One of Glenn Beck's favorite claims about the Tea Party movement -- and the surge of right-wing populism that he's leading -- is that it isn't about parties, it's about being American. And being American, of course, means being conservative.
He was on this briefly again last night:
Beck: Well, the media may be surprised, but I'm not. I think the days when people vote for Democrats or Republicans no matter what -- you know, if it's an R or a D, I'm just gonna pull it -- I think we're seeing the end of those days. For so long, we've bought into the Rs and the Ds -- you know, we're really at a one-party system at this point. We needed to identify ourselves as one or the other, even though it didn't really make a difference. And that label was much more important than the real label we all should have been wearing, and that is, American.
Progressives have put their agenda now into hyperdrive, and it is so crystal clear that their final goal is anything but American.
This claim -- to represent the real America, one that transcends political parties -- is the historic claim of right-wing populists throughout history.
Compare Beck's rant last night with this remarkably similar rant from Father Charles Coughlin, the renowned anti-Semitic radio preacher, in 1936:
Glenn Beck decided to repeat his asking-black-conservatives-dumb-white-guy-questions show with a new round, this time evidently focused on Harry Reid's remarks. Unlike the last time, there weren't any open embarrassments, except for the moment when Beck agreed that poor people are "like a domesticated animal [that] never learns to hunt."
But again, Beck hijacked the words of Martin Luther King Jr. He opened up the show with a King quote written on a chalkboard.
And it really is shameless. Conservatives nowadays love to claim King as one of their own. And it's a complete joke -- because when King was alive, conservatives were the people he had to combat.
When Martin Luther King was buried in Atlanta, the live television coverage lasted seven and a half hours. President Johnson announced a national day of mourning: "Together, a nation united and a nation caring and a nation concerned and a nation that thinks more of the nation's interests than we do of any individual self-interest or political interest--that nation can and shall and will overcome." Richard Nixon called King "a great leader--a man determined that the American Negro should win his rightful place alongside all others in our nation." Even one of King's most beastly political enemies, Mississippi Representative William Colmer, chairman of the House rules committee, honored the president's call to unity by terming the murder "a dastardly act."
Others demurred. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond wrote his constituents, "[W]e are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case." Another, even more prominent conservative said it was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."
That was Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, arguing that King had it coming. King was the man who taught people they could choose which laws they'd break--in his soaring exegesis on St. Thomas Aquinas from that Birmingham jail in 1963: "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. ... Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."
That's not what you hear from conservatives today, of course. What you get now are convoluted and fantastical tributes arguing that, properly understood, Martin Luther King was actually one of them--or would have been, had he lived. But, if we are going to have a holiday to honor history, we might as well honor history. We might as well recover the true story. Conservatives--both Democrats and Republicans--hated King's doctrines. Hating them was one of the litmus tests of conservatism.
I lived in a conservative town in a conservative state at the time, and I remember how deeply and viscerally people hated Martin Luther King when he was alive. And for years after his death, conservatives fought his legacy. They opposed a national holiday in his honor (Jesse Helms, that conservative icon, launched a filibuster against the proposal). Even today, many conservatives believe the old Bircherite smears that King was a Communist.
I thought Beck had a phobia about Communists. After all, the allegations that King had "Communist ties" are about as well grounded as Beck's own charges that Van Jones was a "self-proclaimed Communist."
But I guess when they make for handy stage props for phony discussions about race with a carefully selected audience -- shows which rapidly devolve into whinefests by black conservatives about being pegged as sellouts -- he'll look the other way.
Now, I dunno about sellouts. But anyone who thinks "conservative values" were anything but a hindrance to the black community for most of this country's history is just plain ignorant.
Especially if you know anything about what Martin Luther King Jr. actually stood for when he was alive -- and who his enemies were. They were conservatives. And for them to try to claim his mantle now is a travesty and a joke.
Hannity: You stand by those comments because you think it still exists in the bill.
Palin: I do. It's a commission, it's bureaucracy, it's bureaucrats who will ration care if the bill goes through as Obama wants it to go through. Yes -- it's modeled, in essence, after a British system that does have people to decide whether, based on your quality of life, your age, whether you're gonna deserve health-care coverage or not -- that's what's gonna happen in America if this health-care bill isn't stopped, and it needs to be stopped soon, and that's why the people of this land can't give up in demanding that their voice be heard, demanding that the White House understand that this is a representative form of government, we do expect that the will of the people is listened to and adhered to and implemented via our representatives, who we elect.
Eh? The British system has no such "commissions." As the AP recently reported, officials in Britain recently repudiated claims like Palin's:
The criticism, widely covered in the U.K. media, has clearly stung Britain's left-leaning Labour government. The Department of Health took the unusual step of contacting The Associated Press and e-mailing it a three-page rebuttal to what it said were misconceptions about the NHS being bandied about in the U.S. media – each one followed with the words: "Not true."
At the top of the list was the idea that a patient in his late 70s would not be treated for a brain tumor because he was too old – a transparent reference to Grassley's comments about Kennedy.
And what of Republicans' claim that British patients are robbed of their medical choices? False again, the department said.
"Everyone who is cared for by the NHS in England has formal rights to make choices about the service that they receive," it said in its rebuttal.
Then followed a fact sheet comparing selected statistics such as health spending per capita, infant mortality, life expectancy, and more. Each one showed England outperforming its trans-Atlantic counterpart.
The British government offers health care for free at the point of need, a service pioneered by Labour in 1948. In the six decades since, its promise of universal medical care, from cradle to grave, is taken for granted by Britons to such an extent that politicians – even fiscal conservatives – are loath to attack it.
The NHS has a body called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that decides which new treatments and drugs the NHS should pay for. One of the factors NICE considers when deciding whether to approve funding for a new treatment or drug is cost-effectiveness. To determine the dividing line between what is cost-effective and what isn't, it must set a threshold. Taking its lead from Britain's Department of Transport — which has a cost-per-life-saved threshold for new road schemes of about $2.2 million per life, or about $45,000 per life year gained — NICE rarely approves a drug or treatment that costs more than $45,000 per life year gained. In short, NICE does not want the NHS to spend more than $45,000 to extend a citizen's life by one year.
