The politics of power

I'm sure everyone's been following the brouhaha over the Enron Tapes and what they reveal about the tactics of the now-mostly-defunct-but-still-thrashing-about energy giant. And make no mistake, what the tapes confirm is what was perhaps already clear: a corporate culture so reptilian, so deeply devoid of ethics and so far outside the law, that it now has its own special wing reserved in the depths of Business Hell.

What's especially worth observing about the tapes, though, is what they say about the bigger picture. Thomas Leavitt at Seeing the Forest explains:

The Enron Tapes and the Snohomish vs. Enron hearing aren't just about a few potty mouthed "bad apples" at Enron engaging in opportunistic exploitation of regulatory loopholes (as Enron's PR people would like you to believe). They highlight a fundamental problem of our system of governance: the balance of power between corporations and the average human citizen is way out of whack. This is a point that those of us on our side of the issue would be well served to bring to the fore.

Enron lobbied our legislators and regulatory agencies with the conscious and deliberate intent of creating a non-transparent marketplace full of inefficiencies that they could then exploit (see Dr. Carl Pechman's testimony, quoted in previous posts). AND OUR LEGISLATORS AND REGULATORS LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT... or rather, they did not intervene, because they saw nothing unusual in the process as it happened. This doesn't always result in disaster (apparently New York state managed the deregulation process better), but it happens way too often.

... This goes beyond partisan ideology -- what we are talking about here is the fact that elements of corporate America have systematically subverted our government's regulatory apparatus for private gain. This happens over and over and over again, regardless of which party is in power, at any level. In this particular instance, it just happened to go sour in a very big, and very public way.

(Be sure, by the way, to check out the compilation of Enron-tapes material at Leavitt's own blog.)

Leavitt's point is important, because deregulation and the "magic of the marketplace" have become mindless panaceas for politicians at nearly all levels of government, both Republican and Democrat. And the results are plain to see: "Deregulation," particularly in the energy industry, is a grotesque failure, an open invitation for private corporations to ransack the public's pocketbook.

It's not surprising that this has happened. Opponents of deregulation have been consistently attacked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative mouthpieces as "socialists," and over the past 15 years a mythology has built up around the notion that "getting government out of business" is an unrelievedly good thing.

The result has been that the last real bulwark of the public interest has turned out to be government regulators, particularly small, local- and state-level agencies who remain bound by law to stand up for the public.

For these most recent revelations, the nation has the Snohomish County Public Utilities District, just north of Seattle, to thank. And a fine public service it was. If nothing else, we learned that the fraudulent "energy crisis" of 2000 was actually just Enron gouging the public on West Coast for about $1.1 billion.

What's especially worth noting about the PUD case is what it demonstrates about the power of Enron's scurvy crew to keep inflicting damage well after their supposed demise. The PUD obtained the tapes as part of its defense in a lawsuit filed by Enron against the agency after it cut off its contracts with the energy giant in the wake of the gouging. As Joel Connelly points out, Enron continues to rip off consumers by filing these outrageous lawsuits. David Horsey has this one right.

Outrageously enough, the Bush administration's Justice Department only reluctantly released the tapes after being forced to do so by the courts. And it continues to do so with even more extensive material. Fortunately, the state's congressional delegation is on the job on this on. Sen. Maria Cantwell is demanding some action be taken by Ashcroft and Co. -- including, most recently, e-mails written by Enron employees that are being hidden by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. (Of course, Cantwell has also fired off a letter to Bush "asking that he do everything possible to provide relief to Washington state consumers who have been gouged by Enron while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) failed to protect them from Enron's market manipulation." As Shrek would say: Yeh, right. Like that's ever gonna happen.)

The problem really is a systemic one, rooted in the phony myth of deregulation. As things now stand, we're saddled with a federal oversight agency absolutely wedded, ideologically and otherwise, to even further deregulation -- even though the notion of improved efficiency in energy markets and delivery through divestment of public ownership has proven, over and over again, to be not a dream but a nightmare.

Enron is only one example. The same fiasco has occurred on a smaller scale throughout the country, sometimes with equally disastrous results, sometimes with only minimal harm. But nowhere has deregulation proven to provide even a margin of benefit to consumers. It has so far only been a gigantic bonanza for energy companies.

One of the real small-scale disasters was the demise of Montana Power, which through deregulation decided to get out of the power-generation business; the company actually was renamed Touch America and relaunched itself as telcom player, only to be shortly dashed on the rocks of reality and bankrupted. (One of the best accounts of this is the Missoulian project Generations of Power.)

Even in states where deregulation supposedly has worked, the savings to consumers have been minimal, and the choices are nearly nonexistent, as my good chum T.M. Sell explored in depth in this Salon piece on deregulation.

The chief reason, as Sell explains, is that after an initial burst of activity, the power providers have begun drying up. So even in states like Pennsylvania, touted as deregulatory successes, the only savings have been to major power consumers, while residential consumers are left holding the bag:

[T]he biggest reason for the lack of real competition, critics say, is that there's simply no money to be made in selling residential electricity at competitive prices. Firms that rushed into the power-supply business rapidly discovered that a high-cost, low-margin business with customers who use very little of your product won't pay the bills, let alone turn a profit. And residential customers buy all of their power at the wrong times -- morning and evening off-peak periods.

... Today, in all the deregulated states, there isn't much of anybody who's offering any electricity at any price to the great mass of consumers, unless they're factory owners or an aggregation of customers with enough leverage to work a deal. While deregulation has meant savings for large customers, residential customers appear to be saving money only where states have mandated rate cuts, and all of those rate caps are eventually scheduled to expire. Most residential customers in the 17 actively deregulated states aren't shopping for power, and few energy suppliers are trying to serve the residential market.

The real problem is that, as Sell later explains, the problems brought to the surface by the Enron manipulations haven't gone away:

Critics also point to another potential problem of a market-based electricity system: reliability. Under the old system, plants that will supply power during periods of peak demand could be built into the rate base and made economically feasible.

"We're about to throw all that away for a slogan," says utility consultant Merrill Schultz. Under the new system, Schultz and others point out, there's a positive disincentive to have a plant that may operate only on a few cold mornings a year. First, you can't charge people for it when it's not operating. And second, the mere presence of such plants ought to tend to depress the price of electricity. In a purely profit-driven market, nobody wants that.

"It's not very profitable to sink a couple of hundred million dollars into a power plant unless you have customers you can count on to buy from you," Odisio says.

Meanwhile, big chunks of the country say their disaster plan is to import power from Ontario. Last summer's power meltdown ought to at least call that notion into question.

FERC spokesman Bryan Lee says the answer is regional power pool planning, which would make it easier for states to push through new transmission lines, among other things.

For all its faults, the old, regulated system had its virtues. People got power, and utilities were profitable, and reliability, considered over the whole system, was outstanding.

Merrill Schultz, who did most of his work in the West, watched the California debacle with much dismay, and he worries it will be repeated. The emphasis in the industry has gone from public service to competition.

"I was fooled by the precipitous change of proud independent operators into greedy marketers," he says. "All those people did whatever they could to make big bucks and no longer cared about reliability or performance."

In other words, thanks to the manifest failures of government regulators, we are faced with the prospect of further brownouts and blackouts this summer, thanks once again to a system that we know is broken and no one is fixing.

In another column, Joel Connelly points out that the root of the problem at this point lies with enforcement -- which is to say, the remarkably laissez-faire Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

But then, this should surprise no one. This administration is clearly content to let the "magic of the marketplace" just magically make billions of consumer dollars disappear while its cops gaze skyward and whistle a tune. Whether it's the Justice Department or FERC, the unified front it has presented so far should leave little doubt whose side it is on.

I just wonder how much longer conservatives can keep successfully selling their ideology as somehow helpful to average, working-class Americans.

A little bit about blogging

I'm sure I wasn't alone in feeling a little stricken if sympathetic when Hesiod announced he was departing the ranks of bloggers. Counterspin has been a major gathering point and informational source for progressives in Blogville, and a truly great resource for the past couple of years.

Worst of all was the pang of sympathy I felt. It's been increasingly difficult for me to post with great regularity lately, in part because my focus just isn't on writing right now. Death on the Fourth of July is supposed to hit the stands July 1, and I'm gearing up to promote it, while simultaneously I'm now in the editing phase for Strawberry Days. I'm also working on a book plan for my next project. And on top of all this, there's a lot of real-life work facing me this summer (painting the house, some yard projects, that sort of thing).

When Hesiod announced his retirement, I couldn't help but think about doing the same, or at least going on hiatus. Sometimes it's best to step away from work that has become a grind.

But I'm not there yet. The fall election is too soon, and there's too much work yet to be done.

I thought about what I said in my first draft of the Media Revolt Manifesto, about the importance of the role of blogs in the emergence of a newly democratized journalism, and realized that, while I deeply understand why Hesiod stepped away from it, it's going to be vital for the rest of us to keep going.

This is especially the case when it comes to confronting the issues I tackled in the Manifesto -- namely, the subversion and destruction of serious journalism by the Stalinist tactics of the ideological conservative movement.

As many of you may recall, one of the ongoing conversations about the Manifesto that followed involved the question of toning down its unmistakable (and intentional) partisanship. I think this is an interesting discussion, and many of the points raised by critics were sensible, I thought.

