Your Librul Media At Work: Minneapolis Paper Highlights The Right's Imitation Confab, Ignores Netroots

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

 [Keith Ellison gives the Netroots keynote on Saturday: the Minnesota politician the Star-Tribune chose to ignore.]

I sat down to have a nice departing breakfast at my hotel in Minneapolis yesterday morning after a satisfying Netroots Nation, and as is my custom on such occasions, I bought the local Sunday paper. In this case, that meant buying a copy of the Star-Tribune.

Now, I will admit I am impressed that the paper has thus far refused to succumb to the Shrinkage phenomenon that is reducing modern papers to the size of postage stamps. The Star Tribune is still printed on standard old broadsheet paper, and it is graphically quite appealing as well.

But what I went there to read was to see what coverage they had of Netroots -- easily the largest gathering of political bloggers in the country, and one of the most powerful gatherings of progressive activists in the country as well.

Now, I expect that local readers will tell me that the Minneapolis paper is a long-established right-wing Republican rag, and gauging from their Sunday editorial-page lineup, that certainly is the impression I came away with. And no doubt it is despised by the PowerLines of the world for not being right-wing enough, which then becomes their excuse -- "See? Both sides hate us! Therefore, we must be exactly right in the middle!"

So to be honest, I wasn't really surprised to see that the Star-Tribune, as I perused it over my coffee and hashbrowns this morning, had actually completely ignored the presence of Netroots Nation in their city and carried not a single word about events there. And indeed, if you check their archives, they couldn't even be bothered to send a single reporter over to the convention center this week to write about the many luminaries there. Instead, their coverage consisted entirely pieces filed by Associated Press reporters. Oh, wait -- there was one piece by a columnist that talked about Netroots and its deeper meaning without any indication he'd ever set foot in the convention.

That's just embarrassing.

But then I nearly blorted my coffee out onto the rag when I came across Bob Von Sternberg's loving coverage of the Republican luminaries at the Right Online conference, complete with big pictures of Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, which meant that they not only sent a reporter, there was a Star-Trib photographer there as well. (Von Sternberg wrote a second piece, for online readers, about Right Online as well.

There was no indication whatsoever that the Star-Trib was aware that Right Online has ALWAYS been a deliberately imitative gathering -- they follow Netroots Nation around like a pathetic wannabe girlfriend, a creepy stalker, setting up shop in whatever city we gather in. Which means that next year, they'll be in Providence, Rhode Island too, no doubt.

Previous gatherings were truly pathetic. They first tried this in Austin, and it was hilariously tiny. The same thing happened in Pittsburgh and in Vegas last year.

But this year they made it ridiculously cheap for anyone to attend, thanks to heavy Koch Brothers underwriting, as Tina Dupuy observes. So they were able to boast some decent attendance numbers -- I saw one site claim there were in excess of 1,200 people, and my independent sources inform me that's probably correct (and not in the realm of the mythical 1.7 million who marched at the GlennBeckpalooza in Washington that in fact gathered about 90,000 people).

Moreover, the story did end with this nugget that in fact is almost completely wrong:

Meanwhile, a couple of blocks away, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, RightOnline's liberal counterpart, Netroots Nation, was holding its own conference with Sen. Al Franken headlining.

Yep, that's the entirety of the Star Tribune reporting staff's coverage of Netroots Nation. Meanwhile, Right Online gets two long pieces, photos in the print edition, and several videos in the online edition.

Moreover, it's true that Franken was indeed the keynote speaker Saturday morning -- but he was only one of several keynoters throughout the conference weekend. The "headliner" at the convention, if anyone, was Rep. Keith Ellison on Saturday night.

Now, I can just hear the Star-Trib's reporters and editors explaining their thinking: Pawlenty and Bachmann are from Minnesota, after all, and deserve priority for their readers, right?

That sounds good. Until you realize that both Franken and Ellison are from ... wait ... I need to look this up ... oh yeah! Minnesota! Huh! Whoda thunk?

You know, I love when mainstream reporters whine that blogs ruined their business and made them irrelevant. Incidents like this demonstrate just how they have managed to do that all by themselves. Bloggers just are filling the vacuum created by the black holes remaining in the spaces that were supposed to be occupied by their journalistic standards.

You may want to share your thoughts with the folks at the Star-Tribune about those standards. You can call their front desk at (612) 673-4000, or you can write Von Sternberg at vonste@startribune.com and let him know what you think. It might be useful to make your feeling known to Political Editor Patricia Lopez too.

Please be polite and thoughtful. It makes a difference.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez At Netroots: Latinos Want To Vote For President Obama, But Being Taken For Granted Will Kill Their Turnout

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I took part in a small-group discussion at Netroots Nation this morning with Rep. Luis Gutierrez organized by the fine folks at America's Voice, and afterward I managed to squeeze in a brief interview kind of summing up the discussion.

The upshot: President Obama's political team may well be endangering his ability to gain re-election by deferring action on immigration -- not merely in passing comprehensive immigration, but in providing administrative relief for DREAM Act-eligible students, and laying off its draconian "Secure Communities" initiative -- because it wants to tackle these issues in its his second term.

As the congressman said:

GUTIERREZ: That's what he doesn't understand, I think, is that people just won't show up. And you know what? There's nothing more, I believe, that the Republicans want, than to see us just kind of sit on our hands. 'Cause guess what -- they're voting. They're not staying home. You can say in the polls they're 10 points behind, but they're still going to show up the next day. Our folks? We need to be fed.

C&L: Well, if you're being taken for granted ...

GUTIERREZ: And we have been. And unfortunately, we have an administration who made us a promise about bringing about comprehensive immigration reform. Now, are there challenges this president -- are there challenges the president of the United States could have been defeated on? Yeah. But you see, what they want is someone who goes down fighting.

I would say that the congressman is talking about a lot of progressives from across a wide spectrum.

But this is a significant case of short-sightedness. Latinos delivered the vote for Obama and Democrats in 2008. They saved the Senate for Democrats in 2010. And now the administration's inaction threatens to wash all that down the drain -- along with their own re-election chances. That's plain stupid.

More Right-Wing Violence: Notorious Montana Militiaman Takes Shots At Cops, Disappears Into Woods

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[Videos from KPAX and KECI.]
Militiamen are really a bunch of bad pennies who just keep popping back up:

LOLO - A former militia leader who went on the run Sunday after allegedly shooting at Missoula County sheriff's deputies seems well-equipped for a long sojourn in the woods, given the caches of weapons, food and gear already discovered, Undersheriff Mike Dominick said Monday.

Some 65 county, city, state and federal authorities combed a 30-square-mile area west of Lolo on Monday for David Burgert, who once led Project 7, a Flathead County militia group accused of plotting to assassinate judges and law enforcement officers in hopes of provoking a war with the federal government and NATO.

Burgert holds intense anti-government views, and has survivalist skills, Dominick said.
"He has that type of mentality where he believes in training, in preparation," he said. "... This guy seems to have had a plan."

Authorities discovered ammunition in the Jeep Cherokee in which Burgert originally fled on Sunday and also located a second car, loaded with ammunition, food and camping gear, that they believe belongs to Burgert. They're searching for yet another that Dominick described as a tan or red Jeep Wagoneer-type vehicle dating to the 1980s.