While NICE's decisions have angered some doctors and patient groups — particularly some oncologists who say they are unable to prescribe expensive, life-extending cancer drugs — mainstream politicians, the media and most Britons accept NICE's rare rejections as a necessary compromise to keep universal coverage affordable in the face of rising health-care costs. As NICE chairman Sir Michael Rawlins recently told TIME, "All health-care systems have implicitly, if not explicitly, adopted some form of cost control. In the U.S., you do it by not providing health care to some people. That's a rather brutal way of doing it."
Democrats responded by saying the accusation wasn't true and highlighting the actual Medicare provision and what it said.
That wasn't necessarily an effective strategy, said Drew Westen, a psychologist who studies political communication and advises Democrats on messaging. "Instead of stopping and asking themselves, 'What are Republicans trying to appeal to?' the Democrats rolled their eyes and said, 'Isn't this stupid,' " he said. "On one level, it was stupid, but on another level, it was hitting seniors very close to where they live."
People intuitively understand that health care reform is about lowering costs, and end-of-life care can be quite costly, he said. The "death panels" claim exploited fears that people already had. Rather than just saying the claim wasn't true, Westen said, a better response would be that there already are "death panels" — run by insurance companies.
For right-wingers like Sarah Palin, though, it's better to have people denied any coverage whatsoever than the possibility that a government insurance plan might ration access to expensive treatments.
Baldfacedly and defiantly lying about it, evidently, is just part of the deal.
It was Glenn Beck's turn to host new Fox News Analyst Sarah Palin yesterday. It was actually an incredibly boring interview, since Beck mostly seemed interested in whether Palin hung on his every word or not and bought into his theory that Obama is a radical black Marxist bent on destroying America. She did, of course.
It featured all of Beck's tired schticks, including his claim that Republicans like George W. Bush and John McCain are actually "progressives":
Beck: It killed me to vote for John McCain. And I voted for John McCain because of you. Um, John McCain is a progressive. John McCain -- he's an honorable man.
Palin: He is an honorable man.
Beck: He is an honorable man. And that goes a long way -- there's, I mean, that's a rare island to find. He's an honorable man. But he's also a progressive.
He's big government, he was for the bank bailouts, he was for the uh, uhm, health care. He's for all of it. He's for all of it.
Palin played along, pointing out: "Look what he's doing now!" and generally suggesting that those naughty wayward conservatives had gotten the gospel of Glenn and were back on the right track.
Beck seems utterly unaware that, in fact, Palin was for the bank bailouts too.
As you can see from the additional footage we included in the above video, Palin vocally supported the bailouts in her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden, praising McCain's supposed work in trying to get the bailout package passed:
John McCain thankfully has been one representing reform. Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.
People in the Senate with him, his colleagues, didn’t want to listen to him and wouldn’t go towards that reform that was needed then. I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain’s bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week, even suspending his own campaign to make sure he was putting excessive politics aside and putting the country first.
As Dave Weigel noted awhile back, this was just after McCain had "suspended" his campaign to return to Washington to attempt to push the bailout through.
Palin: That’s why I say, I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out.
But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. A
And trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation.
This bailout is a part of that.
That is, it's a defense of sorts. Actually, it makes no sense whatever -- it's just a big pot of policy-wonk words thrown together in a way that I think Palin hoped sounded like it made some kinda sense.
The only thing that's really clear from all this is that not only was Palin a full supporter of the bailouts, she was a big fan of health-care reform. In fact, she seems to have believed the bailouts would help reform health care. Eh?
Notice that peculiar odor arising from the news that Sarah Palin plans to speak at the National Tea Party Convention planned the first week of February in Nashville?
It's got the distinct whiff of a scam. Take, for instance, Palin's insistence last night on The O'Reilly Factor -- in her debut as a "Fox News Analyst" -- that "I will not be financially gaining anything from this".
Well, yeah, except for that $100,000 speaking fee. Palin insisted she was going to "turn it right back around and contribute to campaigns, candidates, and issues that will help our country."
Right.
But exactly what kind of movement is it that locks out the press and operates behind closed doors? As Dave Weigel says:
This really is unusual. As a journalist, I’ve been allowed into sessions, dinners, everything at conferences hosted by the Eagle Forum and by Focus on the Family. Extra credit to Eagle Forum here — when I was covering the How to Take Back America Conference in St. Louis, Phyllis Schlafly’s son Andy, an organizer, invited me away from my media seat and into a seat at his dinner table to chat with more activists. And some of the most controversial speakers at the National Tea Party Convention, like Rick Scarborough, happily chatted with me inside and outside of their sessions at previous events.
One major implication of this, of course, is that for the third time since the presidential election — the first at a speech in China, the second at a speech for a pro-life group in Indiana — Sarah Palin will give a political speech that members of the media are not allowed to attend.
The National Tea Party Convention is being largely spearheaded by Tea Party Nation, which styles itself an independent operation. But if you look at the list of speakers, among them is WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, who's keynoting the Friday dinner.
I think the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be.
That’s not to say it is in every case. I have much good to say about groups like Tea Party Patriots, but I think this national tea party convention smells scammy.
Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number.
That scammy smell is what you get whenever you combine money and far-right wingnuttery.
“We the People” is about Obamacare and the health-care reform bills that have passed both houses of Congress.
The lyrics express a comic, but pointed warning to members of Congress: “You vote Obamacare, we’re going to vote you out of there. We the People have awakened to your tricks. You vote to let this pass, you’re going to be out on your (sound of foghorn).”
They also feature a noteworthy lyric:
We've heard from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh What you got in mind for Grandma
[Video: Nurse putting chloroformed cloth over elderly woman's face]
Yeah, now that you mention it, we have heard that from those three -- and a number of others. And we also know that IT'S A FREAKING LIE.
