'Molon Labe!' Religious-right Warriors Led By Gen. Boykin Eye Their Modern-day Spartan Army

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

One of the more potentially nasty political coalitions on the Right is the on-again-off-again flirtation that goes on between the Patriot/militia movement -- which likes to cast itself itself as secular, but is riddled with deep (and often extremist) veins of fundamentalist Christianity -- and the Religious Right, which likes to cast itself as mainstream but is riddled throughout with veins of extremist right-wing paranoia.

It also gives creatures like Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin -- the modern-day General Ripper whose exploits range from the Waco disaster to Abu Ghraib, and who makes his living nowadays promoting the theory that Islamic radicals are secretly promoting Marxism, complete with appearances on the Glenn Beck show in support of his 'Islamic caliphate' theory -- plenty of opportunity to pitch their wares.

It also makes for some moments of high comedy, such as this exchange (via >Digby) that Kyle at Right Wing Watch happened to catch, with Focus on the Family's Tony Perkins egging Boykin on:

BOYKIN: We reflected on that, we also reflected on the fact that there was a famous battle at a place called Thermopylae where the Greek King Leonidas fought against the massive armies of Xerxes with 300 men. But as Tony pointed out in our discussions, they not only saved their homes, their villages, they saved democracy. They preserved democracy for all eternity, if we leverage that and take advantage of it.

And one of the great things that I like about that whole story is the fact that when Xerxes said to Leonidas, with his 300 men there, and Xerxes with his massive army said to him, 'Lay down your weapons,' Leonidas sent the message back, and said, 'Molon labe!' 'Come and take them!'

Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm at the point now where I am sayingady to say 'Molon labe!' to those in Washington, to those in the special interest groups that want to take my liberties, that want to rob my grandchildren of the ability to have the kind of America that I grew up in. I'm at the point where I'm saying, 'Molon labe!'

Because I will not be silent. I will not sit on the pews, confident in my salvation -- I know that I'm going to heaven, I know that I'm redeemed of my sins. But that's not enough.

Nevermind, of course, that these guys are promoting the movie version of Thermopylae, which has only a passing resemblance to the actual history -- namely, the reality that it was Sparta that was the great slaveholding society then (there is no evidence the Persians under Xerxes owned slaves) and the version of "democracy" they were preserving was not exactly one that preserved people's freedoms.

Of greater significance, though, is that "molon labe" has become the battle cry/slogan of the new militias, cropping up in all kinds of places -- including that incident in which that Glenn Beck fan was arrested while scoping out a supposed federal detention facility.

As I explained awhile back:

A common organizational theme popping up among the new militiamen -- you'll find it scattered throughout the above site -- is "Μολών Λaβέ" -- or "Molon labe," which is Greek for "Come and get them." As Wikipedia notes, it's the sentimental equivalent of "Over my dead body."

I have voted in Safety Joe's poll for the next friend's list he should make and I have suggested a state by state Μολών Λaβέ so that those who are near each other can prepare a response plan.

We grossly outnumber them - if we organize. How can 5, 10, 20, or even 30 cops stand down every Μολών Λaβέ patriot who bands together in defense of each other?

Talk is nice but now is the time for action. Organize with your geographically close Μολών Λaβέ friend and prepare a response plan.

Another glimpse into this mindset can be found at the MySpace website for Come and Take It Radio:

Join hosts Matt Conner and Erin Cassity as they proudly lead the way into the dark bleak abyss that will be the Obama Presidency as the drum beating leftys that have joined with us for the past eight years run off into the shadows to back pedal and support Obama's wars for the Elite. We will speak the truth that the true "Conservative" will be so desperately seeking in this new age of world governance. Everything from preserving our gun rights to how to prepare for the fun of the looming depression, these Texas Nationalists will cover in this Sunday evening show.

If you scroll around the site (recommended only for those with a shower handy), you'll find posts from likeminded souls, such as the white supremacist who posted this:


[Full-size version here.]

One website even offers all kinds of "Molon Labe" clothing items you can get -- such as these fine ladies' panties:

I wonder if this is what Jerry Boykin has in mind too. Purity of essence and all that.

Fox Talkers Seem To Be Hoping That The Wisconsin Protests Become Violent

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

One of the significant achievements of the Wisconsin protests is that this gathering of teachers and firefighters and public workers has been simultaneously forceful but peaceful.

This really is a surprise only for people who believe right-wing propaganda about the unions being populated by violent thugs. So that means it especially throws off the talkers at Fox News, who have been leading the right-wing media parade attempting to smear the protesters as violent thugs.

Notice how, in her interview on Thursday, the morning after the Republicans in the Senate rammed their union-bashing legislation through, Megyn Kelly tries to get Jesse Jackson to somehow hint at violence in the Wisconsin protests?

And Jackson simply wouldn't bite.

Let's hope it stays this way. Fuses are getting short in Madison, but it isn't the protesters who are losing their cools.

O'Reilly Thinks It's 'Insane' To See The Radical Right As A Serious Domestic-Terrorism Problem

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly has been sneering all week at the notion that the threat of terrorism from the American radical right is, in terms of domestic terrorism, of greater significance than that from homegrown Islamic radicals -- even after the most recent case of domestic terrorism to hit the news this week involved the arrest of a neo-Nazi for the attempted Martin Luther King Day parade bombing in Spokane.

Of course, O'Reilly is in deep denial about this reality, as is Rep. Peter King, whose "Muslim radicalization" hearings have been the talk of Fox all week. Indeed, when Geraldo Rivera pointed it out to O'Reilly on his Fox show Friday, O'Reilly acted as though it was the first he'd heard of the matter. That's some knowledgeable insight on domestic terrorism, eh?

RIVERA: He's got a point. You know, I understand his point. His larger point, which I totally endorse, is that it is unfair, as you mention in your lead-in, to single out this one group.

O'REILLY: OK. Now, I didn't say it was unfair. I said some people, like you, crazy left wingers, think it is.

(CROSSTALK)

RIVERA: Can I tell -- it's not 126. That's Eric Holder's number of the people prosecuted for terrorism. But your audience has to know that of the 126, we're talking about 50 American citizens. The vast majority of the 50 American citizens are like the knuckleheads from Newberg, entrapped into doing terror with co-conspirators who are really FBI agents leading them down the primrose path.

O'REILLY: If you look -- if you look at the totality of the problem, in the world, not the United States, it is Muslim-jihad generated. Congressman Green has the nerve to foist upon the American public that the KKK should be equally looked at when the KKK hasn't had any -- any kind of impact on this country for decades. So you're saying to yourself...

RIVERA: I don't think so that's true. I think the KKK --

O'REILLY: Do you think the KKK has any influence in this country right now?

RIVERA: Let me -- let me tell you and your audience that January 17, the last act of attempted terror in the United States, that was a neo-Nazi, that guy in Spokane, Washington, who planted a weapon of mass destruction on the route of the Martin Luther King Day parade march. And that was terrorism. This was a neo-Nazi. And why wouldn't a hearing on domestic terror include a heinous act like that?