I reported on Burgert's original spree back when it happened:

Kalispell made the news last year when a militia outfit called Project 7 was broken up by local police. Its leader, a 38-year-old named David Burgert, was arrested for jumping bail on an earlier conviction for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest; when captured, officers uncovered him in possession of an arms cache of about 30 weapons and some 30,000 rounds of ammo.66

What was even more disturbing was the simultaneous discovery of his plans for this materiel: To run amok in a killing spree against local authorities. Burgert had organized a team of about 10 people to target some 26 city and county officials, including some of those same police officials, mayors and judges who came out for the potluck last summer.

Burgert, who received support from the usual far-right suspects, eventually pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges in the case, and faces a maximum 10-year prison term when he's sentenced in September. But no one has ever been charged in the alleged conspiracy, partly because any evidence that the plot extended much beyond Burgert's fantasies was not very strong. He has countered by filing a lawsuit against the FBI and Montana's state Division of Criminal Investigation.

Of course, we've been reporting for quite some time now that the Patriot movement of the 1990s is fully resurgent in 2011, thanks in large part to its close associations with the Tea Party movement. Indeed, we've reported that places like Montana are significant hotbeds for this kind of extremist revival.

David Holthouse at Media Matters observes that Burgert's fugitive run is occurring in the context of a fully resurgent extremist right in western Montana:

This coming Saturday for example, the Montana-based militia group Flathead Liberty Bell, which Cox helped get off the ground in 2009, is sponsoring a survivalist "Preparedness Expo" at the Valley Victory Church in Kalispell, Montana.

Scheduled workshops include Political Structures, Wild Foods and Herbal Remedies, Home Schooling, Animal Care, Self-Defense...and much more.

Also featured will be Special Presentations by radical right luminaries including Ruby Ridge icon Randy Weaver, who will be autographing copies of The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge, and Stewart Rhodes, ex-Ron Paul aide and founder of the Oath Keepers, a national organization of police and soldiers who've sworn to disobey orders they deem unconstitutional.

Glenn Beck Suggests Americans Need To Get A Gun To Deal With Obama And Sunstein

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[H/t Media Matters.]

Apparently Glenn Beck is planning on going out the door at Fox News with a deep, lingering slime trail behind him. He reached a new low on his show yesterday:

BECK: By the way, the U.N. is also working on a small-arms treaty -- which purports to fight terrorism, but if implemented, Second Amendment proponents like me believe that it will only enforce rougher licensing requirements, create more red tape, and possibly an international gun registry. As if terrorists give a flying crap about registering their gun or their machete before they kill you.

This will do nothing but make it harder for you to get a gun. Why would you get a gun? [Points to picture of President Obama and adviser Cass Sunstein.] To prepare for tough times. That's why.

He then went on to explain that Sunstein and Obama were apparently destroying America's energy infrastructure by regulating coal-fired power plants out of existence -- while referencing Dan Froomkin's HuffPo piece on Sunstein ... a piece that actually is all about how Sunstein has hardly been a slash-and-burn environmental regulator.

Naturally, Beck will laugh this off as just a coincidental timing thing. But given his track record, that deniability is simply no longer plausible.

Our Degraded Discourse: Fox News' Eric Bolling Goes Flat-out Racist -- And The Rest Of The Media Yawn

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

You know that we've reached an important juncture in the degradation of our national discourse by the American Right when a white anchor on Fox Business can skip the company's ample supply of dog whistles and go right for the David Duke bullhorn in a segment attacking the presence of leading black figures visiting the White House, renaming it the "White Hizzy" -- and hardly anyone blinks an eye.

Fortunately, Media Matters is calling it out:

During the opening of Fox Business' Follow the Money on Friday, Eric Bolling teased a segment about the White House hosting the president of Gabon by saying, "Guess who's coming to dinner? A dictator. Mr. Obama shares a laugh with one of Africa's kleptocrats. It's not first time he's had a hoodlum in the hizzouse."

As you can see, the segment went on for several agonizing minutes as the overwhelmingly white panel indulged in the most crude and noxious kind of racial stereotyping we've seen since cruising through the Stormfront Website. Bolling was joined by Fox's platinum-blonde Sandra Smith in calling it "the White Hizzy":

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): There are good guys. There are bad guys out there. We've got to stay engaged. SMITH: We don't have to have them at home, though.

BOLLING: Thank you, Smitty.

SMITH: We don't have to have them in our White House and entertaining them.

BOLLING: Where? Where? Where? Go ahead, say it. Where?

SMITH: In the hizzy.

BOLLING: In the hizzy. Thank you, Smitty.

SMITH: Do we really have to have them in the White Hizzy?

We've observed previously that Bolling appears to be trying to out-crazy Glenn Beck in an attempt to win his soon-to-be-vacated 5 pm EDT slot. Guess that means, at Fox News, doing your best George Wallace imitation.

Eric Boehlert has some more thoughts on that.

But most disturbing is that this isn't raising any eyebrows anywhere else in the so-called liberal media. Guess that envelope has been pushed so far that this is now the new normal.

Albert Gaxiola On Trial In The Flores Family Murders: A Special Kind Of Depravity

[Albert Gaxiola, left, in the courtroom, with his attorney, Steve West]

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]
 
The case of Shawna Forde and her killer Minutemen -- who in 2009 broke into a home in rural Arizona and killed a 9-year-old girl and her father -- is really, as you'd imagine, a story featuring a cast of depraved characters, led of course by Forde, who was convicted in February and now sits on Arizona's death row. Likewise, the gunman in the case, Jason Bush -- a onetime Aryan Nations member and general nutcase -- is now awaiting execution.

But if the case prosecutors presented holds up -- and the evidence, frankly, is powerfully damning -- there was a special level of depravity reached by Albert Gaxiola, the third defendant in the case, whose trial I have been covering this week under the auspices of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. That's because Gaxiola had been a longtime friend of the Flores family and was adored by their two little girls, Brisenia and Alexandra -- and yet he evidently not only set them up for murder, he accompanied the gang of killers inside as they ransacked the home and Brisenia lay dying on a couch.

I knew some of this from having talked with people in Arivaca in February. But it all came out in court this week, when the mother and only survivor of the home invasion, Gina Gonzalez, testified to that effect.

Dave Ricker, the Green Valley News reporter who really has owned this story since it happened, has the details:

After hearing a recording of a 9-1-1 emergency center call made by the surviving victim in the fatal home invasion the jury heard Gonzalez relive for the third time from the witness stand the night she was wounded and her husband and daughter were shot to death before her eyes.

After she had been shot, Gonzalez decided to play dead in hopes of surviving. “I laid on the floor very scared,” she said. “I heard Junior taking his last breaths.”

Eventually, the tall male, Jason Bush, who was doing the shooting of the victims, addressed Brisenia, who by now had awakened. Bush asked her about the location of her older sister. “He was telling her that nothing was going to happen to her and that everything was going to be okay,” Gonzalez related. “She was crying a lot. She was scared.”

Brisenia told the Bush that her sister was staying with her grandmother’s house. Brisenia was asked if the body on the floor in front of the love seat was her sister. “At first she said yes. Then she tips over and looks and says ‘that’s my mom; why did you shoot my mom?’” Gonzalez said.

At that point, Bush paused to reload his weapon as Brisenia watched. “I could hear him put the bullets in the gun,” Gonzalez said. “She was begging him not to shoot her.”
What followed were two more blasts from his gun in the direction of her daughter. “He shot her. I saw her fly back. He shot her twice,” Gonzalez said.

By that time the female intruder told her compatriots that they had to leave, but they paused first to search the Flores home for money and drugs. After they left, Gonzalez did what any mother would do. “I sat up and grabbed Brisenia. I was telling her not to die on me,” she testified. “She was shaking really hard.”

