has enabled the ACLU to support this legislation, because it does protect both civil rights and free speech and association. The bill specifically blocks evidence of speech and association that are not directly related to the crime.

That means that anyone saying we have unleashed the thought police, or thought crimes, is wrong.

... This bill will have the strongest protection against the misuse of a person’s free speech that Congress has enacted in the entire federal criminal code.

Napolitano was obviously looking for a way to grind Glenn Beck's usual ax about "our rights" being "eroded" by the federal government. And he obviously didn't want to bother explaining the facts in order to do it.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Kilmeade does eugenics: Americans marry 'other species' so we don't have Swedes' 'pure genes'

[H/t Media Matters]

-- by Dave

Brian Kilmeade put on a classic display of the way today's right-wingers cling to old half-baked notions of race and eugenics Wednesday morning on Fox and Friends, discussing a Scandinavian study of the benefits of marriage:

Kilmeade: Leave it to the Finns and Swedes to come up with something. Because that's a -- we are, we're a, we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other --

[Crosstalk]

Kilmeade: I mean the Swedes -- the Swedes have, uh, pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes. Because that's the rule. Finland -- Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we marry everybody. So we marry Italians and Irish and --

Dave Briggs: OK, so this study does not apply.

Kilmeade: It does not apply to us.

Other species? We marry other species? Since when? What, is this the man-on-dog sex that Rick Santorum was on about?

And what the hell do "pure genes" -- whatever those are -- have to do with marriage behavior?

It's astonishing, really, the level of complete and utter idiocy that passes for professional news talk on our cable TV these days. Charles Pierce is right.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Sarah Palin's not just a quitter -- she's a professional quitter. And taxpayers get the tab

-- by Dave

Sarah Palin quit as Alaska's governor because, she claimed, she needed to "do the right thing for Alaska."

But has anyone sat down and figured out how much this stunt is actually going to cost Alaska's taxpayers?

One of our wise Alaska friends e-mailed the other day, pointing out that Palin's resignation is likely going to wind up costing in the vicinity of $200,000 or more, because a special session is going to be required to name a successor to the lieutenant governor's post.

Indeed, Greg Sargent is reporting that one of the reasons Palin repeatedly gave for resigning -- that defending her on the ethics complaints was costing taxpayers a bundle -- was fundamentally false.

All this for the sake of someone who already has a history of quitting on the state when she hit rough sledding -- but using the splash she made from doing so as a stepping-stone to higher office.

John Ziegler, Palin's Biggest Fan, dropped that point in passing the other night on The O'Reilly Factor -- as though it were an admirable thing to do, of course.

Crisitunity at Swing State Project explored this in a bit further detail:

One other thought about Alaska that just about everyone in the tradmed seems to be missing. Sarah Palin did have a job in between being mayor of Wasilla and Alaska Governor: she was chair of Frank Murkowski's Oil and Gas Commission. How long was she on this Commission? Less than a year... until she quit in January 2004 with a big public huff (leaving the Commission in the lurch with only one member), saying "the experience was taking the 'oomph' out of her passion for government service and she decided to quit rather than becoming bitter." She publicly cited her frustration with being unable to be all straight-talky and mavericky about the corruption and backbiting on the Commission, but the resignation also came at a very convenient time for switching over to lay the groundwork for her successful 2006 gubernatorial run.

As DavidNYC at DailyKos acidly observed:

Don't forget that she also quit four different colleges en route to getting a degree in journalism. It seems that the one lesson Sarah Palin's learned her whole life is that quitters always win.

The best part is that the taxpayers pick up the tab for it, too. Apparently, "what's right for the people of Alaska" is to give them the shaft -- now that she's "too big" for them, especially.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Fox report suggests Pentagon policy nixing religious flyover is a sign Obama is anti-Christian

-- by Dave

Gretchen Carlson of Fox and Friends was all worked up this morning over something she read off the Christian Newswire -- and in typical Fox fashion, proceeded to report on only the religious right's spin of the event.

The story involves the Pentagon's decision not to have its Air Force jets do their annual flyover at the "God and Country Family Festival" in Nampa, Idaho last weekend. She had on Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, which is constantly on the lookout for "anti-Christian" activities on the part of whatever miscreants it can manufacture. It produced this exchange:

Carlson: So when I first read this story, I actually found it hard to believe. Because for 42 years, at this rally in Idaho, the Pentagon has authorized a flyover. Suddenly this year, a new president in office, and a new policy. What do you make of it?

Mahoney: Well, we're stunned, actually, and it's a reminder that our Constitution promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. I think the viewers need to understand, the flyovers that were held for 42 years were not to endorse or promote any religion, but to honor the military, who was there in force.

Actually, the promoters of the event told the local paper otherwise:

Organizers don't deny the explicitly Christian nature of the annual patriotic rally.

"Yes, it's about as Christian as you can get — we believe in promoting Christianity," Syme said. "And we have no plans to change that."

Regardless, Mahoney charged on:

Mahoney: I think it causes one to pause and say, 'What changed? After 42 years, what changed?' And Gretchen, the only indicator we have is that we have a new commander in chief.