Nonetheless, the continuing (and rising) drumbeat of hateful rhetoric, thuggery and violence -- paired with a fresh chorus of complaints from the right about the supposed "hatefulness" from the left -- should leave little doubt that reasoned discussion and normative compromise with the right are a mistake. This is mainly so because, without fail, it is clear that such give-and-take is abused as a "weakness" by these Mayberry Machiavellians, and submitting to this is not an option.

Charles Pierce (with a nice link to this blog) threw down the gauntlet the other day at Altercation:

All this concern erupted when the left started hitting back a little, and developing institutions and vehicles through which to do it. Well, for the moment, f**k civility. The center cannot be allowed to remain where it is. It has to be shoved back and shoved back hard. And if that means calling out ABC for criticizing Michael Moore's methodology while continuing to employ --nay, PROMOTE -- a corporate fabulist like John Stossel up through its news division, or if it means striking back at the people who go on television with their perpetual wounded victimhood and call people "Nazis," well, I'm sorry, Aaron, that's just the way politics is going to have to be for a while. Take a pill and go sit in a dark room until the vapors pass.

Digby picked up on Pierce's post, and carried it further:

What the media is really saying, on behalf of the GOP, is that we liberals should should be the punch line of a very old joke: "Two Jews are lined up against a wall to be shot. When one asks for a blindfold and a last cigarette, the other whispers to him, "Don't make trouble."

Fuggedaboudit. Aside from the obvious point that Pierce makes about capitulating at the zenith of right wing power so as to make the center of American politics somewhere to the right of the Third Reich for the next generation, we just have to be prepared for all out political war and we are going to have to be brave enough to take the heat. That goes whether Kerry wins or not --- in fact, it goes especially if Kerry wins.

This is a vital point. Even if the right is defeated this fall -- and that is hardly a given -- it is not going away soon. They are never giving up. The conservative movement is determined to control all levels of government, to convert America to a one-party state, and it has already lined up to carry on with the same nastiness in a new phase, if necessary.

Matt Stoller puts it even more forcefully, if that's possible:

Legitimacy is the key to governance. If an authoritarian government isn't seen as legitimate, it must act incredibly harshly to sustain its rule, or it will fall. The legitimacy of a liberal democracy goes further than this; it relies on an acknowledgement that the opposition has a right to exist, and even, to oppose. When this assumption breaks down, when the loyal opposition finds itself considered treasonous, a slew of terrifying events is set in motion, and ultimately, liberal democracy fights back, or liberal democracy falls. We are in the midst of seeing this struggle play out.

Dick Morris says flat out that to elect Kerry is to elect bin Laden. I fear that Morris's tome is not just his, but is the centerpiece of the Bush reelection campaign. This political attack is not an honorable disagreement that will end after the election. This is a declaration of illegitimacy, a statement that a Kerry Presidency is unacceptable even if the American people find the alternative unpalatable. Morris is echoing sentiments -- from top Republican officials like Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, and others -- that there is a political war raging, and that survival for the other side is not an option. The impeachment and the toxic politics it helped foment will continue, either crushing Democrats further under a second Bush term or preventing governance through impeachment or investigation of a President Kerry.

It's vital, at this point, to keep fighting, and to be prepared to fight for another decade or more. For the foreseeable future, that's what I hope to achieve at my little blog.

However, just for the sake of my sanity, I'm going to be blogging a bit lighter for the next few months. As much as I'd like to post daily, I don't think that will be feasible. I hope you, my readers, are patient with the fits and starts with which you'll be seeing material appear here. I'm going to keep tinkering with the Manifesto for the next couple of weeks, and hope to have a definitive version up at the end of that -- which means I may not be posting a lot during that time.

I'm planning, however, to be fully revved up by the end of September for the home stretch. And of course, for the long fight that remains ahead afterward.

Ah, fatherhood

What I like about Father's Day: Being a father.

Beyond Fahrenheit 9/11

It's looking like a plum year for documentaries, isn't it?

Like many of you, I'm looking forward to the release of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 -- not necessarily for the film itself, but for the reaction to it.

Actually, I find Moore's films to be guilty pleasures. I'm well aware that sprinkled throughout most of them are various factual errors, mostly minor ones, but enough to bring out the censurious editor in me. At the same time, Moore is not only an imaginative filmmaker with astonishing narrative skills, he's also a very clever political provocateur who concocts really hilarious stunts that have the virtue of making his point incisively. I expect 9/11, which hits theaters Friday, will be more of the same.

Perhaps buried in the hoopla over Moore will be The Hunting of the President, the Harry Thomason documentary based on the Joe Conason-Gene Lyons classic about the Clinton Wars. I'm probably even more eager to see it than 9/11, even though its perspective is decidedly more in retrospect. (Atrios has actually attended its New York premiere, the lucky dog, and gives us an early lowdown.)

But the important thing to remember is that THOTP is not ancient history: It's very much about current events. The same people who brought us the impeachment fiasco are now running the show in the Bush administration (see, e.g., Ted Olson). The past is never past.

Getting much less attention, certainly, but also well worth a look are two other documentaries, both of which offer rather nuanced treatment of difficult subjects. I have no idea whether they'll show in Seattle, but I'm keeping an eye out for them.

The first is a film titled The Letter, a documentary about tensions in Lewiston, Maine, after a substantial population of Somali refugees made the city their home. It takes its title from a missive written by the city's mayor to the Somalis, asking them to stop coming.

As Ziah Hamseh, the filmmaker, explained in the article:

... "A firestorm erupted when Mayor Larry Raymond of Lewiston sent an open letter to 1,100 newly arrived Somali refugees advising them that the city's resources are strained to the limit and asking other Somalis not to move to the city. Interpreted as a rallying cry by white supremacist groups across the United States. The Letter documents the crossfire of emotions and events that culminated in a hate rally convened by the World Church of the Creator and a counter peace rally with more than 4,000 Lewiston residents supporting ethnic diversity," he said.

Hamzeh said he spent two years in Lewiston filming, and it was dangerous at times.

"The white supremacists, seeing a venue for their own agenda, swooped into town and many ordinary citizens became threatened and fearful. It was dangerous because I was meeting with Neo-Nazis in their homes, but this story and the plight of the Somalis became my obsession. I set out searching for the truth, tracing the events that led to the chaos that engulfed that city," Hamzeh said.

The last is a documentary by a former Seattlite named Mike Tucker, who put together a film about life in the 2/3 Field Artillery unit in Baghdad, titled Gunner Palace.

Among the soldiers Tucker interviewed and spent time with was a young man from Kent, a middle-class suburb south of Seattle, named Ben Colgan. A few weeks later, Colgan -- whose parents are antiwar activists -- was killed.

Tucker sent me an e-mail describing the film and hoping my readers give it a look:

As we are out of the major festival cycle, we decided to go ahead and post a few clips from the film -- scenes that we think are definitive not only of what we have captured, but of the experience. In one scene a soldier does a freestyle rap; in another, a young soldier plays a very electric version of the Star Spangled Banner on the roof of Uday Hussein's Palace.

After Abu Ghraib, after the massive amounts of attention paid to M. Moore's F911, it is our hope that this film is at the center of an American conversation, about who we are and where we are going. We hope to find a middle ground, not division. That's happening right now. On blogs ranging from antiwar.org to military sites, people are embracing the story and the reaction has been, more often than not, surprising.

That's where this ties into the culture war. Over the last week, as people write me -- I just received a letter from the mother of a soldier who died in the unit I filmed -- I sense exhaustion. America has been at war for almost three years. Much soul searching is going on, but there is also much rabid commentary. Ann Coulter thinks Iraq is a raging success; Michael Moore thinks the insurgents are "the Minutemen". To both, I suggest a soft-skinned HUMVEE ride through Baghdad. America is ailing, I hope there is a way to bring the war to the table of a constructive discussion free from stubborn rhetoric.

Of course, in the current climate, I'm not sure how free we can ever be from "stubborn rhetoric." But it's true that the exhaustion is setting in. Which in turn means that perhaps the people who have exhorted us to "support our troops" will realize that the best way to do that is to get them the hell out of Iraq.

Alan Berg and the haters

It was twenty years ago this weekend that Alan Berg, the Denver radio talk-show host, was gunned down in his driveway by members of The Order, a gang of Aryan Nations thugs who robbed banks and targeted Berg for his on-air humiliation of right-wing extremists.

My friend Kevin Flynn at the Rocky Mountain News (who co-authored the definitive book on The Order, The Silent Brotherhood) interviewed Berg's ex-wife (with whom Berg had dined the night he was killed) on the anniversary, and came away with a great piece:

Fighting racism for 20 years
Neo-Nazi victim Alan Berg's ex-wife calls hate a 'disease'

Like nearly everyone touched by this crime, Judith Berg has been watching the development of hate groups over the succeeding years, their cycles as they wax and wane. And she has an interesting perspective on where we stand currently:

Berg said the murder of her ex-husband was a watershed event that inspired more hate-movement violence.

"What happened to Alan in the grown-up world has reached into the youth culture," she said. "It opened the door to an acceptance of violence as a means of acting on hate."

The nation's attention is now focused on terror threats from abroad, but Berg thinks the nation should also look inward.

"While our backs are turned toward overseas, hate groups are having a heyday," she said.

"People are very unhappy; they're out of work and jobs are scarce. They're ripe for joining extremist groups. We need to understand what happened to make sure it doesn't happen again."