Gonzalez was able to get to a portable phone on an ottoman close by, thus she call 9-1-1. “I asked them what I should do,” she recalled.

At that point, Gonzalez notice that the female leader of the home invasion crew, Shawna Forde, re-entered the home with a big smile on her face. “I’m panicking; I’m freaking out; a million things are going through my head,” she said.

Gonzalez decided to try to get to her husband’s gun in the kitchen, as she made her way to the kitchen her leg snapped. Eventually, she retrieved the gun and used it to exchange gunshots with the tall male shooter, who had reentered her home, wounding him in the leg.

As you can imagine, this was truly gut-wrenching testimony in a week full of such moments. One of the more damning pieces of evidence was the fact that Gaxiola's DNA turned up all over an AK-47 the perpetrators idiotically left behind at the scene, sitting on top of the kitchen stove. Defense attorneys, as you can imagine, tried their damnedest to cast doubt on that particular piece of evidence, and spent the better part of Friday afternoon in that attempt. Whether they succeeded or not remains to be seen, but it was a highly technical bit of arguing and did not sound terribly convincing -- especially considering that the kitchen is where, as it happens, Gina Gonzalez happened to earlier testify she thought she had heard a voice like Albert's speaking while the house was being ransacked.

We also had a brief flurry of concern yesterday involving one of the potential witnesses in the case, Laine Lawless -- an extremist nutcase who was involved in the post-murder logistics between Forde and Gaxiola. Lawless had previously tried to enter the courtroom in disguise, even though she had been barred. One of yesterday's witnesses bore an unfortunate resemblance to Lawless and some of the deputies were concerned that she was about to try the same stunt -- but it was, of course, a false alarm.

Be sure and read Ricker's complete coverage of the case, as well as that of my friend and colleague Terri Greene Sterling, who was also in court this week.

Unfortunately, I have to return home this week and will be relying on my colleagues, including the superb Kim Smith of the Arizona Daily Star (who also has a good wrapup of this week's trial), to keep you updated.

Coming up: We'll hear from the dubious Oin Oakstar again, and we'll probably learn more about that Border Patrol uniform they found in Gaxiola's home. (Gonzalez testified that the "Mexican" man she saw poke his head in the door briefly -- the one she thought looked like Gaxiola -- was wearing a Border Patrol uniform.)

SPLC's Potok Calls Out Obama Administration For Its 'Political Cowardice' On Domestic Terrorism

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[H/t Heather]

Apparently, the SPLC's intelligence director, Mark Potok agrees with our assessment of the Obama administration's disastrous failure to take right-wing domestic terrorism seriously. Here is on The Ed Show the other night, discussing the report in the Washington Post on ex-Homeland Security analyst Daryl Johnson raising the red flag on the issue:

POTOK: What it means in concrete terms is that law enforcement officials, agencies out there in the 50 states, are not getting the intelligence that was very useful to them in helping to understand what was going on out there.

What DHS really did or used to do was to produce intelligence. It wasn‘t so much building actual criminal cases as in intelligence as to what was going on out there on the radical right.

Daryl‘s report was really a very prescient report. It very much fell in line with our own independent findings. And of course, it was immediately confirmed. As it was being pilloried by people like Michelle Malkin, the columnist, by the American Leagues and so on, things were happening that absolutely confirmed it.

Very shortly after the leak of the report, for instance, George Tiller, an abortion provider, was murdered. Not long after that, I‘m sure viewers will remember, a guard was murdered at the Holocaust Museum by a well-known neo-Nazi.

And the list goes on and on. In January of this year, a man tried to murder hundreds of people at a Martin Luther King Day Parade in Spokane, Washington, A well known neo-Nazi, allegedly at least.

SCHULTZ: Daryl Johnson—

POTOK: So it‘s a disaster basically.

SCHULTZ: You spoke with him. How adamant is he about the fact that this lack of resources being focused here is really playing into the increase of some of these events that you are talking about?

POTOK: Well, Daryl is a friend. And I think that Daryl is really deeply concerned. And it is not only him. I know that he‘s received all kinds of messages in the last few days since he went public from other people in law enforcement, talking about how very right he was.

And, you know, the shame of this, as you suggested in your intro, is that Secretary Napolitano essentially seemed to have acted out of mere political cowardice. You know, the fact is that the DHS report of 2009 did not pillory conservatives. It did not suggest that all veterans were potential Timothy McVeighs or people who were concerned about abortion or immigration were terrorists.

And yet it was accused of all of those things. And the reaction of the Department of Homeland Security was after a very brief and kind of weak knee defense of the report, was to absolutely pull back and, moreover, to suggest that Daryl had gone out of normal channels, that this was an unauthorized release of the report, when in fact it had been fully authorized.

The secretary was briefed on the report by Daryl personally before it was released. And then beyond that, as you suggested already, the unit was gutted. It has produced not a single substantial report since the report of 2009. Daryl has left the agency, as have four other senior analysts there.

So essentially, the department is doing nothing because it is afraid of offending conservatives, or at least the leadership of the department.

Of course, we've been writing about this issue for awhile now. But it is yet further confirmation -- beyond simply the reported data already available -- that we have a serious problem on our hands.

Unfortunately, there has been no indication whatsoever from the administration that it intends to address the issue. Apparently it's bought into the Beltway Village narrative that merely bringing up these matters is deeply uncivil.

But What About All Those Terrorists Crossing The Mexican Border? Er, What Terrorists?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

One of the incessant mantras we hear from right-wingers demanding we "secure the border" -- particularly the Minuteman types and their media enablers -- is that the need to do became incredibly important after 9/11, because Islamist terrorists were certain to be crossing into the United States through the desert.

That's certainly what we've been hearing constantly at Fox News and its many onscreen nativists, perhaps most notably Michelle Malkin. Remember how Glenn Beck tried to stir up a panic over the finding of a book on Iranian martyrs out in the desert -- which just happened to be an English translation? It even inspired Rep. Trent Franks to proclaim: "If terrorists ever come across our border with nuclear weapons... they (could) hold an entire city hostage ... This book is a grave reminder of the mindset and intent of the indescribably dangerous enemy we face."

And then there are the politicians who've used the claim to attack President Obama, such as wingnut Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County: ""If the majority of regular illegal immigrants can sneak into America, what does this say about the ability of terrorist sleeper cells?"

Well, as we've been saying about this supposed threat for some time now: They're barking up the wrong tree:

A turning political tide has renewed fears that raged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - that terrorists will sneak into the country across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Nobody disputes that's possible, but analysts and government officials say terrorists plotting to kill Americans are more likely to use other routes into the country, if they're not here already.

It's much more common for people convicted in the U.S. of crimes connected to international terrorism to have been U.S. citizens or legal residents, or come into the country on visas.

"There is no serious evidence that the U.S.-Mexico border is a significant threat from terrorism," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York.

Claims of terrorist threats on the Southwest border distract legislators and policymakers from addressing long-term solutions to drug smuggling and illegal immigration, said Tom Barry, senior analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

"It's politically motivated," Barry said, "playing on that sense of fear that certain people are susceptible to."

That's pretty much what we said awhile back:

Meanwhile, if terrorists really want to sneak into the country, they'll likely do it the way they do traditionally: forge papers and come in through the front gate with visas. That's how the 9/11 terrorists came in, and it's fairly simple and easy for them -- unlike, say, paying large sums to drug lords to sneak you over in a highly dangerous illegal crossing in the remote backcountry, which is how nativists like Malkin seem to imagine the terrorists are sneaking in.

