Think Progress

Anti-Mosque Coalition’s Website Owned By Neo-Conservative Islamophobe Frank Gaffney

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for “transparency” about who is funding the ugly attacks against the construction of a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York City. “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she told KCBS radio.

Naturally, right-wing opponents of the mosque blasted Pelosi for the comments, claiming the opposition is an organic, spontaneous uprising of concerned Americans. However, the coalition leading the charge against the mosque, the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero, appears to be funded by a major neo-conservative advocacy group, with deep-pocketed donors, and extensive connections to the conservative establishment. As Glenn Greenwald noted, the coalition’s website StopThe911Mosque.com is registered to the Center for Security Policy, a neo-conservative think tank and advocacy group run by Reagan defense official and far-right hawk Frank Gaffney:

The coalition’s partners include a who’s who of far-right pundits, politicians, and neo-conservative advocacy groups, such as Keep America Safe, the attack group formed by Liz Cheney and hawkish Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Another coalition partner is 911FamiliesForAmerica.org, a group run by Tim Sumner and Debra Burlingame, who also happens to be a founding board member of Keep America Safe.

The Center for Security Policy, of which Gaffney is the founder and president, appears to be leading the charge, thanks to its network of big-time right-wing funders like the Bradley Foundation and, presumably, its board of directors. Gaffney’s board includes the vice president of Van Scoyoc Associates, which touts itself as the “largest independent lobbying company in Washington, D.C,” with numerous defense clients and $15.93 million in lobbying revenue over the first six months of 2010. Other members of Gaffney’s board include the former vice president of Boeing’s missile defense division, and the head of the investment firm American Securities LP, which is invested in, among other companies, Potbelly’s Sandwich Works. The group paid Gaffney $288,300 in 2008, according to its most recently available 990 form.

Another partner in StopThe911Mosque.com is the anti-Muslim hate group ACT! For America, whose “radical Islamophobe” founder Brigitte Gabriel has said that Muslims should not be allowed to hold public office, and that an American Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen” because Islam is the “real enemy.”

Gaffney himself has long history of advocating outrageous and bigoted positions about Islam, and has repeatedly questioned President Obama’s birthplace and religion.

The StopThe911Mosque.com campaign reflects Gaffney’s radical views, declaring that it is not opposed to only the “mega-mosque and Islamic Center at Ground Zero,” but to many mosques, because they may be “‘Trojan Horses,’ masquerading as places of worship when they in fact have proved to be sources of extremist activities and terror plots against America.” The New York mosque is just “a prominent example of this kind of ‘Trojan Horse.’” Indeed, the website also targets mosques in Boston and London.

Charles And David Koch Exposed For Insidious Role In Crafting The Modern Right

Fred Koch

Mayer’s piece builds off the original reporting conducted by ThinkProgress since the very beginning of the Tea Party movement. Here’s a review of what we’ve reported:

– In April 2009, ThinkProgress revealed that Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by David Koch, was helping to plan dozens of the first national Tea Party rallies. Americans for Prosperity staffers organized events, from making reservations, to providing talking points and signs, to calling activists to encourage them to participate.

– In August 2009, ThinkProgress obtained an exclusive memo from a Tea Party group supported by Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. The memo outlined various ways for Tea Party activists to intimidate Democratic lawmakers and disrupt their town hall meetings on health reform. ThinkProgress published half a dozen articles exposing the role of Koch-funded groups like “Patients United” in encouraging opposition to health reform. For instance, in Virginia, a Koch-funded operative Ben Marchi assisted a birther who followed Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) around, yelling at him at town hall meetings.

– In May 2009, the Wonk Room published a detailed history of Tim Phillips, an astroturf lobbyist Koch appointed to run his Americans for Prosperity front. Phillips had served as a business partner to Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed.

– Writing in the Boston Globe, ThinkProgress commented on the similarities between David and Charles’ Tea Party movement to their father’s efforts to attack President John Kennedy through the John Birch Society.

– The Wonk Room reported on thirty years of Koch Industry environmental front groups. The timeline showed how Koch tried desperately to smear the cap and trade system set up to address acid rain with a “grassroots” group without a single grassroots member.

– At Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) “House Call” rally, ThinkProgress produced a video report exposing Koch for paying for dozens of buses for anti-health reform activists to reach DC. We also captured the picture of a large banner comparing health reform to the Holocaust.