And I think that we are wondering, when we look at President Obama: Is there a culture of hostility toward expressions of faith in the public square -- particularly Christian?

Let's put this in context. Several months ago, the president spoke at Georgetown University; when he spoke there, he covered a cross, and he covered a sacred symbol for the name of Jesus. He did not celebrate the National Day of Prayer at the White House, had no events at the White House, and yet just a couple of weeks ago we had a major reception to celebrate Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in June.

So we need to move -- we right now are filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the American Center for Law and Justice, and we want to get to the bottom of this to ensure that no American citizen and no group is denied access to the public square because of their faith tradition.

Of course, I've never heard that "sucking up taxpayer dollars by employing the military for your entertainment" was a matter of having "access to the public square" before. It's a novel concept, but not one likely to fly in court.

But Carlson notes that of course the eeeeeevil Daily Kos endorses the Pentagon's enforcement of its longstanding policy. So I went looking and discovered that she was referring not to a front-page piece but rather a diary by Chris Rodda -- and a very good one at that, which explains that the Pentagon was actually finally responding to complaints filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. And what happened was that the Pentagon finally agreed to enforce its longstanding policy against permitting military participation in religious events:

Looking into this issue for MRFF (in what I wrongly thought was going to be a very temporary job), I found that the Stone Mountain event was far from an isolated incident. The military was regularly providing flyovers at countless evangelical Christian events all over the country, not only violating the regulations prohibiting military participation in religious events, but spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money in the process.

MRFF began exposing these events, which included flyovers on the five holidays when flyovers at civilian events are permitted, and even a few at National Day of Prayer events, and began to see some decline in their frequency, but we weren't sure if the number of flyovers at these events was really decreasing, or if the military and organizers of these events were just being more careful not to make the nature of the events so obvious.

Well, needless to say, the following letter denying, for the first time in 42 years, the request for a flyover at one Christian rally, released on many websites in conjunction with a Christian Newswire article titled "Pentagon Denies Flyover of Patriotic 'God and Country Rally' in Nampa Idaho Because of its Christian Content," was the best 4th of July present MRFF could have asked for.

The letter read in part:

Your Air Force aviation support request doesn't fall into either approved category, as such, we are unable to approve it. Air Force and DoD policy prohibit support for events which appear to endorse, selectively benefit, or favor any special interest group, religious or ideological movement.

With an increasingly high operations tempo and limited resources to meet our training and operational commitments, we are required to take a hard look at all of our requests and carefully follow our policies and guidelines. In denying your request, we are not questioning the worthiness of the event, but rather enforcing DoD and Air Force policy to preserve the operational and training requirements of our aviation units and to practice the prudent stewardship of taxpayer-financed resources.

Of course, one of the ways you can tell whether or not these kinds of "issues" have any validity is by looking at the people who are raising a stink about them. One name that keeps popping up is that of Brandi Swindell:

Christian activist Brandi Swindell sent a text message about the lack of the flyover from Wednesday night's event at the Idaho Center amphitheater. She followed up with another message Thursday.

"This is unbelievable and deeply troubling," Swindell wrote. "The Pentagon does not have the authority to discriminate against Christian groups or events. This type of religious bigotry is unconstitutional. How sad to see this lack of respect and level of blatant bias surrounding the 4th of July celebration."

This is the same Brandi Swindell who ran for Boise City Council on an explicitly (and rabidly) anti-abortion platform, replete with bizarro antics and insane pronunciamentos. She was also kicked out of the Idaho House after she had one of her patented anti-abortion meltdowns in the office of the Republican Speaker.

Hearing a complaint about "anti-Christian bias" from the same people who are most aggressively trying to shove their "Christian nation" ideology down everyone else's throat is only mildly amusing. Seeing them attack President Obama as anti-Christian is pretty disturbing.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Coulter thinks Palin's resignation was a brilliant move: 'She is too big for the position now'

-- by Dave

I suspect Ann Coulter didn't really intend, appearing Sunday on Fox News with Marc Lamont Hill, to open a big wide window for everyone to see in brilliantly illuminated color the deep, sneering contempt in which your average Republican pundit actually holds all of those "hard-working average Americans" they normally profess to represent.

But she did:

Coulter: I think it's brilliant. And I'm baffled by people being baffled by it. Um, I mean, she's a huge, huge star. And meanwhile she's stuck up in Ulan Bator, she can neither respond to her many admirers who want her to come speak down in the Lower 48, and want her, you know, to be raising money for them, starting PACs, and being the voice of conservatism, which she is. She can't do that, or she'll be neglecting the state.

... Look, she's a lame-duck governor, it isn't her fault that she became a huge, huge star, but she is too big for the position now. And people acting like, you know, leaving a governorship is a step down.

Hill: When she was on the campaign, she talked about fighting for the little person, fighting for the state of Alaska. And now all of a sudden to say, she's too big for an elected office. I mean, how can you be too big for an elected office. That's her job. That ostensibly was her calling.