O'REILLY: Was he associated with a group?

RIVERA: Yes. He was a neo-Nazi, I forget -- which -- which of the...

O'REILLY: According to the Spokane police, he was a lone crazy nut.

RIVERA: That's not true. He is definitely a neo-Nazi. The National Alliance. I have a note. The National Alliance.

O'REILLY: The National Alliance.

Look, I'm not opposed to having hearings about these people, but to raise...

RIVERA: Peter King is a great guy.

O'REILLY: ... them to the equivalency of the jihad is insane.

Wanna know what's insane? The fact that we have 23 identifiable instances of serious right-wing domestic terrorism of the past two and a half years, and guys like O'Reilly can just whitewash it away:

Know what else is insane? That guys like O'Reilly can keep citing utterly discredited misinformation such as Frank Gaffney's utterly nonsensical claim that "85 percent of mosques" in America are radicalized -- and can simply get away with it -- because they're too big to care.

Yep, there's plenty of "insane" to go around on Fox.

Another 'Isolated Incident': Alaska Militiamen Arrested In Conspiracy To Kill State Troopers, Judges

Schaeffer Cox, center, with some of his fellow Alaska militiamen

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Gee, I wonder if Bill O'Reilly is still so certain that the radical right isn't the country's most significant domestic-terrorism threat:

Five people in the Fairbanks area were arrested Thursday by state and federal law enforcement on charges connected with an alleged plot to kidnap or kill state troopers and a Fairbanks judge, according to the Alaska State Troopers.

Francis "Schaeffer" Cox, Lonnie Vernon, Karen Vernon, Coleman Barney and Michael Anderson are accused of conspiring to commit murder, kidnapping, and arson, as well as weapons misconduct, hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence, according to trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters in a written statement late Thursday.

An investigation "revealed extensive plans to kidnap or kill Alaska state troopers and a Fairbanks judge," the statement said. The plans included "extensive surveillance" on the homes of two Fairbanks troopers, the statement said.

"Investigation also revealed that extensive surveillance on troopers in the Fairbanks area had occurred, specifically on the locations of the homes for two Alaska state troopers," the statement said. "Furthermore, Cox et. al. had acquired a large cache of weapons in order to carry out attacks against their targeted victims. Some of the weapons known to be in the cache are prohibited by state or federal law."

U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler said Lonnie Vernon, 55, was arrested for threatening to kill a federal judge. She said more information about federal charges would be released today Fairbanks Police Chief Loren Zager said the operation involved multiple police actions related to Fairbanks-area members of the "sovereign citizen" movement.

Of course, we were pointing out earlier this week how law enforcement officers are the first in line to be targeted by these extremists -- which is why conservative hysterics over disseminating intelligence about these extremists can be so harmful.

Clearly, the troopers in Alaska were well aware of the nature of the problem they had on their hands. Because it's been around awhile. Notably, in the more recent past, Cox and his pals were part of the militia faction that supported Joe Miller in his Palin-sponsored run for the Senate.

David Holthouse at Media Matters has more.

It appears Cox's issues with law enforcement first cropped up in a court hearing in December:

Schaeffer Cox appeared at the Fairbanks courthouse Wednesday morning as scheduled despite saying last week he would treat another court date "like an invitation to a Tupperware party."

However, Cox, the 26-year-old head of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, did not address the issue of a trial date on a weapons charge as the hearing was intended to do. He instead attempted to serve criminal papers and a restraining order from a "de jure court" on District Court Judge Patrick Hammers.

He also told an Alaska State Trooper after the hearing the militia has the troopers "outmanmed, outgunned and we could probably have you all dead in one night." But Cox added he could not see himself shooting someone who lives in the same town as him.

About a half-dozen supporters and members of the militia accompanied Cox at the hearing. Initially, militia member Ken Thesing spoke for Cox, calling himself Cox's representative and "counsel before God."

Hammers identified himself as a judge at Cox' request, which was not enough to dissuade Cox in his belief that the Alaska court system is a for-profit corporation. Cox, who also refused to take off his trademark hat in the courtroom, insists the positions of the state judiciary were never actually filled and the court system is a "pre-processing company" with no jurisdiction over Alaskans.

"You're now being treated as a criminal engaged in criminal activity and you're being served in that manner," Cox said.

As with so many other cases where law enforcement is being targeted, "sovereign citizenship" ideology appears to be a significant component of Cox's belief system:

Cox, who is facing a misdemeanor weapons misconduct charge for not immediately letting a Fairbanks police officer know he was carrying a concealed weapon last March, has in recent weeks been advocating for the concept of "sovereign citizenship."

Cox claims he and all Americans are sovereigns, or kings and queens, and no one is required to obey laws unless not doing so would directly harm other sovereigns. Much of his claims center around the belief President Lincoln subverted the original Constitution and replaced it with a copy that incorporated the United States.

Much more on "sovereign citizens" here.

UPDATE: Reader ricky directs us to the following cartoon commentary:

Who'da Thunk? Evangelicals Denounce Glenn Beck As A "New Age" Mormon Because Of New Feel-good Book

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Back when he was blaming President Obama for the fact that so many malinformed right-wingers believe that he is Muslim, Glenn Beck was fond of remarking that Obama's brand of Christianity is "a Christianity that many Americans just don't recognize," and "I don't know what that is, other than it's not Muslim, it's not Christian. It's a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it."

As Jon adroitly observed at the time, he was playing with fire: "Sadly for the Fox News host, as many of his Tea Bagging allies view his Mormon faith in precisely the same terms."

Of course, you'll recall that much of the thrust of Beck's work in the past year, particularly his big shindig on the Capitol Mall, was about marrying the Tea Partiers with the Religious Right. But we had to wonder how long it would be before his new "friends" on the evangelical set couldn't stomach his Mormonism any longer.

Well, now we know. From WorldNutDaily:

Christian author: Glenn Beck actually New Age 'anti-Christ'


A Christian author and national speaker has just released a video in which he flays radio and TV commentator Glenn Beck as a pagan, New Age "anti-Christ" who is deluding many believers away from the Bible's teachings and leading them toward Eastern mysticism.

Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend in Collierville, Tenn., who was once a defender of Beck, is now blasting the popular Fox News host based on content of Beck's new book, "Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life," co-authored by psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow.

"Back in August of 2010, I tried warning folks that Glenn Beck was a pagan, New Age, universalistic Mormon, and indeed, he now has revealed his hand," Howse says in the video, which is based on a column he wrote earlier this year. "Beck's book is nothing less than a promotion of universalism, postmodernism and pagan spirituality, also known as the New Age movement."

I doubt that this will even slightly deter the intrepid Beck, who mostly tries to tamp down these kinds of controversies and pretend they didn't happen. At some point, he may have to actually confront these kinds of voices, but most likely he will try to spin it as vindication somehow that he was right all along. Or something.

