Strategic silence

The White House yesterday:

MCCLELLAN: Let me respond. Look at the president’s record when it comes to defending the sanctity of life. It is a very strong record.

His views when it comes to pro-life issues are very clearly spelled out. We also have stated repeatedly that state legislatures, when they pass laws, those are state matters.

The White House in 2004:

In a statement released Wednesday night, President Bush said the ruling was "deeply troubling.

"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman," Bush said. "If activist judges insist on re-defining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

A little later, on the same subject:

In recent months, however, some activist judges and local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage. In Massachusetts, four judges on the highest court have indicated they will order the issuance of marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender in May of this year. In San Francisco, city officials have issued thousands of marriage licenses to people of the same gender, contrary to the California family code. That code, which clearly defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, was approved overwhelmingly by the voters of California. A county in New Mexico has also issued marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender. And unless action is taken, we can expect more arbitrary court decisions, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials, all of which adds to uncertainty.

Seems that this White House policy of not commenting on state-law issues is pretty new. Or is it just, shall we say, fungible? Especially when the religious right is involved?

The conservative bubble

One of the reasons the conservative movement has morphed into a pathological political religion is that it has managed to largely cut itself off from the real world by insulating itself from any kind of criticism whatsoever.

Criticism of right-wing programs and policies, you see, is never confronted on its own terms, but is dismissed with a wave of the ad hominem wand: it can't be right because the critics are Bad People with Bad Motives.

Recent discussions over blame-laying in the Iraq war fiasco has provided us with the latest example of the bubble (which in this case also includes a large number of liberal warhawks). It's not Bush's fault the war has gone so badly, it's his critics'.

So it has always been: Conservatives concoct a cockamamie vision of what the world ought to look like, try to force it on the rest of us -- and when it all predictably turns to shit, find a scapegoat (usually liberals).

A recent permutation of this surfaced after William F. Buckley, that conservative icon, declared the Iraq war a disaster. Responding to liberals' glee, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom turned the blame back in their direction (via Sifu Tweety at the Poor Man).

And this is (and has been) a crucial component of the war -- one that many on the anti-war side are loathe to admit: that their constant naysaying, though it is well within their right to voice, has objectively hurt the war effort, particularly when the criticism incorporates carefully-crafted falsehoods many of the war's critics know for a fact to be objectively untrue.

I don't know if Goldstein can establish the levels of actual harm inflicted by the domestic naysaying, but I can say that a number of other "carefully crafted falsehoods" perptrated by the White House -- from claims regarding weapons of mass destruction to the Al Qaeda-Saddam link to -- were substantively harmful in that they induced the nation to go to war under false pretenses, costing so far over 2,200 soldiers' lives and thousands more innocent Iraqi civilians.

A constant drumbeat of similar falsehoods, ranging from Swift Boat smears to the bizarre distortion of a Howard Dean campaign cheer, were contrived to help Bush stay in power, and have been ceaselessly deployed to destroy any and all critics. And that was also substantively harmful. Indeed, the decision to retaliate against one of these critics by outing a CIA operative engaged in WMD anti-proliferation work almost certainly damaged our ability to contain nuclear-arms work in places like Iran.

Still, no one who raised these objections, either then or now, was credible in the eyes of guys like Goldstein because, you see, they were just Bush haters:

Most of those on the right who I've read on the subject have criticized Buckley's analysis by noting that his initial stance on the war was hardly gung ho, and his most recent conclusions seem a bit premature. But they have respected him for making the argument, knowing that his goal, from the outset, has not been to undermine efforts to democratize Iraq either out of some immense hatred for the President or out of some newfound Democratic party / progressivist fealty to foreign policy realism; in fact, it can be argued Buckley has been there all along).

Unfortunately, I don't think the same can be said for the majority of those most vocal voices on the political left.

I'm wondering if Goldstein can point to any mainstream critics of the war who actually announced their intent to undermine efforts to democratize Iraq, for instance; expressing doubt that it was possible under these circumstances isn't the same thing. How many, exactly, raised these issues by saying they did so because they hated Bush? (As for foreign-policy realism, it seems to me that real realism -- that is, a policy based in real facts and not speculation -- is what Democrats were arguing for all along.)

No, we only know that those were the critics' motives because the right told us so. That is, whenever critics on the left or center (or even the right) came up with substantive reasons for opposing the war, they were dismissed as "Bush haters." No matter, as Glenn Greenwald described in detail at Crooks and Liars, that those reasons in fact proved wholly prescient.

We saw the same kind of circular logic at work in John Hinderaker of PowerLine's recent attack on John Murtha as "nuts." When his work was fact-checked by Judd Legum at ThinkProgress, Hinderaker responded with typical churlishness:

One of the dimmest of the dimwitted left-wing web sites has tried to respond to this post. Among other things, the proprietor of this slough of ignorance has resurrected the old chestnut that Dick Cheney said in an interview that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons;" ergo, Murtha was right! This is so stupid it makes your head hurt.

Hinderaker then goes on to ostensibly demonstrate that Cheney simply misspoke in the interview. But as Legum noted subsequently:

That's right, it was a just a "slip of the tongue" made on national television four days before the war. Cheney didn't bother to correct it for six months.

Indeed, Hinderaker's response, such as it was, only covered one of Legum's multiple findings, but even that was generous, apparently -- because Bush's left-wing critics are simply to be dismissed out of hand anyway:

Sadly, I think a great many liberals are this stupid. Worse, I think that many liberals--like the proprietor of the hate site that resurrected the Cheney quote earlier today--are so far gone in hatred of President Bush that everything they say and do is said and done in bad faith. Like Jack Murtha, they have lost any ability to distinguish truth from fiction, and any desire to do so.

Moreover, Hinderarker's rant obscures the reality of what the nation was being told during the runup to the war. As John MacArthur detailed in Columbia Journalism Review, the administration began trying to convince the public that Saddam was on the verge of obtaining a nuclear device, and steadily impled that he may well have already done so, as early as September 7, 2002:

It was then that the White House propaganda drive began in earnest, with the appearance before television cameras of George Bush and Tony Blair at Camp David. Between them, the two politicians cited a "new" report from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency that allegedly stated that Iraq was "six months away" from building a nuclear weapon. "I don't know what more evidence we need," declared the president.

For public relations purposes, it hardly mattered that no such IAEA report existed, because almost no one in the media bothered to check out the story. (In the twenty-first paragraph of her story on the press conference, The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung did quote an IAEA spokesman saying, in DeYoung's words, "that the agency has issued no new report," but she didn't confront the White House with this terribly interesting fact.)

But the next day, more "evidence" suddenly appeared, on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. In a disgraceful piece of stenography, Michael Gordon and Judith Miller inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon: "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."

The key to this A-bomb program was the attempted purchase of "specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium." Mysteriously, none of those tubes had reached Iraq, but "American officials" wouldn't say why, "citing the sensitivity of the intelligence."

The nuclear-weapons claims reached a feverish level in Bush's Oct. 7, 2002, speech pitching the preparations for war, in which he warned of the threat of a "mushroom cloud" over America:

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed.

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

To heighten the nuclear fearmongering, the White House even began promoting a forgery regarding a supposed deal Saddam had made with Niger to obtain the uranium:

Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." He commented, "Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide."

The clear implication of the claim was that Iraq had in fact finally obtained the means to build a nuke, and probably had done so. Indeed, while the administration danced around the question, it consistently implied that Saddam obtaining a nuke was a fait accompli. Cheney's remark was made within this context, and went uncorrected until after the invasion. Pretending that this was anything other than a "carefully crafted falsehood" is simply disingenuous.

And when Joseph Wilson, with a long record as a nonpartisan diplomat who had served both Republican and Democratic administrations with honor and skill, stepped forward to point out that the claim of a Niger uranium deal was a hoax, the administration chose to maintain its bubble by attacking him personally. He wasn't someone with credibility making a substantive charge: he was a Bush hater who had been pushed into the role as a bit of nepotism by his CIA-operative wife. Oh, oops! Did we just blow her cover?

So much for national security. Yet to listen to Bush defenders like Goldstein and Hinderaker, it was people like Wilson who were really responsible for the administration's failures in Iraq.

So it has always been with this crowd.

Paul O'Neill? Oh, he's just trying to sell a book. Nevermind that his description of Bush as incurious and insular, not to mention incompetent, played out before the nation during the Katrina disaster.