I think the current down cycle for right-wing extremism is actually masking a lot of activity beneath the surface. White nationalist sentiments are being gradually introduced into the mainstream discourse, especially among younger people. There has also been a real flurry of low-level recruitment -- particularly the distribution of flyers -- that may enjoy only slight success, but which definitely indicate an uptick in proselytization in the mainstream.

The four years after the coming election will be very interesting either way. If Bush is re-elected, expect to see the gradual emergence of these belief systems on the mainstream stage, in keeping with trends of the past four years. If Kerry wins, expect to see an extremely virulent and violent resurgence of the extremist right, because the conditions of the past four years have paved the way for them.

The hate these days

Why, who should descend from Olympus to mingle with the common folk the other day but Tucker Carlson, (or "that smug little homunculus," as my friend Charles calls him) who held forth on various topics in a Washington Post chat (also carried as an item at Romenesko's Media News). Of particular note was this exchange:

Albany, N.Y.: I recall reading not long ago that, as a joke, you gave out the number of the Fox news channel's Washington bureau, claiming that it was your own, and that in retaliation the Fox people posted your real home phone number. I also read that as a result of the Fox posting, your wife and children got threatening and obscene phone calls. Is this true? If so, doesn't it bother you that the people who did this have the same views and values that you have? If so, how can you possibly align yourself with such people?

Tucker Carlson: There are haters and morons on both sides, as you know. (In the case of Fox viewers, my impression was that most of them were drunk. No surprise there.)I must say, though, that most of the hate I run across these days seems to be coming from the left. Check out MoveOn.org some time if you don't believe me.

Well, I rushed over to the MoveOn.org Web site to take a gander at all this hate.

And, well ... you can judge for yourselves.

First there was the drive to "Protect Our Votes - Insist on a Paper Ballot." This is based on suspicions that touch-screen voting is vulnerable to being rigged. Not much hate there. A little paranoia, perhaps, but it's relatively reason-based paranoia.

Next there was "The Movie the White House Doesn't Want You to See." This part of MoveOn's effort to spur a discussion about global warming, based on the bad sci-fi flick The Day After Tomorrow. A bad idea -- this film is not the place to kick off a reasoned discussion of the subject -- but nothing particularly hateful.

Next one had some promise: "Fire Rumsfeld: View our new TV ad." Except that Rumsfeld probably should be fired, because his culpablity in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal mounts daily. That isn't hate. That's common sense.

Then we had the petition to "Censure Bush for Misleading Us." Again, the campaign is partisan and charged, but there is no abusive or demeaning language, and the issues are all based on facts, not on such emotional claims as the illegitimacy of his presidency or his corruption.

Then, if you go to the page for MoveOn's book, 50 Ways to Love Your Country, you get more of a rundown of their style. It's largely about empowering liberals. There's no smack talk about conservatives, no demonizing them, no insistence that they represent all of the nation's ills. It's not about tearing others down. It's about building your own base.

I happen to have a little experience with "hate." Especially after years of dealing with "hate groups" and "hate crimes." "Hate" is one of the most abused terms in the modern lexicon, because it can mean so many things. But in the contexts in which I've dealt with it, I've managed over the years to distill a certain essence of "hate" as we know it in the context of such groups and such crimes. It enables me to spot real hate when I see it.

Real hate, in the end, is about excluding, demonizing, and eliminating the Other. It finds its voice in sneering denigration and threats, focusing especially on depicting the Other as a disease or vermin or a source of betrayal, a threat in need of extirpation.

Maybe Tucker knows of some pages tucked away on the MoveOn site that I don't know about. But I could find no evidence of "hate" -- left-wing or otherwise.

Now, I wonder how Carlson would categorize the following material:

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism

Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism

The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith and Military

Of course, Michael Savage should get his own section:

Right now, even people sitting on the fence would like George Bush to drop a nuclear weapon on an Arab country. They don't even care which one it would be. I can guarantee you -- I don't need to go to Mr. Schmuck [pollster John] Zogby and ask him his opinion. I don't need anyone's opinion. I'll give you my opinion, because I got a better stethoscope than those fools. It's one man's opinion based upon my own analysis. The most -- I tell you right now -- the largest percentage of Americans would like to see a nuclear weapon dropped on a major Arab capital. They don't even care which one. They'd like an indiscriminate use of a nuclear weapon.

In fact, Christianity has been one of the great salvations on planet Earth. It's what's necessary in the Middle East. Others have written about it, I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity but I'll get here a little later, I'll move up to that. It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings. ... Because these primitives can only be treated in one way, and I don't think smallpox and a blanket is good enough incidentally. Just before -- I'm going to give you a little precursor to where I'm going. Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people, just so you understand that I'm not going to be too intellectual about my analysis here in terms of what I would recommend, what Doc Savage recommends as an antidote to this kind of poison coming out of the Middle East from these non-humans.

[May 12 broadcast]

"Well there's a big difference between fighting for civil rights, and fighting for homosexual marriage, you moron. It's a big difference for fighting for the equality of all men, despite their race, and fighting for perversion, you idiot! You think people are stupid?"
-- [June 10 broadcast]

And how about Rush Limbaugh? He's supposed to be "mainstream", right, Howie? Here are some recent remarks, courtesy of David Brock's Media Matters:

I'm going to tell you is what's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today. That's how you boil this down. And it doesn't have to be Al Qaeda. What's good for terrorists is good for John Kerry. All you got to do is check the way they react. [3/15/04]

25) So the only real question is, if Al Qaeda's active and capable, what are they going to do? Because we know what they want: they want Kerry, they want the Democrats in power. They'd love that -- I mean, based simply on what they're saying and how they're reacting to what happened in Spain. I'm not guessing. [3/15/04]

26) They [Democrats] celebrate privately this attack in Spain. [3/16/04]

27) I mean, if you wonder -- if you want the terrorists running the show, then you will elect John Kerry, who is a bed brother with this guy who just won election in Spain. [3/18/04]

28) I'm telling you, we're in the midst of a huge liberal crackup. They are so motivated by the quest for power. They are so motivated by rage and hatred, that they are not in power. And they focus that on Bush. That they have aligned themselves unwittingly -- I'm going to grant them that -- with those who intend harm on this country. [3/24/04]

29) You don't hear the Democrats being critical of terrorists. In fact, you hear the Democrats saying, "We've got to find a way to get along with them." [4/5/04]

33) [Speaking about Democrats] I don't know who they are, I don't know what they believe, but I can't relate. I can't possibly understand somebody who hates this country, who was born and raised here. I don't understand how you hate this Constitution. I don't understand how you hate freedom. I don't understand how you hate free markets, but that's who elites are, because freedom and free markets challenge their power. It's the only thing I can come up with. I know it's much more insidious and hideous than that, but I still can't relate to it. [3/16/04]

Then there are other supposedly mainstream voices:

The young Kerry seems to have fallen in the latter category, communist apologist. ... John Kerry deserves to make atonement to the Vietnamese people -- not for what he did as a young soldier but for what he has done ever since to justify communist tyranny in Vietnam and elsewhere.
-- Linda Chavez

Or:

Miller is not alone, though some are more sanguine when it comes to evaluating the roster of contenders. Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot."
-- [Kathleen Parker]

If the Democrats win the Presidency, they can veto Republican advances. If they lose, they don't eat. The very sinews of their political power will decay with increasing speed. The Democratic coalition will be weaker, shorter, and poorer in 2008 than 2004. This sense of desperation explains the "hatred" and vicious attacks on Bush.

This should not surprise us. Expect the crescendo to grow through 2004. The other team isn't being unreasonable. It is reacting rationally to a real threat to its ability to function. Anything short of placing snipers on the rooftops of D.C. would be an underreaction by the Left.

Cornered rats fight. Hard.
-- [Grover Norquist]

I am absolutely convinced that God is far from finished with the story of the United States of America. ... First of all, [there's] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century." There were, and are, "two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We're going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we're going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We'll settle it. And we'll win. And then there's no holding us back.
-- [Rabbi Daniel Lapin]

And then there's the blogosphere:

I don't really consider the Democrat party a party of the people anymore, nor do I consider the socialist Democrats (they are not "liberal", that's just a euphemism for socialist anymore) "nice people who are misguided." I consider them to be pure, raw evil, who want to destroy everything rational or beautiful in sight: success, prosperity, even the very security of the country.
-- [Amber Pawlik]

Not saying anything in specific, mind you, but we'd be damn careful about showing our face in public if we were you. You just never know who that perfect stranger behind you in that alleyway might be. Could be a sibling or other relative of one of the fallen soldiers that you just took a dump on the grave of, and G-d only knows what might happen then.

Eric may not be famous enough to be a pick for the 2004 Dead Pool, but there's another signed Imperial Mug for the first LC to inform me that Eric Blumrich has died in a "tragic" accident.

Accidents DO happen, you know, and that's the kind of news that would definitely make my entire day.
--[Emperor Misha]

These are all the more civilized remarks. Meanwhile, on the street level, things are not so civilized. In an Oregon coffee shop, a woman is treated to the following diatribe:

"I hate all you f*ing Democrats. You f*ng deserve to be die. Hopefully we can kill the f*ing bunch of you soon..."

And liberals regularly are treated to lovely responses from the pro-war right as well:

Fuckin Leftist traitors break the law and think they should get away with it?! FUCK YOU YA GODDAMN LEFTIST PUKES AND DON'T EVEN THINK OF FUCKING WITH FREE REPUBLIC MOTHERFUCKERS!

WE WILL BEAT YOU DOWN IN THE STREETS NEXT FALL!!!!