But it's also a reminder of the pitfalls that await the presidential candidacy of Beck's fellow Mormon, Mitt Romney. This should be an interesting year ahead.

Tsunami Warnings: If Republican Budget Cutters Have Their Way, We Won't Get Them

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[H/t Karoli]

Digby has a great point about tsunami warnings:

I'm sitting here now, six blocks from the beach in California, waiting for the wave to hit the west coast. Luckily it doesn't appear to be dangerous to us at this point.

The good news is that if the Republicans have their way, when one of these things does hit us in this earthquake zone, we won't have warning:

Thursday night's massive earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami warnings that have alarmed U.S. coasts, seem likely to ignite a debate over a previously little-discussed subsection of the spending bills currently being debated in Congress.

Tucked into the House Republican continuing resolution are provisions cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the National Weather Service, as well as humanitarian and foreign aid.

Presented as part of a larger deficit reduction package, each cut could be pitched as tough-choice, belt-tightening on behalf of the GOP. But advocates for protecting those funds pointed to the crisis in Japan as evidence that without the money, disaster preparedness and relief would suffer.

"These are very closely related," National Weather Service Employees Organization President Dan Sobien told The Huffington Post with respect to the budget cuts and the tsunami. "The National Weather Service has the responsibility of warning about tsunami's also. It is true that there is no plan to not fund the tsunami buoys. Everyone knows you just can't do that. Still if those [House] cuts go through there will be furloughs at both of the tsunami warning centers that protect the whole country and, in fact, the whole world."

The House full-year continuing resolution, which has not passed the Senate, would indeed make steep cuts to several programs and functions that would serve in a response to natural disasters (not just tsunamis) home and abroad. According to Sobien, the bill cuts $126 million from the budget of the NWS. Since, however, the cuts are being enacted over a six-month period (the length of the continuing resolution) as opposed to over the course of a full year, the effect would be roughly double.

Just remember: When it comes to disaster preparedness and relief, Republicans are the folks who brought you the Hurricane Katrina fiasco.

Domestic Terrorism Of The Right-Wing Kind: Spokane Arrest Manifests Once Again Where The Threat Lies

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Not that it'll ever happen, but boy, does Bill O'Reilly owe Mark Potok an apology.

One day after castigating Potok publicly on his Fox News show for contending that "our biggest domestic terror threat ... pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country", Potok's point was pretty clearly substantiated by the arrest of 36-year-old Kevin Harpham for planting a backpack bomb along the parade route on Martin Luther King Day in Spokane.

Bill Morlin has more details at Hatewatch:

The emerging picture suggests 36-year-old Kevin William Harpham is a “lone wolf’’ with a military ordinance background and apparently increasingly extreme radical-right views that may have prompted the attempt to carry out a mass murder on the late civil rights leader’s birthday. He is also a man who has joined a neo-Nazi group, apparently posted to racial extremist websites and worried that the 9/11 attacks were actually a government conspiracy.

The domestic terrorism suspect faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the initial two charges he faces: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an improvised explosive device. Other federal charges could come when a federal grand jury in Spokane reviews the case on March 22.

“This one is very serious,” federal defender Roger Peven said outside the courtroom, moments after he was appointed to represent Harpham.

The backpack bomb, reportedly containing shrapnel dipped in rat poison to enhance bleeding, was spotted moments before hundreds of people were to march by it. Authorities rerouted the parade immediately.

At some risk, a bomb squad defused the device and kept it intact — likely leading the FBI to capture a windfall of forensic evidence, possibly including fingerprints and DNA that could have identified Harpham as the suspect.

Of special note is the fact that Harpham appears to have been an admirer of Alex Jones' conspiracy theories:

On another Web site, Harpham posted that he watched the video “Loose Change” — popularized by the antigovernment “Patriot” group We Are Change — that the U.S. government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11.

Leading anti-Semites, including Christopher Bollyn, have suggested that Jews were responsible for 9/11.

On the “Loose Change” Facebook page, there are references to a “Zionist connection” and links to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — a famous forgery that is a touchstone for the neo-Nazi right, including the late founder of the Aryan Nations, Richard Butler, who accuse Jews of plotting to control the world.

“I typically don’t buy into these conspiracies, then my friends told me to watch this video called ‘Loose Change,’” Harpham posted on another website forum devoted to steam automobiles.

“Some of the stuff was speculation but overall it changed my opinion greatly,’’ the Harpham posting said.

It's not coincidental that, as Alexander Zaitchik recently reported for Rolling Stone, Gabrielle Giffords' would-be assassin, Jared Loughner, was also an admirer of Loose Change.

Also worth remembering: Harpham happens to fit precisely the warning of the dangers inherent in rising right-wing extremism made two years ago by the Department of Homeland Security in its much-maligned bulletin for law enforcement -- specifically the key language in the report that upset all those conservatives:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

[..] DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.

[..] Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of “leaderless resistance” and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.

... U//FOUO) Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

Of course, conservatives have been trying to whitewash away the existence of these radicals.

Unfortunately for them -- and the rest of us too -- the radicals won't let them do it for long.
In their eagerness to promote Peter King's dubious and nakedly Islamophobic hearings on homegrown Islamic-radical terrorism, O'Reilly and his Fox colleagues have openly sneered at suggestions that we ought to do the same for right-wing extremists and their mounting acts of violence. This case definitively underscores that need, embodied in the 22 cases we've documented over the past two and a half years:

Simultaneously, it's also not very clear that the Islamic radicals pose a serious threat in terms of domestic terrorist activity. Certainly, there's plenty of reasons to believe that the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism is wildly overstated -- not least of which is the fact that, as Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress reported, terrorism incidents in the USA have been coming from non-Muslim sources at nearly twice the rate as that of Muslims.

Indeed, it's probably overstated to the same degree that the danger of right-wing extremists is understated. Perhaps there needs to be some reassessment of our terrorism priorities here -- particularly in the media.

David Holthouse at Media Matters has more on the suspect. See the Spokesman Review's coverage of Hapham's court appearance, too. You can read the federal complaint here (application/pdf - 55.64 KB).

No, Rep. King, We Indeed Cannot Be In Denial

[Cross-posed at Crooks and Liars.]

Rep. Peter King, in his opening remarks this morning to kick off his congressional hearings on the "problem" of "Muslim radicalization":

This Committee cannot live in denial which is what some would have us do when they suggest that this hearing dilute its focus by investigating threats unrelated to Al Qaeda. The Department of Homeland Security and this committee were formed in response to the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11. There is no equivalency of threat between al Qaeda and neo-Nazis, environmental extremists or other isolated madmen. Only al Qaeda and its Islamist affiliates in this country are part of an international threat to our nation. Indeed by the Justice Department’s own record not one terror related case in the last two years involved neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, militias or anti-war groups.

How unfortunate for Rep. King that, just the day before -- and apparently before he could edit his opening remarks -- the FBI arrested a white supremacist for planting a backpack bomb along the parade route for Spokane's Martin Luther King Day celebration in January ... an act labeled by the FBI as an act of domestic terrorism.