Moreover, if Malkin wants to worry about terrorists sneaking over our borders, she'd be better off keeping an eye on the Canadian border. After all, the only known case of a terrorist caught bringing materiel over the border -- the 1999 Ahmed Ressam incident -- happened in Washington state, on the ferryboat from Canada. A quantitative analysis of terrorist threats to the U.S. found that there was "no terrorist presence in Mexico and no terrorists who entered the U.S. from Mexico"; but there was in fact "a sizeable terrorist presence in Canada and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the U.S."

The idea that it's possible to completely secure the border by physical means is a fantasy anyway. You defeat terrorism with intelligence -- not stupidity.

Domestic Terrorism Of The Right-Wing Kind: One Of The Obama Administration's Most Abject Failures

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We all know that progressives have been getting agitated for the past couple of years over the many failures of the Obama administration to stand up on behalf of their issues, with good cause. Largely, it seems, the White House is choosing not to fight for key issues because they fear the right-wing noise machine and its ability to dictate the terms of the national discourse in their favor.

But there may be no area where the White House has been more cowardly than it has in dealing with domestic terrorism, where it has abjectly caved to the noise machine's angry complaints that trying to tackle right-wing extremism makes everyday conservatives look bad. The result: Americans are far more vulnerable to right-wing domestic terrorism and its lethal effects than they have been since at least the days of the Reagan administration -- particularly because that toxin has been dramatically on the rise since the day that Obama was elected president.

The Washington Post's R. Jeffrey Smith reported on this problem yesterday:

The Department of Homeland Security has stepped back for the past two years from conducting its own intelligence and analysis of home-grown extremism, according to current and former department officials, even though law enforcement and civil rights experts have warned of rising extremist threats.

The department has cut the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled numerous state and local law enforcement briefings, and held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups, the officials and others said.

The decision to reduce the department’s role was provoked by conservative criticism of an intelligence report on “Rightwing Extremism” issued four months into the Obama administration, the officials said. The report warned that the poor economy and Obama’s election could stir “violent radicalization,” but it was pilloried as an attack on conservative ideologies, including opponents of abortion and immigration.

In the two years since, the officials said, the analytical unit that produced that report has been effectively eviscerated. Much of its work — including a digest of domestic terror incidents and the distribution of definitions for terms such as “white supremacist” and “Christian Identity” — has been blocked.

Multiple current and former law enforcement officials who have regularly viewed DHS analyses said the department had not reported in depth on any domestic extremist groups since 2009.

“Strategic bulletins have been minimal, since that incident,” said Mike Sena, an intelligence official in California who presides over the National Fusion Center Association, a group of 72 federally chartered institutions in which state, local and federal officials share sensitive information. “Having analytical staff, to educate line officers on the extremists, is critical.…This is definitely one area” where more effort is warranted by DHS.

We've addressed this very issue here previously, in the context of the sovereign citizens' movement and its lethal attacks on law-enforcement officers, most notably those horrifying cop killings in West Memphis, Arkansas:

The incident was yet another reminder that one of the most significant ongoing threats to law enforcement officers in this country comes from right-wing extremists of the Patriot/"sovereign citizen" variety -- people who take Republicans' government-bashing rhetoric to its illogical extreme and declare themselves free of federal laws and functionally laws unto themselves. There are constant reminders of this threat -- from the Hutaree Militia to the Richard Poplawskis out there.

Of course, we all were witness to the right-wing shrieking over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin warning police officers around the country about the nature of this resurgent threat. That's because conservatives are more concerned about whitewashing away these embarrassments than they are with the lives of police officers.

They like to use dead cops as props to attack liberals while loudly arguing, as Glenn Beck did a couple years ago, that even paying attention to such right-wing threats is a smear of mainstream conservatives.

.... The unfortunate reality is that federal officials are almost certainly not sharing this vital intelligence with police officers because, whenever they do, they're viciously and loudly attacked by right-wing pundits for allegedly smearing mainstream conservatives. Amazingly, no one in the mainstream media seems to have yet cottoned to the fact that this really is a near-outright confession of complicity.

Indeed, domestic terrorism is sharply increasing in the past two years, as evidenced by the 22 incidents and counting we've documented involving right-wing extremists committing acts of violence against "liberals" and government targets.

But because right-wing talkers only want to discuss terrorism as a "Muslim" phenomenon, we're getting a badly skewed understanding of the nature of terrorism.

Ironically, this all is being explained away by the Obama administration as a civil-rights issue:

DHS’s caution or avoidance, as its critics claim, may partly stem from worries that aggressive intelligence operations could be seen as civil liberties violations. A DHS official explained that “unlike international terrorism, there are no designated domestic terrorist groups. Subsequently, all the legal actions of an identified extremist group leading up to an act of violence are constitutionally protected and not reported on by DHS.”

Seriously? There are "no designated domestic terrorist groups"? That's not only an astonishing assessment by a supposed domestic-terrorism official, it's outrageous.

Have these supposed terrorism experts never heard of the National Alliance, the folks who distribute literature promoting domestic terrorism as an avenue to fomenting race war, and one of whose members recently was responsible for attempting to bomb the MLK Day parade in Spokane? Or the Aryan Nations, one of the major conduits of domestic terrorism for the past 20 years and more in America?

Or, for that matter, how about the sovereign citizens movement, the subject of a recent 60 Minutes expose on the rising threat of right-wing domestic terrorism?



Indeed, since that piece ran, two more serious cases of violence involving "sovereign citizens" have made headlines -- but, the "liberal media" being what it is, only local headlines. In Ensley, Florida, a sovereign citizen shot up a local seafood market with an AK-47 because they didn't carry crawfish (!).

And in Colorado, a father of 11 who claimed sovereign citizenship shut down the state Capitol for a day by terrorizing state officials with a fake-anthrax threat mailing -- one of their favorite tactics.

The threat of right-wing domestic has been steadily mounting, as we've documented here at C&L. Here's our map of the incidents so far:

Click on map to see interactive version.

It's not only tragic that the Obama administration has -- out of apparent cowardice -- simply turned its back on this problem. It's also outrageous, considering that its own electoral base is often one of the chief targets of these crazies.

Watch NRA Heads Explode: Al Qaeda Spokesman Urges Terrorists To Buy Lots Of Guns At Gun Shows

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for Al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on -- through the gun-show loophole:

America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?

Of course, we've previously discussed how the gun-show loophole is an open invitation to criminals, particularly in the context of the the drug-cartel violence along the Mexico border, which is in fact being heavily fueled by guns purchased legally in the USA, many of them at gun shows.

As Chris Brown at Media Matters observes:

At gun shows buyers can purchase guns from private sellers without passing a background check. An investigation by the City of New York showed that even buyers that identified themselves as people who "probably couldn't pass a background check" were able to purchase guns at gun shows. The investigation also showed the wide variety of guns available at gun shows.

In addition, people on terrorist watch lists are not forbidden from purchasing guns and many have done just that. Gadahn's instructions come in the wake of Associated Press reporting that showed that more than 200 people with suspected terrorist ties bought guns legally in the United States last year. Following the AP report Representative Mike Quigley introduced an amendment to the Patriot Act that would give the Attorney General the authority to block gun sales to individuals on terror watch lists. The amendment was voted down.

Of course, the NRA remains adamantly opposed to closing the gun-show loophole. Indeed, they also remain opposed to bipartisan efforts to make it tougher for terrorists to buy guns.
One can only conclude that they are objectively pro-terrorist.