Richard Clarke? Just an embittered loser with an agenda (and a book to sell too!). Nevermind that his concern that the Iraq invasion would be a disastrous diversion from the serious pursuit of a real "war on terrorism" is proving all the more accurate every day.

Brent Scowcroft? Please. He just lives in a pre-9/11 world still.

Bruce Bartlett? Just another disgruntled ex-employee.

Nevermind that all these "Bush haters" are people who have long histories of distinguished service under Republican adminstrations, people who have real credibility on the subjects they're addressing. And all people dismissed with yet another wave of the ad hominem wand.

Perhaps, when considering whether Bush's critics "objectively hurt the war effort," it's useful to run a simple test of logic. Namely, tell us which has hurt us more:

-- An administration that ignored serious and well-founded concerns about the legitimacy of the invasion and the planning for postwar reconstruction, as well as an exit strategy, and proceeded to commit our troops to what has proven an inextricable disaster, worsened by its own outrageous incompetence.

-- The critics who raised all those concerns in the first place.

Logic, however, is incapable of puncturing an ideological bubble like this, because its structure resists it: Even good logic can be ignored because anyone proferring it is by definition a Bush hater, a Bad Person with Bad Motives.

The reality, of course, is that the motives of the critic do not delegitimize his criticism. Moreover, it's clear that the motives of many of his critics originate not with "hatred" of Bush but at well-founded opposition to his policies.

Conservatives, in order to maintain the bubble, have even begun constructing an agenda predicated on the mythology that there is no legitimacy to liberal or centrist criticism of Bush because it is constituted solely of "unhinged" Bush hatred -- even if the actual evidence for this charge is scant. So, of course, they drum up outlier incidents like the Colorado high-school teacher who ranted a lot of anti-Bush nonsense before his classroom, as though it represented the mainstream of opposition to the Bush agenda.

Perhaps even more ominously, the "Bush hater" dismissals are coming with a lot of expressions of elimination talk, suggesting that the people who are now being blamed for the dismal failure in Iraq need to "dealt with." This isn't relegated just to the fringes and radio ranters, but is even coming from leading elected Republicans.

Consider, for instance, what Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham recently told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the latter's Senate testimony regarding the NSA surveillance program:

During the time of war, the administration has the inherent power, in my opinion, to surveil the enemy and to map the battlefield electronically - not just physical, but to electronically map what the enemy is up to by seizing information and putting that puzzle together. And the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements. And let me tell folks who are watching what a fifth column movement is. It is a movement known to every war where American citizens will sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy. And it's happened in every war.

It would not be much of a step, judging from what we are now reading from the Bush defenders, to conclude that Bush's left-wing critics comprise just such a "Fifth Column." After all, the underlying logic of the meme is that criticism of Bush has been motivated purely by a desire to harm Bush which ignores the consequent harm to the nation. If they're harming us, well, what's the harm of a little surveillance? Or, for that matter, a few mass roundups?

The conservative bubble is a problem not just because it produces a pathological brand of politics. It also dehumanizes the people living inside it, because everyone outside of it becomes, if not the enemy, then at least expendable.

But like all such bubbles, it is also doomed to founder on the sharp rocks of reality. The question is whether the rest of us will be spared the shock of the explosion.

White supremacy doesn't pay

Free speech is a great thing. But your right to speak freely doesn't protect you from the realities of the workplace -- especially if you're on the public payroll.

Seems a part-time prosecutor in upstate New York was fired after he participated in the white-supremacist American Renaissance gathering last weekend in Herndon, Va.

I'm not so sure it was his mere attendance that prompted the firing. One has to suspect it has more to do with him being quoted in the Washington Post story on the event:

Conference participant Michael Regan, an assistant district attorney in New York's Allegany County, said U.S. policies on immigration, trade and "demographics" have put the country on the wrong path. "You can see European Christian Americans are an endangered species," he said, asserting that the accurate description of conference participants is "white preservationists" rather than "white supremacists."

The comment from his bosses:

Allegany County District Attorney Terrence Parker said Regan's "recent activities will continue to significantly disrupt and impair his effectiveness as an assistant district attorney and the operations of the entire district attorney's office."

... "Those kinds of comments are absolutely inappropriate for a public official," said Joel Levy, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, which characterizes the [New Century] foundation's ideology as "intellectualized, pseudoscientific white supremacy."

Public officials have to be able to deal with all sectors of the public, including nonwhites, and the presence of a DA like Regan would have cast a pall over the office where he worked.

The larger question, I suppose, is how many others there are who think like Regan but don't commit their opinions to the pages of the Washington Post.

[Hat tip to Ignorant Hussy.]

Koufax time

The nominations are in for the annual Koufax Awards for lefty blogs from the fine folks at Wampum (and while you're there be sure to tip them some change).

Polls are open. You can vote through comments or e-mail.

Orcinus is a nominee in seven categories:

Best Blog (non-professional)

Best Blog -- Sponsored or Professional

Best Writing

Best Single-Issue Blog

Best Series

Best Expert Blog

Some observations:

Orcinus probably shouldn't be a nominee in both the professional and non-professional categories, but Dwight tells me that the nominations belong to the readers, so there ya go. I can understand the confusion: this certainly is not a funded blog -- for that matter, I'm still declining to run advertising -- and I run it out of my garage as I always have. But I am a professional writer, which definitely fits the criteria for the "professional blog" category. So if you're going to vote for me for Best Blog, you should probably make it in the Professional category (where I'm doomed anyway).

As always, I'm a little uncomfortable with the "best expert" and "single issue" categories (and while I'm at it, I should mention that my "single issue" focus is probably better described as "right-wing extremism" than "hate groups"). I'm dubious about the extent to which I'm actually an "expert" at these things, but OK, whatever; and as regular readers know, I also post on a lot of other topics as well. Still, I understand how these things work, and I'm always honored to be among the finalists in these categories. (But we all know that Jeralynn and Juan Cole are used to walking away with these awards, and deservedly so.)

I'm a nominee once again for Best Series, an award I've won the previous two years. And I'm quite proud of this year's nominee, the Unhinged: Unhonest series. It's probably not quite at the level of the previous two award-winners, especially since it's essentially just an extended fisking. But I was hoping to use the whole fisking genre as a way to springboard into a discussion of something serious, namely, right-wing eliminationist rhetoric, and how right-wing Newspeak accusing liberals of being "unhinged" primarily serves as a cover for it. (I examined this even more in the followup discussion with Cathy Young.)

Still, none of it quite holds a candle to the amazing work of the gang at firedoglake on the Plame matter, does it? Sigh.

And of course, I've always coveted the Best Writing award, and I'm usually a finalist, but I don't think I've ever been really close on that.

So, in examining the field, it looks like a bit of a down year for Orcinus at the Koufaxes. And that's probably reflective of the blog this year: I've turned my attention to a number of other directions, I have had weeklong stretches with no posts, and right-wing extremists just haven't been on the national radar as much. Some of my best writing, I think, has come in posts that no one else much wants to link to, and it seems fewer people are reading, since they are on topics that are not exactly political. Certainly I noticed that, for the first time, I wasn't nominated at all for "Best Post" -- an award I came very close to winning two years ago.

Well, all that's as it should be; audiences are bound to come and go whenever you shift directions as a writer, and much of this is by design on my part. I also think that recognizing fresh blood is good for the blogosphere. I do think, though, that regular readers will see a little more to chew on this year than last, if for no other reason than that the extremists are definitely picking up their pace this year. (Also, I have plans for a kickass series to begin sometime next month, I think.)

So go vote, help me out where you think I deserve it, but most of all, spend some time and check out the other nominees. There's a ton of great writing out there.

Bringing Nazis and Jews together

Jared Taylor wants to know: Can't Jews and neo-Nazis just get along?

Well, no. At least, that's the conclusion you have to reach after reading this fascinating piece by Jonathan Tilove in the Forward about Jews who choose to participate in the annual American Renaissance gathering in Herndon, Va., and what happens to them:

The events Saturday, February 25, passed without major incident. But then, late Sunday morning, none other than former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke approached the microphone on the floor during the question-and-answer session for French writer Guillaume Faye. After congratulating Faye for stirring remarks that "touched my genes," Duke asked if there weren't an even more insidious threat to the West than Islam.