Coulter: Well, she doesn't say that. I'm saying that. Obvious.

Hill: No, no, you are saying that, but you're replicating the very thing that she said shen she said that 'I have a higher calling.' If she says that her calling is higher, it essentially is greater than the thing that she's doing right now, and that borders again on absurd.

Coulter: Than dealing with fishing licenses in Alaska. [ed. note: corrected]

Hill: Tell that to the people of Alaska.

Hill is right: Coulter is just giving clear voice to the message that Sarah Palin is sending. That message is: She's too big for those little people in Alaska anymore. Why, she's so big now she can save the world. "Don't cry for me, Wasilla!"

I bet those Alaskan voters are real impressed right about now. The rest of us too.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

As 'Tea Parties' lose steam, fringe conspiracists step up to the fore

-- by Dave

If it wasn't already obvious that the right-wingers who organized the Tax Day Tea Parties vastly overstated their actual significance -- except as a harbinger of the slide towards right-wing populism -- then this past weekend should lay any doubts to rest.

Even before the holiday weekend, it was clear that the planned 2nd edition of the Tea Tantrums Parties was going to be somewhat less than energetic. David Weigel at the Washington Independent observed that a lot of this had to do with mainstream support peeling away:

But the collaboration between the official Republican establishment and the Tea Parties has not lasted into June. The RNC has no plans to get involved with any Tea Parties. A spokesman for Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who jaunted around northern California to attend several Tea Parties, said that his holiday plans were private but would probably not include Tea Parties. Gingrich will not attend any of the Tea Parties, although he recorded video messages for events in Birmingham and Nashville “at the request of the respective organizers,” according to spokesman Dan Kotman.

Media coverage has also gotten a little bit more scarce. Coverage on Fox News has largely been limited to interviews with Tea Party organizers on the network’s morning shows. While sources at Fox would not discuss their plans for covering the weekend events, they confirmed that no anchors would be attending and that the attendance and news value of the events looked to be lower than that of the April rallies. Tea Party organizers are counting, instead, on local news coverage and on distributed reporting such as the conservative news site PajamasTV, which hosts an “American Tea Party” show and has asked readers to submit their own videos from their rallies.

Part of the dynamic of right-wing populism is that, as whatever mainstream backing it gathers initially peels away, its more radical elements rise to the fore. And indeed, the Anti-Defamation League warned beforehand that extremists were likely to be making their presence felt at these gatherings:

White supremacists and neo-Nazi hate groups plan to take advantage of the anti-tax "Tea Parties" set to occur in more than 1,000 cities and localities over the July 4 holiday weekend to disseminate racist fliers and other materials and attempt to recruit others to their cause, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

ADL's Center on Extremism, which monitors extremist groups and provides information to law enforcement and the public, has released information on its Web site describing the attempt by white supremacists to co-opt the anti-tax message of the events as a means to spread racism and anti-Semitism.

On Stormfront, the most popular white supremacist Internet forum, members have discussed becoming local organizers of the "Tea Parties" and finding ways to involve themselves in the events. Many racists have voiced their intent to attend these rallies for the purpose of cultivating an "organized grassroots White mass movement," with some suggesting that they would do so without openly identifying themselves as racists.

If you watch the above video -- featuring clips culled from various Tea Parties around the nation, including (in order of appearance) Norwich, Conn.; Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; Cape Coral, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; and La Canada/Flintridge, California -- you can see it all: the lackluster crowds, combined with a toxic dose of truly wingnutty rhetoric.

The conspiracists were obviously out in force. In Oklahoma, a man calling himself "July4Patriot" talked about his organization, the "Oath Keepers" -- a collection of freshly returned war veterans who are organizing to resist the impending New World Order. As you can hear, among the things they fear is that the government intends to conduct house-to-house searches of private homes and begin rounding up citizens and putting them in concentration camps. The only thing missing was the black helicopters (though give him enough time, and that probably will turn up too).

Then there was the "Birther" speaker in Florida who assured everyone that the Constitution is based on Biblical law, and added that President Obama isn't a constitutionally legal president because he won't show his birth certificate. Or the woman in California who warned that illegal immigrants were the real problem.

The conspiracist element was everywhere -- and so was the fizzling of energy. There was no party in Seattle this time -- though a gathering in Olympia was reported to have gathered 1,500. As you can see from the tea parties' organizing site for Washington, the sponsor of that "party" was an outfit calling itself "PatriotMarch"
-- and if you go there, you can quickly ascertain that this is an essentially Bircherite group of conspiracists too. (Quick shower recommended afterward.)

It happened elsewhere as well. In Duval County, Florida, there were signs comparing Obama to Hitler.