... If I see you or any of your comrades from Dem Underground I will kick the living shit out of you you filthy faggotcunt traitor

DO NOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS LEFTIST OUT ON THE STREET YOU PIECE OF SHIT OR YOU WILL BE BEATEN UNCONSCIOUS YOU GODDAM ENEMY OF AMERICA!!!!!

This was all well after the war began. Before we invaded Iraq, it was a common occurrence to read letters about "doing away with" Democrats, "Go back to France," and read fantasies about assaulting antiwar protesters.

Of course, the threats haven't been relegated merely to ordinary citizens and protesters. Objects of right-wing ire -- for instance, 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick -- are also targeted:

"I can confirm that I've received threats at my office and my home," she told CNN on Saturday. "I did get a bomb threat to my home."

She added, "I have gotten a lot of very vile e-mails. The bomb threat was by phone."

Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid or shrill or some other thing that makes me easy to dismiss. But all of the above is what I think of when I think of "hate": the denigration, the venom, the demonization, the threats, the announced desire to eliminate.

And it isn't hard to see which side of the aisle it's coming from.

But then, maybe if I wore a bowtie, I'd see it differently.

The Bush Apologista

It's not easy being a Bush apologist these days. In fact, it's getting so bad that they have to just make shit up.

(OK, so they've always made shit up. But it's becoming pronounced.)

Anyone who listens to NPR or watches Fox knows, of course, that Juan Williams is a Bush Apologista of some repute. So it's not surprising that his recent New York Times op-ed is primarily an apologia for Bush's dismal standing in the black community.

Along the way, there's this:

This is the record that President Bush can draw on to win a larger share of the black vote. But he has to want to do it. In private conversations, administration officials make the case that they want the black vote. But it is also clear that they are not planning to work hard to get it -- in part because they are still angry over the black response to their efforts in 2000.

Ah, yes. Of course, it's black people's fault that the Bush administration's photo ops with onstage minorities failed to attract votes. It probably doesn't cross these people's rather dim radars that if Bush had done something other than, say, obfuscate his dismal record regarding hate-crimes laws, play pitty-pat with neo-Confederates and slam affirmative action, something other than a handful of blacks might have considered voting for him. Even then, it's a hard sell.

Any, it goes on to a dramatic conclusion:

Interestingly, the anger predates the post-election sparring in Florida. It has its roots in an ad, run nationally by the N.A.A.C.P., that implied that Mr. Bush, as governor of Texas, did not want to punish the white men who attacked and killed James Byrd Jr., a black man, in Jasper, Tex., in 1998.

The ad distorted a complex situation. As governor, Mr. Bush took the conventional conservative position that hate crimes legislation could lead to a dangerous increase in prosecutorial power. Mr. Bush argued that there were adequate criminal penalties to punish Mr. Byrd's assailants. No matter: the N.A.A.C.P. broadcast its ad. Mr. Bush, who won 30 percent of the black vote and 47 percent of the Hispanic vote in his 1998 gubernatorial campaign, was introduced to minorities as a man willing to stand with white lynch mobs.

It's hard to say where Williams came up with this nugget. Bush's position as governor, as far as the written and reported record goes, regarding hate-crimes legislation that was proposed during his tenure had nothing whatsoever to do with prosecutorial power.

Bush's actual, stated position was far more simplistic, and his shameful behavior during the whole episode involving James Byrd's family and the effort to pass a new hate-crime law in Texas -- behavior that was at the heart of the ad in question -- ranged from evasive and nasty to downright deceptive.

Here's an excerpt (pp. 109-110) from my forthcoming book, Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America:

The hate-crime debate continued to rage on the state level, too -- especially in Texas, where James Byrd's killing inspired another effort to pass an effective law. The key player: the state's moderate Republican governor, George W. Bush.

Texas already had a hate-crimes law, passed in 1993 -- which was in fact the source of the problem. Passed amid a rancorous debate over the inclusion of sexual orientation as a bias category, it was watered down so that the law defined a hate crime by referring to the selection of victims "because of the defendant's bias or prejudice against a person or group." This language was so vague as to render the law constitutionally unsound and virtually worthless; a similar Utah statute was thrown out in 1999 by a state judge who called the law "incomplete" and "unenforceable." Consequently, Texas prosecutors rarely used the law -- and indeed, the cases pursued under the law in the ensuing years numbered exactly two.

Bush, however, had already made clear where he stood: "I've always said all crime is hate crime," he told a March 1999 news conference. "People, when they commit a crime, have hate in their heart. And it's hard to distinguish between one degree of hate and another."

But the governor was on the verge of launching his ultimately successful campaign to capture the presidency, and he had already made clear he intended to present to the voters a vision of "compassionate conservatism" -- a platform that suggested some moderation on social issues. At the same time, any bill approved in Texas that would expand hate-crimes categories to include gay-bashing, or might otherwise grant "special rights" to gays, was certain to attract the wrath of the Christian right, who constituted one of the Republicans' chief national constituencies.

So when State Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston introduced a bill in the 1999 Texas Legislature to replace the state's weak hate-crimes law, Bush chose to take, officially, no position on its passage. Indeed, when it passed the House eight-three to sixty-one, Bush said he would consider the bill if the Senate passed it. Then, quietly, his office went to work to kill it in the Senate, reportedly at the behest of Bush's political director, Karl Rove.

The bill faced difficulties anyway; Texas legislative rules severely limit the length of time bills are allowed to linger between houses, and Senate Republicans promptly set about sidetracking the measure in the Criminal Justice Committee, where it remained. Supporters then turned to their trump card: James Byrd's family, who came to Austin in May to lobby Bush for his support.

Byrd's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Renee Mullins, met with Bush on May 6 in his office. Accompanying her were a cousin, Darrell Verrett; state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, a Democrat from Houston; and a gay-rights lobbyist.

Mullins later described the meeting: "I went in there pleading to him. I said that if he helped me move it along I would feel that [James] hadn't died in vain. . . . [Rep.] Thompson said, 'Governor Bush, what Renee's trying to say is, Would you help her pass the bill?' And he said, 'No.' Just like that.
"He had a nonchalant attitude, like he wanted to hurry up and get out of there. It was cold in that room."

A week later, after a Bush staffer met with the Republican caucus, the Senate officially let the bill die in committee. However, the matter would continue to haunt Bush.

The facts of the NAACP ad campaign are also rather at odds with Williams' characterization of the situation. They began running shortly after Bush rather blatantly misstated, during his nationally televised second debate with Al Gore, his position on hate-crimes laws and his handling of the legislation in Texas (as well as the outcome of the Byrd murder trials). Also from the text (pp. 112-113):

James Byrd's family was outraged [by Bush's debate performance] but not surprised. Renee Mullins in particular was angry about Bush's performance, saying: "It was just another way of him misleading the public. He didn't have the statistics right."

The NAACP, which had supported the Byrd family's efforts in Texas, made a national campaign issue out of Bush's handling of bias-crime laws, with the family in a starring role. It prepared a series of television, radio and newspaper ads questioning the governor's commitment to racial justice, featuring Renee Mullins saying: "I went to Governor George W. Bush and begged him to help pass a Hate Crimes Bill in Texas. He just told me no."

The Bush camp responded testily: "Throughout the process, Governor Bush has treated the Byrd family with a great deal of respect," spokesman Ray Sullivan said. "He spoke to them prior to Mr. Byrd's funeral. He gave forty-five minutes of his time to meet with Miss Mullins. The governor's office helped to fund the prosecution of Mr. Byrd's killers."

But in truth, no one in the Byrd family could recall Bush phoning the family -- and in fact, he had stayed away from the funeral by suggesting that the atmosphere was too "politically charged," even though other top state Republicans (including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) had shown up. Nor was the contribution from the governor's office to the prosecution anything out of the ordinary -- $100,000, or about an eighth of the actual costs (the federal government, in contrast, contributed about $250,000).

Reality notwithstanding, Republicans in short order turned the NAACP's attack ads into a liability for Democrats, accusing the civil-rights group of "reprehensible" behavior for linking Bush to the Byrd killing. By the time the election rolled around in early November, conservative commentators offered as conventional wisdom the idea that the ads "implied that George W. Bush killed James Byrd." Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter featured the meme in her later book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, suggesting that Bush's support for the penalty should have mollified his critics, but instead, "they would not rest until the killers were found guilty of 'hate' and forced to attend anger-management classes."

The ads, of course, reasonably took Bush to task for his awful record on hate-crimes legislation, but with an emotional twist. Yes, it was a gut punch -- and conservatives responded in kind.

It's too bad Juan Williams couldn't be bothered to at least describe the actual content of the ads. Or perhaps explain just where in Bush's speeches or policy statements he opposed hate crimes out of a concern for prosecutorial abuse. And is there any mention of Bob Jones University here?

But then, that would make his job as an apologist that much harder all over again.
____

[Pssst. Death on the Fourth of July is supposed to be hitting the shelves this week. More soon.]

Right-wing creep

Speaking of right-wing politics creeping into the mainstream ...

Has anyone else noticed that one of the candidates for the Showtime "reality" show American Candidate -- in which average Americans compete to become the contestant chosen to be an "official" candidate for president -- is none other than Richard Mack?