"There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and our spirit," Duke said.

"Tell us, tell us," came a call from the back of the room.

"I'm not going to say it," Duke said to rising laughter.

But Michael Hart, a squat, balding Jewish astrophysicist from Maryland, was not amused. He rose from his seat, strode toward Duke (who loomed over him like an Aryan giant), spit out a curse — "You f...ing Nazi, you've disgraced this meeting" — and exited.

As it happens, only a few minutes earlier Hart, a mainstay of American Renaissance conferences, had been trying to reassure Herschel Elias, a first-time attendee from suburban Philadelphia, that he should not let his observation that the meeting was "infiltrated by Nazis and Holocaust deniers" ruin his impression of American Renaissance.

"The speakers aren't Nazis," Hart assured him. "Jared isn't a Nazi."

No, Jared -- that is, Jared Taylor, the American Renaissance leader -- isn't a Nazi, at least not exactly. But he is a right-wing extremist who leads a bona fide hate group. And his audience -- white nationalists -- comprises from top to bottom mainly people who, if not actual fascists, are at least profoundly anti-Semitic.

And, as much as Taylor might view Jews as whites who should be on his side -- and tailor his recruitment accordingly -- it's doubtful his organization can ever escape the gravitational pull of the vast majority of his audience who view Jews as the actual source of all racial problems through their money and connivance.

That becomes more than abundantly evident when you consider how Jews have been treated at past AR conferences:

At the 2000 conference in Herndon, Robert Weissberg — a political scientist who then worked at the University of Illinois — delivered a speech titled "Jews and Blacks: Everything the Goyim Want To Know but Were Afraid To Ask." His thesis was that although Jews and blacks loathe one another, Jews remain frightened of the white right.

Weissberg delivered his remarks with his trademark blend of erudition, Yiddishisms and Borscht Belt timing. He was not a big hit. Taylor heard the complaints: "Now the Jews want to take over this, too."

Weissberg, who is living in New York once again, keeps coming to the conferences. He enjoys the open talk about race, perhaps also the whiff of intellectual danger. At the Saturday morning session, the man sitting next to him doodled on his pad: "No good Jew."

Michael Berman, a New York Jew who wrote a piece for AR in 2003 about his "racial awakening," experienced something similar this year:

Not everyone at last weekend's meeting could stay cool on the Jewish question. Before Faye spoke, Michael Matthews, an attendee from New Jersey, passed Michael Berman in the hotel foyer.

"Are you a Jew?" Matthews demanded. "I don't think you should be here."

Berman was hurt.

"You see, there's no home for me,'' he sighed after Matthews had left. "I'm like a black sheep here and everywhere I go."

I have a hard time feeling bad for Mr. Berman. His eagerness to join and participate in an organization like Taylor's -- which in the end is all about scapegoating and bigotry and little else -- means he and the other Jews who are part of the AR crowd are just embracing their own narrow brand of prejudice (in most cases, against blacks).

But no matter what they do, there will always be the David Dukes and their thousand little minions around to remind them that bigotry is a many-edged sword -- and over history, the biggest and sharpest edge has long been reserved for their own kind.

The NSA and the 'rule of law'

Torrid Joe at Loaded Orygun points out a potentially significant development in southern Oregon regarding the NSA surveillance scandal.

Namely, it now appears that at least one activist group claims it was harmed by the wiretapped conversations between the director of an Islamic charity and two attorneys, and has filed a suit to shut the program down:

A chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a defunct Saudi Arabian charity, was established in Ashland in 1997 as a prayer house that also distributed Islamic literature. The chapter was indicted in February 2004 on tax charges alleging it helped launder $150,000 in donations to help al-Qaida fighters in Chechnya in 2000.

Attorneys for the Al-Haramain chapter have insisted the money was used only for charities. But federal prosecutors had claimed in the indictment the money could have been used to assist Muslim militants.

Prosecutors later asked a federal judge to dismiss the charges against the Ashland chapter of the charity. The request was granted last September, over the objections of attorneys for Al-Haramain, who wanted the government to show what evidence it had against the charity.

Of particular note is the fact that both the caller and the persons receiving the calls were within the United States:

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Portland alleges the NSA illegally wiretapped electronic communications between the chapter and Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, both attorneys in Washington, D.C.

The complaint, which also names President Bush as a defendant, seeks "an order that would require defendants and their agents to halt an illegal and unconstitutional program of electronic surveillance of United States citizens and entities."

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the two Washington attorneys and the Al-Haramain chapter by three Portland civil rights lawyers: Steven Goldberg, Zaha Hassan and Thomas Nelson.

Some of you will recall that Nelson was the attorney for Brandon Mayfield, the Portland lawyer who was falsely accused of conspiring in the Al Qaeda railway bombings in Madrid. He has something of a track record for winning these kinds of cases.

One of the other attorneys, though, got right to the heart of the matter:

Hassan said the case is about "whether we are prepared to accept after 9/11 that the executive branch of our government has unlimited and unchecked power to engage in unlawful activity at the expense of the civil rights of Americans."

"This is simply a case about the rule of law," Hassan said.

Ah, yes, the rule of law. I remember when it was all the rage.

But then, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out the other day, there are all kinds of longtime conservative values getting booted out the cargo door of their flaming dirigible of a movement these days.

When Republicans in Congress decided to impeach Bill Clinton back in 1998, we heard endless intonations regarding the "rule of law." It was even in the Articles of Impeachment:

In all of this, William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Bulldog Manifesto at DKos had a handy compilation of Clinton-era "rule of law" quotes a couple of months ago. My favorites:

Henry Hyde: "I suggest impeachment is like beauty: apparently in the eye of the beholder. But I hold a different view. And it's not a vengeful one, it's not vindictive, and it's not craven. It's just a concern for the Constitution and a high respect for the rule of law. ... as a lawyer and a legislator for most of my very long life, I have a particular reverence for our legal system. It protects the innocent, it punishes the guilty, it defends the powerless, it guards freedom, it summons the noblest instincts of the human spirit. The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door."

James Sensenbrenner: "What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law. Our failure to bring President Clinton to account for his lying under oath and preventing the courts from administering equal justice under law, will cause a cancer to be present in our society for generations. I want those parents who ask me the questions, to be able to tell their children that even if you are president of the United States, if you lie when sworn 'to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,' you will face the consequences of that action, even when you don't accept the responsibility for them."

This only scatches the surface. Among many others, there was notably this from the late Barbra Olson:

"I would not call myself a conservative if I thought the rule of law could be contorted and twisted to my own personal views."

Indeed, after the impeachment failed, a number of conservatives declared the rule of law dead because of Bill Clinton.

That's it! It's all Bill Clinton's fault! The Clenis Strikes Again! Aaaiiieeee!

I should've known.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that the wiretapped conversations apparently took place while the director of the charity was in Saudi Arabia, not in Oregon. So it appears that, in this case at least, it did not occur entirely as domestic surveillance.

Crying terrorist

Michelle Malkin brings us a fresh update on the Oklahoma suicide bomber who was killed last year in Norman. Recall, if you will, that Malkin and her cronies drummed up the case last year because they believed that the bomber, a young fellow named Joel Hinrichs, might have ties to Islamic terrorists.

Except that, well, he didn't.

She links to a Daily Oklahoman story that finds the following:

A Norman police bomb expert said Tuesday he does not believe University of Oklahoma student Joel Henry Hinrichs III committed suicide by blowing himself up outside a packed football stadium.
"I believe he accidentally blew himself up," Sgt. George Mauldin said.

Mauldin said Hinrichs, 21, an engineering student, had two to three pounds of triacetone triperoxide, commonly known as TATP, in a backpack in his lap when it exploded Oct. 1.

When asked if he believed Hinrichs meant to enter the stadium with the explosives, Mauldin replied, "I don't believe he intended for an explosion to occur at that spot (on the park bench)."

In other words, it seems possible he intended for the detonation to occur inside the stadium. But it's only one of several possibilities -- including that he was carrying the device for thrills and didn't intend for it to go off at all.

In any event, there's simply no evidence whatsoever in the story that Hinrichs may have been an Islamic terrorist -- which Malkin, it must be said, doesn't suggest explicitly this time out. But given her previous coverage of the case, that appears to be the entire purpose of this post, complete with nyah-nyahs at the many people who had good reasons -- and still do -- for doubting that he was an Islamic terrorist.