The next step in the devolution process of right-wing populists -- just as we saw with the Minutemen -- involves acting out by renegade violent and unstable actors. That's the really ugly part. And as you can see, the Tea Parties are getting there, bit by bit.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

How I helped drive Sarah Palin crazy by digging into her past

-- by Dave

Last October, I went on CNN Newsroom with Rick Sanchez to talk about an investigative piece co-written with Max Blumenthal about Sarah Palin's longtime dalliances with Alaska's far-right elements, particularly the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

At the time, the McCain campaign blew us off publicly. And unfortunately, none of our colleagues in other media settings picked up on the story and asked further questions about the issues it raised -- particularly at a time when the McCain campaign was busy accusing Barack Obama of "palling around" with "terrorists" and extremists.

Now, it turns out that my short appearance on TV threw Sarah Palin into a tizzy and provoked a quarrel with Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign. This from a CBS story by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe:

Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day offer a rare look at just how frustrated then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy. The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt.

The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin's relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla. The AIP's platform calls for a vote giving Alaskans the option to secede from the United States. It had already been widely known that Todd Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 and that Governor Palin had taped a recorded greeting at the party's 2008 convention.

On the morning of Oct. 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, "THE PALINS AND THE FRINGE."

While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP.

The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.

Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line "Todd" to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message (all of the e-mails are reprinted below as written).

"Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party," Palin wrote. "It's bull, and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it ... Pls have statement given on this so it's put to bed."

Schmidt hit "reply to all" less than five minutes after Palin's e-mail was sent. "Ignore it," he wrote. "He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america."

This clear cut response from the campaign's top dog carried an air of finality, but it did not satisfy Palin. She responded with another e-mail, adding five more names to the "cc" box, all of whom traveled on her campaign plane. They included her senior political adviser Tucker Eskew, senior aide Jason Recher, the lone traveling aide from her Alaska office Kris Perry, press secretary Tracey Schmitt and personal assistant Bexie Nobles.

Palin's insertion of the five additional staffers in the e-mail chain was an apparent attempt to rally her own troops in the face of a decision from the commanding general with which she disagreed. Her inclusion of her personal assistant was particularly telling about her quest for affirmation and support in numbers, since the young staffer was not in a position to have any input on campaign strategy.

"That's not part of their platform and he was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan," Palin wrote. "He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed."

Now, the problem with this response is that it's just factually false. Palin's connections with the AIP ran much, much deeper than Todd's paper affiliation. As we explained in the Salon story:

* Palin formed a political alliance with Wasilla's Patriot-movement faction while still a Wasilla city councilman, and they played a significant role in her successful campaign against the three-term incumbent mayor in 1996.

* Palin, in one of her first acts as mayor, attempted to fill the seat vacated by her ascension to the mayorship with one of the leaders of this faction -- a bellicose man described by the city councilman who blocked his appointment as having a "violent" disposition.

* Mayor Palin also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this faction.

* Palin also organized this faction to turn out at a city council meeting to shout down a proposed local gun-control ordinance. Palin also determinedly allowed the testimony of the pro-gun crowd before the bill had even been presented to the council or prepared for public hearings -- a clear violation of city-council policy.

* Palin had a continual association with Alaskan Independence Party chairman Mark Chryson (a Wasilla resident) throughout her tenure as mayor, and joined to support him in a series of anti-gun-control and anti-tax measures, both locally and statewide.

* Palin attended the AIP's state conventions in 1994 and 2006, the latter when she was campaigning for the governorship. The 1994 appearance is more questionable, since it came at time when the AIP was more openly radical (its members had backed militia figure Col. James "Bo" Gritz in the 1992 election), and its platform then contained what Chryson calls "racist language".

* She sent a videotaped address to the AIP at its 2008 convention, ostensibly because "I've always thought competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well" -- though notably, she sent no such similar videotaped welcome to the state's Democratic Party.

Schmidt needn't even have consulted our story to ascertain its falsity. According to the CBS story, all he had to do was look at the AIP's website:

Clearly irritated by what he saw as Palin's attempt to mislead her own campaign and apparently determined to demonstrate that the ultimate authority rested with him, Schmidt put the matter to rest once and for all with a longer response to everyone in the e-mail chain.

"Secession," he wrote. "It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country

We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this."

Schmidt's rebuttal to Palin's suggestion that reporters had asked her about the issue was particularly blunt in that it implicitly questioned her truthfulness.

At the time, the McCain campaign's official response was this, from Michael Goldfarb:

CNN is furthering a smear with this report, no different than if your network ran a piece questioning Sen. Obama's religion. No serious news organization has tried to make this connection, and it is unfortunate that CNN would be the first.

Well, as I pointed out at the time: the issue isn't one of Sarah Palin's faith, it's about her conduct in public office, and how it is affected by her ideological associations. It's the cold reality that Palin has a real history of empowering these extremists, and pandering to their conspiratorial beliefs, from her position of public office.

That was an issue then, and it continues to be an issue as long as Sarah Palin seeks public office. Which, given the past weekend's events, may not be much longer.

UPDATE: You'll note that Palin's staff appears to be claiming that they received no inquiries about this matter. Schmidt's memo observes: "According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews."