And you'll notice that Bill O'Reilly played this very snippet the other night, quite approvingly, and made no attempt to correct the record. This is how the Fox propagandists keep spreading the lies.
But then, if there were some nugget of news on Fox that were actually true, these nimrods would never believe it.
As I noted awhile back, when discussing the violent propensities of the white nationalists who have invaded the Tea Party movement:
One can't help but feel a sense of foreboding about what's likely to occur when immigration reform comes up on the national plate ... These people are already organized and already inclined to violence. If you thought the town-hall teabaggers went nuts over health-care reform, just wait.
We later got a prime example of this in the New Hampshire teabagger who shouted, "We don't need illegals. Send 'em home on a bus, send 'em home with a bullet in the head the second time!"
Of course, the problem isn't just the violence. Accompanying it, at every turn, is an overpowering nativist racism that opposes immigrants of every kind, and not merely the illegal ones.
Right-wingers love to whine that simply opposing illegal immigration brings charges of racism. That's what Glenn Beck was on about yesterday on his show.
Beck: The progressives must reactivate their far-left base, they must smear their detractors. They will call me and Fox News and anyone else if you believe that we are a nation of laws and not of men, you're going to be called nasty names. And they're not going to listen to any of the facts that you have to say.
Perish the thought that they might continue resurrecting these canards during the immigration debate -- along with whatever new race-baiting memes they can come up with. (No doubt they'll be busily consulting Michelle Malkin on that front.)
You know, we'd love to have a debate about reforming our nation's immigration laws and policies that's sane and logical and free of the emotional taint of racism. But that will only be possible if the right decides to quit indulging it. If, in other words, hell freezes over.
Lou Dobbs was fond of this exact same whine -- even as he indulged in fake stories about immigrants spreading leprosy and attacked efforts to improve legal immigration, while hosting white supremacists and nativists on his program as "experts" on immigration.
It's one thing to hold a contrary opinion – which, despite the claims of Dobbs and defenders, was not what he was attacked for. It's quite another to irresponsibly demagogue and demonize an entire bloc of the American population with provably false information and paranoid conspiracy theories derived in large part from hate groups – which was in fact what he was attacked for. Dobbs wasn't in trouble with the public merely for opposing illegal immigration; a large segment of the public sought his removal because he had become an irresponsible font of false information and fearmongering, for demonizing and belittling Latino immigrants and peddling conspiracy theories; because he had indeed become a major conduit for right-wing extremism into the mainstream of our discourse. That's racism, and a whole lot more.
Of course, there was a special irony in Beck making this claim, especially when he went on:
Beck: Charges of racism deserve to be heard and debated -- if there is evidence. But there usually isn't.
Yeah, Glenn Beck would know all about that. Media Matters has the video:
David Weigel at the Washington Independent dug up this photo of Dale Robertson, who heads up the would-be national Tea Party website TeaParty.org, with the sign he was carrying at the February 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston.
According to Weigel, Robertson was eventually kicked out of the event for carrying the sign. But as with most right-wing populist movements, the most extreme elements are very determined to shape the movement in their direction, and will inevitably find ways to float to the top. Especially when the supposed mainstream "just folks" who populate much of the movement turn a willing blind eye to the extremists who increasingly are leading them.
As Weigel notes, Robertson has arranged a series of "Liberty Concerts" to help promote the Tea Party movement. An e-mail sent out to subscribers to news from ResistNet -- one of the major clearinghouses of Tea Party activist information -- described Robertson's plans:
Robertson is molding the Tea Party events to empower Citizens so they will make a difference in the November 2010 elections. The ongoing tactics are to prioritize States, creating a durable model for ballot access, voter eligibility, precinct chair/county chairs, and candidate awareness. The Tea Party is actively seeking candidates that represent Conservative Constitutional Values. It appears the Major Parties can’t get in step with such a complex idea as Conservative Constitutional Values; therefore, the Tea Party will make it easy for the Independent Parties to break the glass ceiling and get on the ballot.
The ‘Liberty Concerts’ event taking place in Stafford, Texas is a developing prototype, which when successful, will allow the Tea Party to create a thriving event not in months but days. We will be quick on the draw, sure fired and ready to rock in a matter of only a few days. This Tea Party formula will work against incredible odds and will be nothing short of a miracle, but Robertson believes with all his heart all the pieces will fall into place.
Does the Tea Party really believe it can make a difference in November? “Some say, “talk is cheap” but 2 years ago when I started the modern day Tea Party no one believed it could work now 7 million strong, the world is listening and America is hoping, we will not fail.” Dale Robertson – TeaParty.org
As Tars Tarkas notes, the folks at ResistNet put out a disclaimer of sorts:
This is in response to the blast mail you received regarding the Liberty Concert being promoted by the National Tea Party group. The purpose of the email was to share an opportunity for you to experience the fellowship and company of other conservatives, as we kick off the election season and strive to take back America, restoring it to the Constitutional Republic it is meant to be. While they are a separate group from us, we share many of the same goals, a free, conservative America, and fiscal responsibility within our government. We are not necessarily promoting their complete ideology.
It's hard to say why ResistNet is even bothering to distance itself; it is, after all, a site riddled throughout with extremists of various stripes, as suggested by its reference to "the Constitutional Republic" in its disclaimer. After all, this is a site that hosts a copy of Louis Beam's essay, "Leaderless Resistance," which was nothing less than the basic blueprint for forming cells of "citizen militias" and "lone wolf" domestic terrorists as the blueprint for action of the white-nationalist far right. Beam, you may recall, was a leader in the Aryan Nations.
This is a movement that is not only riddled throughout with far-right extremists, but is increasingly being led by them. And no doubt they'll keep producing reminders of that for us.
Quist: I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is -- every generation has had to fight for freedom. This is our fight! And this is our time. This is it! Terrorism, yes, but that's not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals! They aren't liberals, they're radicals! Obama, Pelosi, Waltz, they're not liberals, they're radicals! They are destroying our country! And people all over are figuring that out.
