Friday, April 25, 2008

Just another viewpoint





-- by Dave

In the age of Drudge and "Fair and Balanced" news, we all know that facts and falsehoods are just two sides of the same coin, right? So I guess it's inevitable that some Republican somewhere would find it acceptable to speak before neo-Nazis because they're just another interest group, after all.

Sure enough. Jason Miller at the New-Dispatch in Michigan City, Indiana, reports that a bright republican attorney named Tony Zirkle, vying for the GOP nomination in his local congressional district, decided to do just such a thing:
U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

"This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

The Crown Point Republican spoke in front of about 56 "white activists" at an event honoring the birth of Hitler. The German leader was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

Zirkle said the group asked him to speak to discuss the effect of pornography and prostitution on young, white women and girls.


Actually, it does matter who you speak to if you aspire to publicly elected office: Your presence before any organization lends them legitimacy; and when it comes to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, that's simply irresponsible. That's why it was a problem when folks like Ron Paul and Trent Lott and Haley Barbour spoke before the Council of Conservative Citizens. If nothing else, it speaks of incredibly poor judgment on the part of that official.

But when you read the report of the event from the South Bend Tribune, it's clear that Zirkle's problems go beyond just a lack of judgment:
An account of the gathering on www.Overthrow.com says "Zirkle spoke on his history as a state's attorney in Indiana, prosecuting Jewish and Zionist criminal gangs involved in trafficking prostitutes and pornography from Russia and the Zionist entity.''

... Zirkle said he feels he was misunderstood. His real mission, he said, is to rid the country of pornography, and that's what he was saying at the ANSWP gathering. So how did his comment about Jews fit in?

"Most of the male porn stars were Jewish at the beginning," Zirkle explained.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Floyd Brown schtick strikes again



-- by Dave

In a way, you have to admire the Rovean evilness of Floyd Brown's schtick, now playing in North Carolina.

The new ad recounts the deaths of three Chicago residents in 2001 at the hands of criminal gangs. "That same year, a Chicago state senator named Barack Obama voted against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders," an ominous female narrator intones. "So the question is, can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?"

What's clever about the schtick is that it lets John McCain look noble and "moderate" by officially denouncing it -- to, of course, no effect, because that's how these things work -- while the ad gets national play and permeates not just North Carolina voters' consciousnesses but that of Americans generally. It's how the right runs these kinds of appeals up the flagpole to see how it flies -- and the way it's flying so far, I'd guess it's just a preview of what we'll see this fall.

And so it's been playing on my cable TV all day, over and over -- CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they're all playing it. Atrios has it exactly right, as usual:

Some Republican or conservative group runs a dumb ad.

John McCain nobly distances himself from it.

Cable news spends all day talking about it and showing it for free.

Rinse. Repeat.

That's the Brown formula: Create an incendiary ad, typically reverberant with far-right (often racist) themes repackaged for more mainstream consumption; spend a little bit of money in a few precincts, let the Republicans involved look good with the soccer-mom contingent turned off by racially incendiary campaigns, by officially denouncing; but still reaching the closet-racist bloc with the ad itself -- which of course gets national play in the mainstream media as it discusses the outrage that ensues. This, of course, expands the audience exponentially, and for no added expense. Diabolical, really, but clever as hell.

It's important to understand that the media are being deliberately gamed here, but they have no excuse whatsoever, ethically speaking, for allowing this to happen. After all, this is Floyd Brown we're talking about here. He's played this game before -- many, many times -- and has boasted afterward about how easy the media were to manipulate. But they never learn. Or perhaps they don't want to learn, because it makes for an easy narrative, and there's nothing they love like easy narratives.

It's also been striking how often the narrative veers into a discussion of Rev. Wright and Obama's judgment, which is ostensibly the ad's chief storyline. But anyone watching it can see that there's a larger, underlying theme: the ad is all about associating Obama with black criminality and supposedly lax liberal policies to "blame" for it. It's all about scaring white suburbanites while giving them the cover of hand-wringing about his "judgment."