Well, it's true that we didn't communicate directly with Palin's staff, but that's mainly because we could only contact them through the McCain/Palin campaign at the time. I phoned them as the story neared completion and asked them for comment, and was told that I needed to send an e-mail to the main press address for the campaign. So here's the e-mail I sent to the McCain campaign people on Oct. 9:

To: press@mccain
From: David Neiwert

My name is David Neiwert; I’m a freelance journalist based in Seattle. Max Blumenthal and I spent some time in Alaska the past few weeks going through public records and talking to local residents in Wasilla and elsewhere about Gov. Palin. We’ve put together a report that will be published shortly at Salon.com.

We wanted to know if the McCain campaign cared to comment on our findings so we could include that in the story. I called your press office at headquarters this morning and they suggested I send an e-mail.

Essentially here’s what we found:

• That Gov. Palin, when a Wasilla city council member, formed an alliance with some of the more radical far-right citizens in Wasilla and vicinity, particularly members of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party who were allied with local John Birch Society activists. These activists played an important role in her election as Wasilla mayor in 1996.
• Once mayor, one of Mrs. Palin’s first acts was to attempt to appoint one of these extremists (a man named Steve Stoll) to her own seat on the city council. This was a man with a history of disrupting city council meetings with intimidating behavior. She was blocked by a single city council member.
• Afterward, Mrs. Palin fired the city’s museum director at the behest of this faction.
• She fomented an ultimately successful effort to derail a piece of local gun-control legislation which would simply have prohibited the open carry of firearms into schools, liquor stores, libraries, courthouses and the like. The people recruited to shout this ordinance down included these same figures, notably the local AIP representative (who became the AIP’s chairman that same year).
• She remained associated politically with the local AIP/Birch faction throughout her tenure as mayor on other issues, particularly a successful effort to amend the Alaska Constitution to prohibit local governments from issuing any local gun-control ordinances.

In general, we found that not only did Mrs. Palin have numerous associations with these extremists, she actively sought to empower them locally and to enact their agendas both locally and on a state level.

We’d like to know if you have any comment on these findings. We hope to hear from you soon.

David Neiwert
Seattle

I received no response to this e-mail whatsoever.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Is Rush Limbaugh trying to encourage a military coup against Obama?

-- by Dave

One of the problems with trying to track the flood of wingnuttery emitted daily by Rush Limbaugh is that there's so much of it, and it's so ceaseless, that one becomes overwhelmed trying to keep up with it. But there's been a thread in his commentary this past week that's particularly dangerous, and it needs calling out.

It began on Monday, after the military coup in Honduras. Limbaugh went on the air and said this:

Limbaugh: So we've got hell breaking loose in Honduras. You know what we learned about Honduras? We learned the Obama administration tried to stop the coup. Now what was -- the coup was what many of you wish would happen here, without the military.

The next day, describing Obama talking to troops about the withdrawal from Iraq, he described the president thus:

"This is a guy who sought their defeat."

And then Wednesday, he expanded on these thoughts even further:

This is Barack Obama, who led from the United States Senate his party into doing everything he could to ensure the defeat of the U.S. military. ... This party was doing everything it could to impugn and dishonor the military.

On Thursday Limbaugh added to the litany in a much more explicit fashion:

Limbaugh: And if we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back.

This thread of commentary clearly is pushing toward a single thought -- to push people in the armed forces into seeing Obama as a usurper and traitor, just like the Honduran president, and toward the idea that a similar military-based removal of him from office might be justified.

Keep in mind that Limbaugh is only of only four pundits still broadcast daily on Armed Services Radio, so our men and women in uniform are getting fed this garbage on a daily basis. (And Wes Clark was right: It is well past time to take him off.)

Limbaugh in fact is picking up on sentiments already circulating on the right. Larisa Alexandrovna at AtLargely picked up on the chatter going on at various right-wing blogs after Honduras coup, pointing in particular to the Gateway Pundit's commenters, who posted such items as the following:




We've seen a steady drumbeat of fearmongering from the right since Obama's election. But now we're treading into truly dangerous, insurrectionary territory.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Sunday News Brunch and Open Thread

-- by Sara

Sorry it's been so quiet here this week. The weather's warm (at least by the standards that obtain on the 50th parallel), which makes it hard to focus on work. Canada celebrates its Independence Day on July 1, and the US's is three days later, so the party energy is running high on both sides of the Cascadian border. The tourist season is starting to bring in visitors from points south, so we're spending the weekend clearing out the guest room. Oh, and my first chick fledged -- she turned 19, found a fabulous job on a new TV show, and moved out into her own apartment this past week. We bought her a set of cooking pans for a birthday gift. A landmark moment that passed in a blink: one day she was here, and a single U-Haul load later, she was gone.

What's for brunch? Got lots of little yinnies I've been saving up over the past couple weeks, meaning to blog but not quite getting to. On the menu today:

Southern Baptists: old, white, and in decline. The SBC's 16-million-strong membership is falling so fast that it could be less than half that size within 40 years. Baptisms are down. So its the church's influence in Southern culture (the article notes that "dry" counties are becoming less so). They're not holding onto the kids. It doesn't bode well for the long run.