House Republicans Want To Bring Back Elizabeth Warren For Yet Another Round Of Lying Abuse

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We all saw what happened the last time Elizabeth Warren testified before a Republican-led House committee: She was repeatedly called a liar by the committee's chairman -- a bank-financed wingnut, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina -- that day, including on a CNBC appearance before the hearing.

Now Republican Rep. Darrell Issa wants her to come back for a full day's grilling:

Issa's letter said he wanted to question Warren again to give lawmakers more time to grill her. He cited her "unwillingness to provide direct and responsive answers to a number of important questions" at last week's hearing, according to the letter.

The California Republican asked her to clear an entire day in June for the hearing. The hearing would be Warren's third appearance before a GOP-controlled House panel this year.

"The American people have a right to know how you intend to organize and operate the CFPB," Issa said in the letter.

Warren, for her part, played it cool:

Warren "looks forward to her next appearance before the committee," said Jennifer Howard, spokeswoman for the consumer bureau.

"As the former chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Professor Warren appreciates the importance of and value in checks and balances," Howard said.

Warren has Republicans so freaked out that they're refusing to adjourn so that President Obama can't make her a recess appointment. Mitch McConnell thinks she "could be a serious threat to our financial system".

And they know they already have the complicity of the Beltway media in hand -- since the McHenry smear was treated by the press as just another political tiff, as CJR's Ryan Chittum explains:

So somebody’s got to be wrong, right? Who is it? We’re not told. So readers end up with McHenry says Warren lied, and Warren denies it. Thanks for nothing.

The Wall Street Journal was no better, nor was Reuters, The Hill, or almost any of the other mainstream news stories I read.

But for anyone half paying attention, much less a beat reporter, this is not a close call: McHenry is full of it.

Moreover, Chittum notes, this is a clear case of the press simply repeating Republican lies and treating them as mere versions of the truth:

There’s no way around it: By passing on McHenry’s already debunked claims without fact checking them, the press lent credence to falsehoods. In other words, it’s helping politicians lie and perpetuating a smear against Warren.

There’s no excuse for that.

Oh, we know their excuse: "Hey, everybody does it." It's just a profoundly lame one, that's all.

At Ellis Island, Sarah Palin Attacks The DREAM Act: It 'Usurps' Legal Immigration

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.] 

Yesterday, while making a photo op of Ellis Island on her bus tour of the East Coast, Sarah Palin made plain she's with the nativist wing of the Tea Party -- which is to say, pretty much the mainstream of today's Republican Party -- in opposing the DREAM Act:

PALIN: The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow rules to become U.S. citizens. I’d like to see that continue. And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they’re able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn’t accomplish that.

Not that facts or reason ever matter much with Palin, but Andrea Nill at ThinkProgress does point out that, in fact, the DREAM Act perfectly fits Palin's description:

Actually, the DREAM Act aims to accomplish precisely what Palin described. Under the DREAM Act bill that Republicans killed last December, applicants would have had to go through a rigorous process of background checks, in addition to paying taxes, learning English, and either serving in the military or attending college. They would have then received a “conditional nonimmigrant” status and would be required to “stand in line” for ten years before being granted legal immigrant status. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the same bill would reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion over ten years.

Today's Republicans are so deeply in the thrall of their nativist wing that they can't even bring themselves to endorse a common-sense piece of immigration legislation like the DREAM Act. Instead, they succumb to the pack of lies that the nativists sell.

They will regret this deeply, and soon. I'm looking forward to seeing Sarah Palin trying to sell her "Latino outreach" in the 2012 election. Bet it goes over about as well as Sharron Angle's ill-fated stab.

Donald Trump Rips Republicans For 'Mistakes' On Medicare, Says He Might Yet Enter The Race

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Anyone who takes Donald Trump seriously gets what they deserve. And yes, there were -- and apparently still are -- Republicans who take him seriously.

Last night on Greta Van Susteren's show, Trump -- who at one time, before he announced he wasn't running, was being touted on Fox by "Republican strategists" as a serious candidate -- not only ripped into the Republican Party for their idiocy with Paul Ryan's let's-kill-Medicare plan and Eric Cantor's refusal to help tornado victims, but threatened to enter the race after all, if the eventual Republican nominee turns out to be "a stiff."

Trump was too slippery to identify who might be among the stiffs, but it's safe to say candidates like Romney, Paul, Gingrich, Pawlenty and Santorum are on that list.

In any event, Trump told Van Susteren that he never actually really got out of the race, and he might decide to drop in, maybe as an independent, if the GOP fails to come through.

The guy is a complete circus act and should be laughed off the stage. It tells you a lot about today's Republicans that he hasn't been yet.

Karmic Update: Russell Pearce Recall Campaign Turns In 18,000 Signatures -- More Than Twice What's Needed

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've been tracking the recall campaign against Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, author of SB1070, because he insisted on playing his nativist fiddle in the Senate while Arizona's economy burned to the ground. It probably hasn't helped that he's become belligerent whenever anyone brings up his role in the Fiesta Bowl scandal, either.

Of course, Greta Van Susteren knew better than to ask Pearce any such tough questions last night on her Fox show. She mostly lobbed out the news of the day -- the fact that the people leading the recall had filed more than twice what they needed, some 18,000 signatures -- and let him swing away.

But Pearce looked scared, and he should be:

In a celebratory display of unprecedented organization, a bipartisan group of activists poured into the Arizona secretary of state's office yesterday with more than 18,300 signatures to demand the recall of State Senate president Russell Pearce. The filing of the petitions marked the culmination of a campaign that has defied expectations, and a watershed moment for the beleaguered state. Once the state and Maricopa County recorders verify the legal requirement of 7,756 signatures from the traditionally conservative and Mormon-founded Mesa district, Pearce—who is considered by many as the de facto governor and motivating force behind the state's notorious blitz of extremist policies on education, health, guns and immigration—will become the first State Senate president in American history to be recalled.

Those signatures contain a message:

Recall proponents say they filed petitions bearing 18,315 signatures. But campaign chairman Chad Snow acknowledged thousands of those might be duplicates or signatures of people who live outside the Senate President's district.

"We want those extra petition signatures to send a message," Snow said. "We want to send a message to Sen. Pearce, to every legislator down here at the Arizona Legislature that this kind of extreme, ideologically driven policies will no longer be tolerated in our state."

Pearce claimed to Van Susteren that most of the signatures would be proven ineligible and that his legal team intended to contest them. Then he claimed that the people involved in the recall are "radical leftists" and "anarchists." Then he claimed that his nativist agenda was in fact extremely popular with his constituents.

Right.

Of course, he has formed a response team:

His supporters have formed their own group, The Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall, and on Tuesday launched a website to solicit donations to fight the recall effort.

"We will not sit back and let out-of-state and out-of-district special interests attempt to use a recall to harass and intimidate Arizona's constitutionally elected officials," said Matt Tolman, chairman of the group. "We will oppose this recall so that President Pearce and other officials can do the job for which they were elected."

I hope the folks in Mesa are ready for the fight of their lives.

June 30: Our Long GlennBeckian Nightmare Finally Has An End Date

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck's show has become an inane bore in recent months, especially since it was announced he was leaving Fox News. Lots of nattering about his Grand Caliphate Theory and warning that evil radical liberals were colluding with far-right radical Islamists to end the Western way of life. Lots of blackboards and sincere talks. Yawn.