Well, that's Floyd Brown for you. It is simply the Willie Horton campaign updated with the special edge of targeting a black candidate. And stirring the racial pot and widening the cultural divide is what Brown is all about.

Everyone, in fact, mentions the Horton ad as a classic example of Brown's tactics. But it's also important to remember that he's been a major player in nearly every right-wing smear of leading Democratic figures in the ensuing years, including the Clinton impeachment fiasco and the Swift Boating of John Kerry.

Brown Does His Race Thing, And The Media Do Theirs


[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]


In a way, you have to admire the Rovean evilness of Floyd Brown’s schtick, now playing in North Carolina.
The new ad recounts the deaths of three Chicago residents in 2001 at the hands of criminal gangs. "That same year, a Chicago state senator named Barack Obama voted against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders," an ominous female narrator intones. "So the question is, can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?"
What’s clever about the schtick is that it lets John McCain look noble and "moderate" by officially denouncing it — to, of course, no effect, because that’s how these things work — while the ad gets national play and permeates not just North Carolina voters’ consciousnesses but that of Americans generally. It’s how the right runs these kinds of appeals up the flagpole to see how it flies — and the way it’s flying so far, I’d guess it’s just a preview of what we’ll see this fall.

And so it’s been playing on my cable TV all day, over and over — CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they’re all playing it. Atrios has it exactly right, as usual:
Some Republican or conservative group runs a dumb ad.

John McCain nobly distances himself from it.

Cable news spends all day talking about it and showing it for free.

Rinse. Repeat.
That’s the Brown formula: Create an incendiary ad, typically reverberant with far-right (often racist) themes repackaged for more mainstream consumption; spend a little bit of money in a few precincts, let the Republicans involved look good with the soccer-mom contingent turned off by racially incendiary campaigns, by officially denouncing; but still reaching the closet-racist bloc with the ad itself — which of course gets national play in the mainstream media as it discusses the outrage that ensues. This, of course, expands the audience exponentially, and for no added expense. Diabolical, really, but clever as hell.

It’s important to understand that the media are being deliberately gamed here, but they have no excuse whatsoever, ethically speaking, for allowing this to happen. After all, this is Floyd Brown we’re talking about here. He’s played this game before — many, many times — and has boasted afterward about how easy the media were to manipulate. But they never learn. Or perhaps they don’t want to learn, because it makes for an easy narrative, and there’s nothing they love like easy narratives.

It’s also been striking how often the narrative veers into a discussion of Rev. Wright and Obama’s judgment, which is ostensibly the ad’s chief storyline. But anyone watching it can see that there’s a larger, underlying theme: the ad is all about associating Obama with black criminality and supposedly lax liberal policies to "blame" for it. It’s all about scaring white suburbanites while giving them the cover of hand-wringing about his "judgment."

Well, that’s Floyd Brown for you. It is simply the Willie Horton campaign updated with the special edge of targeting a black candidate. And stirring the racial pot and widening the cultural divide is what Brown is all about.

Everyone, in fact, mentions the Horton ad as a classic example of Brown’s tactics. But it’s also important to remember that he’s been a major player in nearly every right-wing smear of leading Democratic figures in the ensuing years, including the Clinton impeachment fiasco and the Swift Boating of John Kerry.


Joe Conason wrote about Brown
and his cohort, David Bossie, back in 2004, when he was involved in swift-boating John Kerry:
At Citizens United, the boisterous Brown and his sidekick Bossie are raising money to air their latest video creation, which blasts Kerry for his expensive haircuts and his wife’s wealth, tagging him as a "rich elitist liberal from Massachusetts who says he’s a man of the people."