He was reminded in short order by Democrat Bennie Thompson:



[H/t Karoli for the videos]

I want to reiterate, however, my belief that a hearing on the linkage between extreme ideology and violent action be a broad-based examination. Yesterday, the FBI made an arrest in a recent Martin Luther King Day bombing attempt. News reports identify the suspect as a member of the same white supremacist group that influenced Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. I urge you, Mr. Chairman, to hold a hearing examining the Homeland Security threat posed by anti-government and white supremacist groups.


As a committee on Homeland Security, our mission is to examine threats to this nation's security. A narrow focus that excludes known threats lacks clarity and may be myopic.

Indeed, as Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress explains, not only was King embarrassingly wrong about right-wing domestic terrorist of recent vintage, he was wrong about the past year as well -- in which there were four terrorism incidents involving neo-Nazis. And that doesn't begin to count the militia cases, beginning with the Hutaree folks.

For what it's worth, American neo-Nazis are indeed frequently linked up with likeminded fascists in Europe and Australia, and yes, they are all outspoken in their desire to topple the United States government. Peter King may be living in denial, but the rest of us should know that neo-Nazism is indeed an international terrorist conspiracy to destroy America. In case you were wondering.

And as long as Rep. King is trotting out graphics, here's one for him to consider:

If We Need To Hold Hearings On Muslim Domestic Terrorists, Why Not The Same On Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

If you want to see conservatives get all twisted into knots, try asking them why, if it makes sense for Peter King to hold his Islamophobic hearings on the supposed threat of domestic terrorism from Muslim Americans, we shouldn't hold similar hearings examining why we're seeing a real surge in domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists.

Take, for example, Bill O'Reilly last night. He got all bent out of shape over Mark Potok's exchange with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux earlier this week:

MALVEAUX: If you can from your study of tracking radical groups, potentially hate groups, what do you think of this hearing? Is al Qaeda radicalizing Muslims? Is that our biggest homegrown terrorism threat right now?

POTOK: Well, I think it's not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country. Although I would certainly not minimize the threat of jihadist terrorism in this country. Obviously, we have seen a fair amount of it.

Of course, O'Reilly deceptively edited out the last two sentences, and then replied:

O'REILLY: Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I mean, think about what the guy just said.

Muslim terrorists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world, correct?
How many people have the radical right killed?

Well, Bill, just to get you up to speed: There have been many, many more right-wing terrorist acts on American soil since 1995 -- including the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, just for starters.

All told, there were over 60 major cases of right-wing domestic terrorism in the ten years after Oklahoma City.

Even more important, let's talk about just the past two and a half years:

We've documented, to date, 22 cases of domestic terrorism since July 2008 involving right-wing extremists of various stripes, all inflicting (or attempting to inflict) violence on a variety of "liberal" and government targets. Compare this to the Bipartisan Policy Center's report on homegrown Islamic-radical terrorism, which documented only seven incidents, all of which occurred in 2009.

Which not only raises the question, "Why not hold hearings to explore the growing radicalization of far-right extremists?", but a similarly pertinent: "Where are the media?"

This is especially the case, given that the SPLC recently released a fresh report finding that the number of hate groups in America, for the first time ever, now exceeds a thousand. This was a key point Potok discussed in his appearance on Cenk Uygur's MSNBC show.

Potok also had the audacity to point out that if a Muslim lawmaker were to hold hearings on right-wing fundamentalist Christians' roles in the radicalization of far-right extremists, the pitchforks would be out en masse.

Of course, Dana Perino disagrees, claiming (in the source of this week's biggest belly laugh): "If there was a hearing on radicalization amongst Christianity, there would have been no protesters". Yeah, those of us who remember the endless right-wing shrieking over the Department of Homeland Security's bulletin for law enforcement about the threat of increasing right-wing extremism -- they were insulting mainstream conservatives and veterans and calling them terrorists! -- got a good long laugh over that one.

Exhibit A that Potok was on the money was O'Reilly's outrage -- which bubbled up beyond his opening Talking Points Memo segment, attacking both Potok and Ezra Klein for bringing up Christian extremists (though frankly, Klein's remarks about "Christian kids" supposedly involved in school shootings as part of the domestic-terrorism picture was in fact off-base). But O'Reilly thought it was outrageous, just outrageous, that anyone would think the radical right still posed a significant terrorist threat to Americans, and had on both Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley to talk it over some more.



[H/t Karoli]

It is not to conservatives' credit that they so eagerly and adamantly try to whitewash away the existence of right-wing extremism -- even though such hysterics have demonstrably made law-enforcement officers less safe in the field, because it short-circuits the flow of needed intelligence.

And it's really shameful on O'Reilly's case, because one of the more vivid terrorist acts of the past couple of years committed by a right-wing extremist was the assassination of Dr. George Tiller by in Kansas -- a murder for which O'Reilly bore no small chunk of culpability.

But then, it has since become an article of faith among right-wingers that domestic terrorists who assassinate abortion providers are not terrorists at all. Sarah Palin, we recall, refused to acknowledge that abortion-clinic attacks were domestic terrorism.

Along similar lines, there was Palin this weekend, claiming that Gerald Loughner's lethal attack on Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January was in any way related to terrorism:



[H/t Digby]

PALIN: Why is the administration so naive in assuming the American public is going to accept a comment like P.J.'s that essentially equates a crazed maniac in Arizona, shooting Gabbie Giffords to this terrorist who tried to and was successful in gunning down our servicemen overseas as he did yell out Allahu Akbar?

O'Reilly and Crowley similarly dismissed such notions. But the reality is that Loughner's act was clearly terrorist in intent, and it's similarly clear that his twisted worldview came straight out of the radical right, including most notably the paranoid alternative universe of Alex Jones.


It seems that conservatives' mania for whitewashing away the existence of far-right domestic terrorism is reaching a fever pitch just at the same time that it's actually becoming resurgent -- and it never seems to occur to them that in doing so, they are creating cover and giving them implicit permission to proceed apace. Funny how that works.

BREAKING NEWS: Arrest Made In Spokane MLK Day Backpack-Bomb Case UPDATED

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

You all remember that "isolated event" on MLK Day in Spokane, where someone left a bomb in a backpack along the day's parade route, a bomb that would have been extremely lethal if it had not been discovered.

Well, there's been a break in the case:

A significant break in Martin Luther King Day backpack bomb investigation in Spokane occurred this morning when an FBI SWAT team executed a search warrant and reportedly made one arrest Wednesday morning in the small northeastern Washington town of Addy.

FBI officials weren’t immediately available for comment, but indicated the name of the suspect would be forthcoming in a news release.

The case has been investigated as a case of domestic terrorism.

Addy is a community in Stevens County, in the northeastern corner of Washington state, bordering Canada. The county has long been a hotbed of extremist and Christian Identity activity.

Of course, in Spokane, no one was calling this an "isolated event.

More details as they arrive.