Yes, that Richard Mack. The fellow who was the NRA's "law enforcement officer of the year" at the same time he was touring the country promoting militias. A quick profile from In God's Country:

Richard Mack. An Arizona sheriff who gained notoriety for refusing to enforce the Brady gun-control law in his county, Mack is a disciple of the late W. Cleon Skousen, a Mormon conspiracy theorist and John Birch Society pillar. Mack travels the nation giving seminars on how to resist the New World Order, embodied in gun-control measures, and he recommends militias as an effective step. The National Rifle Association named him the organization's "Law Enforcement Officer of the Year" for 1995. Mack's drawing card is gun control, but often a point of emphasis is what he calls the "myth of the separation of church and state."

Mack was defeated in his bid for re-election in Arizona in 1998 and wound up moving about in search of fresh causes, first in Nevada and then Utah, where he currently resides.

Of course, Mack is only one of several hundred contestants, and it figures that at least one or two extemist figures would creep into this list. Moreover, at this point it's hard to tell if his 516 supporters are even significant. It will be noteworthy, however, if Mack moves on from the early rounds.

In the meantime, voters in Mississippi's third congressional district will have the option of voting for an independent candidate who bills himself as "Jim Giles, White Patriot". A quick review of Giles' Web site reveals certain predilections:

And don't forget to Practice tolerance!!

Stand next to a tree and let the dogs piss on your new shoes.

Wander through a ghetto about 2:00 AM and let the brothers have a great time stomping your white ass.

When you catch a stud pumping up your wife, just smile and say "Excuse it please."

When a nog rapes your daughter, please understand that he was caught in the throes of an irresistible impulse.

Stand under a statue and let the pigeons shit on your head.

When a mestiza tosses a crap filled diaper onto your lawn, tell her the lawn is big enough for more.

When a ricer steals your cat for his next meal, ask him if he'd also like your dog.

When a mugger takes your wallet, tell him he's also welcome to your jacket, shoes and watch.

When a scum bag is doing a pipe number on your BMW, thank him and let him know you wanted to buy a new car anyway.

Be tolerant. Pretend you are a roll of toilet paper. Be happy with what happens and thank God for blessing you so.

Of course, he happens to be running primarily against Chip Pickering, a conservative Republican who gets to come off looking positively enlightened when contrasted with a Giles.

Seceding from the world

This story is worth noting, though there are reasons to be skeptical:

Group promotes secession from U.S.

A Texas group wants conservative Christians to move to South Carolina -- 12,000 at a time -- to form a biblically inspired government and secede from the United States.

Decrying a national tolerance of abortion and gay marriage, and the teaching of evolution, ChristianExodus.org hopes to achieve a majority of like-minded Christians in the state by 2016, the planned year of secession.

Scholars say the group is symptomatic of an alarming rise of separatist sentiment that is particularly strong in the South.

The piece later reports that the organization is run by a 28-year-old Texan named Cory Burnell, but notes that he is operating in conjunction with the League of the South, an openly secessionist neo-Confederate group with strong connections in South Carolina.

A quick visit to the ChristianExodus.org Web site -- and especially a survey of the group's position statements -- makes clear pretty quickly that this is a neo-Confederate version of the "white homeland" fantasy promoted by Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations and others in which white supremacists would move to northern Idaho en masse. Another version of this was the Montana Freemen's fantasy of creating a "constitutional" sovereign state in Jordan, Montana.

Like those other movements, there was an assumption that the local populace would welcome them with open arms, which turned out not to be the case in Idaho and Montana -- and may or may not be in South Carolina:

Burnell is relying on local groups to help accommodate his fellow Christian secessionists, who will need jobs and homes.

"It's a movement that appeals to us because we're also in favor of state rule," said James Layden, chairman of the S.C. League of the South. "If things continue to slide toward perversion, we're going to have to do something."

The alliance is a natural one, many say.

Burnell's plan is an outgrowth of the Christian Reconstruction movement, a backlash against the Civil Rights advances of the 1960s, Potok said.

Such movements often combine fundamentalist theology with Confederate nostalgia, a mix that can be traced back to the writings of Robert Dabney, chaplain to Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.

The creation of ChristianExodus.org is just another sign that separatist sentiment is rising in the South, said Potok. (Potok pointed out that Texas already has its own neo-Confederate secessionist movement called The Republic of Texas.)

Burnell's program "is very, very similar to the original Confederacy," said Harry Singleton, a professor of religion and philosophy at Benedict College. "Basically what they're trying to do is re-establish a reality where for them the divine and the secular mesh."

At this point Burnell's fantasy appears to be just that and little more. It bears watching, though, to see if his plan bears any kind of strange fruit.

Terry Nichols and the truth

Things certainly looked grim for Terry Nichols last week after the Oklahoma City bombing jury spent only four hours deliberating in convicting him of 161 counts of first-degree murder as well as arson and conspiracy charges. Justifiably so.

So it was quite a surprise, really, when the same jury proved incapable of sentencing Nichols to death last weekend.

For those keeping track, we are now exactly back to where we were at the end of Nichols' first trial: Nichols will spend the rest of his life behind bars, but he will not face the death penalty. The end result, then, was that the Oklahoma City trial achieved mostly nothing, at a cost to the Oklahoma taxpayers estimated at about $10 million.

The L.A. Times story touches on this aspect:

The jury's inability to agree on a sentence renewed charges that the case was motivated by vengeance and was a waste of energy and resources.

"The politics of the death penalty need to be addressed," said Garvin A. Isaacs, a Oklahoma City attorney who lost two friends to the bombing. "I've just had bad feelings about this whole exercise. When you look at the fact that this man is not going anywhere and will never hurt another person, it seems to me that reason should apply. I just don't understand this. It makes no sense."

Certainly, the trial took a toll on the jury, the majority of whom favored a death sentence, as the Oklahoman reported:

Jurors said they voted repeatedly, with outcomes of 8-4 and 7-5. The majority always wanted death for Nichols for the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

... Jurors Saturday said they were upset and frustrated by the outcome.

Juror Joseph Reynolds, who voted for execution, said one question was asked "over and over and over" in the deliberations. If this crime doesn't justify the death sentence, what one would?

He said those voting for life without parole never could give an answer.

He said the deaths of 19 children inside the federal building -- most in the day care -- were reason enough for a death sentence.

"It was their contention that he might be able to do somebody some good someday," Reynolds said of the jurors against a death sentence. "They thought he might be able to talk to a prisoner and do him some good. ... They thought he might do his children some good, also."

Other accounts suggested that the jurors were influenced by Nichols' supposed conversion to Christianity. Meanwhile, the prosecutor questioned the dissenting jurors' honesty, but the complaint had no evidence to support it. Besides, as defense attorney W. Creekmore Wallace told the Oklahoman, jurors often come to such decisions during the course of the trial:

Few jurors know in advance how they will respond when faced with the prospect of actually condemning someone to die, Wallace said -- especially a case as complex as Nichols'.

Lead defense attorney Brian Hermanson said jurors who rejected the death penalty were brave.

"While most people in Oklahoma did not want a second trial, almost everyone in Oklahoma has strong feelings about Terry," he said. "Those jurors knew that and still followed their consciences."

While most of the accounts so far have focused on jurors' perceptions of Nichols, few have mentioned a factor that may have played an equally significant role: the suggestion that Nichols was only a minor participant in the bombing plot, someone who was easily manipulated by Tim McVeigh, and that "others unknown" may have played more substantial roles.

Indeed, even before sentence was announced, the Oklahoman reported that many observers, including the families of victims, were hopeful that Nichols would be spared, precisely because he may know the names of those other participants.

This point did receive considerable attention, however, in Scott Gold's follow-up in the L.A. Times:

Perhaps the most unanticipated response came from those who believed Nichols was the state's best and last chance for unraveling what they saw as an enduring and maddening mystery. The end of the trial -- a quick conviction, but a division among jurors as to the sentence -- rekindled the belief among some that the Oklahoma City bombing plot was more complex than government officials had allowed, and involved people who had not been identified or caught.

Jannie Coverdale, 66, an Oklahoma City retiree whose two grandchildren died in the bombing, said she did not believe in what she saw as more fanciful conspiracy theories. But she said she believed others helped plot the bombing.

"And some people believe Terry Nichols is going to give up the information one of these years," she said. "These people operate in cells. I will always believe that other people were involved. And I don't believe that we should be crucified for that."

Relying on Nichols to reveal whether others were involved, if there were any others, is a longshot, acknowledged Gloria Chipman, an Edmond, Okla., resident whose husband, Robert, was killed in the blast.

"I hope they keep a good eye on him," she said. "But if he hasn't talked before, I don't think he's going to start now."

As regular readers will recall, I've described in detail previously the many facets of this point. Nichols' first trial, as I explored in a Salon piece about the John Doe 2 mystery, ended as it did precisely because there were serious doubts in the minds of both the jury and the judge that Nichols and McVeigh acted alone:

A more reasonable explanation for the construction of the bomb can be found in the testimony at Terry Nichols' trial. Charles Farley, a local sporting-goods rental shop worker, told the courtroom that he passed by Geary Lake at the time the bomb was being built, and saw not only the Ryder truck, a two-ton farm truck loaded with white bags of fertilizer and a car similar to McVeigh's getaway car, but at least five men working around the scene.

"Initially, when I got to the gate, there was one individual standing at the back of the farm truck, at the back left corner of the farm truck," Farley testified. "I seen three individuals standing down between the Ryder truck and the brown car, one of them standing in the -- in the road just a little bit, one of them leaning against the front of the Ryder truck and the other one just kind of standing between them."