As I pointed out before, it's far more likely he was more in the Tim McVeigh vein of bomber. That doesn't seem to have crossed Malkin's radar just yet.

Curious, that. Especially since the Oklahoma Daily covered the same event, and carried further remarks from the same Sgt. Maugham:

The suspicions of an Islamic connection were shown to be false, Mauldin said.

... Mauldin said he thought of members of the American Taliban when he saw the driver license photograph.

"They all thought the same thing I thought," Mauldin said. "This looks like an Islamic terrorist."

But while Mauldin and others did have initial reactions, he said many media misrepresented the facts in the aftermath of the explosion, speculating about whether Hinrichs attempted to enter the stadium and whether he was connected to Muslim organizations in Norman.

It's one thing to have an initial suspicion based on appearances. It's completely another to cling desperately to that suspicion when all the succeeding evidence makes it clearly groundless.

[Hat tip to Malkin(s)Watch, and commenter Cam.]

The Cro-Magnon Renaissance

Some other worthwhile reading can be found at Ignorant Hussy, which fills us in on the details from last weekend's American Renaissance gathering in the D.C. area. Funny thing: there's no Robert Stacy McCain report on it this year in the Washington Times, as has been his tradition.

And as long as we're talking about white supremacists promoting their agendas, be sure to check out Isis' images from the Orlando neo-Nazi rally of last weekend.

And if you need a break from all those swastikas, read Nancy Goldstein's remarkable piece on Laurel Hester, a New Jersey policewoman who recently passed away after fighting to win the right to name her partner, Stacie Andree, the beneficiary of her pension. Hester, in this instance, was fighting the Cro-Magnons who sit on county boards and wonder if allowing lesbians equal civil rights would "violate the sanctity of marriage."

The neo-Nazis' imposture

Be sure to check out the report from George Howland in the Seattle Weekly on the neo-Nazis in Washington prisons posing as Jews:

Jewish chaplain Gary Friedman wasn't surprised when he learned that incarcerated neo-Nazi gang members were claiming to be Jews at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center on the Olympic Peninsula. In fact, the chairman of the Seattle-based Jewish Prisoner Services International had been expecting the news. Nationwide, "There is this amazing phenomenon of non-Jews claiming to be Jewish," says Friedman.

Across the country, prisoners of every ethnicity, faith, and political viewpoint, including neo-Nazis, latch onto Judaism for a variety of reasons. Of the 120 prisoners in this state who are granted a kosher diet, only a dozen are Jewish, Friedman says. Seattle Weekly's interviews with Washington prisoners who have declared themselves Jewish and are receiving kosher food have yet to yield an actual Jew. Interviews with these prisoners and prison officials reveal a host of reasons for the fakery. Some like the prison kosher diet better than regular institutional chow—one prisoner says it tastes better, another claims it's more nutritious, and a third says it helped him lose weight. Others use the opportunity to write to Jewish organizations asking for money. "All us Jews are rich, right? We get deposit slips for inmate accounts!" says Friedman.

It seems that most of these claims are made to get the kosher meals, which tend to be better than standard prison fare.

This immediate brought to my mind the dietary habits of some Christian Identity folks, who come to their beliefs -- including the notion that Jews are the descendants of Satan and that nonwhites are soulless "mud people" -- from an arcane and frankly dubious reading of the Old Testament. But because of that, they also observe closely the many dietary prohibitions and restrictions.

The Montana Freemen were especially noteworthy for this. During their 81-day standoff in Jordan, meeting their dietary needs was part of their ongoing negotiations with the FBI.

In any event, the piece also delves into a prison-based outfit called the Aryan Family, which seems to be unique to the Clallam Bay prison; the Aryan Brotherhood is far more widespread. But the piece gives some real insights into how these groups operate, in and out of prison. Definitely worth a full read.

Springtime for Hitler

Maybe, if all these neo-Nazis keep insisting on dragging their sorry belief systems out of the closet and parading them about in hopes of inciting a riot, the time has finally come to bring out the most dreaded weapon in a free society's arsenal: laughter.

Maybe, instead of just showing up to oppose them, we take it the next step. We laugh at them.

Rick at OlyBlog proposed this as a constructive way to deal with our recent local infestation of the National Socialist Movement's recruitment drive:

I've been considering the following diabolical plan, and I ran it by my class this morning and got a big thumbs up. Here's what we do:

-- Make lots of costumes of Nazis, only make them outrageous, cartoonish, and fantastic.

-- We wear these costumes to the next NSM rally that is scheduled in July at the State Capitol.

-- We prance around in our surreal nazi costumes, making statements about how persecuted and abused we are.

This strategy of mockery has several attractive features. Our presence will deter those who may be vulnerable to recruitment, but would change the dynamic of the demonstration from one of confrontation to one of humor and farce. The comical approach will make their claims about being an abused minority look hysterical. It will make it very hard for them to spin any photos taken from the event. Finally, it will be great fun for us to think of creative ways to dress like Nazis. (The more like Village People, the better!)

I think this is a great idea, for number of reasons:

-- It will channel the anger and energy of the opposition in very constructive direction, and lighten up the whole affair.

-- Humor takes the sting out of their message, and denies them any kind of victory.

-- It's also more persuasive than "white power" chants.

-- It will drive the Nazis, who take themselves quite seriously and want desperately to be taken seriously, nuts. OK, more nuts.

Of course, I'd also be in favor of sponsoring a Nazi Nutball Film Festival in conjunction with all this. You know, show films like The Great Dictator and The Producers.

Meanwhile, the Ghost of Lenny Bruce wonders just what those Easter egg Nazis were thinking. And he reminds us of an old joke:

Q: How many Nazi skinheads does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Eight. One to change the bulb, the other seven to back him up.

I can't think of any better way to chase these people off the public stage than to laugh them off it.

Neo-Nazis in the 'hood

[Photo by Julie Fletcher/Orlando Sentinel]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the same neo-Nazi organization that has been raising its profile out here brought its roadshow to Orlando this last weekend, intending to promote the notion that "the crime problem is a race problem." But they wound up not getting the message out:

More than 500 counter-protesters held back by 300 police officers drowned out the message of a neo-Nazi group that marched through Orlando's historic black Parramore neighborhood Saturday.

Twenty-two members of the National Socialist Movement, some wearing khaki uniforms with swastika armbands, finished their march with a rally outside the federal courthouse that could not be heard over the jeering crowd.

The group shut down the rally 90 minutes early and left town.

Seventeen people were arrested, all of them from the crowd separated from the neo-Nazis by lines of police in riot gear.

Police and civic leaders expressed pride that the event ended without the violence some had feared.

"I've lived here since 1944, and I've never been more proud of Orlando, Orange County and Central Florida," said former legislator Alzo J. Reddick, one of the organizers of the Be Cool campaign that urged residents to ignore the march and the rally.

Though there were 17 arrests and some minor violence, it was all a distinct contrast to what happened earlier this year in Toledo when the same organization attempted the same tactics -- namely, marching into a mixed-race residential neighborhood and deliberately antagonizing the people who lived there. In that case, the police were poorly prepared to deal with the NSM's failure to follow the terms of its permit, which meant that they wound up holding an impromptu rally at the local high school rather than marching through the neighborhood, and as security fell apart, the anger of the residents at having their home streets invaded boiled over into rioting and random violence.

That is, of course, exactly why the NSM holds its rallies the way it does: to maximize the insult and to inspire violence. Their entire purpose is to instigate it by taking their abusive and hateful rhetoric right into people's neighborhoods.

It's important to note that there was a substantial presence of an anti-Nazi crowd in Orlando -- and it was by and large very well behaved. Moreover, their presence forced the Nazis to shut down early and skedaddle; they got the message -- that their presence was unwelcome -- loud and clear.

This puts the lie to the hope of some civic leaders, including the Orlando Sentinel's editors, that perhaps just ignoring the Nazis would be more effective. Yet the same state senator that the paper chastised in fact, as their own story reported, led a powerful contingent of silent opposition to the rally whose presence made a real difference. The Sentinel's plan for everyone to "stay away" might have worked, but the actual outcome was far more powerful and effective a response.

No doubt, some of the pre-rally organization also made a difference:

Under a response dubbed "Operation Be Cool," community leaders and the Police Department hope to avoid a repeat of Toledo, where angry counter-demonstrators clashed with police in anticipation of a march by a few members of the National Socialist Movement. The riot in October resulted in 114 arrests and 12 injured officers.