UPDATE: The Spokesman-Review reports that the suspect is a 36-year-old Kevin Harpham from Stevens County:

An ex soldier with ties to the white supremacist movement has been taken into custody in connection with the planting of a backpack bomb along the planned route of the Martin Luther King Jr. March in downtown Spokane, authorities have confirmed.

Kevin William Harpham, 36, of Colville, could face life imprisonment on charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an unregistered explosive device, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court. An initial court appearance is scheduled for this afternoon.

Harpham was arrested this morning during a raid at his home near Addy, Wash. by dozens of federal agents who had been assembling in Spokane during the past few days.
The Southern Poverty Law Center confirmed that Harpham in 2004 was a member of the National Alliance, which is one of the most visible white supremacist organizations in the nation.

It was founded by the late William Pierce, who authored The Turner Diaries, a novel about a future race war. That book was believed to be the blue print behind the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh.

“What to me this arrest suggests is that the Martin Luther King Day attack is what it always looked like: A terror-mass murder attempt directed at black people and their sympathizers,” said Mark Potok, who is the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project that tracks and investigates hate groups.

Methinks Bill O'Reilly owes Potok an apology.

NPR's Own Weak Knees Let Lying Bullies Like James O'Keefe Score Another Easy Victory

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

So James O'Keefe, the lying criminal scam artist whose deceptively edited videos -- along with a complicit media who swallowed them whole -- brought down ACORN has scored another scalp with his latest hit job targeting NPR: Not only has Ron Schiller, the fool caught on video being way too frank with strangers, stepped down in advance of his planned departure, but NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) is out, too.

Not a bad day's work for a lying criminal scam artist.

Naturally, Fox News was all over the story, with every one of its evening-show hosts -- O'Reilly, Hannity, and Van Susteren -- featuring segments on the video. Of course, there was only scant mention of the fact that O'Keefe was a lying criminal scam artist whose track record of deceptive editing was well-established. As Ellen at Newshounds puts it: "Who Cares If James O'Keefe Is A Lying Creep With A Criminal History? He Hates ACORN And NPR, So What's Not To Like If You're Fox News?"

But really, what can you expect from a news organization with such a sterling record of running like scared sheep whenever conservatives get out their Full Umbrage schtick and run at them and their federal funding with it? Sure enough, the first people to toss Schiller under the bus were his colleagues at NPR.

No doubt at Fox this will be spun as a defeat of a "liberal" media organ, except that NPR is anything but a liberal entity. They specialize in classic spineless-Beltway-liberal behavior -- hippie-bashing, conventional-wisdom genuflection, he-said-she-said 'balance' in its reporting and the-left-does-it-too false equivocation. It's why Juan Williams managed to hang on as long as he did, and why Mara Liasson is still there.

And in this case, it's pretty funny. As the WaPo's Stephen Stromberg noted, it's hard to see exactly what it is we're supposed to be outraged about.

After all, what has the Fox folks outraged were his comments about the Tea Party -- which actually were perfectly defensible renditions of cold fact. Are Greta and Byron really trying to pretend that there weren't Tea Partiers bringing loaded weapons out to public rallies? Really?

All in all, it's a classic one-day non-story. Hope the Fox reporters enjoy their bit of breathlessness.

Who knows what piece of recycled propaganda from lying criminal artists they'll treat as legitimate news next.

CNN Tries To Tackle White Anxiety -- By Treating White Nationalists As Credible Sources

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[Louis C.K.answers CNN preemptively. Warning: NSFW.]

This was the headline yesterday at CNN:

Are whites racially oppressed?

"We went from being a privileged group to all of a sudden becoming whites, the new victims,'' says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at La Salle University in Pennsylvania who researches white racial attitudes and was baffled to find that whites see themselves as a minority.

"You have this perception out there that whites are no longer in control or the majority. Whites are the new minority group."

Call it racial jujitsu: A growing number of white Americans are acting like a racially oppressed majority. They are adopting the language and protest tactics of an embattled minority group, scholars and commentators say.

Considering the racial angst that underlies so much of the Tea Party movement, this actually might have been an interesting and worthwhile subject to tackle. And it starts out promisingly, with quotes from smart people like Tim Wise, discussing the role of economic insecurity in these fears.

But then it devotes a great deal of space to the views of people like the Political Cesspool's James Edwards and VDare's Peter Brimelow -- hate-group leaders who are allowed to basically spew their venom as though their ideas were worth considering in the first place. And there's not a word devoted to discussing the hatefulness of the core ideology they promoted.

As Todd Gregory at Media Matters notes:

The most glaring problem with CNN's treatment of Brimelow and Edwards is that it presents the nature of their views as a he said/she said matter -- i.e., the Southern Poverty Law Center says they run hate groups, but they deny that. Any fair-minded look at their public statements would show that they espouse the view that minorities are inferior to white people.

Another important point about this treatment of white racial anxiety: It is completely unfair to white people who don't hold hateful views of minorities. If you are seeking perspective on "what white people think about race," you have committed journalistic malpractice by quoting people like Brimelow and Edwards. They can't be said to be in any way representative of what white people think.

Treating Brimelow and Edwards this way has the same effect as treating the New Black Panther Party as representative of black people. They're not. Plain and simple.

It's one thing to lend space to the views of racial hatemongers. It's quite another to do so without any kind of countering opinion. Yet the closes the CNN piece comes to doing that is to simply mention that the SPLC considers the subjects to be extremists -- as if that bit of proxy is all that's needed to explain to readers that no, really, white people are the opposite of being oppressed.

Gregory also observes:

Even if your goal is to accurately report on the views of people who hold "pro-White" views or sympathize with "white nationalists," setting up interviews with them and disseminating their message to a wider audience is the wrong way to go about it. People who are openly bigoted make plenty of statements about what they think, which could easily be quoted. Allowing them to offer fresh thoughts through your reporting presents them an opportunity to promote their views.

This is, of course, always a danger when it comes time to report on white supremacists of various stripes: In order for your readers to understand them, you have to present their views. But to do so without explaining to those same readers why these views are misbegotten and grounded in misconceptions, lies and pure bigotry is, in fact, profoundly irresponsible.

Sarah Palin Gets Snippy When O'Reilly Tries To Press Her On Aid Cutbacks To Alaska's Poor

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It's hard to say why it happened, but all of a sudden Bill O'Reilly decided last night to stop tossing Sarah Palin the usual softball questions and Hannity Jobs she's become accustomed to during her tenure at Fox News. He asked her to finally get specific instead of bloviating in vague generalities about where and how she's achieve the budget cuts she's calling for.

It made for the entertaining sight of the Mama Grizzly growling growling at the Poppa Bear:

O'REILLY: Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait I just want to be very clear. So 55, anybody over keeps the social security that they have coming to them, but younger --

(CROSS TALK)

PALIN: When we --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: -- or whatever the revision is?

PALIN: -- when we talk about increasing -- when we talk about increasing the retirement age, there is a good proposal on the table, a good idea to look at age 55 that all of this does have to be looked at.