Farley said he made to drive out of the area, pulling just beyond a gate nearby. "As soon as I was out, I seen an individual walking alongside of the farm truck. He was probably at the cab when I first seen him. And I was really going slow. I mean, I was just creeping. And I was going to roll the window down and ask him if he needed some help. And -- give me kind of a dirty look and I decided, well, if you're going to be that way, me too, and I'm just going to leave; so I just drove away."

Farley said he couldn't identify any of the other men, but he got a clear view of the man who shot him a look. Nichols' defense attorneys handed him a photo of a gray-bearded man and asked if that was him, and Farley said it was. The Rocky Mountain News later tracked down the identity of the man in the photo and found it was a sixtyish member of a local Kansas citizens' militia group named Morris Wilson.

Strangely, prosecutors did not attempt to rebut Farley's testimony, which came on the last full day of defense testimony. It was a crucial error in judgment. The jury convicted Nichols, but only of the lesser crime of taking part in the conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter, eschewing the murder and bombing charges that would have brought him the death penalty. Several of the jurors later said that Farley's testimony had convinced them that there was a wider conspiracy.

The jurors were not alone. In the sentencing phase of the trial, Judge Matsch himself indicated he was not convinced that everyone involved in the bombing had been brought to justice when he offered to lighten Nichols' life sentence in exchange for information about other participants. He said many questions about the case remained unanswered, adding: "If the defendant in this case, Mr. Nichols, comes forward with answers or information leading to answers to some of these questions, it would be something that the court can consider in imposing final sentence," Matsch said.

Nichols chose not to act on Matsch's offer precisely because the Oklahoma charges still awaited. But now that those have been resolved, Nichols is free to open up and begin identifying any other perpetrators. His lawyers may even offer such information as part of final sentencing; it will be interesting to see if Judge Steven Wilson, who has presided over this trial, will make an offer similar to Matsch's.

The mystery, it's clear, will live on -- and as long as it does so, the nation will be unable to resolve the serious issues raised by the Oklahoma City bombing. But there is some small comfort, at least, knowing that the sole person capable of revealing the truth will remain alive for the foreseeable future. Perhaps, at some point, that newly acquired Christian conscience will kick in.

Stick a fork in Ralph

Well, I've been arguing for some time now that Ralph Nader has clearly become a right-wing tool.

Now he's gone and removed all doubt:

Nader does Buchanan

There are many choice bits worth commenting on, but most noteworthy is Nader's pandering to the right on immigration:

PB: Should illegal aliens be entitled to social-welfare benefits, even though they are not citizens and broke into the country?

RN: I think they should be given all the fair-labor standards and all the rights and benefits of American workers, and if this country doesn’t like that, maybe they will do something about the immigration laws.

Why any progressive with two brain cells left to rub together would vote for Nader is beyond me. But then, that was what I thought in 2000.

An unexpected bulwark

I'm still trying to play catch-up, so it will be old news to many of you that University of Idaho computer-science student Sami Al-Hussayen was acquitted of a variety of terrorism charges late last week. The jury was hung on eight lesser charges. (Here's the Washington Post report on the trial's outcome.)

As I discussed earlier, the case was a real test of the Patriot Act -- and it came up far short. Indeed, there are grave questions now about whether its provisions are acceptable in the broader context of American constitutional law.

The L.A. Times zeroed in on this aspect of the verdict:

Acquittal in Internet Terrorism Case Is a Defeat for Patriot Act

The Boise case in fact is only the latest and most noteworthy of a series of failures by John Ashcroft's Justice Department to apply the law appropriately:

The verdicts point up a little-known reality of the Justice Department's war on terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While it has won scores of highly publicized guilty pleas in terrorism-related cases -- often by dropping the most serious charges -- its trial record is mixed.

It has taken only two other major terrorism-related cases to trial since the Sept. 11 attacks, and at least some defendants have been acquitted in each.

In one case involving an alleged domestic "sleeper cell" in Detroit, the judge has threatened to throw out all three convictions because prosecutors allegedly withheld exculpatory information.

The case against Al-Hussayen, the son of a retired Saudi education minister who had been studying in the U.S. for nine years, raised questions from the start.

His arrest 16 months ago shocked the local Muslim community in the college town of Moscow, where he was known as a family-oriented father of three who shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks organized a blood drive and a candlelight vigil that condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam.

He was eventually charged under a section of the Patriot Act that makes it illegal to provide "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists. The provision was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in Los Angeles in January, although that ruling was not binding on the Idaho case.

"In some respects, this was the broadest reach in all of the government's anti-terrorism prosecutions," said David Cole, a Georgetown University Law Center professor.

"When President Bush and [Vice President] Dick Cheney say, 'You have not shown me a single abuse of the Patriot Act,' I think people can now say, 'Look at the Sami Omar Al-Hussayen case -- a case where the government sought to criminalize pure speech and was resoundingly defeated.' "

Idaho is often reviled by liberals for many reasons, some of them well earned. But it's worth remembering that nearly a century ago, a Boise jury delivered a verdict that kept the nation's nascent labor movement from being crushed into oblivion (see J. Anthony Lukas' Big Trouble for the details). I wonder if another Boise jury has performed a similar national service.

Proto-fascist thuggery

[San Franscisco gallery owner Lori Haigh, after being assaulted for displaying an antiwar painting.]

This is how it begins. One little step at a time.

A death threat here. A fistfight there. An act of vandalism here. An assault there.

Keep adding them up, and pretty soon something takes root. Something dark and hateful.

Consider what's been happening in the past few weeks, as bad news has mounted atop of scandal for George W. Bush and his dwindling base of supporters.

Two weeks ago, there was the vicious attack on gallery owner Lori Haigh in San Francisco's North Beach area. Haigh'd had the audacity to display a painting by artist Guy Colwell that depicted the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. As the Chronicle reported:

Two days after the painting went up, Haigh arrived at her gallery to find broken glass, eggs and trash strewn outside her storefront. Haigh also began receiving the first of about 200 angry voice mails, e-mails and death threats.

A week ago, a man walked into the gallery and spat in Haigh's face. On Tuesday, Haigh decided to temporarily close the gallery and began to consider giving up on her dream of owning an art gallery. Just two days later, another man knocked on the door of the gallery and then punched Haigh in the face, knocking her out, breaking her nose and causing a concussion.

According to Fenimore Cooper, who has been tracking the Haigh case closely, haigh chose to close up shop, and Colwell has removed the painting from public display. So in a sense, despite the large show of support for Haigh, the thugs have won. For now.

It is worth noting that a San Francisco city supervisor named Aaron Peskin has proposed putting Colwell's painting on display at City Hall as a way of repudiating the intent of the thugs. Somewhat predictably, a local Republican dissented:

Prominent Republican Mike DeNunzio called Peskin's plan "a shame."

"I would have thought better of Aaron Peskin," he said. "There is no need for something like that -- obviously he has some need to preserve publicity."

DeNunzio said he would "have more respect for Peskin's conduct" if the supervisor were willing to decorate City Hall with images showing the other side of the story.

"Would he also like to put a photograph of the young man whose head was sawed off by terrorists?" asked DeNunzio. "Would he also like to put up photograph of the thousands of men and women who were murdered by Saddam Hussein?"

Sure, and he could display a picture of the Easter Bunny, too, since it would have as much bearing on a commentary regarding the behavior of American soldiers. There is no "other side of the story" when it comes to torture.

In any event, it's also worth noting that the thugs appear to still be at work:

In a related development, the owner of another North Beach art gallery -- Live Worms Gallery on Grant Avenue -- said someone has made a veiled threat against his gallery as well. Owner Kevin Brown said a man walked into his gallery and engaged him in a debate about the Capobianco attacks and the Iraq war in general. On his way out, he said, "you're next," according to Brown.

It may seem surprising that this played out in a liberal hotbed like San Francisco -- but that, frankly, is an accurate barometer of how broad, and how pervasive, the polarization that drives incidents like these has become. If it's getting bad in places like the Bay Area and Seattle, one can imagine what the atmosphere is like in rural areas, where antiwar sentiments are decidedly in the minority.

Only a few days before the Haigh incident, there was a similar problem with threats against an antiwar group in rural Nevada County, California.

A group of concerned parents planned to hold a meeting at the county schools office to talk about the presence of military recruiters in their schools. But when a cadre of local conservatives began calling in threats, the district simply cancelled the meeting, saying it feared "violence between Weiss' group and conservative activists."

Funny that, considering that conservatives were the folks making the threats:

When word spread that a room at the superintendent's office was to be used for the gathering, Republican Central Committee Chairman Tony Gilchrease raised an alarm via e-mail.

"Please note that this Peace Group of Anti-Americans and al Quida (sic) supporters, as far as I'm concerned, are holding their rally and 'training' at the Nevada County Superintendent of Schools office," Gilchrease wrote to several dozen area residents the day before the scheduled meeting.

"I suggest that each one of you that feel as outraged as I am about this, call Terry McAteer, a Republican and the Nevada County School Supt. and tell him just how you feel about allowing this traitorous activity to occur on Nevada County school owned property."

Gilchrease wasn't available for additional comment Wednesday evening.

After a brief article about the meeting appeared in The Union on Friday and Gilchrease sent out his e-mail, McAteer said he received several angry phone calls and was threatened verbally over the use of the room for Weiss' group.

McAteer said he neither took names of callers nor reported threats to police, but he said he chose to ask Weiss to move the meeting for the safety of all involved.