Over the years, the SBC has been the font of some of the most egregious looniness from the religious right, so I feel a bit like a circus fan hearing the news that attendance is falling off at Ringling Bros. shows. For the whole 20th century, they were the best show in town. Best catch 'em before they fade into history.

Huckabee and Gingrich: Prop 8 passed because of prayer. Evidently, the Yes on 8 voters just couldn't be hateful and stupid enough all on their own to vote away people's civil rights. For spite of this magnitude, you need God.

More on why both the above stories are a major problem for the GOP.

Some are responding to the Republican meltdown by giving up on God, and going for their guns. "...For many gun owners, this year's NRA show isn't the beginning of any armed insurrection, but rather a part of a conservative soul-searching as an out-of-power political minority seeks a new role." Well, that's something to look forward to.

And then there's the current fuss on the right about the census. This is an old Bircher bugbear going back to the 1960s. Reading around, it seems pretty clear to me that their real fear is that an accurate count will result in more of their money going to Those People (which, as Digby rightly notes, is the animating force behind most conservative racism). Though I'm still not clear how encouraging white people to make sure they're undercounted is supposed to fix that.

In any event, right-wing screeching aside, next year's census (as currently configured) is actually considerably less intrusive than any census done in most of our lifetimes. Even the small percentage of households getting the expanded questionnaire aren't being asked questions that haven't been asked before.

In any event, if the upshot is that Michelle Bachmann's seat is wiped off the Congressional map by this, it will not be a bad thing.

Eliminationism on parade: Coulter, Joe the Plumber, and military chaplains' leader wish for deaths

-- by Dave

The right-wing pundits have been busy whipping a fresh batch of eliminationist rhetoric this week.

Leading the parade, as is often the case, was Ann Coulter, appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show on Monday:

Coulter: Well, apparently, this one random nut who shot Tiller -- I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.

... I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others.

... OK, their logic is, if you don't believe in abortion, don't have an abortion. If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, don't shoot an abortionist.

Coulter actually was just regurgitating this week's column for cable consumption:

I'm not justifying it, but I understand when you take democracy away from people, some of them will react violently. The total number of deaths attributable to Roe were seven abortion clinic workers and 40 million unborn babies.

... I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.

As Fred Clarkson observes:

So that's four times in the past year and a half that she has coyly or not so coyly justified political assassination: Before prominent religious right audiences; in a nationally syndicated column, and on national television.

Meanwhile, as Blue Texan at FDL observes, Joe the Plumber was joining the parade with an open wish for the lynching of Sen. Chris Dodd:

Wurzelbacher has a reputation for being a blunt, politically incorrect speaker. Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, "Why hasn't he been strung up?"

...Referring to the Constitution as "almost like the Bible," Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: "They knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work."

The real prize, however, belongs to Col. Jim Ammerman, leader of the Full Gospel Chaplaincy. as Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action reports,

As noted in the Newsweek story, last fall - as the presidential election was heating up, retired Colonel E.H. "Jim" Ammerman, in the official September 2008 newsletter [ PDF of newsletter ] of his Department of Defense approved chaplain endorsing agency, published a letter which suggested, per the advice of a fabricated Abraham Lincoln quote, that four US Senators should be be "arrested, quickly tried and hanged!!!"...

The alleged crime ? - voting against a Senate bill that would have established English as the official language of the United States. Newsweek did not reveal the names of the four senators. But a May 20, 2009 Huffington Post story by Military Religious Freedom Foundation Senior Researcher Chris Rodda does: Democratic Party senators Dodd, Biden, Clinton, and Obama.

How influential is Ammerman? As Wilson explains, very:

Through his Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, retired Colonel "Jim"Ammerman presides over more than 270 active duty military chaplains, perhaps 7-8 percent of the active duty chaplain force.

Ammerman says he was a friend to the late General William Westmoreland, claims both Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee and Word of Faith televangelist Kenneth Copeland as current friends and states that his agency works with three and four star generals and has allies at the highest levels of the Pentagon as well as in the US Congress and Senate.

Ammerman himself, as you can see from reading Wilson's piece, has been hawking "New World Order" conspiracy theories for some time now. But what's especially noteworthy about this is that he and his fellow ideologues are most concerned about ... illegal immigration.

Take, for example, a sermon from one of Ammerman's chief cohorts, fellow preacher James Linzey:

"I want Americans, I want everybody listening, to go out and buy 5 weapons and 5,000 bullets - for your own protection, for self defense. Because I believe that foreign soldiers will come to our houses, to rape our wives and teenage daughters and kill the men right in front of them - and then the women will bear children of an ethnic stock different from what they are...

...this whole illegal immigration thing is a ploy. It's done deliberately. It's not done by accident. This is not a matter of `Oh, they're coming over the border because they can't get a job in Mexico.' - NO. The world bankers did the same thing to Mexico that they are now doing to America. That's why they're coming up here. Now they want to make us the same ethnic group through intermarriage, and rape, and killing the caucasians."