But we need to quit assuming that government can, better than we as individuals, plan our retirement for us than our security they're stating - -

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: Ok, I got -- I got all that.

(CROSS TALK)

PALIN: -- and we need to --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: -- but I got to get specific here, Governor. All right, so what you're saying is instead of 52 it goes to 55. So you can't draw on it until 55. Some people want mandatory retirement age where you would have to take it raised up to about 67.

Are you for that? Do you want to raise that mandatory age to 67 retirement? Is that --

(CROSS TALK)

PALIN: Everything -- everything is going to have to change for those who are enrolled in the program now and will be enrolled in the program now. But we do not change the pension benefit --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: I -- I agree. The people who --

(CROSS TALK)

PALIN: -- of those who are receiving it now and that what's people care --

O'REILLY: -- brought in and the people who need it --

(CROSS TALK)

PALIN: And I really apologize that up here in Alaska we have the four second delay. So it's -- it's not an easy exchange --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: Ok.

PALIN: -- to try to -- to try to get my point across to you if you interrupt.

I gather that O'Reilly can interrupt President Obama 48 times in 10 minutes, and it's OK, but Heaven help the man who dares interrupt the Shrilla From Wasilla.

If there's anything O'Reilly hates, it's being lectured to by his guests -- that's his job, after all. So after Palin kept spouting meaningless, vague talking points, he kept going after her. In the end, he finally produced Palin's acknowledgement that she's in the "So Be It" camp when it comes to taking care of America's poor and unemployed:

O'REILLY: Ok. That's -- I -- I'm for that private thing and I'm for raising the ages.

Now, in your state, a lot of people depended on Medicaid, particularly people in the sub Arctic region up there and they're dependent on these government checks. You had to deal with that when you were the governor of Alaska.

So we're going to have to cut back there. Poor people are going to get hurt, poor people are going to get hurt, in the Medicare and Medicaid range. Are they not?

PALIN: Everything is going to have to change. Look, how can Michael Moore, for instance, as -- as you had said in your introduction, tell Americans that we're not going broke? We take in $2.2 trillion a year and yet we're paying out $3.5 trillion a year. What's in the water there in Hollywood and in DC for people to not want to understand or believe -- or trust what the reality is --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: Oh he's just not a truthful -- they are just not truthful people -- they're just not telling the truth.

PALIN: They're not truthful so we have to be truthful. And we have to deal with the reality --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: Ok but let's get to the poor people.

PALIN: -- and reality is we are going bankrupt and the only way that we're going to get out of the problem that we face is to cut, is to cut budgets --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: But let's --

PALIN: -- is to reform entitlements, and then to start a pro-growth agenda that's based on cutting taxes and incentivizing production and tapping our energy sources and again stop assuming that government can plan our economy for us.

O'REILLY: Ok. But what about the poor people who absolutely need the entitlements they get? You know in your state there are a lot of people on the dole, a lot.

(CROSS TALK)

PALIN: There will -- and there will always --

(CROSS TALK)

O'REILLY: So are you going to cut -- are you going to cut the subsidies going to people earning, say less than $15,000 a year? Is that going to happen?

PALIN: There is a need -- there is a need for a safety net for those who are disadvantaged and in some of the rural communities in Alaska where there's 80 percent unemployment, there is a disadvantage and there needs to be a safety net.

But you know why there is a disadvantage here in Alaska? Because the federal government has locked up our lands and not allowed us to tap into energy sources so that we can create more jobs. Less than one percent of Alaskan land is in the private sector hands.

Now, we asked the federal government and I've sued the federal government for allowance to be able to develop more so that people aren't of this entitlement mentality where they believe that the only way that they can get out of a disadvantaged stage is to have government provide for them.

If we had a robust economy here and all across the country, then we wouldn't have to be looking at these insolvent entitlement programs that yes, when -- when we start pulling the plug on some of them, there is going to be a shared burden across our country.

I just love those shared burdens, don't you? Especially when -- as always seems to be the case when Republicans talk about them -- working-class and poor people are the only ones doing all the sharing.

In the meantime, you have to wonder how much longer Palin is going to enjoy her free ride at Fox. If O'Reilly is toughening up on her, that probably means Roger Ailes is getting close to throwing her to the wolves.

UPDATE: Conservatives4Palin is claiming I "lied" in presenting a slightly faulty transcript. And indeed the transcript is slightly off. However, since it is a Lexis/Nexis transcript, I'm not really sure how this constitutes "lying."

Of course, even more interesting is that they seem to think that Bill O'Reilly was "destroyed" by Palin. I'm sure O'Reilly and the Fox execs who pay her will be interested to hear that too.

Might be time for someone's contract to end, I suspect.

How Right-Wing Hysterics Keep Danger Levels High For The Nation's Law-Enforcement Officers

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Scott Noll at WREG-TV in Memphis had a fascinating story earlier this week, following up on last summer's deadly rampage by two sovereign citizens, Jerry and Joe Kane, that left two police officers dead and several other wounded:

Tonight there are new questions about how much the feds knew about an anti-government activist, accused in the deadly attack against police officers in West Memphis.

WREG On Your Side Investigators have uncovered the secret FBI files showing Jerry Kane was the target of a federal investigation five years before that deadly day last May.

The 19 page file was released this week, following our Freedom of Information Act request last June.

Tonight, West Memphis's police chief believes if his officers had known what was inside last May they'd still be alive today.

"I felt like I let this department down May the 20, 2010 when I didn't have the information I should have had," said Paudert recalling the shooting that left his son, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, and Officer Bill Evans dead.

The chief finds it disturbing to know the FBI knew about Jerry Kane years before that deadly day.

Paudert had no idea what was in the file until we showed him.

"You could become very angry very quickly when you lose your son and a fine officer like Bill Evans thinking this information was stored away someplace in someone's file and they didn't want to share it," explained Paudert.

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

Of course, we all were witness to the right-wing shrieking over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin warning police officers around the country about the nature of this resurgent threat. That's because conservatives are more concerned about whitewashing away these embarrassments than they are with the lives of police officers. They like to use dead cops as props to attack liberals while loudly arguing, as Glenn Beck did a couple years ago, that even paying attention to such right-wing threats is a smear of mainstream conservatives.

Ironically, Glenn Beck was nattering at length on his Fox News show this week claiming that left-wing extremists are about to start killing police officers en masse, which is why they need to destroy their unions. Right.

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

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

But because right-wing talkers only want to discuss terrorism as a "Muslim" phenomenon, we're getting a badly skewed understanding of the nature of terrorism. As Rep. Bennie Thompson explained in Politico a few weeks back:

While I agree that homegrown terrorism and the jihadist threat deserve continuing attention, a single-minded approach ignores all other threats.

Today’s terrorists do not share a particular ethnic, educational or socioeconomic background. Recently, when state law enforcement agencies were asked to identify terror groups in their states, Muslim extremist groups ranked 11th on a list of 18.