Like yesterday's episode, wherein he told people who objected to his incessant reliance on Nazi analogies to "get over it":

BECK: We have gotten an awful lot of criticism on this program whenever we talk about Nazis. Well, you know what? Get over it. The fact is, however -- you don't have to go back to the violence and vicious hatred and the desire to exterminate an entire race of people. You only have to turn on your news. Check the headlines. You'll see it right before your eyes, but most in the mainstream media will not tie this stuff together.

These are people who surround a tiny little country, Israel. These are people who have been trying to wipe out the Western way of life. The same people who flew planes into the World Trade Center. The same the radicals on the left in America are teaming up with to destroy the Western way of life, through Israel.

Of course, if he were really concerned about eliminationist rhetoric on his TV tube, Beck should begin with his own program.

In any event, it's been dragging on, creating a looming sense of "Can we please just get this over with." So it was with a real sense of relief that we read today that, there's finally an end date to all this:

Mediaite has learned that Glenn Beck’s last day on Fox News is currently scheduled to be June 30th. Fox News has confirmed this information to Mediaite.

As Richard Lawson at Gawker puts it:

But yes. The Beck as we know him right now will end at the end of this month. And thank God (and by "God" I of course mean the mighty Hunga-Deity that is George Soros) for that. The greatest thing about all of this is that we can now begin to speculate about how fantastical and surreal his final show will be. Take a drink every time he squeezes his eyes shut really tight and desperately tries to ascend to heaven, right there live on TV!

Matt Drudge's Race-War-Mongering Narrative: How Selective Editing Can Lie

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]


Andrew Breitbart isn't the only right-winger out there creating false narratives about his targets through selective editing -- indeed, this is a common practice at Fox News, too. But the real champion of selective editing -- in quite a different fashion -- is Matt Drudge.

Instead of chopping up video, Drudge selectively edits tidbits of information from around the country to create narratives on his widely read Drudge Report website -- narratives that, in fact, are often right-wing lies pandering to right-wing audiences.

Recently, the narrative at Drudge has been this: Criminal young black men, freed to wanton abandon by the Black Panther-coddling Obama administration, are embarking on a retributive crime wave against white people.

Alex Pareene at Salon calls him out:

Since Obama actually took office, though, Drudge has seriously stepped up his "scary black people" coverage. There was, in September of 2009, the story he heavily publicized of a kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up. A kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up is not really national news -- until Drudge makes it so. The fact that the beater was black and the victim white is why Drudge made it national news. Rush Limbaugh made the subtext explicit: "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."

This is the narrative that Drudge is trying to create, especially on slow news weekends when there's nothing real to aggregate and post: The blacks are rising up and attacking the whites. If that sounds a bit crazy, in a Charles Manson way, then you're obviously not paying attention. Black people are angry and they're taking over! When Barack Obama was campaigning to win Chicago the Olympic games, Matt Drudge led with a terrifying photo of (black) gang violence and the breathless, all-caps headline, "OLYMPIC SPIRIT."

The violent death of a young man is definitely news ... in Chicago, where it happened. It had very little to do with whether Chicago is a suitable venue for the Olympics. Violent murders happen in big cities and small towns across the nation every day. But only some of them can be used to stoke paranoia about emboldened, angry black people rising up.

John at Gawker observes that this past weekend, there were 10 Drudge headlines supporting this narrative:

Then be sure to check in with the Drudge Report, which has conveniently rounded up a slew of run-of-the-mill summer crime stories that happen to involve black people and suggestively weaved them into a nationwide race riot.

...

The race-baiting is a bit more transparent—"urban," "rib fest"—than we've come to expect from Drudge, who is usually more elegant in his efforts to stoke white rage. All of Drudge's readers in the media business, the cable news producers and Politico reporters who regard him as "America's assignment editor," know exactly what his intent is with those headlines. But instead of being dismissed as a racist weather-obsessed recluse he continues to be regarded as a power player in right-wing politics.

Unsurprisingly, some of the wingnutosphere's duller tools in the shed promptly leapt to Drudge's defense by trotting out the classic right-wing stereotypes about blacks and crime -- thereby clinching the case that what Drudge was doing was stirring up these resentments. F'r instance, Confederate Yankee:

Pareene is a far left liberal that would like to embrace the childish fiction that all races and cultures are essentially the same. It's a wonderful view to have when you're ten.
While individuals within these cultures can be anyone and achieve anything, it is a statistical fact that African-Americans are disproportionately responsible for crimes in this nation compared to any other ethnic group. They are also more likely to commit some of the more sensational crimes, such as the near riots and wildings that are the prime headline fodder that are Drudge's bread and butter.

If Pareene really wanted to make an impact, he'd spend his time and resources trying to find the reason for the statistical discrepancy that shows African-Americans are more prone to be criminals and victims of violent crime.

Of course, he already knows the reason. It started with LBJ's "Great Society," and continued with the rise of Planned Parenthood and the destruction of the African-American family unit due to "progressive" social reforms.

Oy. The stooooooopid, it burns. And then these same conservatives look hurt and amazed when people point out that their attitudes are deeply racist.

Right-wingers like Bob Owens never seem to understand that the correlation of crime with race is not a causal relationship -- rather, the causal relationship is between poverty and crime. And black people are more likely to be impoverished in America than other races for a broad variety of reasons, many of them historical in nature, but including a number of ongoing factors: demographic segregation, job discrimination, and impoverishment of urban schools.

There are many theories about race and crime in America -- some of them promoted by white supremacists such as Jared Taylor and David Duke.

As Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon observes:

Drudge's choice of what stories to highlight is about creating a narrative, and the insinuation is now that we have a black President, all hell is breaking loose. One of the weirdest, most long-standing conservative myths is that black people are aching to "rise up" and take the nation by force. The argument is then that they have to, more in sorrow than in glee, argue against equal rights for black people. They'd want to share, but you know, violence! The notion that black America is revenge-minded is something that is surprisingly powerful for wingnuts. That's why there's non-stop chatter on right wing radio about slavery reparations, even though the subject has no traction in real world discourse, and even if it did, said reparations would look much different than right wingers imagine it would like. (They're picturing jack-booted thugs stealing your grandmother's pearls and giving it to some family you don't know to pawn, but it would more likely be a check that resembles a Social Security check or a tax refund.) And that's why Andrew Breitbart thinks that some court settlement to black farmers who were systemically discriminated against for decades is the biggest problem our nation faces.

Indeed, Drudge's editorial choices tell us far more about him -- and his many fans -- than anything else.

Sarah Palin's 'Unconventional' Route To The Presidency: The Power Of Messianic Delusion

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Everyone in the press and the Republican establishment seems equally confused by Sarah Palin's bizarre run-up to her near-certain presidential run. What they don't get is the depths of Palin's messianic delusion: She really believes she's been sent by God to save America, and she can run any way she wants.

Karl Rove was on Fox News yesterday morning (actually working on Memorial Day!) pointing out the stark contrast between Michele Bachmann's run-up to her presidential bid -- making nice with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, building connections with local Republicans, and all the traditional things that are part of a presidential run -- with Palin's:

ROVE: Sarah Palin -- much different, which is: 'I'm gonna conduct a bus tour, where I go not to -- ' I mean, she's about ready, sometime in the next couple of weeks, to make her first visit to New Hampshire in over two years. That's, that's really unusual. And then you've got the situation of -- you know, she's going to Antietam and Gettysburg and to Philadelphia. And I'll bet you a dime to a dollar that those visits to those areas are not preceded by courtesy phone calls to the local Republican Party chairmen and a request that they generate volunteers. She's just gonna announce her schedule and show up. So that's what I mean by unconventional.