This was from a mid-December Christmas party for the Wabash County Republicans.
Sergeant Major (Ret.) Walz's service to his country apparently means nothing to Allen Quist, one of the Republicans lining up to challenge Walz in this year's mid-term election. Here is a video of Quist, who has never worn the uniform of his country, telling you that this brave American is a "radical", is more dangerous than a terrorist and is out to destroy the country he served for 24 years...
...
Allen Quist, a politician who has been chasing office since 1982, should be ashamed of himself. A year before Quist began his desperate attempt to become a career politician, the man who's patriotism he attacks put on an Army uniform at the age of 17 and wore it for 24 years, rising to the highest enlisted rank and becoming the highest ranking enlisted soldier in southern Minnesota. A man who has so little respect for the service of America's Veterans has no business serving in Congress.
Yeah, well, the only problem with teabagging Republicans is ... they have no shame whatsoever.
Karl Rove went on Fox News twice yesterday -- first on Your World and later on Hannity, where he essentially repeated his earlier performance -- to accuse the Obama White House of being soft on terrorism because it did not declare Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber of that Northwest flight into Detroit, an enemy combatant:
Rove: This shows the big difference in this administration's approach to it. This guy was treated not as an enemy combatant, and turned over to the FBI and the CIA for interrogation, he was charged criminally, which means he immediately lawyered up and the amount of information we're going to get from him is going to be this much, compared to what we could get if he was just simply sweat by the FBI and the CIA -- not even using enhanced interrogation techniques, just using what police would be able to use if you weren't lawyered up. This is a very troubling way in which the administration has handled this.
On Hannity, he claimed that by filing criminal charges, "we treat him as a guy who tried to knock over a Seven-Eleven or got caught shoplifting."
Memo to Karl: Convenience-store robbers and shoplifters do not get charged with terrorism in federal court. Just sayin'.
Moreover, the problem with Rove's claim that "this shows the difference" between the Bush and Obama administrations is flatly false (aka a lie).
Faced with nearly identical circumstances with would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid -- who was attempting to use the exact same kind of explosive on an American flight -- the Bush administration in 2001 did exactly the same thing: it filed criminal charges and eventually tried Reid in federal court.
What's worth noting is that Reid, too, was potentially an intelligence bonanza, since he had numerous operational ties with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
Then there was Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was eventually convicted of plotting with Al Qaeda to participate in the 9/11 attacks. He, too, was treated as a federal criminal by the Bush administration.
Finally, it should be noted that declaring suspects "enemy combatants" -- especially when they are captured away from the field of battle -- is actually a legal minefield fraught with far greater uncertainty than the use of federal criminal statutes. The classic example of this was the case of Jose Padilla, who was declared an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and whose case wound up taking years to be settled by the Supreme Court -- which eventually insisted that he be tried in federal court. Padilla's case was somewhat different, since he is a U.S. citizen, but one can rest assured that the issue of habeas corpus central to his case would be resurrected should Obama have followed Rove's advice.
But then, anyone who follows Karl Rove's advice deserves everything that inevitably will happen to them.
Civil rights and the more expansive human rights matter little when you’re dead. So longer sentences make us feel better, like all the marching, chanting, petition signing, mouse clicking and text messaging meant something. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, no one will go to jail for taking Luis Ramirez from his children and this world. So while we need to support this case, it has to be done in a larger context. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, it still will be dangerous to be a Latino in the United States.
This reality is underscored by the details as they emerge in the Ramirez case. Indeed, the conditions that gave rise to the attempt to cover up the bias crime by local officers are present in nearly every small rural town in America.
The Pennsylvania prosecutor who failed to secure felony convictions against two teens in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant says he thought his case was "compromised" from the start.
Like many residents in the small, tight-knit eastern Pennsylvanian community of Shenandoah, Schuylkill County District Attorney James Goodman knew that an officer investigating the death of Luis Ramirez was in a relationship with the mother of one the teens involved.
Goodman also believed the investigation and evidence hadn't been handled as it should have been.
"They didn't interview the perpetrators, the boys. In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back and told the boys what to say," Goodman told CNN.
The son of Shenandoah Police Lt. William Moyer also played on the same football team as the teens who were involved in the July 2008 street brawl, according to court documents.
"It's clear they were trying to help these boys out, for whatever reason -- they were football players, these police officers were trying to help these boys out and limit their involvement in the death of Luis Ramirez."
Residents say they witnessed or long suspected the culture of corruption, nepotism and coercion among the town's law enforcement described by federal prosecutors in indictments and at hearings this week. The police chief and his second-in-command also face federal charges of extorting payments from illegal gambling operations.
Eileen Burke, a former Philadelphia police officer who moved back to her native Shenandoah, said she saw its bleakest example firsthand. After the beating, Ramirez lay about 15 feet in front of her house at Vine and Lloyd streets. From her porch Thursday, she pointed to a manhole cover in the middle of the street where she kneeled over him as he convulsed on July 12, 2008.
A nearby utility pole once had "RIP" scrawled onto it, but it has since been painted over. Now there is only a faint orange blob to mark the spot.
"I knew there was a cover-up," Burke said. "I knew."
Police from other municipalities and state police responded to the scene before a single Shenandoah police officer arrived, she said.
"I sat on my porch that night, from when it happened at approximately 11:15, until 2:30 in the morning," Burke said. "No one came to me to ask what I saw, what I did."
It wasn't until 10 days later that Shenandoah police dropped off a paper on which she was asked to write out a witness statement, Burke said. In the months after, she said she watched the teens walk around town as if nothing wrong had happened. People coddled and protected them, she said, because they were star athletes in a town where Blue Devils football is the primary preoccupation and where the newest immigrants, Latinos who come to work on farms or in factories, are often seen as aloof and unwelcome.
"They made them heroes," Burke said. " 'Free the three.' They wanted to make shirts up and everything, because it was our illustrious football team."
When she walked around town, some people called her a "Mexican lover" or told her to "go see a Mexican," Burke said.