The Orlando police, NAACP, black ministers and other leaders are urging people to avoid the area during the march. Posters on storefronts along West Church Street urge residents to "Dis & Dismiss Ignorant Racists . . . They expect you to come downtown to confront them. Be Cool! Don't be drawn into violence."

"Stay home. Stay away. There won't be a problem. Everybody will be safe, and it will be over," police Chief Michael McCoy said.

Earl Dunn, who runs Paradise Island Cafe on West Church Street, said he plans to close his business Saturday.

"Customers will be afraid of what these guys can do," he said. "It's best for us to close that day."

But down the street, Andria Brown said she intends to keep her store open in defiance of the white supremacists.

"Let them have their silly thing. I'm going to be right here," said the owner of Zion's Daughter Alterations.

Several Parramore residents questioned why the city would allow white supremacists to parade their hate through a black neighborhood. The city said it had no choice.

"We live in a country where there is freedom of speech," said Reggie McGill of the Orlando mayor's office.

Orlando was stuck in a dilemma that faces many cities confronted with events like neo-Nazi rallies for the first time.

All cities have ordinances in place that carefully limit the circumstances of marches, parades, rallies, and the like, and regulate them under a permit system. But the Supreme Court rulings on these issues have been fairly consistent in knocking down restrictions limiting where these rallies can occur, including residential neighborhoods:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stated in Christian Knights of KKK v. District of Columbia that when using a public forum, "...speakers do not have a constitutional right to convey their message whenever, wherever and however they please."

Accordingly, the government may regulate a marcher's use of the streets based on legitimate interests, such as: 1) Accommodating conflicting demands by potential users for the same place; 2) protecting those who are not interested onlookers, like a "captive audience" in a residential neighborhood, from the adverse collateral effects of the speech; and 3) protecting public order.

The court emphasized that a permit process cannot be used to "...impose even a place restriction on a speaker's use of a public forum on the basis of what the speaker will say, unless there is a compelling interest for doing so, and the restriction is necessary to serve the asserted compelling interest."

The court ruled the city's denial of a permit request from the Ku Klux Klan to march 11 blocks and the resulting decision to limit the march to only 4 blocks was unconstitutionally based on anticipated listener reaction, which turns on the group marching, the message of the group, and the extent of antagonism, discord, and strife the march would generate.

However, the court also held that a restriction based on the threat of violence could be constitutionally justified if that threat of violence is beyond reasonable control of the police.

... Nonetheless, because of conflicting police testimony and evidence, the court concluded the threat of violence posed by the proposed Klan march was not beyond reasonable police control and that the restriction therefore violated the first amendment.

It's clear that Orlando officials concluded that they could provide reasonable police control, and so had no grounds for limiting the planned march route.

However, it's worth noting that the NSM is taking to planning its rallies in residential neighborhoods, which is one of the reasons for the new volatility of their appearances. As I noted before, this amounts to real harassment, particularly when the racial insults and chants start. In the Orlando case, the entire rally was predicated on the notion that the neighborhood where the rally was to occur was a major source of criminality.

I think the fact that these are being planned primarily for residential neighborhoods also gives cities some real leeway in circumscribing the reach of these events and containing them in smaller areas where they will harass fewer people in their homes. As noted, the Supreme Court also has placed a high priority on the right of government to keep people secure in their homes ("the State's interest in protecting the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home is certainly of the highest order in a free and civilized society"), though it also has knocked down overbroad restrictions against any rallies in neighborhoods. Still, it seems at least feasible to me that restricting a march route based on the need to protect the "captive audience" of the neighborhood from the collateral effects of such a march would pass constitutional muster -- especially since the effects in a case like this are so pronounced.

Still, it strikes me that there's something profoundly wrong with this picture.

An outfit like the NSM -- where the followers can be counted, along with their IQs, in the 25-and-under category -- can go to Orlando in search of a parade permit and emerge saying, "We basically won everything we wanted," and subsequently receive massive amounts of police protection in the ensuing publicity stunt.

But in New York City, antiwar protesters are herded into pens and refused the right to march, or protests of the Republican Convention result in mass arrests.

How exactly did that come to pass?

No, Nazis, No

Wow! The response to the "Say No To Nazis" fund-raiser has been phenomenal. I'm touched and honored.

The tally, after just two days: over 120 donations totaling more than $2,500. That more than doubles the total after more than a week of regular fund-raising.

To say it's heartening is understating it badly. The breadth and depth of the response tells me that not just the regional community, but the larger blogging community, understands the importance of standing up to the cancer of racial hatred.

As if to illustrate the character of the people we're dealing with here, the very same group that named me (along with Sarah of OlyUnity) a "race traitor" went and made the local newscasts with their antics in the Olympia area.

Seems they were leaving Easter eggs containing pornographic images and obscenities on neighborhood lawns. Maybe it was part of their Kiddie Outreach program:

Words of hate and pornographic images are circulating in a most unexpected way in Thurston County.

Plastic Easter eggs loaded with obscenities have landed on lawns in Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater.

"Every house had two or three," said Tumwater resident Steve Newbon, who picked up several from his own lawn in a residential neighborhood.

At first, he thought Easter had come early. Then he got a closer look.

"It upset the living bejeezus out of me," he said.

Dozens of eggs like this one, with hate messages on them, were found in Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, Wash.

Police say a neo-Nazi type group spread the eggs and flyers. The containers held obscene images, slurs against homosexuals and slurs against certain minorities. Newbon's most concerned because his young son gets on the bus close by.

He also has an adopted grandmother from another country and both English and Spanish are spoken in his house.

Police say the eggs have shown up on lawns all over the area including Olympia and Lacey. An officer found more than 40 in Tumwater alone.

I watched this report when it was broadcast, and it was unfortunately marred by a hyperbolic lead-in by the anchors that referred to the egg laying as "neo-Nazi attacks," as well as some not exactly accurate information:

But despite the messages, police say the only crime is littering.

"At this time, we really don't have much. We have littering. They have a right to free speech. There's not much we can do … We don't have any suspects," said Tumwater Police Det. Jennifer Kolb.

This is contrary to some of what we've been told: If there really were pornographic images, then there certainly may have been charges related to that, since these were left on families' lawns. It's not a free-speech right to distribute pornography to minors.

There also was some confusion among the interviewees chosen for the "man on the street" portion of the report:

While police look for suspects, neighbors hope they're caught before they hatch more hate.

"They shouldn't be doing the eggs. That's not right at all," said Shirleyann Westman.

"That's not first amendment rights, that's bigotry," said Newbon.

Actually, bigotry is part of Americans' First Amendment rights. People who hold such beliefs do, for better or worse, have every right to voice them in a lawful fashion. Hate speech becomes a hate crime only when it enters the criminal realm: that is, when it becomes a threat, intimidation, or criminal incitement.

Which is why counter-speech -- standing up to them -- is so absolutely essential. Bad speech cannot be countered by silence; people like these only interpret the silence as implicit endorsement. They thrive on the illusion that they represent the silent wishes of the white majority, and shattering it is the only effective means of defanging them.

So the outpouring of support this week has been especially gratifying. I think we made a powerful statement that every hateful move they make will only be turned to strengthen our side. Every threat, implicit or explicit, will only stoke our fires higher.

I'd especially like to thank the following bloggers for stepping up and directing readers this way, and pat them on the back for locking arms:

Crooks and Liars

Jesus' General

Steve Gilliard's NewsBlog

Horses Ass

LGF Watch

Voice of a Native Son

GOTV

Jesus Politics

OlyUnited

Steve Sailer Sucks

Ahistoricality

Thanks to all these folks, and to the many donors. I really was looking more for sheer numbers of donations by way of making a statement, and we certainly achieved that; but many went well over and beyond the call of duty in how much they donated. I'm very grateful. A special thanks in that regard to Asher, Joseph, Kay, Nadia, Devon, Steven, Marianne, Robert, Christopher, Adam, Mr. SJ, Steve Gilliard, and The General.

Stay tuned throughout the year.

Faith of the faithful

Dwight Meredith wrote in recently in response to my post on the conservative movement as a political religion, which he said "reminded me of a letter to the editor I saw recently from The Salt Lake Tribune:"

Bush the Messiah

Right-leaning conservatives seeking political domination need not fret over the seculars kicking God out of our country.