This is how it happens on the small, mostly unnoticed level -- what Ann Coulter affectionately calls a little "local fascism."

The most interesting development in this trend, however, is the way it appears to be coalescing on a national level -- aimed particularly at the antiwar wing of the liberal bloc, in the person of filmmaker Michael Moore.

I'm not a huge Moore fan [though he'll always have a place of affection in my heart for three things: 1) His marvelous interviews of Robert Miles in Blood in the Face; 2) his interview of James Nichols in Bowling for Columbine; and for his "Pedophiles for Buchanan" donation stunt detailed in Downsize This!, my all-time favorite bit of guerrilla politics]. The downside to Moore is that he plays fast and loose with facts too often, which makes him something of a loose cannon who can be as much embarrassment as asset.

There has already been a huge outcry over Moore's forthcoming film, Fahrenheit 9/11, partly because the Disney Corp. killed its distribution deal for the film due to its anti-Bush content. The movie is being released anyway, and it's garnering lots of attention, pro and con, all of which no doubt will make it a box-office hit.

It has all the earmarks of being a kind of cultural watershed, a reverse image, as it were, of Mel Gibson's The Passion. Where conservatives organized an off-the-boards campaign to drive out support for Gibson's anti-Semitic exercise in masochism, they appear poised to do the same to keep Moore's film from being shown.

There has recently appeared a Web site calling itself "Move America Forward" -- which in turn is being promoted by the right-wing Web site NewsMax -- that is dedicated to shutting down showings of Fahrenheit 9/11, at least in part by urging the public to contact theater owners directly. The result, according to What Really Happened, is that some of these owners "are reporting receiving death threats."

WRH also reports that it ran a DNS check on the "Move America Forward" site and found that it is owned by the San Francisco public-relations firm of Russo Marsh & Rogers. Sal Russo, one of the firm's principals, has extensive GOP ties, including service as an adviser for the "Recall Grey Davis" campaign. (Kurt Nimmo has been tracking these developments as well.)

None of this will ever be directly connected to George W. Bush, of course. There's no need. There are too many people out there willing to do whatever it takes to keep him in office. Whatever it takes.

[Many thanks to the many readers who wrote in about the Haigh case, including Jeremy at Fantastic Planet, who has some good posts of his own on the subject; Julius Civitatus, who also has more photos; as well as Suzanne, Jake, Martha, Thom, Kevin and George. I intended to post on it earlier, but delayed a bit to ensure it wasn't a hoax. It wasn't.]

Extremism as entertainment

Here's a disturbing story about the way extremist behavior and beliefs have been creeping into popular entertainment -- in this case, the tawdry world of professional wrestling:

CNBC financial analyst fired for making Nazi gestures during wrestling match

The case involves John "Bradshaw" Layfield, who also was employed by CNBC as a contributor, which had picked him up last month after an earlier stint with Fox News:

In an apparent attempt to draw a crowd response during his match against WWE champion Eddie Guerrero in Munich, eyewitness reports said Layfield goose-stepped around the ring and raised his arm numerous times in an Adolf Hitler salute. Such actions are illegal in Germany, although no criminal charges were brought against the 13-year wrestling veteran after the show.

In a statement, a CNBC spokesman said Layfield was fired because, "We find his behavior to be offensive, inappropriate and not befitting anyone associated with our network."

WWE also responded to the incident through a statement on its web site: "WWE and John Layfield deeply regret Mr. Layfield's actions in the ring at our event in Munich and apologize if it has offended or upset our fans. Mr. Layfield has been reprimanded for his actions."

The WWE apology deserves to be viewed with some skepticism, however. After all, Layfield's act has been going on for some time, and apparently with WWE approval:

Layfield, 36, was recently elevated to a main-event position on the WWE's Smackdown roster after his character was changed to portray him as an anti-immigration zealot, with Mexicans usually the targets of his prejudice during weekly Thursday telecasts on UPN.

The people responsible for this behavior likely will claim that Layfield's character is only a fictitious creation, but the fact remains that lending this kind of hate-mongering any shred of legitimacy is extraordinarily irresponsible.

Going nuts

When examining cases of extremist violence, I usually restrict myself to measured terms that accurately describe the conditions that lead to such acts. But sometimes, the only thing that can accurately be said is that the perpetrator simply went nuts.

That was the case with last Friday's rampage with an armored bulldozer by an enraged Colorado man who destroyed a number of businesses in the little town of Granby before finally becoming trapped. The man, a 52-year-old muffler-shop owner named Marvin Heemeyer, then shot himself.

By now, of course, this story is more than a week old (I was out of contact when it happened), which means it has already faded from public memory. But there is a quality to it that is worth a longer look -- particularly in certain aspects of the reaction to it.

There was relatively little discussion of the incident among bloggers, but over at the right-wing transmitter site Free Republic, there have been several threads devoted to discussing Heemeyer's rampage. Many of those posting have, of course, expressed their disgust with Heemeyer. But others, interestingly enough, have tried to make him out a martyr.

One thread in particular is devoted to painting Heemeyer as a victim of tyrannical local government officials:

Local resident and former muffler shop owner Marvin Heemeyer had finally had enough of being pushed around and told to go to hell by local politicians and public servants, who refer to themselves as "public officials" -- the people in charge!

Many of the commenters of on this thread continued in this vein, comparing Heemeyer to the Founding Fathers and other "patriots." A poster at another thread compared Heemeyer to Carl Drega (and this same thread at one time contained a link to "The Ballad of Carl Drega," but it has been since removed).

Carl Drega, you may recall, made headlines in 1997 when he went on a killing rampage in the little New Hampshire town of Columbia. He murdered four people -- a judge, a newspaper editor, and two state troopers -- at with a shotgun at point blank range before he was himself shot down. At his property, investigators "found at least 600 pounds of ammonium nitrate 'in a fairly elaborate system of tunnels' built beneath and adjacent to" Drega's home.

In short order, Drega -- who was a devotee of a variety of right-wing conspiracy theories -- became a martyr figure for the far right, a "true patriot" who decided he'd had enough and struck out on his own against government tyranny. These kinds of martyrs are the stock in trade for radical right-wing propagandists, both among white supremacists and Patriot/militia "constitutionalists" -- for earlier versions, see Gordon Kahl, Robert Mathews, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, and Benjamin Smith.

Drega's tale was even touted in the title of a book by Vin Suprynowycz that was a collection of extremist anti-government essays. Since then, Drega's name crops up whenever the far right talks about local zoning and land-use issues.

It appears the same sort of hero status will be Marvin Heemeyer's fate. See, for instance, this longer essay at the conspiracist site Rense.com (by the same author as the material that appeared at Free Republic) building a case for Heemeyer as a "Patriot" martyr.

Thus, it probably won't be surprising to see, in a little while, books and songs devoted to Heemeyer as the "little guy" who stood up to government tyranny by welding himself into a large machine and detroying his neighbors' businesses. Likewise, don't be surprised if we see a few more homemade "killdozers" cropping up around the landscape. Nothing inspires copycats, after all, like a good media event.

Coddling extremists

The GOP's little problem with extremism -- notably the neo-Confederate version -- has cropped back up in South Carolina, where one of the radicals who has been trying to take over the heritage-oriented Sons of Confederate Veterans, a fellow named Ron Wilson, is now running for the state Senate:

S.C. Senate candidate touts right of secession

Notably, Wilson is in the running for the GOP nomination:

Running as a Republican for an Anderson County seat in Tuesday’s primary, Wilson openly promotes the right of secession. He also wants to have "Confederate Southern Americans" designated a specific minority group, like Hispanics or African-Americans.

"Confederate Southern Americans are a separate and distinct people," Wilson said in a statement posted on the Internet. "As a people, Confederate Southern Americans are tired of being the 'whipping boy' for the rest of the country's racial problems."

Wilson has been significantly involved in recent years in the attempt to radicalize the Sons of Confederate Veterans by placing neo-Confederate ideologues in upper-echelon positions. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking this takeover attempt for some time now (a recent report follows up on this in-depth study of the matter); the SPLC also named Wilson as one of its "40 to Watch" catalogue of the nation's most powerful right-wing extremists.

And though Wilson and his apologists attempt to gloss over the extent of his activities as an extremist, one only need look at who's supporting his campaign now to get the bigger picture:

One Wilson contributor is Lexington County restaurant owner Maurice Bessinger, who gave Wilson $1,000. Several years ago, major food chains yanked Bessinger's barbecue sauce from their stores when it was revealed that Bessinger distributed pamphlets at his stores saying that slavery was God's will for blacks and that blacks were happier being slaves in America than free in Africa.

Wilson's opponents -- Bryant and Allen -- declined to discuss him. However, both acknowledged Wilson has a base of support with hundreds of Sons of Confederate Veterans members and their families who live in the Anderson area.

"Don't count Wilson out," said political scientist Neal Thigpen of Francis Marion University.

It will be interesting to see how national GOP officials respond if Wilson indeed wins the primary. It would be comparable, frankly, to David Duke's election to the Louisiana Legislature in the late 1980s.

A brief break

I'm off to the San Juans for a long weekend. Hope to see some orcas. Apologies for the light posting this week, but the batteries need recharging.

Attacking the providers

Blue Mountain Women's Clinic in Missoula, Montana, is one of those places doing important work in a forsaken environment, providing a range of great medical care for women in western Montana -- and yes, abortions and other reproductive choices.