– The Wonk Room investigated Koch Industries’ role in the effort to repeal AB 32, the landmark California climate change clean energy law. The Wonk Room’s video report revealed how Koch Industries’ reliance on high-carbon Canadian crude would become less profitable if similar laws like AB 32 are enacted around the country.

– ThinkProgress reported how a variety of right-wing fronts supported by the Koch family and its political deputies not only helped overturn nearly a hundred years in campaign finance law in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, but also is lobbying aggressively against the DISCLOSE Act, which would provide transparency into the campaign spending for plutocrats like the Koch family.

– The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson reported extensively on the multiple climate-denying campaigns orchestrated by the Koch family. Johnson has lampooned some of the Koch family’s more ridiculous attempts at billionaire populism.

– ThinkProgress partnered with Climate Progress to investigate David Koch’s funding of the Smithsonian Institute. We spoke to the Smithsonian director, who continued to express gratitude to Koch, and whitewashed Koch’s role in distorting public knowledge of climate science. Similarly, we have long chronicled the “Swift Boat” style attack campaign conducted by Koch’s various anti-science fronts.

– The Wonk Room reported on how Koch-backed groups and media outlets spread the myth that the so-called “Climategate” e-mails showed that scientists had concealed climate data from the public.

Mayer’s article sheds light on many other ways in which the Koch family has intertwined its business interests with its investment in right-wing groups. She also exposes a serious conflict of interest with David Koch’s position as a board member to the National Cancer Institute, an honor granted to him by President Bush. Mayer notes that while David Koch has been “casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a ‘known carcinogen’ in humans.”

Gingrich Won’t Explain Why He’s Backing Out Of Participating In 9/11 Anti-Mosque Rally

Last week, the right-wing group Stop Islamization of America announced that former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a “confirmed” speaker for the group’s September 11th protest against the proposed Park 51 Islamic center near ground zero, in New York City. Other speakers included former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart, and, notably, the far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, best known for his self-described “hate” towards Islam.

Last week, however, Gingrich spokesperson Joe DeSantis told Politico that the Gingrich — who has been an outspoken opponent of the Islamic center — “is not scheduled to be at this rally. He is not speaking.” DeSantis said Gingrich’s staff had only agreed to send a video message, not make an appearance, but that too has now been canceled, but Gingrich won’t say why:

But a spokesman for Gingrich, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, told The Hill that the former leader of the House had never confirmed his appearance. Instead, one of Gingrich’s staff had agreed to send a video message from him to be shown at the Sept. 11 rally.

That has since been canceled.

“The confusion is at least partially our fault,” said Joe DeSantis, a spokesman for Gingrich. “A staff member mistakenly promised a video message, though not an appearance. However, we are not sending a video. We informed them earlier this week.”

DeSantis did not comment on why Gingrich was no longer planning to send a video message to the rally, and attempts to contact the organizers of the rally were unsuccessful.

Given Gingrich’s extreme rhetoric on the issue and self-appointed leadership role in the opposition, it’s surprising that he would pass up this opportunity.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is also listed on the event’s website as an “invited speaker,” but a spokesman for King said he was not planning to attend because he “will have so many 9/11 commemorations [to attend] in his district.” King has also spoken out against the Islamic center, but his rhetoric has been more temperated than Gingrich’s, and he even publicly condemned the former Speaker for “making a Nazi comparison” about the center. “It was wrong,” King said of Gingrich’s comment that the center’s organizers are “radical Islamists” who are seeking “supremacy,” much like “Nazis.”

However, protesters will still hear from Wilders, who tweeted, “I booked a flight and a hotel. Great feeling. Important speech. No one can stop me. No mosque at ground zero!” On Wilders’ website, he touts the would-be appearance with Gingrich, calling the duo “two eagles” who will come together to heighten awareness and stop the mosque.

In Calling For Islamic Center’s Relocation, Former Bush Official Ignores Message She Touted Abroad

In stoking the paranoid hysteria over the Cordoba Initiative, right-wing opponents to the proposed Islamic center are cleaving to the sensitivity talking point: while Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center, they would be offending Americans if they did.

Yesterday, another Republican voice joined the chorus calling for relocation. President Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes penned an op-ed in the Washington Post asserting that the Islamic center is “contentious because it goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” Hughes, who promoted the center’s sponsor Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as an ambassador of Islamic faith in America under the Bush Administration, claims his current project would be a “searing reminder of terrible deaths at the hands of murderers calling themselves Muslims” and ultimately allow terrorists to “celebrate its presence as a twisted victory over our society’s freedoms.”