When President Bush presented himself as the Messiah of world democracy and was re-elected, we assured ourselves that ours had finally become a faith-based government. The voters' message was that we trust the president as a man of faith.

We trust Him to do the right thing. We trust that under His command, our government will spy on those needing to be spied upon, torture those who are in need of torturing, start wars wherever wars ought to be fought, bomb those who need to be blown away, and castigate as evil those who are of Satan. God bless Him.

Horst Holstein
Salt Lake City

Dwight notes: "I see no evidence that the letter is satire although it would be good satire if so intended."

Having been born in Salt Lake City and raised in southeastern Idaho, I'm pretty sure the letter was meant quite seriously.

In the meantime -- as I continue to gather my thoughts on all this -- be sure to read Mahablog's continuing discussions along these lines, notably a terrific post on nationalism and a followup on hate speech.

Also, be sure to drop over to Dwight's place and plug in some nickels for the Koufax Awards. They recently had an emergency fund-raiser, and could always use the help.

UPDATE: Several commenters have pointed out that several of Mr. Holstein's previously published pieces were decidedly anti-Bush. I think it's clear that the letter was intended satirically. But it's also obvious that Holstein knows his neighbors well.

Swift Minutemen

Now there's a marriage made in hell: Minutemen leader Jim Gilchrist is teaming up with Swift Boater Jerome Corsi to write a book about how illegal immigrants are part of a Mexican conspiracy to trash America:

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project, and Jerome Corsi, Harvard Ph.D. and co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," have teamed up to write a shocking account of the endless flow of drugs, terrorists, and economic refugees at America's borders -- and to expose the Mexican government's open complicity in this full-fledged crisis. The to-be-titled book will be published by World Ahead Publishing and available in bookstores nationwide this July.

The Minuteman Project is a volunteer-based organization that gained national prominence last year for organizing a citizen watch along the nation's southwestern border to report suspicious activity to authorities. While denounced by politicians in the nation's capital -- including President Bush -- over-worked Border Patrol agents privately praised the Minuteman Project volunteers for their efforts.

"Illegal immigration is bankrupting states along the border, but this is about more than economics -- we're placing our national security at risk," says Gilchrist, who along with other Minuteman Project volunteers has come under fire while on patrol and carrying nothing more than binoculars and cell phones. "Drug lords and violent gangs like MS-13 are streaming into the U.S. from Mexico. Terrorists are also walking in unopposed; our southwestern border is littered with Arabic papers and Islamic prayer rugs."

[Note how Arabs are equated with terrorists. Never in the mind of someone like Gilchrist could a terrorist be white.]

"Politicians who believe that illegal immigration can be ignored must realize that Mexicans and others are dying every day along our nation's borders," adds Corsi, whose book "Unfit for Command" played a key role in convincing the American people to reject John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. "These economic refugees are often abandoned and left to die by the human traffickers and Mexican soldiers who smuggle them across the border. It's nothing less than a tragedy."

I don't know about you, but it just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy outside to see Corsi waxing sensitive about the deaths of illegal immigrants on the border. After all, last year marked a record number of deaths on the southwestern border. Many of them were the result of people being forced to attempt more dangerous crossings because of the presence of the Minutemen in less dangerous spots.

But then, we know all about Corsi's ethnic sensitivity, since he is the same fellow who penned the following lines over at Free Republic:

Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered, and the infidels killed.

So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the laywers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it.

Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA -- oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's first act in office was to promote "gays in the military." RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together.

Not that Gilchrist is any better:

Less than a year ago, Jim Gilchrist's vision of the future was plainly apocalyptic. The country, he predicted to one newspaper reporter, will have "100 tribes with 100 languages," a situation from which "mayhem" will result. "I see neighborhood armies of 20 to 40 going out and killing and invading one another," he said. Too many immigrants, he added, could even result in a full-scale civil war -- a situation he suggested might be avoided by inciting a revolution in Mexico.

"Illegal immigrants will destroy this country," Gilchrist said last May. "Every time a Mexican flag is planted on American soil, it is a declaration of war."

By late August, Gilchrist wasn't talking like that any more.

... Gilchrist, conceding that Gov. Wallace "was probably a bigot," insists he is no racist. But he is a close friend of Barbara Coe, who routinely describes Mexicans as "savages" and recently said she was a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group which opposes "race-mixing." Gilchrist also is a member of Coe's California Coalition for Immigration Reform, another hate group.

Coe is a real piece of work who is a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens and who regularly refers to illegal immigrants as "savages."

Together, they all make just one cozy little right-wing sensitivity seminar, don't they?

[Hat tip to Matt Stoller.]

Killer whales at large

I'm sort of celebrating my return to print journalism today with a cover story on orcas for Seattle Weekly. It examines, among other thing, the impact of the recent endangered species listing for the Puget Sound's southern resident killer whales. As I report, that impact could reach as far as the hotly constested dams on the Snake River that are choking off the Columbia spring chinook runs.

Rereading the story, I realize that I neglected to point out one important aspect of the orcas' impact for people on the Wet Side of the mountains: whale watching has become a multi-million-dollar industry here. The whales probably mean more to the local economy than either the Seahawks or the Mariners. So their symbology is more than just skin deep.

Say No to Nazis

Following the recent outbreak of neo-Nazism in my own neighborhood, I've become even more acutely aware of the silent tide of white supremacism that's creeping back into our lives, if that's possible.

It's one thing when it happens elsewhere, as I usually find myself documenting. But having it in your own back yard drives home the reality in a particularly pungent fashion.

And it does continue to manifest elsewhere too, in nearly identical fashion: Until they unfurl their flags and don their costumes, today's white supremacists dress, talk, and comport themselves like normal people. They present their ideas as though they were simply normative, rather than the hateful aberrations they've been widely considered to be over the past half-century.

They see the current political environment as ripe for their return. So they constantly stress the need for movement followers to blend in and appear normal. They often call themselves "ghost skins" because their skinhead beliefs are often invisible. As Margaret Kimberley at the Black Commentator explained:

The ghost skins eschew goose stepping and rioting, and proclaim their intention to blend in with their neighbors. They are skinheads, but kinder and gentler in their approach, hence the ghostly aspect of their movement. The ghost skin who distributed the most flyers denouncing "the Oregon cesspool of Niggers, Spics, Kikes, Faggots, Ragheads, Chinks, Gooks, Roaches & leftist communist swine," received among other prizes, 1,000 white power songs as a bonus for work well done.

Alina Cho at the Anderson Cooper blog recently wrote about her own experiences in dealing with these folks:

I met Jarred Hensley, a Ku Klux Klan member, six months ago while working on a story about racial tensions in Ohio. I remember being struck by his age: At 23, he was -- and remains -- the second most powerful Klansman in the state.

Hensley told me the Klan was growing younger and larger, information we later verified with the Southern Poverty Law Center. I asked Hensley if we could attend one of his Klan meetings. He told me non-members are not allowed. But he eventually agreed to videotape the meeting for us. His tape arrived a few months later.

After reviewing the tape (only portions of the meeting were filmed), I went to Ohio to interview Hensley. He told me there was an increase in Klan membership after 9/11. He also said the Internet is the Klan's number one recruiting tool.

Skins, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis will often talk openly to white reporters like myself, but it can be very difficult for anyone of color to work on these stories. As Cho explains:

Personally, this has been a hard story for me to report. As an Asian-American journalist, I found it difficult at times to listen to his views objectively. At one point in the interview, he told me I should leave the country.

Some people have asked me why we are giving the Ku Klux Klan a platform. I respond by saying there is clear evidence the white supremacist movement is on the rise in this country and around the world. This story cannot be ignored.

Neo-Nazis often express these ideas -- particularly their repugnance of minorities -- to white reporters as if they should be naturally understood. The leader of a group of white supremacist skinheads in Pennsylvania, described in a recent piece in News of Delaware County, talked exactly this way:

However, according to a member of the Pennsylvania skinhead movement, the organization is not what people perceive it to be.

"It's about love of your people and love of your country," said Ron, a self-proclaimed white nationalist and a college student who grew up in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Ron -- who did not want his last name released -- has been an active member of the skinhead movement for about one-and-a-half years and believes that white nationalists have received a bad rap.

"Everyone to a certain extent prejudges people," Ron said. "White nationalists are just more open about it.