Considering that President Obama yesterday met with key congressmen about immigration, and pledged to push through a comprehensive-reform bill, the trigger the far-right extremists have been looking for may be just around the corner.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Arrests in 2004 Arizona bombing: Are the feds finally taking domestic terrorism seriously again?

-- by Dave

Back in 2004, someone sent a letter bomb to Don Logan, the director of the Office of Diversity and Dialogue in Scottsdale, Ariz. Logan suffered serious burns on his hands and arms, and two other people suffered minor injuries.

At the time, it was clear that both federal and local authorities wanted to treat the case as an "isolated incident" unconnected to any racial matters. The chief line of investigation was into Logan's personal background, to see if he might have had financial dealings that created enemies. Unsurprisingly, the trail went cold in short order.

Yesterday, the FBI finally arrested three white supremacists in the case:

An undercover ATF sting raided white supremacists in at least three states on Thursday in an investigation connected to the 2004 letter bombing of Don Logan, an African-American who worked for a diversity program in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms infiltrated "several" undercover agents into white supremacist circles as part of the investigation, according to court records.

In Arizona, Dennis and Daniel Mahon were arrested this week by the ATF on a sealed indictment issued June 16.

In Missouri, Robert Neil Joos was arrested by the ATF on a firearms charge. An ATF affidavit said the arrest resulted from a multi-year investigation into the Logan bombing.

According to the affidavit, Dennis Mahon called Joos on the morning of the bombing.

Dennis Mahon has been a player in the white-supremacy movement for a couple of decades now:

Dennis Mahon is a white supremacist and anti-Semite who has been active in several states in the Midwest and in Arizona. He has held leadership positions within various white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a now-defunct group led by long-time white supremacist Tom Metzger.

In 1991, Mahon even embarked on a Klan/neo-Nazi recruitment tour in Europe.

Mahon claims to have befriended Timothy McVeigh when both were hanging out at Elohim City, the violent white-supremacist enclave in the Ozarks.

Likewise, Robert Joos has been a figure on the white-supremacist right for some time. He was arrested for pulling a gun on a cop during a traffic pullover in Missouri in 1994. Joos is a hardcore "dual seedline" adherent of the white-supremacist Christian Identity movement, and is mostly regarded a paranoid recluse. However, as the Joplin Globe notes, he is also known to have some expertise in explosives:

Joos is characterized in the affidavit as a “long-time white supremacist associate and an expert on weapons, explosives, bomb making and general survival skills.”

Joos allegedly told undercover operatives that he knew how to make napalm and agreed to train others, and that he used caves on his property for concealment and shelter. The caves were stockpiled with food, water and weapons, according to the affidavit.

After awhile, it ceased to surprise me when these cases were buried during the Bush administration -- which treated terrorism mostly as a marketing tool. It's a relief to see them get the handling they deserve now.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

FBI's arrest of Hannity pal Hal Turner has been a long time coming

[Photo h/t Think Progress]

-- by Dave

Well, we've known for some time that Patrick Fitzgerald doesn't mess around. Just ask Rod Blagejovich and Scooter Libby. Yesterday Hal Turner, Sean Hannity's erswhile friend, got the same lesson:

CHICAGO—Hal Turner, an intermittent internet radio talk show host and blogger, was arrested today by FBI agents at his home in North Bergen, N.J., on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb.

Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., was arrested this morning after FBI agents went to his residence to execute a search warrant. He was charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges with intent to retaliate against them for performing official duties in a criminal complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Chicago. He is scheduled to have an initial court appearance at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow (Thursday) before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Shipp in U.S. District Court in Newark.

“We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who announced the charges with Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Amanda Terkel at Think Progress has more details.

Turner was already facing charges in Connecticut for similar threats issued to state officials there.

There is at least a touch of irony here: Turner's previous threats involving Judge Lefkow were referenced in these posts. Turner wrote:

“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.”

Some of us wondered if Turner hadn't crossed the line into issuing real threats back in 2005. Now it appears the FBI has decided he has.

This is welcome news, but it's probably long overdue.

Now if only the FBI would take threats against abortion-clinic doctors every bit as seriously.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Beck gives credulous interview to Texas secessionist, who says Tea Parties are a great place to recruit

-- by Dave

Last week Glenn Beck scoffed at the notion that he had been promoting the notion of state secession, somehow overlooking the fact that he had in fact been promoting the notion of state secession.

So on Wednesday, to further demonstrate his skepticism, he invited on his Fox News program a fellow named Dan Miller, who runs the Texas Nationalist Movement. As you can see, he provided two full segments of the show to an interview that most kindly could be called “credulous,” and less kindly would make a crude reference to teabagging.

And indeed the Teabaggers’ Parties was an important topic, because Beck raised it himself at the end:

Beck: You actually believe the Tea Parties are, um, are the “gateway drug” to secession. Is that true?

Miller: Well, I think that’s definitely the case for a lot of folks. Because, you know, the Tea Parties have been about venting frustration and anger with what’s going on in Washington, D.C. And what we’re seeing here is a lot of people are looking for solutions, and the solution for Texas is Texas, independence.