That's right: Palin is not concerned about any of the ordinary aspects of running for the presidency, especially not the party-building that has been successful Republican nominees' bread and butter since the days of Nixon. She has bigger fish to fry. She's on a mission from God.

The WaPo's Chris Cilizza seems equally taken aback:

The trip, which was announced via her political action committee website Thursday, resembled nothing so much as an episode of “Amazing Race” — a helter-skelter series of stops at historical sites with little (if any) advance notice given of her plans.

The lack of details left reporters confused and scrambling, and the political world wondering just what she was up to. Which is, of course, exactly how Palin likes it.
Asked about a potential 2012 campaign on Sunday night, Palin said “it would definitely be non-conventional and untraditional,” a comment that amounts to the political understatement of the year.

Palin added in an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren (one of her go-to members of the mainstream media): “I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media ... I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this, and that would include not necessarily telling them beforehand where every stop’s going to be.”

That translated into Palin punking the reporters following her on the tour:

Palin reportedly faked out reporters at her Gettysburg, Pa. hotel Tuesday morning. She snuck out early with her family and a few staffers, leaving her unmistakeable bus behind and giving the press the impression that she was still readying for the day ahead. When her staff came out to load luggage into the bus, reporters and tourists swarmed to get a glimpse of the former Alaska governor herself, but she was long gone, off to the historic battlegrounds.

As Cilizza observes, Palin is trying her own formula here:

Instead of communicating via the media, Palin will use her massive Internet and social media presence to push her message out. Rather than a regimented schedule of travel to early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Palin seems likely to opt for a more fluid schedule that allows for surprise drop-ins on average Americans.

No presidential campaign in the modern era has been run in such a manner and succeeded. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson sought to minimize his travel to early states and focus on communicating with voters through cable televison and web videos. He didn’t win a single primary or caucus.

Meantime, rumors are that Palin may punk Philadelphia, too.

In Sarah's world, of course, this lack of conventionalism makes perfect sense. The press isn't a free publicity on the hoof (the way, say John McCain treated them) -- they're Satan incarnate and the more they can be bedeviled, the better. Because Sarah speaks directly to the people you know -- so long as they don't ask her any tough questions.

And party-building doesn't matter when the Lord is going to make everyone come together behind her. It's more important she get her message out to as many people as possible.

There are folks who think all this is really proof that Sarah's not running. All I can say is: Wait and see.

Is Paul Broun The Dumbest Member Of Congress? Signs Point To Yes

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I'm not the biggest fan of TSA security procedures myself, but I probably prefer them to the laughably ineffective regime that existed prior to 9/11. And I definitely prefer them to what the bedwetting wingnuts who want us to resort to ethnic profiling measures immediately instead of messing around with random searches, which they consider "political correctness."

Guys like wingnut Georgia GOP Rep. Paul Broun, who was on Fox News yesterday with Shannon Bream sharing his expertise -- the guy sits on the Homeland Security Committee, which is a disconcerting thought indeed -- because of TSA procedures he witnessed recently in an airport:

BREAM: Congressman, thanks for joining us today. What did you see that has you so upset?

BROUN: Well, Shannon, what happened at the airport is, uh, an elderly lady walked -- ah, followed me behind in the screening process, and she was patted down. A little kid was patted down. And this guy in Arabian attire just walks right through.

And the point of all this is that we have to focus upon those people who want to harm us.

TSA has been abysmal -- abysmal failure. We're spending eight billion dollars a year on this, and we're -- we're focusing on these total body scans, these enhanced patdowns. We need more, uh, intelligence.

That we do, Congressman, that we do. In Congress, especially.

Broun wants everyone who wears "Arabian dress" to get the thorough patdown at TSA security checkpoints -- even though anyone even half-knowledgeable about antiterrorist security can tell you that no terrorist will wear garb that attracts attention to themselves. They are uniformly intent on blending in and being unnoticed. Anyone wearing "Arabian dress" is actually not likely at all to be a terrorist.

But that ain't no nevermind to someone like Broun. He has bigger fish to fry here:

BROUN: We need to focus on those people who are trying to harm us as a nation. And so it's absolutely critical for us change from this wasteful, um, inefficient -- type of screening that's going on at the airport. It's wasting billions of dollars and we need to start focusing upon what is absolutely going to help prevent people from being killed.

And that's to get the human intelligence out there -- some -- infiltration into these various groups so that we know who is gonna harm us and so we stop these attacks, instead of wasting the taxpayers' money, instead of having this big hassle at the airport. It's costing American taxpayers, as well as the airline industry, billions of dollars.

See, Broun is one of those many Republicans who thinks that simple ethnic profiling measures will do the job and make us good and secure, and probably save us a bundle in the process. Skip the random patdowns and replace it with simple profiling of Muslims, and voila! No more need for a TSA.

This is, of course, rank stupidity guaranteed to get people killed, because it is guaranteed to make us more vulnerable. As we've explained previously:

If you want to profile every "known Muslim," you're going to have a hell of a time in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, considering that their populations are a mix of the world's religions, and any Muslim who wanted to pose as a member of, say, a Christian church in order to fool authorities could do so with ease.

This just underscores how foolish the whole notion of racial profiling actually is, because when you embark on such policies, they actually make you more vulnerable, not less.

That's because terrorists are not that stupid. If you begin profiling for Middle Eastern men, they will find Indonesian or African or European operatives to perform the same task. If you begin profiling for Muslims, they will find ways to conceal their religious preferences.

We know two things about profiling, especially ethnic, religious, or racial profiling: 1) These policies expose the profilers to being gamed by terrorists; and 2) They are always a tremendous waste of resources and inevitably are counter-productive.

Sounds like your classic conservative solution: Hey, let's just make matters worse!

And waste a bundle of money while we're at it.

The best part is listening to Broun provide a down-home rationale for ethnic profiling, straight out of Dukes of Hazzard:

BREAM: But Congressman, how tough is this job now for the TSA, just to see the way that somebody is clothed, or see the pigmentation of their skin to automatically have to suspect them? That puts them in a tough place.

BROUN: Well, it does, Shannon. But the thing is, if a guy who's a young man robs a bank and goes and jumps in a blue Camaro with racing stripes and flames on it and goes running off, you say -- does the police put out an all-points bulletin saying, 'There's a person driving a motorized vehicle. Look for them.'

You know, we've got to focus on those who want to harm us. And the way we do that is we have to have the human intelligence, and we have to stop this inane political correctness that's going on.

Political correctness is not -- eh -- won't save any lives. But focusing on those that want -- will harm us -- uh, will. We've already seen how political correctness run amok has cost lives with Major Hasan out in Texas at Fort Hood. We've got to get past that, we've got to start focusing on those people.

All of which raises the question: Is Paul Broun the stupidest member of Congress? Really, you can't help but watch this performance and wonder.

I remember back in the day that the political columnist Jack Anderson ran an annual piece naming someone or other the "dumbest member of Congress". (I remember this because two of my congressmen from Idaho -- George Hansen and Steve Symms -- were perennial winners.) I don't think anyone does it anymore, but someone should. Because Paul Broun would win. A lot.

Joe Conason, in fact, named Broun the stupidest member of Congress last year. I'd say he's in the running again this year.

This is a guy who, just days after the 2008 election, declared that "he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship." When one of Broun's supporters wished aloud for someone to shoot President Obama, Broun laughed and brushed it off. This is the guy who thinks a vital piece of legislation is to declare a "Year of the Bible".