… If the names of Brown and Bossie sound more familiar, they attained notoriety together during the Clinton era as indefatigable promoters of the bogus "Whitewater" scandal. They served as publicity agents for David Hale, the crooked and discredited former Little Rock municipal judge whose allegations against the Clintons forced the appointment of an independent counsel. Among mainstream journalists panting for a career-making Watergate-style scandal, Brown and Bossie found many a gullible mark. For nearly a decade they churned out junk night and day. For a while, Bossie went on the payroll of the Senate Whitewater Committee; later he worked for Rep. Dan Burton’s House Committee on Government Operations investigating Clinton and Al Gore — until he was caught distributing doctored tapes to the media.

Their scorched-earth campaign tactics were epitomized by Brown and Bossie’s 1992 paperback broadside "Slick Willie: Why America Can’t Trust Bill Clinton." Among the ugliest features of this little pamphlet was a chapter of unsupported and anonymous insinuations about Clinton’s role in a female student’s suicide. Their "investigation" was later called "an unusually brazen dirty tricks operation" in a report on "CBS Evening News." (In light of recent discussion of the president’s National Guard service, the authors may nowregret at least one of "Slick Willie’s" chapter titles — "Brave Men Died in Vietnam: Where Was Bill Clinton?")

The Horton ad appeared not as part of the Bush-Quayle campaign, whose strategists shied away from such obvious racism, but under the auspices of a shadowy organization called "Americans for Bush." According to testimony filed with the Federal Election Commission, which investigated the financing and planning of the Horton ad in 1990, the ad’s actual creators included Brown and Shirley. Others involved included Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, and a young producer named Jesse Raiford who was simultaneously working on TV commercials for Roger Ailes, then his boss at the official Bush-Quayle campaign. (FEC commissioners and investigators strongly suspected unlawful collusion between Bush-Quayle and Americans for Bush, but Republican members of the commission quickly killed the probe.)

The rather primitive commercial featured the scary mug shot of Horton — a sullen, scruffy-looking, African-American murderer who got weekend passes from prison while Dukakis was governor. Its provocative appeal to white fear was so blatant that even the Bush campaign was embarrassed, but Brown gleefully described it as the "silver bullet" that ruined the Democratic nominee.

Brown hasn’t entirely lost his taste for stoking racial animosities. He currently works for the Young America’s Foundation, where he oversees the indoctrination of youthful conservatives at the former Reagan Ranch. The YAF recently honored Rhode Island student Jason Mattera as the "top conservative student activist in the country," apparently because he sponsored a "whites only" scholarship at his school in protest of affirmative action.
I also wrote about Brown that year, discussing his long connections to far-right extremists in the "Patriot"/militia movement, citing a Chip Berlet piece on Brown’s career:
Brown remains proud of the 1988 Willie Horton ad, widely denounced as racist pandering. In 1992, he attempted to place ads for a $4.99 paid phone call that would play tapes of Gennifer Flowers in a telephone conversation with then-governor Clinton. The hook was a promise that the conversation probed sexual matters. The incident was so tasteless that the Bush/Quayle campaign was again forced to condemn Brown and his tactics. Brown also arranged a screening for a reporter of Militia leader Linda Thompson’s video, "Waco: The Big Lie," a potage of conspiracy theories linking Clinton to premeditated murder.