"I had people who said, 'Why didn't you just close the curtains?' "
Having worked for many years in small rural communities, I can attest that this kind of corruption is common, especially when it comes to crimes against people who are considered "outsiders".
Indeed, this very problem is the major subject of my 2003 book, Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America, which focused on another hate crime in a small rural town in which the outcome was reversed, similarly revealing the nature of what goes on in hundreds if not thousands of small towns across the country: hate crimes are ignored, covered up, and go unprosecuted at a disturbing rate in small towns.
One Justice Department study found that the actual occurrence of bias crimes is about fourfold what are actually recorded in FBI statistics, for a variety of factors -- one being that the victims themselves, fearful of further persecution or public exposure, often refuse to press charges or file a complaint. Gays and lesbians and Latinos are particularly unlikely to act because of such fears, and it becomes especially acute in rural areas.
Compounding this, of course, is the reality that local law enforcement is likely to be either ignorant and poorly trained in the nuances of identifying and investigating bias crimes, or as in the Shenandoah case, they are actively hostile to a bias-crime prosecution, and are thus prone to victimizing the victims a second time (as we saw in Ocean Shores).
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted in the fatal race-related beating of a Latino man in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Two indictments charge the five with federal hate crime charges, as well as obstruction of justice and conspiracy, authorities said in a written statement. A federal grand jury handed up the indictments last week, and they were unsealed Tuesday.
Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky are charged with a hate crime for beating Luis Ramirez in July 2008 while shouting racial epithets at him, according to the department. Ramirez died two days later.
"Following the beating, Donchak, Piekarsky and others, including members of the Shenandoah Police Department, participated in a scheme to obstruct the investigation of the fatal assault," the Justice Department said. As a result, Donchak faces three additional counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and related offenses, officials said.
Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and two other officers are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the Ramirez investigation. Nestor and a fourth police officer are named in a third indictment and charged with extortion and civil rights violations related to police corruption, the Justice Department said.
It's genuinely disturbing to discover that local law-enforcement officers were involved in covering this matter up and obstructing justice. It adds just another twist to an already shocking case.
[T]his was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."
Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.
Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.
As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.
But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.
"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.
Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:
"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" the boys said, according to court documents. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here."
... Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin next to him,' " she said.
That is, of course, the entire purpose of bias crimes: To hold the victim up as an example: "You're next." The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them.
This is why Latino advocates demanded the Justice Department step in and deliver justice. It looks like they have.
For some time Beck critics have cried foul over his relationship with Goldline International, a precious metals vendor that features the TV and radio host's endorsement prominently on their website. Critics charge that Beck is guilty of misleading his audience by often advising them to purchase gold in advance of the potential collapse of the value of the dollar on the world currency market, without disclosing that he is in fact a "paid spokesman" for Goldline. Beck's on-air promotion of gold, which includes advising viewers to construct "fruit cellars" and to rely on a "three G system" of "God, Gold, and Guns" in the event of America's collapse, dates back to his time as a host for CNN Headline News.
Glenn Beck also regularly talks up gold on his nationally syndicated radio show, where he often endorses Goldline during live commercial segments. Additionally, Beck has had the company's CEO on as a guest. Advertisements for Goldline are also featured prominently on Beck's own website, where he recently promoted gold in an audio clip warning of an apocalyptic future:
When the system eventually collapses, and the government comes with guns and confiscates, you know, everything in your home and all your possessions, and then you fight off the raving mad cannibalistic crowds that Ted Turner talked about, don't come crying to me. I told you: get gold.
Beck, true to form, has not been subtle in making his pitch. He has appealed to listeners to "think like a German Jew" during the period of Nazi ascendance. "I think people are running out of options," he said, "of something that could be worth something at all."
The alternative? Gold. Beck touts his personal investments in the metal and, though he has offered cautionary notes, he leaves no doubt about his bottom line.
"If you have been watching for any length of time and you still haven't looked into buying gold, what's wrong with you?" Beck asks on a video on his personal website. Those not following his advice, he adds, are "nuts."
Buying gold during economic hard times is not, to be sure, a new concept. In the current recession, it's a strategy that has been embraced by many mainstream investors.
My colleague Tom Petruno has written of how some economic wizards -- including David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, predictor of last year's financial swoon -- have replaced some of the cash in their portfolios with gold.
But even some of those who have been making lots of money selling gold concede that the appeal goes beyond mere reason. Peter Epstein, president of Merit Financial Services, told Politico that his firm had advertised on CNN but that the gold message resonated more with Fox's viewers "because it's the angry white man audience -- it's the conservative audience. . . . They are distrustful of the government, of the regime."
That sort of thinking might not lead to the soundest decisions, some gold professionals told me.
"When people buy into the fear and flock into one thing, it's only a matter of time before it turns," said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at Chicago-based LaSalle Futures Group. Indeed, since last week's high of $1,218, gold had dropped Tuesday to $1,143, Zeman noted, adding: "I think the wheels could really come off the gold bandwagon."
Actually, Beck is promoting Ron Paul's extremist brand of libertarianism by promoting the "gold standard." It's been a sucker play for the Far Far Right for many years, and now it's being promoted by a mainstream news entity.
Glenn Beck seems to be increasingly rattled by having been designated by the ADL as the nation's "Fearmonger in Chief" -- though he continues, on his Fox News show at least, to avoid tackling his critics by name. (He's pushed back at the ADL on his radio show, but only briefly.)
Yesterday he went on his show and denounced the unnamed "they" who say he is encouraging violence with his extremist rhetoric (which would decidedly include us). Keying off his softball interview with Barbara Walters -- who never did bring up his serialfalsehoods about Walters and her colleagues at The View, oddly enough -- Beck gets all worked up about the toughest point raised in the whole conversation:
Beck: Barbara Walters even played into this nonsense during her interview with me last night on her annual 'Fascinating People' show. Here it is:
[CLIP] Walters: Glenn Beck is somebody who incites people to violence --
Beck: Oh, I've heard a lot --
Walters: -- He is inflammatory, he makes us scared.