Law enforcement agencies identified neo-Nazis, environmental extremists and anti-tax groups as more prevalent than Muslim terrorist organizations. The sophisticated explosive device found along a parade route in Washington on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, an act of domestic terrorism clearly motivated by racist ideology, should prove that other groups are just as willing and able to carry out horrific attacks on Americans.

In addition, terrorist groups are not our only threat. According to the Department of Homeland Security, “lone wolves and small terrorist cells” may be the single most dangerous threat we face. Attacks are just as likely to come from lone-wolf extremists — like James Wenneker von Brunn, the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter, or Jared Lee Loughner, who is charged with the tragedy in Tucson, Ariz. — as they are from Muslim extremist groups.

And what do von Brunn and Loughner have in common with Muslim extremists like Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and Colleen LaRose, also known as Jihad Jane? All allegedly espoused radical views on the Internet through extremist websites, chat rooms and popular sites like Facebook.

This starkly illustrates what should be common sense: The most effective means of identifying terrorists is through their behavior — not ethnicity, race or religion.

But that was all washed away by the right-wing shrieking over the DHS bulletin, even though the report was an important heads up about the very real danger for law-enforcement officers out there posed by right-wing extremists:

The Department of Homeland Security more than likely couldn't give a rat's patoot about today's right-wing Tea Tantrums, because they're mostly exercises in futility and stupidity anyway.

But I'll tell you who they do care about: the people in uniform who go out every day and put their lives on the line to keep you and I and our families and neighborhoods safe -- that is, the men and women in law enforcement. People like those three officers in Pittsburgh, who had no reason to suspect a killer was about to ambush them.

A recent study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism lays out in painful detail the very real threat that right-wing extremists pose to people in law enforcement:

Research led by Dr. Joshua D. Freilich (John Jay College, CUNY) and Dr. Steven Chermak (Michigan State University) and funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has revealed a violent history of fatal attacks against law enforcement officers in the United States by individuals who adhere to far-right ideology.

* In the United States, 42 law enforcement officers have been killed in 32 incidents in which at least one of the suspects was a far-rightist since 1990.

* 94% of these incidents involved local or state law enforcement. Only two events—high-profile attacks at Ruby Ridge and at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City—involved federal agents. Much more common are events like the tragic Pittsburgh triple slayings.

* Attacks on police by far-rightists tend to occur during routine law enforcement activities. 34% of the officers killed by far-rightists were slain during a traffic stop, and a number of law enforcement officers have been killed while responding to calls for service similar to the domestic violence call that precipitated the Pittsburgh murders.

* Firearms were the most common type of weapon used during these fatal anti-police attacks. 88% of the incidents involved guns, while only 6% involved explosives and 6% involved knives. 81% of the victims were killed by guns.

* Only 12% of the suspects in these attacks were members of formal groups with far-right ideologies. The vast majority—like Poplawski—acted alone. This greatly complicates law-enforcement efforts to anticipate which individuals might pose a threat to police officers.

* Beyond these law enforcement murders, far-right violence presents a broader threat to national security and American citizens. Since 1990, far-rightists have been linked to more than 275 homicide incidents in 36 states. These crimes have resulted in the more than 530 fatalities, including the 168 victims murdered by Timothy McVeigh when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The vast majority of these suspects are white and male, with almost 70% being 30 years old or younger.

Back then, Beck and Malkin and the rest couldn't be bothered to express even a scintilla of concern about the safety of law-enforcement officers:

This is where I wonder about the grotesquely skewed priorities of the conservative movement and its leading pundits. Because all the yammering has been fearmongering about the DHS potentially targeting ordinary conservatives -- especially VETERANS!!!! -- when in fact there is not a scintilla of evidence they have done so or are considering it.

Yet in the meantime, as we just pointed out, these right-wing extremists who are the subject and the raison d'etre of this bulletin are also known lethal threats for the men and women who work in law enforcement ...

So while the folks at Faux News fearmonger for the sake of yet-unharmed veterans and conservatives, they're completely turning their backs on the interests of the men and women who risk their lives each day serving as law-enforcement officers.

But if you can convince them instead that the real threat they face is the fact that they belong to those creatures of progressivism, the unions -- well, that would be right-wing nirvana right there.

Fox Talkers Are Shocked That Obama Privately Sees Racism Lurking In The Tea Parties

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The folks at Fox News were all worked up yesterday about an excerpt that slipped out from Kenneth Walsh's new book, Family of Freedom:

...But Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent "Tea Party" movement that was then surging across the country. Many middle-class and working-class whites felt aggrieved and resentful that the federal government was helping other groups, including bankers, automakers, irresponsible people who had defaulted on their mortgages, and the poor, but wasn't helping them nearly enough, he said.

A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to "take back" their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn't dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a "subterranean agenda" in the anti-Obama movement-a racially biased one-that was unfortunate. But he sadly conceded that there was little he could do about it.

Everyone from Hannity to Bret Baier ran segment expressing shock and horror that, in private, Obama recognizes what he's declined to say in public -- namely, the stone cold truth that a large chunk of the Tea Parties' ranks are filled with people who despise the idea of having a black man as their president.

The funniest was Megyn Kelly's segment with Michael Reagan, who adopted the standard storyline at Fox -- namely, that the Tea Parties are filled with nothing but Real Americans, and therefore dissing them is tantamount to attacking sacred Americanhood itself.

Of course, they never really explain why Obama should pay any respect whatsoever to a fake "movement" ginned up for the sole purpose of opposing every single policy he intends to try enacting. The Tea Parties were expressly anti-Obama affairs from the start, and indeed their earliest organizers were outfits like Our Country Deserves Better PAC, set up explicitly with the purpose of stopping Obama and his agenda.

Yet Reagan even tried pretending that the Tea Parties were full of people who voted for Obama:

REAGAN: Now it's interesting, that same Tea Party went out there and elected Allan West in Florida, the same Tea Party goes to Herman Cain to speak at so many of their events across this country. Many of those people in the Tea Party probably voted for Barack Obama back in 2008 -- not knowing that when he went into office he was going to take over General Motors, he was going to destroy the economy of the United States of America and make the government the big grand poobah, if you will, of creating jobs, not the public sector.

Some quick factual points:

-- Only 5 percent of the Tea Partiers polled in 2009 identified as former Democrats. The rest identified as Republicans or Independents. (No one seems to have ever polled Tea Partiers to ask them how they voted in 2008, but having attended many Tea Party events, I would guess that the 5 percent who identified as Democrats in those polls are probably the sole Obama voters at best -- since a number of them include disgruntled Hillary supporters.)

-- The GM bailout has in fact proven a real success story -- not to mention that this is some "takeover": the feds are selling off their shares of GM stock as quickly as they can, actually.

-- George W. Bush and the Republicans who ran Congress from 2001 to 2006 destroyed the economy. It collapsed in September 2008, two months before Barack Obama was elected president.

Not that facts matter much to propagandists like Michael Reagan and Megyn Kelly, or for that matter the ignorant and frequently racist boobs who largely populate the Tea Parties. But we thought you might find them handy.