Two of Brown’s senior staff are veterans of the ultra-conservative subculture with its conspiracist worldview of communism as a vast left wing conspiracy-a worldview that originated in the Old Right. Cliff Kincaid is director of Citizens United Foundation’s American Sovereignty Action Project. He the author of two conspiracist books on the United Nations, Global Bondage: The U.N. Plan to Rule the World and Global Taxes for World Government, both published by Huntington House. Kincaid’s claims about the U.N. are promoted within the patriot movement. Kincaid also works for Accuracy in Media, and writes columns for Human Events and the American Legion Magazine, with a circulation of 3 million. In a 1991 article for Human Events, Kincaid red-baited groups protesting the Gulf War and quoted right-wing undercover operative Sheila Louise Rees, claiming antiwar demonstrations were concocted "by the traditional hard-line peace activist organizations that have always worked with the Communist Party U.S.A." Human Events is now published by Eagle/Phillips Publishing. Regnery Publishing is primarily owned by Phillips Publishing and the Regnery family.
It’s important to understand the role that people like Brown play. Not only does he enable the right to feed red meat to their more extremist elements while giving them a certain "plausible deniablity" (thus the official distancing, which Brown explicitly welcomes), he plays an even greater part in transmitting ideas from the extremist right into the mainstream, thanks largely to a complaisant media willing to lend him the mantle of credibility he doesn’t deserve. For instance, I’ve discussed how the Wall Street Journal lapped up Brown’s bill of goods on Clinton in the 1990s:
Likewise, the WSJ indulged all kinds of extremist propaganda in its pursuit of Clinton. One of its chief sources was Floyd Brown, a longtime enemy of Bill from Arkansas days. Brown was responsible for the circulation of much of the early Whitewater dirt on Bill Clinton, mostly through Citizens United’s top investigator, David Bossie (who later gained notoriety as the erstwhile chief investigator for Rep. Dan Burton’s campaign-finance probe). Brown’s credibility was already of questionable value; by 1998, this had become unmistakable. For instance, at Brown’s Citizens United Web site — in addition, naturally, to a bevy of Monica-related impeachment screeds — you could find screaming exposes of the Clintons’ alleged involvement in the United Nations one-world-government plot. A streaming banner on the site shouted: "Secret United Nations Agenda Exposed In Explosive New Video!" (The video in question prominently featured an appearance by then-Sen. John Ashcroft.) A little further down, the site explains: "This timely new video reveals how the liberal regime of Bill Clinton is actively conspiring to aid and abet the United Nations in its drive for global supremacy." For those who follow the militia movement, these tales have more than a familiar ring.

Yet in 1994, members of the WSJ’s editorial board sat down with Brown and examined his anti-Clinton information — which in nature was not appreciably different from what he was flogging four years later — and shortly thereafter, nearly half of the Journal’s editorial page was devoted one day to reprinting materials obtained from Brown. Moreover, the WSJ continued to recycle the allegations from that material for much of the following six years.
More recently, Brown played similar games in the 2004 election in Martin Frost’s congressional race against Pete Sessions: Came in with an "independent" group that ran racially incendiary attack ads against Frost. Sessions, of course, won.

Every time out, the media have played along with Brown. And it’s clear that won’t change anytime soon.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Tuesday Bloggage at Blog For Our Future

-- by Sara

It's that time again. This is rapidly turning "FLDS 'Till Your Eyes Bleed" theme week. I'm planning to spend another couple days working through my current pile 'o facts, and then (unless something really unique happens) I'm done with the subject for a while.

This week's Our Future piece riffs off of my "Crazy Dangerous" series of a couple months back. It's basically a threat assessment: Does the FLDS have what it takes to become truly dangerous? Several perspicacious commenters have already invoked those pieces and drawn some parallels, so I went ahead and did damn near 5,000 words on the subject today. (The short answer is: Yes. And No.)

I'm a long-form blogger, but that's excessive even for me. If you've got time this evening, go take a look. Be warned, though: this one's chewy, and it takes a while.

Another compassionate conservative





-- by Dave

I'd really like all those nativists and border watchers who claim that their activism is only about illegal immigration to explain this:
Disparaging remarks aimed at migrant workers got resident House rabble-rouser Douglas Bruce banned from speaking on a temporary-worker bill today.

"We don't need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in the state of Colorado," Bruce, R-Colorado Springs, told the chamber to an audible gasp.

Rep. Kathleen Curry, leading the House at the time, immediately barred Bruce from speaking at the podium, an uncommon maneuver.

"How dare you?" she asked Bruce, before House members moved back to discussion of a bill aimed at helping seasonal farm workers from other countries enter the state legally on a temporary basis.