Beck: Yeah. People say Glenn Beck is someone who incites people to violence. Yeah, a lot of people are saying that, but what's the evidence?
She also mentioned that I called Barack Obama a fascist. I don't know -- I, I don't think so. Maybe -- I don't think so, I do realize that Media Matters and MoveOn.org now just got an extra grant from Soros and they're moving into hyper-scramble to find, you know, an example. But I don't know if I ever even called him a fascist. I know I've said 'fascistic tendencies' -- sure, the administration is going in this direction.
Actually, what Walters said was this:
Walters: OK, you have said the Obama administration is fascist.
Beck: Like it or not, fascism is on the rise. And that doesn't mean the Adolf Hitler kind of fascism. It's fascism with a happy face. I'll explain the exact definition of fascism in a second, and it will boggle your mind.
--
Beck: I looked up the definition of fascism yesterday, and I want to break it down. The first part is: "Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners." Wouldn't you say this is what's happening with GM right now?
As we noted then, this even included a segment with a time-traveling dime:
How far out to lunch was Beck here? Well, one of the goofier moments in this whole charade came when Beck trotted out the back of an old American dime -- first minted, as Beck says, in 1916 -- which has a fasces, the fascist symbol, on its reverse side:
This is the famed "Mercury dime", which was designed by sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who won a 1915 competition: "The reverse design, a fasces juxtaposed with an olive branch, was intended to symbolize America's readiness for war, combined with its desire for peace."
Now, the fasces has a long history of inclusion in various parts of American symbology besides just this dime. You can find it in the Oval Office, on National Guard Bureau insignia, on the American flag that flies in the U.S. House, in the Mace of the House of Representatives; on the seal of the U.S. Senate, on the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building, and on a frieze on the facade of the United States Supreme Court building. Fasces are incorporated into the Lincoln Memorial.
But then, fascism as a political movement was not born until 1919. So for sculptor Weinman to have intended the fasces on the Mercury dime to imply a "fascist" intent, he'd have had to have jumped in a time machine, traveled to the future, met Mussolini, and come back to 1915 with that nefarious design in his head. Somehow I doubt this.
Beck: We are really, truly, stepping beyond socialism and we're starting to look at fascism. We are putting business and government together!
Ingraham: Glenn, you're throwing a lot of terms around, and I'm going to play devil's advocate, because this is fair and balanced. Now, moving from socialism to communism, that's, that's a pretty big leap -- socialism, obviously, the economic system, communism the political system. How are we right now moving toward state ownership of all, for instance, heavy industry?
Beck: Let me first of all just explain first what happened in Nazi Germany. It was National -- Socialism. We're talking now about nationalizing the banks, and socialized programs. National. Socialism.
At first in Nazi Germany, everybody was so panicked, they were so freaked. Remember -- don't take anytime to think about it, we've just got to do, do, do. At first all the big companies and the big capitalists in Germany said, 'Oh thank goodness there's a savior! OK, great! We'll do that, yes!' It didn't take too long before -- like here in America, now Goldman Sachs. They've started to see the writing on the wall and went, 'Whoa, whoa whoa! You guys are getting out of control here. What are you guys doing?' And they couldn't get out of it fast enough.
Unfortunately, for those in Germany, you could never go back. I don't know if this is the system that we're headed towards or not, where they're not going to let you out, but let me tell you something, I don't want to play this game. This is becoming extraordinarily dangerous.
Now, Beck did not specifically call Obama himself a fascist -- but then, that's not what Barbara Walters accused him of, either. She said he described the Obama administration as fascist -- and he definitely did that.
And the Tea Party organizers -- notably the Astroturf outfits that originated the Parties, such as FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity -- are making that perfectly clear. Two spokesmen for those groups -- Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and the AFP's Tim Phillips, went on Hardball yesterday and made this explicit:
MATTHEWS: Matt, how about third party? What about the Tea Party? Sarah Palin is kind of hard to read. She is fascinating. Let‘s face it, we‘re all fascinated with her, because she‘s exciting as a political figure right now. But she‘s talking third party. I mean, she answered the question of Lars Larson. Maybe it just came to mind, but she said, yeah, I might go third party, something like that. Would you guys knock off an incumbent Republican by going third party? You know how the vote splits. Split the right, the Dem wins.
KIBBE: The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is. We need to replace the Republican establishment with fiscal conservatives that are actually willing to cut spending.
All this talk about a "third party" is just so much smokescreen. What's actually happening is that the GOP is fast becoming a full-fledged right-wing-populist entity. Which means that the latent extremism lurking out on the right's fringes for so many years is becoming its new lifeblood, such as it is.
Funny thing is, as Matthews managed to point out early in the segment, not even the Tea Partiers' supposed hero -- Ronald Reagan -- can live up to their standards:
MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody—your grandfather‘s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?
KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.
MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?
KIBBE: Oh, he—he said that we shouldn't spend money we don‘t have, and he said that the government shouldn't get involved in things that it‘s not very good at doing.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?
KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history.
And he's your role model.
KIBBE: Well, President Obama is...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you. I have asked you one president that you can look up to who was good at tea party politics and ideology.
KIBBE: Right. Right.
MATTHEWS: If it's not Reagan, because he clearly didn't do it, who do you look to? Coolidge? How far do you have to look back?
KIBBE: I think we need to find somebody that can meet that standard.
MATTHEWS: So, nobody has recently?
KIBBE: No, certainly not.
Ah well. Blowing off cognitive dissonance is a special teabagger trait. It just adds to their "insane" mystique.
Republicans may have thought these guys had their backs. But now they're looking with increasing worry back over their shoulders. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, dudes.
John Gibson has a new book out hilariously titled How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy To Make You Think George Bush Was The Worst President In History, and he was touring his old haunts at Fox News yesterday -- first at Fox and Friends and then with Bill O'Reilly -- pitching it and showing off his Kewl New Look (like the goatee?).
His chief line: "They lied through their teeth!"