On health care, Broun was equally reality-based (which is to say: not at all), saying thing like this:

"If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that's in people's pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States -- the Great War of Yankee Aggression."

And this:

In July, Broun declared that the public insurance option "is gonna kill people." Later in the month, he argued that "ObamaCare" would "give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance." At a town hall meeting in September, Broun literally walked away from a constituent who couldn't get health coverage after telling him, "If you have a suggestion, send it to me." And, just a few weeks ago, he introduced "alternative" legislation that would eliminate Medicare altogether.

Yesterday, Broun escalated his attacks on the Democratic reform bill, saying that its passage will "destroy America as we know it today."

Yep, he's back in the running.

As The Minutemen Break Apart, They're Moving Into The Tea Party Woodwork

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Back in August of last year, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the folks from Tea Party Nation exercised their inner Nativists by holding a big rally near the border in Cochise County. What was little noted at the time was where the rally was held: On Glenn Spencer's ranch. The same ranch where, a year before, Minuteman leader Shawna Forde had been arrested for the murders of a nine-year-old girl and her father.

David Holthouse at Media Matters has the whole story -- including the big picture:

Grinning on the sidelines behind mirrored sunglasses was Glenn Spencer, the leader of the border vigilante group American Border Patrol and the owner of the Tea Party Nation rally site.

Spencer's founding of American Border Patrol in 2002 pre-dated the first Minuteman "civilian border patrols" by three years. Before his ranchland became a Tea Party rallying point it served as both meeting grounds and temporary housing for high-ranking members of various border vigilante factions. Minuteman American Defense leader Shawna Forde lived on the property in an RV owned by Spencer in the summer of 2008.

Over the past two years, more than a dozen former border vigilante leaders have taken on key roles in the Tea Party movement. Some, like Spencer, continue to maintain their hard-core nativist personas. Others have sought to separate themselves from their Minuteman identities in pursuit of mainstream political legitimacy.

Spencer's border-watching activities well predated 2002; he was actively organizing such vigilante action back in the early 1990s, when his American Patrol outfit was a player in the Patriot/militia movement, and his vicious rhetoric earned his organization a hate-group designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Spencer is no bit player in the Nativist movement. He has, in fact, been the wellspring of many of the most cherished lies about immigrants, Latinos and the immigrant-rights movement over the years, including the time he spread false rumors that immigrants were carrying the Ebola virus into the USA. Spencer is the original source of the false claim that MEChA is a racist organization, as well as the accompanying phony Reconquista! conspiracy theory.

Above all, Spencer was one of the first people organizing vigilante border patrols -- serving in many ways as the original inspiration for the Minuteman movement, and he indeed continued to play a major leadership role in the movement until its sudden demise at the hands of Shawna Forde. Her conviction in February for the murders in Arivaca signalled the death knell for a movement already on its last legs, splintering into renegade subgroups like Forde's with no accountability, no restraints, and no conscience.

These border watch groups don't call themselves "Minutemen" anymore. Now they use newer, Tea Party-friendly monikers with lots of Patriotic references.

As Holthouse explains:

"The Forde killings really made the whole movement sordid and these guys [Minuteman leaders] needed to find somewhere else for their ambitions," said Heidi Beirich, co-director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which tracks extremist groups. "Rebranding themselves as Tea Party figures is their effort to stay relevant. They saw the rising populism as a good thing to latch onto, so they just toned down their anti-immigrant messaging a bit and synced themselves with the larger Tea Party agenda."

Internal rivalries and financial scandals had already crippled the anti-immigration vigilante movement by the time of the Arivaca murders. The murder of a child begging for her life at gunpoint by Shawna Forde generated massive negative publicity for the entire Minuteman movement and hastened the decline of once-powerful vigilante outfits like the Minuteman Project and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

The Tea Party offered a broader political agenda that appealed to rank-and-file Minutemen. Their concerns over border security and non-white immigration had been equaled if not displaced by distress over the financial meltdown and the election of President Obama.

As Spencer explained, "Many of the so-called Minuteman groups died off, mainly due to lack of focus of the organizations. Sitting on the border in a lawn chair does not fire the hearts of men. Those who were drawn into the political arena by the border issue naturally gravitated towards better organized groups of people concerned with the overall failure of our government to work in the interests of the people, of which the failure to secure the border is just one example."

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Of course, the Minutemen tried desperately to distance themselves from Shawna Forde, even though she had been closely associated with Spencer for over a year, and was also tight with Minuteman Project cofounder Jim Gilchrist right up to the day of her arrest.

Unsurprisingly, the talking heads at Fox lapped up these laughable claims, but reality kicked in. The Minuteman brand name has been permanently tainted.

This has never stopped these folks, however. They just change their stripes and find new ways to worm themselves into the mainstream. Look for Glenn Spencer to turn up alongside Sheriff Arpaio sometime soon on Fox.

'Hannity Primary' Debuts With A Hannity Job For Rick Santorum

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

They really aren't disturbed in the least over at Fox News to be in the position of actually appearing to control the presidential primaries for one of the nation's two major political parties. Last night, Sean Hannity debuted his 'Hannity Primaries' segment, which supposedly will be all about vetting the Republican candidates, at least according to Hannity:

HANNITY: And tonight, on a special edition of Hannity, we are kicking off the 2012 campaign with our very own Hannity Primaries. Now, throughout the campaign, we'll give each candidate a half-hour, right here on the show, to share his or her views with our audience.

But if the first segment is anything to go by, there won't be much actual vetting going on -- or at least, it will resemble the fine job the McCain campaign did on their veep choice in 2008. No, these segments will be about promoting and cheerleading the GOP field and letting everyone else sort it out, because this one was just a classic Hannity Job: "one of those appearances where Sean strokes you, tosses you a bunch of softballs, and lets you promote your campaign and issue non-answers whenever you like."

This became abundantly self-evident when Hannity tried out a "tough" question: Asking Santorum about his boneheaded remark that John McCain "doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works". Hannity got this out of him, and was obviously satisfied:

HANNITY: As we looked into this, recently you had talked at length that you said Senator McCain was wrong, or doesn't understand enhanced interrogation techniques. And there was a backlash, because obviously he had been a prisoner of war for five and a half years. He himself, I believe, had been tortured.

SANTORUM: Which of course I knew. What I was talking about was the enhanced interrogation program that he has opposed for a number of years. And I have supported it. And so there's a policy difference between Senator McCain and I and he got up and wrote an article which I just think was wrong. And I, so that's why I said he obviously doesn't understand that this program actually worked to produce leads that led us to Osama bin Laden as well as other things.

And so it was obviously -- not gonna comment on John McCain's heroism and his withstanding torture and all the things that John did to serve our country. I think he's just wrong on this public policy matter and I said so. And I may continue to say so. I think that our enhanced interrogation program was vital. It is not torture. I don't believe it's torture. Now, John may have a different opinion, but I don't believe it's torture.

This is, of course, incredibly LAME (which is the word that springs second to mind when I think of Rick Santorum, the first being "Santorum"). If you read the McCain op-ed in question, it factually destroys the false claim that these interrogations had anything to do with capturing bin Laden. Indeed, outside of Fox News and Republicanville, these facts are clearly established.

So, for that matter, is the more significant point -- namely, that even if torture did work, it's still not something Americans should ever indulge. The torturer, after all, is the enemy of all mankind.

Which puts Rick Santorum and Sean Hannity in some interesting company, when you think about it. Especially because these "Hannity Primary" segments look like they will be a version of torture to watch.