The pilot program, which sets up liaisons in Mexico to assist foreign workers, would allow up to 5,000 laborers into Colorado
over five years.

The next day, Bruce was unrepentant, even going so far as to explain that he brought it up because he wanted to raise the issue of, yep, illegal immigration:
Bruce stood by his statement afterward, saying his colleagues are "offended by the truth" and contending the term was technically accurate. He said
he'd been planning the bill-related speech — at least two pages, single-spaced — for about a week.

"I was trying to make illegal immigration an issue for the House," Bruce said. "They just don't want anybody to disagree with a bill that they like."

The legislation in question, of course, was all about bringing in legal immigrants. Not that the nativists actually make that distinction.

[HT to Sam Smith at Scholars and Rogues.]

Monday, April 21, 2008

What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS

FLDS founding patriarch Rulon Jeffs with his last two wives
-- sisters Edna and Mary Fischer -- on their wedding day.

He received the pair as a 90th birthday present.

-- by Sara

So far, the wall-to-wall news coverage of the state of Texas's raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints compound in Eldorado, TX has been focused on just a couple of narratives. The first, of course, is the state's dogged and thorough -- and long overdue -- attempt to prove that the church's young women have been systemically sexually abused by the men of the group; and that this abuse is not just rare, but rather an inherent and accepted feature of the group's social order.

The other is the cultural curiosity of the sect's women in general. We see them, looking like they just walked out of the 1890s in their bizarre high hairdos, pastel prairie dresses, and sturdy shoes, and wonder how such a group of fossils (let alone tens of thousands of them) could still exist in modern America. It makes for great TV; but I often look at these women (most of whom have never watched TV in their lives), and feel like they're lambs being dragged out in front of media wolves they've never learned to recognize or fear. In a world when all of us seem to be in permanent rehearsal for our own 15 minutes of fame, these women are so unprepared for all this that they're downright fascinating.

These are the two current storylines the media is focused on -- at least, so far. In time, though, if the reporters and investigators stick around, they might find other things to talk about. A careful reading of Daphne Bramham's excellent The Secret Lives of Saints reveals that there are plenty of other questions we should be asking about the FLDS -- and months worth of stories we're not hearing about right now, but which need to be discussed and generally understood if the country is going to deal with the group appropriately and effectively.

And the country will be dealing with it -- probably for quite some time to come. Throughout its 60-year history, the FLDS has dealt with prosecution (or persecution) by seeding itself into new states, laying down roots for new communities that it can migrate to. (Eldorado itself started out as one of these.) New compounds are coming together now in Idaho and South Dakota; and there are rumors of others being staked out in Colorado and Nevada as well. Hildale/Colorado City may have been effectively taken over by the state of Utah, and Eldorado is in crisis; but with somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 adherents, this is a group that's not going to pass from the American scene any time soon.

One of the things we need to understand is just how the FLDS managed to stay so far under the radar for so long -- and what twisted consequences were allowed to follow from that lack of oversight. Bramham shows that they did a stunningly effective job of building their own self-sufficient infrastructure of community institutions -- hospitals, police forces, courts, financial trusts, schools, and employers -- that allowed the church to function without interacting with the outside world any more than necessary. Most of the group's institutions were designed to mimic and supplant outside authority well enough to keep the group (and especially its treatment of women and children) hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders. And, for 60 years, those who were responsible for providing higher-level oversight for all these institutions have almost always been somehow induced to look the other way.

In the existing FLDS communities in Utah and Arizona, state authorities have already begun investigations on many of these fronts -- not least because they are the stuff on which further legal battles, and the future of the sect, may turn. However, keeping the FLDS at bay in the years ahead will require county, state, and professional authorities everywhere in North America to stop averting their eyes, stay on their toes, and show a strong willingness to challenge these attempts to build this kind of sheltering infrastructure.