He meant the evil liberals who are tearing down poor George W. Bush's legacy, of course.
It should be entertaining to see how Gibson manages to translate "openly discussing Bush's actual record" -- from his manifest failures with Katrina to the destroyed economy -- into "lying through their teeth," but Gibson no doubt hired the best propagandists money could buy to ghost-write his book.
But the title is especially interesting in this context, because it's obvious now that Gibson equates "Swiftboating" with "lying through your teeth".
What's interesting about this is that, back in 2004, when the Swift Boat folks were appearing on Fox News en masse in real time and in fact lying through their teeth, John Gibson actually told his viewers they were telling the truth.
So who was lying through their teeth back then, and who's doing it now? We suspect that John Gibson hasn't any idea how to distinguish them -- but he does know how to write a book that will sell red meat on the right-wing talk circuit.
The latest Rasmussen Poll has disastrous news for Republicans -- and disquieting news for for the rest of us too:
In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.
The look on Eric Bolling's face, filling in for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, contemplating this news said it all: He thought the Tea Party and Republicans were one and the same thing! In fact, he spills as much:
Bolling: Isn't the tea party just another wing of the Republican Party? ... Aren't we just splitting the party?
Well, not exactly. Like Republicans, the Tea Party folks are fervently anti-Obama. But as Republicans like Lindsey Graham are discovering, the Tea Partiers are so arch-conservative they hate BOTH parties, and consider Republicans to be sellouts of their true-blue conservative ideals.
Now, this may appear to be good news for Democrats, since it means the Right is splitting its vote. And over the short term, as we saw in the NY-23 race, it may well be. But there is an ominous quality to this that should be disturbing to everyone.
The GOP thought it could unleash this tide of right-wing populism and prosper -- but are discovering that it's not such an easy thing to control.
And what they're unleashing is a flood of right-wing extremism in the process. Because as the "Tea Party" gathering we saw this past weekend in Spokane made crystal-clear, the "Tea Parties" are one of the most massive conduits for mainstreaming extremist beliefs in our history:
More than 1,000 people, including local sheriffs, state representatives, lawyers, families and blue-collar workers, gathered in Post Falls last month to hear a former Arizona sheriff blast the federal government. About 500 met last week in another event organized by the Campaign for Liberty – a coalition of about 10 Inland Northwest groups hoping to create a forum to share ideas and create a louder voice in politics.
Some aren’t afraid to use the word militia.
“We need to rob that word back from the people who villainize it,” said Schaeffer Cox, a 25-year-old from Fairbanks, Alaska, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd in Post Falls Wednesday night.
It was the second Freedom Festival held at the Post Falls Greyhound Park – evidence, some say, of a new rise of the militia movement in America, but one that blurs the line between extremism and mainstream.
... Wednesday’s meeting was the first event locally since the large gathering on Veterans Day for a speech by Richard Mack, a man described by Potok’s organization as “an iconic hero of the militia movement.”
Mack wrote a book with Randy Weaver in the 1990s about the federal siege at Ruby Ridge and was part of a successful lawsuit against the Clinton administration challenging sweeping gun control legislation.
Mack was joined at the Post Falls event by Washington state Rep. Matt Shea and Idaho state Rep. Phil Hart. County sheriffs were invited to dine with Mack before his speech. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich missed most of the dinner but said he enjoyed Mack’s speech.
“I didn’t hear hate. I heard the exact opposite,” Knezovich said. “I heard respect. Respect for states, respect for individual rights, for the job of the sheriff.”
Knezovich said he received more invitations to Mack’s speech than any other event since he was elected sheriff in fall 2006. Everywhere he went, it seemed, people asked if he planned to go.
“I thought to myself, ‘If that many people would like me to attend this event, I’ll do that,’ ” Knezovich said.
Mack has long been a speaker on the constitutionalist circuit, gaining fame in the militia movement in the 1990s. “There’s really a remarkable amount of anger out there that this movement reflects,” Potok said.
Still, Potok added, “it’s a little shocking that Richard Mack, given his ideas, could draw such a large crowd, including so many public officials.”
When you have law-enforcement officials and state legislators showing up to support citizen militias and "oath keepers" who believe the federal government is about to swoop down in black helicopters and round up citizens to imprison them in concentration camps ... Well, that's a problem for everyone.
It's like the 1990s on steroids. Back then, it produced a notable spate of domestic terrorism. This time around, with so many more people being successfully recruited, one can only imagine the violence that awaits us all.
The right's latest fake controversy is what happens whenever any Democrat happens to bring up historical truths about conservatism -- like the fact that it has been on the wrong side of right and wrong for much of the nation's history. They scream and shout about how mean liberals are and then cover over these truths with a pile of afactual excrement.
Here's what upset them so. Harry Reid accurately laid out the sorry history of conservatives in America whenever important and momentous advances in civil rights and the betterment of life for all Americans happen to arise: They stick up for the forces of oppression, hatred, and economic deprivation.
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans have come up with is this slow down, stop everything, let's start over."
"You think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted slow down, there will be a better day to do that. The day isn't quite right.
When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
The only thing right-wingers heard was that "Reid compared opponents of health-care reform to opponents of slavery."
Well, not exactly: He was pointing out that there was continuum to all of these, a common thread. That is, the opponents of health care, just like opponents of civil rights for minorities, and opponents of the vote for women, and opponents of ending slavery all had one big thing in common: They were all conservative.
Rather laughably, Sean Hannity and Karl Rove try to cover this over -- as does Michelle Malkin -- by pointing out the wonderful things Republicans have done over the decades, such as Lincoln freeing the slaves. Of course, what they don't mention is that these things were achieved by people who would today be considered liberal Republicans. Malkin also wants you to remember those Democrats who fought against civil rights: Of course, she conveniently omits the history of the Southern Strategy and the way old-line bigots like Strom Thurmond joined the GOP en masse in the 1960s and '70s, thereby transforming the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Neo-Confederates.