Beck: Unbelievable.

Well, it's nice of them to admit that the Tea Parties in fact have been a prime recruiting ground for all kinds of extremist right-wing belief systems, most notably those arising from the "Patriot" movement of the 1990s.

Because there were some noteworthy aspects to this interview that went unmentioned on the air:

-- The Texas secession movement in fact has long been the most significant arm of the far-right "Patriot movement" in that state since the 1990s, when it was responsible for various armed standoffs with law-enforcement authorities and a range of domestic-terrorist acts.

As Media Matters noted when Gov. Rick Perry voiced his sympathy for the movement by appearing with Miller and other members of the movement during the Tea Parties promotion:

The Texas Nationalist Movement is not a random group. In a 2005 article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] described the secession movement in Texas as "very hard-line anti-government groups whose views involve anti-government conspiracy theories." Their associates have been responsible for numerous acts and attempted acts of terrorism.

... During the last two decades, members of the Republic of Texas have been arrested numerous times in the course of planning - or carrying out - what can only be described as domestic terrorism:

* In 1997, Richard McLaren, former president of the Republic of Texas, kidnapped his neighbors leading to a week-long standoff between the police and "antigovernment separatists." The standoff ended when McLaren and his four followers surrendered. "After the surrender, a sixth Republic member [was] killed in a gun battle with police, while a seventh elude[d] authorities for four months before being captured."

o During the standoff, McLaren told the New York Times: "We are at war with the United Nations and all foreign entities. We are not at war with the American people, but we are at war with the Federal agencies which have no jurisdiction here." Another Republic of Texas member, who identified himself as Lieut. Richard Keys of the Republic of Texas Defense Forces, said the hostages "were prisoners of war, held under provisions of the Geneva Convention."

* Prior to the standoff in 1997, the New York Times reported that the Republic of Texas demanded "$92 trillion in 'war reparations' from the Federal Government, and it has 'ordered' Gov. George W. Bush and all state legislators to vacate the Capitol building in Austin, none of which seems likely to happen any time soon....The members have passed at least $3 million of worthless but official-looking Republic of Texas checks, and they are simply ignoring state-ordered fines and orders to cease and desist...This month state officials shut two public buildings in Austin because of a bomb threat that they said was linked to the group."

* In 1998, according to SPLC, "Leaders of the so-called Republic of Texas, an antigovernment separatist group whose leader ha[d] been sentenced to serve 111 years in prison, tried to purchase a four-story building and compound to serve as the group's 'capital,' officials [said]. An IRS spokesman [said] Jacques Jaikaran, who face[d] up to three years in prison and $75,000 in fines on a tax evasion conviction, tried to arrange the purchase of a building near Houston that feature[d] machine-gun turrets, a bomb shelter and an operating room."

* Also in 1998, the Republic of Texas plotted to assassinate President Clinton using biological weapons. According to the SPLC, "Officials [said] the men planned to use a cactus thorn coated with a toxin like anthrax and fired by a modified butane lighter to carry out the murders. One man [was] acquitted of the charges, but Jack Abbot Grebe, Jr., and Johnnie Wise - a 72-year-old man who attended meetings of the separatist Republic of Texas group - eventually [were] sentenced to more than 24 years in prison."

* In addition, "according to an affidavit, Wise and Grebe told an FBI informant that they planned to modify a cigarette lighter so it would expel air instead of propane in order to fire a cactus needle tipped with anthrax, botulism or the AIDS virus."

* In 2000, members of the group planned an attack on the Houston Federal building. The SPLC reported, "Federal agents arrest[ed] Mark Wayne McCool, the one-time leader of the Texas Militia and Combined Action Program, as he allegedly [made] plans to attack the Houston federal building. McCool, who was arrested after buying powerful C-4 plastic explosives and an automatic weapon from an undercover FBI agent, earlier plotted to attack the federal building with a member of his own group and a member of the antigovernment Republic of Texas, but those two men eventually abandoned the plot. McCool, however, remained convinced the un [sic] had stored a cache of military materiel in the building. In the end, he [pled] guilty to federal charges that [brought] him just six months in jail."

Moreover, as the TNM's own Website explains, the current movement is a direct descendant of these radicals and has not disassociated itself from them at all. It's mostly in the process of trying to mainstream those beliefs -- and it's finding fertile ground not merely at those Tea Parties, but on Glenn Beck's Fox News show.

But another point about this stands out: The Texas secession movement became active in 1995 and was engaged in various threatening and violent acts through 2000. Then, for the next six years, it became completely dormant, not raising its head again until 2006.

Now, that couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that the President of the U.S. during those years was in fact the former governor of Texas, could it?

Because otherwise, one would have to conclude that we're looking at a pack of bellyachers who hated the federal government until one of their own was running it, and only returned to the business of bellyaching after that same person had completely botched the job, creating an economic disaster that required the feds to take drastic steps about which the bellyachers could easily bellyache.

Though of course, such a point would never occur to Glenn Beck.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.