"It's not about blind hatred, just wanting the best for myself and my country. There are people in our country that are hurting it," Ron said.

The new resurgence of skinheads can be attributed to the fall of other hate groups and the skinhead music industry, according the head of ADL's Philadelphia Office, Barry Morrison.

The skinhead music industry creates passion for young people to gravitate to, according to Morrison. Teardown, a Pennsylvania-based group on the label Final Stand Records is a favorite among white nationalists, according to Ron.

While the old skinheads' cachet used to be with rebellious young thugs, selling themselves as "normal" is a big part of their schtick now:

Many of the new skinheads are young, impressionable, undisciplined and violent, according to Morrison.

"To be a skinhead is to be violent," Morrison said. "They have a great tendency to engage in criminal activity."

Ron, who is not a member of KSS but insists he does frequent their functions, agreed that many of the new members are in their 20s, but added that violence and crime are not characteristics of the skinheads.

"We're definitely not violent ... these people just care seriously about protecting their family," Ron said. "If one of us goes to jail, we're useless to the movement."

He added that the notion that members of the skinhead movement are uneducated is far from the truth.

"These people [skinheads] are very well educated," said Ron -- who is a junior and college and said he intends to go to medical school, or work as a financial analyst.

Public image makeover notwithstanding, it doesn't take long for these skinheads to start peddling the same old hate that's always been their raison d'etre:

Although skinheads are misunderstood, according to Ron, he echoes ideas of complete racial separation that have been championed by other "hate groups."

"This country was meant for white Christians," Ron said. Adding that members of the movement advocate for non-whites and non-Christians to return to their homes of origin and begin a government like white Christians did in America.

"Black people should be given the opportunity to return to their homeland and do the same thing," Ron said. "There wouldn't be anymore interracial crime.

"Asians ... I don't have any problem with them," Ron said. "I [just] think it would be better if they stayed in their land and we stayed in ours."

Got that, Alina Cho? Oh, and you too, Michelle Malkin.

Fortunately, there aren't many indications that this tactic is succeeding any more than previous mainstreaming efforts. Certainly, as the Stranger reported, there weren't exactly a lot of eager recruits to be had at the Fremont rally.

Still, what they represent is so poisonous, and their dark intent so undying, that is warrants eternal vigilance. So you can count on this blog and others to continue to monitor and report on their activities.

In that spirit, please welcome to my blogroll Olympia United Against Hate, which is doing a marvelous job of tracking this local band of neo-Nazis.

Both of us were recently named "race traitors" at the Website of the regional National Socialist Movement outfit (sorry, I won't link to it). There is an innate threat in such a listing, of course, but it's one I'm accustomed to, not to mention well prepared to deal with.

Still, it underscores the potential problems that lie in wait for anyone publishing a blog like this. In addition to the harassment that comes with these things (the NSM folks kindly urged their followers to dump hate material in my comments, which I've been very easily deleting), there's always the potential for these things to trickle over into your private life. The NSM is a tiny contingent, really, but all of these groups attract unstable and violent followers, and they are an actual threat.

I recently wrapped up my regular fund-raiser (I raised over $2,000, and will report in a separate post on that). But I've decided to run a supplemental fund-raiser, based on a campaign of refutation for this kind of intimidation.

What I want is to be able to turn their campaign against them: For every post and threat they make, people can donate to the cause of keeping Orcinus afloat.

I'm asking folks to toss a fiver (or whatever amount you like) in the PayPal kitty at the upper corner (or write me at P.O. Box 17872, Seattle WA 99107), and designate it with the phrase, "Say No to Nazis". I'll report on the fund's progress in the coming weeks.

Here's hoping we can hoist them on their own petard.

Swimming in Coulter's cesspool

I suppose we should take it as an encouraging sign that a lot of voices -- including many on the right -- have been raised in objection to Ann Coulter's bit of performance theater at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference last weekend, wherein she uttered the now-infamous line:

"I think our motto should be, post-9-11: 'Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

The ethnic bigotry couldn't have been more naked. And that, unsurprisingly, is what everyone has focused on.

But there's a deeper problem that Coulter's comment represents -- indeed, it's only the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg. With similar potential for real disaster.

Coulter's remarks -- which included an assassination fantasy about Bill Clinton -- were received with warm applause from the CPAC. And folks on the left, of course, jumped all over them. That's how Coulter's routine always has worked. What's noteworthy is that this time, she crossed a line.

There seems to have been a realization on the right -- long, long overdue -- that Coulter had gone too far. Sure, she can wish aloud for Tim McVeigh to blow up the New York Times Building all she wants, but even they could see that using an ethnic slur was beyond the realm of acceptable discourse.

But it wasn't so much the slur itself, as how it might reflect badly on the rest of the conservative movement. (I think everyone's favorite remark on the right was that "she isn't helping anyone.") After all, reassuring all those middle-class voters that they aren't the Party of Bigots has been an important talking point for them in recent years.

That seemed to be the main concern at places like Right Wing Nuthouse and Outside the Beltway. There was little reflection on the ugliness that these kinds of remarks reveal not just in someone who is a major spokesperson in the media for the conservative movement, but in a movement that would lionize her. She wasn't up on that stage by accident.

Others, like Shape of Days and Jonah Goldberg, were content to dismiss it as just part of Coulter's "schtick," as if she were just a naughty child who got a little out of hand. It's not that she thinks such things; it's that she had the bad form to voice them in public:

I don't think Ann does anybody but herself any good when she jokes about killing presidents, Supreme Court justices or uses terms like raghead. I don't think she should do it and I don't think conservatives should applaud it.

There were some honest expressions of revulsion, like that from Tom Briggs ("I think I'm going to be ill"), and Sean Hackbarth at The American Mind offered a harsh assessment of her rhetoric. On the other hand LaShawn Barber just thought it was "much ado about nothing." Ta-ta.

The refrain heard most, though, was like that from Michelle Malkin, who after lightly slapping Coulter's wrists -- she called the remarks "spectacularly ill-chosen and ill-timed" (words like "reprehensible" or "unacceptable" or "unhinged" seem only to be in her vocabulary with people from the left) -- and worrying about how the remarks would go down with young conservative Muslims, got down to her real problem with the remarks:

Ann's comment gives cover to smug liberals in denial about their own pervasive bigotry (I'll show you 100 liberal hate mails and blog posts referring to me as a "gook" or a "chink" or a "filipina whore" for every 1 "raghead" controversy on the right.)

Glenn Greenwald's response to similar whining about mean lefties from Glenn Reynolds was direct and to the point:

Republicans have been playing this game for years. They wildly inflate the importance of fringe, extremist figures and then -- every time one of those individuals makes an intemperate remark or comment that can be wrenched out-of-context and depicted as some sort of demented evil -- they demand that Democrats ritualistically parade before the cameras and either condemn those individuals or be branded as someone who is insufficiently willing to stand up to the extremists "in their party."

... Unlike, say, Ward Churchill, Ann Coulter is not some fringe, obscure figure for the right-wing crowd. To the contrary, she is one of the most popular and influential pro-Bush speakers around, which is exactly why she was invited to be one of the featured speakers at one of the most significant conservative events of the year. And Glenn Reynolds, just like Coulter, was also an invited speaker at this event.

So, Coulter isn’t just the leader of a substantial faction in Reynolds’ political party (although she is that), but they also have the nexus of both being invited speakers at the same event. Put simply, Coulter’s importance is infinitely greater than Ward Churchill’s (or Harry Belafonte's or Barbra Streisand's or any other left-wing bogeyman), and Reynolds’ connection to Coulter is far more substantial than all of those Democrats who never even heard of Churchill before and yet, according to the sermonizing Reynolds, nonetheless somehow had a compelling obligation to denounce him.

The comments Coulter made during her speech were reprehensible in the extreme. And those comments prompted not condemnation from the audience but its opposite -- what one observer described as a "boisterous ovation." Certainly under the denuncation standards that have been applied to Democrats for years, every attendee at that event, and anyone pledging featly to the "conservative" cause, has an obligation to say what their views are of Coulter generally and to address specifically why she was invited to be a featured speaker and why she plays such a prominent role, and commands such popularity, in the Bush movement. Although her comments were extreme, they are neither new nor surprising, as she has a long and documented history of urging violence against her political opponents and making comments quite similar to those she made at the CPAC.