(Oh, and a reminder to Karl Rove, who claims that "Joe Wilson got in trouble for speaking the truth": He should ask Wilson sometime his views on Lincoln.)
And what they especially avoid confronting is that Reid is right in that opponents of ending slavery were CONSERVATIVE, and opponents of health-care reform are CONSERVATIVE. The contexts change with the shifting challenges of our respective eons, but we can always count on one thing:
When conservatives stand up to fight against common-sense advances that improve the lives of Americans, we can feel a sense of surety that history will prove them wrong. It always has in the past.
By the way, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was whining on Fox's Your World (with Eric Bolling filling in for Neil Cavuto) that Reid's remarks were "over the top" and asking him to apologize:
Our hearts just bleed for those poor victimized Republicans who want us all to erase history from our memories and just remember them as the victims of mean-talking Democrats. Especially the saintly Karl Rove.
Michelle Malkin's latest column wants to turn the deaths of police officers around the country -- spurred by the recent horror in Lakewood, WA -- into a chance to blame liberals for the deaths.
The Left has a popular mantra: “Stop the hate.” Why don’t they start applying it to the men and women who protect and serve?
She listed some officers killed in a couple of different incidents involving career criminals and a bizarre recent case here in Seattle.
Well, I've got a few other officers here she seemed to have forgotten about:
From where does the deadened and deadly callousness toward the thin blue line come?
Oh, I dunno. Maybe it comes from conservatives like Michelle Malkin, who shriek and holler when mean "liberals" at the Department of Homeland Security issue an important bulletin to law-enforcement officers warning them of the threat posed by right-wing extremists to their health and well-being, crying that in doing so they're just "smearing conservatives."
The Department of Homeland Security more than likely couldn't give a rat's patoot about today's right-wing Tea Tantrums, because they're mostly exercises in futility and stupidity anyway.
But I'll tell you who they do care about: the people in uniform who go out every day and put their lives on the line to keep you and I and our families and neighborhoods safe -- that is, the men and women in law enforcement. People like those three officers in Pittsburgh, who had no reason to suspect a killer was about to ambush them.
Research led by Dr. Joshua D. Freilich (John Jay College, CUNY) and Dr. Steven Chermak (Michigan State University) and funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has revealed a violent history of fatal attacks against law enforcement officers in the United States by individuals who adhere to far-right ideology.
* In the United States, 42 law enforcement officers have been killed in 32 incidents in which at least one of the suspects was a far-rightist since 1990.
* 94% of these incidents involved local or state law enforcement. Only two events—high-profile attacks at Ruby Ridge and at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City—involved federal agents. Much more common are events like the tragic Pittsburgh triple slayings.
* Attacks on police by far-rightists tend to occur during routine law enforcement activities. 34% of the officers killed by far-rightists were slain during a traffic stop, and a number of law enforcement officers have been killed while responding to calls for service similar to the domestic violence call that precipitated the Pittsburgh murders.
* Firearms were the most common type of weapon used during these fatal anti-police attacks. 88% of the incidents involved guns, while only 6% involved explosives and 6% involved knives. 81% of the victims were killed by guns.
* Only 12% of the suspects in these attacks were members of formal groups with far-right ideologies. The vast majority—like Poplawski—acted alone. This greatly complicates law-enforcement efforts to anticipate which individuals might pose a threat to police officers.
* Beyond these law enforcement murders, far-right violence presents a broader threat to national security and American citizens. Since 1990, far-rightists have been linked to more than 275 homicide incidents in 36 states. These crimes have resulted in the more than 530 fatalities, including the 168 victims murdered by Timothy McVeigh when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The vast majority of these suspects are white and male, with almost 70% being 30 years old or younger.
This is where I wonder about the grotesquely skewed priorities of the conservative movement and its leading pundits. Because all the yammering has been fearmongering about the DHS potentially targeting ordinary conservatives -- especially VETERANS!!!! -- when in fact there is not a scintilla of evidence they have done so or are considering it.
Yet in the meantime, as we just pointed out, these right-wing extremists who are the subject and the raison d'etre of this bulletin are also known lethal threats for the men and women who work in law enforcement ...
So while the folks at Faux News fearmonger for the sake of yet-unharmed veterans and conservatives, they're completely turning their backs on the interests of the men and women who risk their lives each day serving as law-enforcement officers.
Yeah, well, that was then. This opportunity is now. Even if it means connecting Obama to the Oakland cop killings through Van Jones, just because he was a black nationalist from Oakland ... it's all about Michelle's agenda. Dead cops just make handy props for it.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Thursday that unused money in the Treasury Department’s financial rescue plan would be used to pay for a new job-creation package.
Pelosi said she favored using funds in the Troubled Asset Relief Program to finance initiatives aimed at kick-starting growth in the moribund jobs market.
In doing so, she effectively ruled out implementing a tax on financial transactions by banks and other financial institutions.
Pelosi said she still favored a tax in principle but the U.S. would have to work with other countries to implement such a levy.
So far, financial institutions have repaid around $71 billion of taxpayer money to the Treasury. That figure doesn’t include the $45 billion that Bank of America Corp. (BAC) said Wednesday it intends to repay.
Additionally, there is approximately $226.5 billion of the original $700 billion fund that either was never used by the Treasury or was earmarked for initiatives but not yet spent.
A senior aide to Pelosi said no decisions had been made as to which pot of money to use, or how big the final job-creation package would be.
He said House Democrats are talking to their counterparts in the Senate as well as in the Obama administration.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday the administration is “actively looking at” ways to use the TARP program to help aid the labor market.
… Pelosi said serious thought is being given to investments in transportation infrastructure, seen by economists as one of the most efficient ways of creating jobs quickly.
She also said money could be used to preserve public-sector jobs such as firefighters, police and health-care providers.
The senior Pelosi aide said this would be distributed by bypassing state governments and providing funds directly to local or regional governments.
It’s the “inevitable lard-up” phenomenon I’ve been writing about since bailout-a-palooza began under the Bush administration.
Yeah, Michelle Malkin, champion of our police officers. Right.