And there are other, less obvious reasons we need to be keeping an eye on them, too. Here's the first half of my motley list -- a few assorted areas of interest I'd be poking at more deeply, along with questions I'd be asking, were I a New York Times front-pager, a TV talking head, or a public official in any county or state where the FLDS has set up camp. The list is long, so I'll discuss a few today, and then follow up with the rest by Wednesday.

For-Prophet Health Care
FLDS communities put a priority on providing as much health care inside the community as possible, so they're not dependent on outside medical professionals. (To this end, pregnant mothers have often been sent to Hildale or Bountiful in their last months, so they can be attended by the FLDS midwives there.) Hildale/Colorado City has its own hospital -- built partly with public funds -- that has employed only doctors and nurses who have pledged their first loyalty to the Prophet.

As a result, the group's women and children get much of their primary care from people who feel no accountability to established medical standards of practice, state record-keeping requirements, or any of the existing mandated reporter laws. (Most people in these communities have no idea these laws even exist.) The spotty record-keeping that results is why the state of Texas has made the wise decision to do DNA testing on all the kids: it cannot be taken for granted that their birth certificates are accurate (or, in some places, exist at all).

The FLDs has also co-opted mental health services into another form of wife abuse. In Hildale/Colorado City, FLDS doctors have proven quite willing to declare unhappy women crazy. Daphne Bramham found that up to a third of FLDS women are on anti-depressants; and that women who are express acute dissatisfaction with the life have often been committed to mental hospitals in Arizona by the community's doctors. According to Bramham, the fear of being labeled insane and shut away in an institution is one of the most potent threats the community has used to keep women in their place.

Of course, this misuse of mental health care has turned into one non-obvious but critically important cultural land mine for the Texas authorities who are trying to figure out how to deal with their FLDS wards. Along with everything else, they're trying to work with women who've learned to see mental health evaluations as tantamount to an incarceration threat -- are thus predisposed to regard gentile doctors or social workers as a mortal enemy. It's not making things easier.

Based on this long history, counties and states that find themselves hosting FLDS compounds need to be keeping a close eye on how these communities manage health care. Who provides it? Are they keeping good records? Are they following the law? Do they adhere to accepted standards of care? Are they holding the line as our first line of defense against child abuse -- or are they helping the community hide its abusive secrets? If the state officials in charge of supervising hospitals and doctors had stepped up and asked these questions decades ago, thousands of women and children might have been spared generations of abuse.

Cops and Courts: No Law But God's Law
Much of the power of the prophets has been drawn from the fact that they historically controlled both the cops and the courts that served the Hildale/Colorado City area. Though these were officially chartered law enforcement agencies and nominally public courts, they weren't concerned with civil law. Instead, their task was to enforce the law according to the FLDS and its Prophet. The people in these communities had no effective recourse to the laws the rest of us live under. They could be arrested, fined, jailed, and have their property seized by nominally "official" cops and courts, acting under full authority of civil government, for violating church laws.

Like African-Americans in the slavery era, women who tried to run were captured by these police and returned to their husbands for punishment -- or taken to the hospital for the dreaded mental health evaluation. The police force's main job is to be the muscle that enforces the Prophet's control of the entire community. When the Prophet decides that a man no longer deserves his home, these are the cops who enforce the eviction. Appealing to the FLDS judges has been useless: due process as we understand it doesn't even enter into the conversation.

There is progress on this front. The state of Utah began to move against the Hildale police force in 2005, revoking the certification of its polygamous chief. Sam Roundy admitted that he'd investigated over 25 sexual abuse cases in the past decade -- including one that involved the rape of an eight-year-old -- and never reported it to child protection authorities. (He pleaded ignorance of all mandated reporter laws.) However, Roundy was replaced with another polygamous officer who immediately sent Warren Jeffs a letter pledging his loyalty, and I found no word that he's left office since. Later that year, the Utah Supreme Court also disbarred the local polygamous judge, which paved the way for reform of the local courts.