Coulter's prominence on the right-wing scene is matched only by her long record of similarly hateful and eliminationist remarks, often in the guise of "jokes". As Jenna K. at The Girl Gets Away adroitly observes, Coulter's jokes just ain't funny, except as a way to vent some genuinely hateful beliefs.

Let's face it, Coulter has been spewing hate -- ethnic and otherwise -- for a long time under the guise of "political humor." In terms of poisoning the public discourse, just how much worse is an ethnic slur than calling for us to invade Muslim nations and forcing them to convert to Christianity? Or, for that matter, wishing for the bombing of the New York Times Building? Calling liberals innately "treasonous," and calling for their oppression? Disenfranchising women? Extolling the benefits of "local fascism"? Fantasizing about shooting the president?

Considering that Malkin devoted an entire chapter in her book Unhinged, to decrying supposed left-wing assassination fantasies, you'd think that the frequency of the latter (inclduing an appearance in this latest speech) from Coulter would earn almost as much ire from Michelle Malkin as an ethnic slur. But of course, Malkin makes no mention of it in her rebuke.

That's par for the course. As I pointed out a bit ago regarding Malkin's treatment of Coulter:

Has Malkin ever spoken up about this kind of extremism? It doesn't appear so. A quick Google of her site reveals plenty of references to Coulter -- but they're all adulatory and approving; many are about painting Coulter as a right-wing martryr.

As Greenwald points out in his post, the same is true of Glenn Reynolds, who boasts a similar Google record despite claiming that he "mostly ignores" her. Across the board, would-be mainstream conservatives behave the same: they invite her onto their talk shows, book her for their conferences, and buy (and promote) her books by the bushel. Then, when she says something outrageous, either simply pretend it didn't happen or sniff that no one takes her seriously.

Conservatives, in fact, have been happily swimming in the Coulter cesspool for a long time and have not only failed to notice the stink, they've positively extolled its virtues.

However, it's also important to give credit where it's due, and Glenn Reynolds, nearly alone on the right, correctly identified the real problem with Coulter's remarks:

[H]er ongoing treatment of Muslims has followed this general pattern of fostering alienation. The result of this sort of behavior is aid and comfort to the enemy.

To win this war, we need to kill the people who want to kill us. But we need to win over the rest. The terrorists of Al Qaeda want to polarize things so that it appears to be a war of Christianity against Islam, of America and the West against all Arabs and Muslims. With remarks like those, she's helping their cause, not ours. Call it "objectively pro-terrorist."

This point has, of course, long been a core operating principle at this blog:

Those who foment war against Islam are objectively furthering the agenda of Osama bin Laden, and are thus an effective Al Qaeda 'fifth column.'

Osama bin Laden wants you to make this into an Islam-vs.-the-West conflict. That was the explicit purpose behind 9/11.

The more that conservatives make the rest of Islam culpable for 9/11, the more they make enemies of our allies in the Islamic world. These include such major strategic partners as Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Their own Republican president has been working hard not to allow this to turn into an anti-Islamic crusade. Yet their own ignorance about the nature of Islam is nonetheless increasing the chances that the "war on terror" could explode into an uncontrollable global cultural conflict.

Remember that shortly after 9/11, bin Laden told his followers, "Tell them that these events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of the faithful and the camp of infidels. May God shield us and you from them." Bin Laden's larger strategy behind 9/11 is to create such a large conflagration that Western society cannot contain it, and it is his religious belief that God will eventually grant Muslims the victory.

Rhetoric like Coulter's poses a real danger to us all. Because rather than keeping the conflict contained to a handful of radical terrorists -- which was our best hope for winning, before Bush's heedless Iraq incursion -- she would have us take on all of Islam in a massive world war. No doubt, given her previous remarks, she would not consider it a victory short of "killing all their leaders and converting them to Christianity." Talk like this plays directly into bin Laden's hands.

What's genuinely troubling is that Coulter loves to be on the cutting edge of right-wing ideology, and so her clarion call for a revival of open bigotry against Muslims -- which is the only realistic interpretation of pointedly featuring a naked ethnic slur in her remarks -- is almost certain to be picked up. At the same time, she also has a history of rather slyly tuning into the right-wing dialogue that's occurring just beneath the surface. The truth is that she's hardly the first right-winger to call them "ragheads," nor will she by any means be the last.

In fact, one of the really disturbing trends of the past year is the extent to which you see conservatives conflating radical Islamists with mainstream Muslims -- not merely conflating, but essentially identifying and failing to make any distinction between them whatsoever. The festering capital of the use of "ragheads" is of course the Free Republic, but you can also find it present throughout the right blogosphere, at sites ranging from Little Green Footballs to Jawa Report to Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler to Dr. Sanity to Ace of Spades to RedState. These all are sites where conservative Muslims are consistently identified with Islamists -- and identified as the Enemy. The comments at these sites are particularly vicious, and rife with the use of "ragheads."

And, perhaps not surprisingly, they are all on the blogrolls of Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin and all those other supposedly mainstream conservatives horrified by Coulter's remarks. Consistency would suggest they would be as ready to denounce the steady patter of rhetoric that plays into the hands of our very real enemies coming from throughout the conservative movement.

But no. They've all been too busy making hay by denouncing the behavior of the Islamic cartoon rioters -- and linking to all these sites in the process. And committing, by extension, the same mistake.

There's no doubt the cartoon riots are yet another example of the violence that can be wielded almost at will by the forces of fundamentalism, and are deeply disturbing for that reason alone. No doubt, there are serious free-speech issues at play, and I think the ramifications could be profound for Europeans especially.

Yet one thing you'll notice that's decidedly absent in all the right-wing horror at the riots is any recognition of the power relationship that is the real context in which they are occurring. There seems to be no recognition that we're talking about a people -- namely, Third World Muslims -- who've suffered a century and more of economic and political deprivation, a setting that has made them ripe for exploitation by fundamentalist demagogues.

Of course we don't riot or engage in violence when someone is disrespectful of our culture and our beliefs; we Westerners have been perched in the catbird seat for some time now and can afford to ignore it if we choose. That's not how people on the bottom rung, though, are likely to respond to high-handed mistreatment and disrespect. Making fun of the high and mighty and privileged and powerful is an honorable thing, even if not very profitable. Making fun of the downtrodden -- especially from a position of privilege -- is a despicable thing ... but it sure is easy.

Muslims are rioting because the Danish cartoons that sparked the anger have come to symbolize the ethnic arrogance of Europeans and Americans, typified by ethnic slurs like "ragheads," that they blame as the engines of their dienfranchisement, and from which they now believe they are finally able to rise up and restore their societies. Certainly the way that Westerners on both sides of the Atlantic have responded to the riots -- holding them up as evidence of innate Muslim barbarism -- has only served to deepen that anger.

The American voices who have joined in this chorus have almost certainly not gone unnoticed. Just today, Muslim rioters in Indonesia (another one of our Muslim allies) targeted an American embassy, though it's hard to tell if this is a product of the Iraq war or just the general sense of American complicity in the spread of the supposedly sacrilegious cartoons.

Yet we have to be extremely careful and measured in how we respond to this. The thousands of rioters, for all their ugliness, are almost certainly ordinary fundamentalist Muslims and not radical Islamists. Yet it's also clear that they are being manipulated by fundamentalist clerics whose sympathies appear well in line with the cause of Al Qaeda.

Certainly, they are being pushed into bin Laden's arms. After all, bin Laden has, like the Wahhabists generally, scapegoated the West (and the USA in particular) in the process of trying to stake a claim to representing the true Islam. Recall that immediately after 9/11, he cast the coming "war on terror" as one involving all of Islam rising up against the West: "What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated."

He also has warned: "Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion." And so, it seems, they are beginning to heed him. That this is occurring is bin Laden's dream, and our worst nightmare.

People like Ann Coulter, and the thousands of little Freepers and wingnuts who are part of the "raghead" chorus, and their cartoon-drawing counterparts in Europe, have not only been swimming in their own little hate-filled cesspool, they are slowly dragging the rest of us into it with them. Not just the nation, but the world.

They drive ordinary Muslims into the waiting arms of bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi even as they convince more Americans that their enemies really are those same ordinary Muslims. In the process, they help bin Laden realize his strategy exactly as planned.

Coulter's book Treason, it will be said in the years to come, really was just a classic piece of right-wing projection.