But, during her tenure with the Bush administration, Hughes cited American commitment to “our society’s freedoms” as a key difference between American and Saudi Arabian society. During a week-long Middle East tour “to improve the image of the United States” in 2005, Hughes spoke to several hundred Saudi women about the non-discriminatory right of driving in America. Saudi Arabia’s ban on female drivers is “one of the more controversial” issues in Saudi Arabia that “many high ranking officials maintain” is “a societal issue.” In fact, paralleling the increasingly vitriolic debate over the center here at home, the idea of Saudi women drivers spurred Saudi conservatives and religious scholars to argue that “that giving women the right to drive will lead to a ‘Western-style’ erosion of morality and a loss of traditional values.”

Going “significantly further” than then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the subject, Hughes told the audience in ‘05 that its society’s unwillingness to allow women to drive flouted an important “symbol” of the freedoms Americans take “very seriously”:

“We in America take our freedoms very seriously,” Hughes said. “I believe women should be free and equal participants in society. I feel that as an American woman that my ability to drive is an important part of my freedom.”

Women in the audience applauded after she also mentioned that they should have a greater voice in the Saudi political system, including eventually receiving the right to vote.[...]

Asked about the contrast between her comments and Rice’s, Hughes said her remarks were part of a U.S. policy of “slowly advancing ideas” with the Saudis. “My job is to raise issues in, I hope, a respectful way, to help other countries understand concerns Americans have,” she said.[...]

“It is important for them to understand that for many American women, driving is a symbol. We can’t imagine not being able to drive ourselves to work,” she told reporters traveling with her.

Hughes went further in warning against American backlash against Muslims while speaking at the Islamic Society of North America convention in 2005. Seeing that her role was to “respond to civil liberty concerns within the United States from Muslims whose lives and travel have been disrupted,” Hughes urged “people of all faiths to speak out against the ‘backlash and widespread demonization of Islam and Muslims’ that followed the 9/11 attacks.” “It is important that we be mindful of speaking out against all voices of hate and incitement including those raised against Muslims themselves,” she said. “We want to be a welcoming country.”

Hughes’ current position hardly reflects the tone she projected in 2005. It is wrong to believe that we honor the 9/11 victims by rejecting the values they cherished while succumbing to the very fear and hatred their murderers were trying to provoke.

Rhode Island Democratic Lawmaker Goes After ‘Anchor Embryos’

Last Friday, on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, conservative state lawmaker Peter Palumbo (D-RI) appeared with state Rep. Joseph Trillo (R-RI) to discuss their outreach to Arizona politicians as they craft their own tough immigration law. During the interview, Palumbo referenced “anchor babies,” a derogatory and “politically charged” term used to refer to the U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents, noting that in Rhode Island they have “anchor embryos”:

We’ve all heard of anchor babies. We have something unique to Rhode Island, and they’re called anchor embryos. And what it is is a policy that we have in the state of Rhode Island — if you’re an illegal alien woman and you’re pregnant and you come to Rhode Island, you go to the Department of Human Services — the first thing you have to do is tell them that you’re an illegal alien and you’re pregnant and the Department of Human Services will offer you, do you want Blue Cross, United, or Neighborhood Health.

Watch it:

A handful of states provide prenatal care assistance based on an unborn child’s eligibility, rather than the pregnant woman’s. When Nebraska moved to deny the unborn babies of undocumented women prenatal care Medicaid assistance, state Sen. Jeremy Nordquist called it “the biggest pro-life issue in the Legislature this year.” Pro-life advocates who support providing prenatal care assistance for undocumented mothers argue that it’s a matter of fetal rights. “We don’t accept that borders should be put ahead of babies,” said Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life. Nebraska Right to Life believes that providing prenatal care “improves the chances that a woman will choose to give birth rather than seek an abortion.” Others argue that denying future U.S. citizen children prenatal care benefits boils down to an issue of public health.

Ironically, Palumbo has also sponsoredThe Women’s Right to Know Act in 2002 which included provisions requiring doctors to “offer alternatives to abortion and about available public and private assistance for prenatal care, childbirth, and services available to help with children and families.” “This legislation ensures that women have all the information they need to make their decision” reasoned Palumbo.