But the Saints are now in many places besides Utah; and officials in these other states shouldn't be surprised if they try to hijack cops and courts and replicate this system wherever they go. In Utah, decades of failure to attend to this effectively deprived tens of thousands of people of their civil rights. It can't be allowed to happen again.

Death Among the FLDS
These communities also bury their own dead (and at least one has its own crematorium), which opens the way to record-keeping anomalies with death certificates -- and ensures that no questions will ever be asked, and no autopsies will ever be performed. Given the genetic instability and volatile control issues within this group, it may not be wise for them to have the means to dispose of dead bodies without official oversight. We need to be asking questions about who's in their cemeteries and crematoria, how they got there, and what kinds of records are being kept.

The Fatal Flaw: Inbreeding Takes Its Toll
One of the most striking things about the FLDS is that certain surnames -- Jeffs, Blackmore, Fischer, Jessop, Barlow, Steed -- occur over and over again. In a community of over 40,000 people -- many of whom share fathers, grandfathers, or uncles -- the degree of blood relationship between any two people is likely to be very close indeed. In fact, over half the people in Hildale/Colorado City are blood relatives. So it's not surprising that, starting in 1980, the tragic results of three generations of tight inbreeding began to appear.

That was the year the first Colorado City child was diagnosed with fumarase deficiency -- a genetic disease so rare that only a handful of cases had ever been diagnosed worldwide. The disease causes severe mental retardation, seizures, hydroencephaly, growth failure, and physical deformities. Two of the FLDS's old-line families, the Barlows and the Jessops, both carry the recessive gene -- which is now present in several thousand FLDS members who trace their descent to those two founding fathers. By the 1990, Bramham writes, the twin FLDS cities had the highest concentration of children with fumarase deficiency in the world.

There are also signs of widespread hereditary eye problems among the current crop of children, along with evidence that that the community has a higher-than-average infant mortality rate. Arizona coroners recently -- and finally -- got involved in investigating these. But there's plenty more here for public health officials to look at; and it's becoming clear that the custom of close intermarriage needs to end on genetic grounds alone.

In the next post, I'll cover a few more reasons that the FLDS should never again be allowed to operate without close oversight from the outside world.

What to Give the Racist Who Has Everything

-- by Sara

The spirit of the Confederacy is alive and well -- and now available for just $99 (in three easy payments!) from The Bradford Exchange:


Also, apparently, doubles as a dog whistle:

Civil War Men's Sterling Silver Ring Shows Your Southern Pride! Exclusive Civil War Gift for History Enthusiasts!

Hold history in your hands with a dramatic jewelry exclusive that pays tribute to an unforgettable time in American history. Introducing the Civil War men's sterling silver ring, available only from The Bradford Exchange. Detailed with striking Civil War era symbols, this fine jewelry design is a handsome presentation that represents Southern pride and memorializes those who fought for the South during this turning point in our country.

Proudly wear this Civil War memorabilia, individually crafted of solid sterling silver for a gleaming finish. At the center, this Civil War men's sterling silver ring bears the Confederate flag and shield in rich red and blue enameling and trimmed in silver to boldly stand out against an inlay of genuine black onyx. C.S.A. (Confederate States of America) and the years of the Confederacy (1861-1865) are emblazoned on the banner below. As a special finishing touch, the inside of the band is engraved with "Pride of the South." What a stunning keepsake for you to treasure every day or give as a unique Civil War gift. Hurry, strong demand is expected. Order now!
However: I'm puzzled that it's missing that all-important secret compartment for your Viagra pill, which strikes me as a very serious oversight considering the audience.