It's important because in a place like Montana, as Mother Jones reported some time back, the Christian right's stealth campaign again abortion has focused on denying access to abortions by drying up the number of places able to provide them.

When I lived in Missoula, some good friends of mine worked at Blue Mountain. I knew that abortion was hardly the only work going on at the place -- but I also knew they felt strongly about keeping it available there, because it was choice that was increasingly not being offered elsewhere in the state and indeed the broader region, including Idaho, Wyoming and eastern Washington.

The place was burned to the ground in 1993 by a right-wing fanatic turned arsonist. The clinic kept running in other locations until a brand-new facility was built, thanks to a strong showing of support from the community.

This clinic was the target of frequent anti-abortion protests in the early 1990s, most of them organized by Operation Rescue, the ultra-right outfit associated with a couple of abortion-doctor murders in Florida. But after the arson, the protests largely went away.

Via Z Magazine, it appears the protesters have returned with a vengeance:

In September 2003, a person with well-known ties to Operation Rescue, Marilyn Hatch, set up camp at the clinic picketing and harassing patients and staff. With a long history of anti-choice activism, Hatch had three previous arrests, all from 1994, when she was apparently traveling throughout the country on her "mission" to obstruct clinic access. In March 1994, she was arrested during an Operation Rescue blockade of a clinic entrance in Birmingham, Alabama. In May of that year, she was arrested for obstructing the entrance to the Planned Parenthood in Waco, Texas. In June, she was arrested for violating FACE (the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act) when she and four others chained themselves to old cars in front of a clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During that year, Hatch was on the payroll full time for Operation Rescue.

In her currently resurrected career of clinic harassment, Hatch's strategies to harass, confuse, and intimidate patients has become more aggressive. During her first weeks at the clinic, she began by telling patients that she was "here to help them" by providing counseling. ("Sidewalk counseling" is currently in vogue with anti-choice protestors throughout the country.) As those techniques failed to draw any free "counseling" takers, she changed her tactics and began shouting misinformation at women and their partners as they entered the clinic. Clutching her bible, she would yell, "Ask about the breast cancer link." (The National Institute of Health reported in March 2003 that there is no medical evidence linking breast cancer to abortion.) She would often shout at the partners, "Be a man, don’t kill your baby" or, "This will damage you for life, you won't be able to have babies again."

Hatch also targets clinic staff. Her tactics include photographing staff and their license plates and trying to befriend staff by telling them, "You can get a better job" or leaving business cards for "abortion workers," urging them to report employers for discrimination and payroll fraud. In one instance, Hatch singled me out as the director of the clinic and threatened to tell my neighbors that I kill babies.

Why is this happening now? Possibly because of the direction coming from the top:

Public discourse on abortion has become more heated during George Bush Jr.'s presidency. One of his first actions after taking office in 2001 was to reinstate the global gag rule on abortion. The gag rule prohibits family planning organizations that receive U.S. funds from using their own funds to counsel about or refer for abortion or to lobby their own government for a change in abortion laws.

Bush's nomination of nine conservative judges to federal circuit courts has also reignited the abortion debate, as most of the nominees either refused to answer questions about their positions on abortion or were blatantly and vocally anti-choice. Circuit court judges are often nominated to the Supreme Court and with President Bush's public statements in favor of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, national organizations such as NAF, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization of Women pressured Democrats to filibuster the nominations of these extremist judges.

Bush's policies to withhold the $34 million that Congress had traditionally appropriated for the United Nations' International Family Planning Program (UNFPA), has damaged the U.S.'s standing internationally. The fund provides the largest internationally funded source of population assistance to developing countries, providing reproductive and maternal health services to millions of men and women in more than 150 countries. The Fund's programs help impoverished and underserved women throughout the world. Bush's withdrawal of support was based on the funds' work to promote contraceptive education and access to safe abortion services.

With Bush on their side, extreme right pundits have set the climate for renewed aggression aimed at abortion clinics, physicians, and families looking to access their safe and legal right to reproductive health care.

The religious right has been especially vocal in pushing Bush farther rightward on the abortion issue. The result is that Bush's sympathy for anti-abortion extremists has become fairly clear.

That sets an example that plays out in dangerous ways. And it genuinely harms women in the process.

Media mavens

My favorite moment from Alexandra Polier's excellent piece on the attempt to smear John Kerry with a concocted "intern scandal":

One reporter had a little girl call up, assuming I wouldn’t hang up on a child. They even made her say, "Can I talk to Alex?" And when I said, "Yes, it's me," a reporter jumped on the line. CNN's Zain Verjee wrote beseeching notes, slipping them under the front gate. It was like a horror movie where the zombies are on the other side of the door and then an arm comes through the window. Stuck with Kerry's denial, each of the American networks had hired a local fixer to approach me for a big sit-down. "Tell me it's true and we're on the next plane to Nairobi!" ABC's Chris Vlasto e-mailed hopefully.

But of course, since it wasn't true, they stayed put. Funny about that.

As always, Atrios is your one-stop shop for the lowdown on Vlasto (including a recent shot).

What a nasty piece of work Vlasto is. And people wonder why I think the chief problem with the media has been its takeover by conservative ideologues who will do literally anything to attack Democrats. It's precisely the kind of behavior that conservatives consistently accuse nonpartisan journalists of engaging in, usually when they're simply doing their jobs.

Lying liars

From Liz Rich, via Mark Crispin Miller:

George W. Bush last February, on Meet The Press:

Russert: If the Iraqis choose, however, an Islamic extremist regime, would you accept that, and would that be better for the United States than Saddam Hussein?

President Bush: They're not going to develop that. And the reason I can say that is because I'm very aware of this basic law they're writing. They're not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion.

George W. Bush yesterday, in a Rose Garden press conference:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that's fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly --

THE PRESIDENT: Chalabi?

Q Yes, with Chalabi.

THE PRESIDENT: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.

Mr. Brahimi made the decision on Chalabi, not the United States. Mr. Brahimi was the person that put together the group. And I haven't spoken to him or anybody on the ground as to why Chalabi wasn't taken.

In terms of information --

Q I guess I'm asking, do you feel like he misled your administration, in terms of what the expectations were going to be going into Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't remember anybody walking into my office saying, Chalabi says this is the way it's going to be in Iraq.

[Extended digression, smothered with patriotic homilies]

Manipulated by Chalabi

My friend Paul deArmond, aka Warbaby, of World in Conflict is an extraordinarily sharp-eyed analyst. Sometimes he overreaches, and sometimes he misses the mark, but more often than not he's on the money. I went back recently and reread a piece he cobbled together nearly a year ago regarding developments in Iraq, and was struck by its prescience:

INC and blowback

What has not been widely discussed is the central role the Iraqi National Congress (INC) played in the road to war -- not as puppet but instigator. The role of the INC in generating unreliable "intelligence" on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD -- meaning nuclear, chemical and biological weapons) has been mentioned in passing in the media since the occupation started to go sour. Once the investigations move beyond the ability of some as-yet unidentified foreign operation to plant childishly crude forgeries in the State of the Union address, the INC's steady stream of questionable intelligence will deserve more scrutiny.

And that's where the afore-mentioned list of bogus assumptions in the Bush war plan become very interesting. You see, all of them trace back to a single source. If you guessed the Iraqi National Congress, you win the exploding cigar!

His conclusions back then, in particular, seem especially relevant:

The White House allowed the false information to circulate through the echo chamber of the media. The hawks made baseless allegations that would move America closer to war, the INC dutifully provided the "intelligence" selected to reinforce their masters' views, the media uncritically echoed the leaks and statements by "unnamed officials" -- and the public was manipulated.

The intentions of the parties involved may be arguable, but the effect is indistinguishable from psychological warfare against the national interest.

The debate over whether the misinformation was a product of intentional deceit or incompetent gullibility misses one important point: the United States government needs to be protected from bad intelligence and particularly needs to be defended against external manipulation. In this case, the counter-intelligence apparatus failed to defend the integrity of the intelligence process and the country has been manipulated by misinformation disguised as "intelligence."

The roots of bigotry

The estimable Kynn Bartlett of Shock and Awe has written a terrific column for The Californian that tackles the sticky issues raised by the recent rise of the specter of white supremacism among high-schoolers in the San Diego area and elsewhere:

Is 'City of hate' back?

Significantly, Kynn points out that the bigotry is not merely relegated to matters of race:

The roots of intolerance grow deep in our community. It`s not always just about race. Lake Elsinore Unified School District Superintendent Sharron Lindsay said that students with disabilities and gay students have been targets of hate.

"Anyone who is different in any way," she told The Californian recently.

Schools can`t deal effectively with this kind of intolerance, because it doesn`t actually come from the schools. It only manifests there.

Hatred begins in the home. The evils of racism, homophobia, disdain for people with disabilities, and hatred for those who are different need to be fought throughout the community, not just in the high schools.

These kinds of problems don`t grow in a vacuum. The attitudes of intolerance which dominate our community led directly to events such as the Temescal Canyon fights as well as hate crimes on a Murrieta campus.

Kynn goes on to point out that the Lake Elsinore area has an unfortunate history of real bigotry deep in its roots.

The reality is that nearly every locale in America has similar roots. And the problems of bigotry are, as a result, extremely difficult to eliminate.

Conservatives often react in horror to attempts to stamp it out -- mostly by labeling it "identity politics" -- by pretending that racism and other kinds of pernicious bigotry are part of our distant past. But, as Faulkner famously put it: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."