Remember: Just eight shopping weeks till Father's Day!

h/t Andrew Kar, who found this little gem in Parade magazine.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Minuteman Scam

Chris Simcox (the cleaned-up version)


[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]


One of the few pleasures to be derived from watching the antics of the American right is that more often than not, the whole scene devolves into something like a Punch-and-Judy show on acid (bad acid, admittedly), which if nothing else has its moments of amusement. If they’re not turning up dead from self-asphyxiation dressed in wet suits, they’re busy ripping people off — most particularly each other. At which point much more head-clubbing ensues.

Take, for instance, that erstwhile Neighborhood Watch on Androgenic Steroids, the Minutemen. It seems that even though the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, whose finances have come under close scrutiny, reported income to the IRS that finally jibed with what they reportedly spent, there’s something not quite right about their accounting:
But Stacey O’Connell, former MCDC Arizona state chapter director who is now a member of the Patriot’s Border Alliance, a separate Minuteman-style organization, said the money listed in the new 990 filing does not match claims by Mr. Simcox on how much MCDC has actually collected.

Mr. O’Connell said that in past interviews, Mr. Simcox said the organization had collected $600,000 in donations in its first year, along with $1.6 million for a border fence MCDC is building. He said he also is aware of a single $100,000 donation given by an Arizona man. He later filed a fraud lawsuit against MCDC that has since been withdrawn because of a lack of funds to pursue it.

"After reviewing the Minuteman Foundation 990 from 2006, it appears well below the donation amounts Simcox has claimed in the past," Mr. O’Connell said. "Many of us, perhaps thousands of volunteers and supporters, have donated not only to MCDC but to the fence project as well.

"Many of us also feel that the lack of cooperation in showing where the money goes, how it is spent; that there is something very wrong within the organization," he said.
MCDC, on its Web page, said donations have been "used wisely and effectively, and have focused the nation on illegal immigration," saying it "cannot … accept responsibility for conspiratorial, disruptive and inappropriate speculations about MCDC organizational process and finances, nor will we waste precious time or resources upon those who refuse to accept the IRS nonprofit organization financial accountability standards."
The reality of the Minutemen — that they really are just another right-wing moneymaking scam, one that mostly takes money out of the pockets of ordinary citizens — became clear shortly after they split into two organizations in late 2005 — mainly because the two paranoiac egos that had founded the organization, Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, wound up scarcely able to be in the same room together.

Simcox went off and formed the MCDC, part of an elaborate PR makeover for Simcox. It was built essentially around drafting as many recruits from non-border states into their border-militia concept — which they could fulfill just by donating. Then Simcox has turned around and hawked the resulting mailing lists to right-wing political-mailing outfits. At the same time, he’s embarked on other scams as well, most notably the supposed construction of the border fence that never got built.

Meanwhile, Jim Gilchrist has not fared any better. His Minuteman Project organization has similarly devolved into a predictable right-wing mudpit, with lawsuits and paranoiac accusations flying hither and yon.

It would be a lot more amusing if they could find a way from making demonizing Latinos and other immigrants the reason for their existence.

It's about American values, Mandrake




-- by Dave

JJust as Californians are considering finally repealing the McCarthy-era "anti-communist" laws that threatened the firing of any teacher suspected of promoting communism, it seems that the Arizona Legislature is considering passing their 21st-century counterpart:

Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel. SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials to the state superintendent of public instruction, who could withhold state aid from districts that broke the law.

Of course, such subversiveness is an overwhelming problem in today's schools -- far more pressing than dropout rates and declining academic standards. Now if only we could figure out who's doing the subverting ... unless ... that's it! It's that insidious Reconquista! plot!

Sure enough, that's what this bill is in fact all about -- killing Latino studies and MEChA clubs:

Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if it is "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria," a provision Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said is aimed at MEChA, the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a student group. The 9-6 vote by the Appropriations Committee sends the measure to the full House.

MEChA is the nativist right's favorite flogging boy, even though there is no evidence at all that it's actually subversive or racist or whatever it is they seem to think it is. Unless you consider holding school bake sales subversive. Most likely it's the Cinco de Mayo parties.