Huckabee Just Digs That Hole In Kenya Deeper. Why Not Just Admit He Got His Misinformation From Fox?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly had on Mike Huckabee last night to explain his bizarre gaffe in which he described President Obama as having grown up in Kenya.

As he has been ever since the gaffe, Huckabee explained that this was a simple slip of the tongue -- that he simply meant to reference the president's four childhood years spent in Indonesia.

And of course, O'Reilly gave him plenty of slack with which to make this claim:

HUCKABEE: Well, honestly, it was about the 40th media interview of the day -- you've done these things. Uh, if I'd read from my own text, page 183 of my book, I clearly said he grew up in Indonesia. It was a verbal gaffe. I immediately apologized. But that's not enough for the left-wing media --

The reason it's not enough for any sentient being is that it doesn't jibe with what Huckabee originally said, to wit:

HUCKABEE: I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits --

MALZBERG: Of Winston Churchill.

HUCKABEE: The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

How could Huckabee have been referencing Obama's Indonesian childhood while nattering at length about his grandfather and father and the Mau Maus, who lived half a world away in Kenya? And the bust of Winston Churchill? How does that have anything to do with Indonesia?

Ah, but Bill O'Reilly can explain all:

O'REILLY: You actually made a point about his outlook on the world because his father and grandfather are from Kenya and they have a very different view of the British and Kenya because of the Mau Mau uprising against the British colonists there who were running the government. And so, I mean, that's legitimate. It's just that he wasn't in Kenya.

HUCKABEE: And my point, really, about talking about him being raised in a different country -- actually, Indonesia, not Kenya -- as I do understand, again, it's right there in the book for me to read and everybody else, if they care to -- but, but the point that I do want to make is that creates a different worldview. This is not a kid who grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and playing Little League Baseball in a small town.

O'REILLY: He's not a traditional -- he is not a traditional guy, he is a guy who's had a lot of life experience that is different from the, you know, Mom and apple pie offering.

Yeah, he's like a freak alien from another planet, ya know? He's FOREIGN!!!

Except, of course, that Obama in fact did belong to a Scout troop (in Indonesia) and played basketball and soccer in Hawaii.

And moreover, he in fact wrote an entire book dedicated to the fact that he barely knew his father or grandfather, was little influenced by either of them, and hardly knew anything about them -- because he didn't even visit Kenya until the late 1980s.

Best of all, it turns out Huckabee is lying about the "Page 183" citation -- it simply doesn't exist!

On page 183 of his book, Huckabee references the Churchill bust and the Mau Mau rebellion, but does not say that Obama grew up in Indonesia. In fact, neither that page (nor the rest of the chapter) references Obama's childhood in Indonesia. And based on a search of the Kindle version of his book, Huckabee makes no mention of Indonesia (or Indonesian, Jakarta, and Menteng).

Perhaps the most comical part of all this is that Huckabee's source of misinformation is clearly none other than Fox News itself. Their employer is the chief purveyor of the very same false "facts" that Huckabee so faithfully (if convolutedly) regurgitated on the radio.

Most recently, it was peddled by Stuart Varney on Megyn Kelly's show:

Varney's source, meanwhile, was almost certainly none other than Glenn Beck, who first concocted this theory back in June 2010:



As Matt Gertz at Media Matters observed at the time:

First of all, Obama never met his paternal grandfather, and met his father only once, when the president was ten. The idea that Obama's grandfather's torture 60 years ago would have triggered a deep-seated hatred of the British just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Second, Beck's evidence that Obama hates Britain is mind-numbingly weak -- all he points to is that Obama supposedly returned the Churchill bust after he became president. If Obama really hated Great Britain, shouldn't he be, I don't know, declaring war on them or something? What's more, Obama reportedly keeps on his desk a wooden penholder given to him by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown; the penholder is "crafted from wood taken from the HMS Gannet, the sister ship to the Resolute, a British naval vessel whose wood was used to make the presidential desk."

Third, Beck's sole piece of evidence that Obama hates Britain doesn't add up: Both the British Embassy and the White House have said that the Churchill bust had not been a gift, but rather a loan that expired with Bush's presidency.

It's a classic example of how pull-it-out-of-your-butt theories cooked up by yobs like Glenn Beck, even when laughed out of the room, manage to have a long half-life, bobbing up whenever right-wingers open their mouths and start gushing out the things Fox fills their brains with.

A Wide-eyed Megyn Kelly Is Wowed By Sketchy Moonie Times Report Blaming '08 Economic Crisis On (Chinese?) Terrorists

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Probably the greatest blunder of the Obama White House over the past two years has been its abject failure to make certain the public understood that it was conservative misgovernance that was at the root of the great economic meltdown of 2008 -- especially because it was that very downturn that propelled him into office.

That failure has functionally given conservatives -- the architects of the disaster -- the ability to cover their tracks by erecting a narrative in which the blame was instead laid at the doorstep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and minority-lending programs. And that narrative is now widely believed by over half the country.

Now the Washington Times is trying to muddy the water even further, running a bizarre and thinly sourced piece claiming that perhaps terrorism -- maybe even Chinese terrorists, colluding with radical Islamists, perhaps? -- were actually behind the meltdown.

Here's the piece.

Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”

But as you can see from reading the piece, Freeman presents no evidence other than the economic catastrophes themselves that these were terrorist attacks. Indeed, it's nothing but unadulterated wild speculation from start to finish.

Nonetheless, Megyn Kelly invited Freeman onto her Fox News yesterday and treated it as if it were potentially the biggest story in the whole wide world. She was duly wowed -- even though, as you can see, Freeman couldn't even tell her whether these were Chinese terrorists or Islamic radicals, or mebbe they were working in collusion! (As if!)

No wonder everyone involved in analyzing the markets is pretty much laughing at Freeman and the reporters who gobbled up this nonsense so gullibly.

Then, of course, Kelly capped it all off with the classic "minority lending programs did it" narrative as the safe story everyone believes:

KELLY: But how could they have done it? Because, you know, I think the conventional wisdom in this country is, uh, you know, you had Fannie and Freddie giving out tons of mortgages that never should have been given out, then you had the Wall Street folks trading these so-called credit default swaps, basically doubling down on the bad investments, and ultimately things just started to implode in a way where, you know, we had to step in, the government bailed out those banks, and we all know the history that happened after there.

That's a pretty remarkably dense thicket of lies that have little or no relationship to reality whatsoever.

Let's try to unpack it a little:

-- Fannie and Freddie's role in the economic crash was so minor as to be nearly farcical. As McClatchy explained at the time:

As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

The "turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007," the President's Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday.

Conservative critics claim that the Clinton administration pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make home ownership more available to riskier borrowers with little concern for their ability to pay the mortgages.

"I don't remember a clarion call that said Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster," said Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.

It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.

This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.

To be sure, encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners gave unsophisticated borrowers and unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares.

But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership.

The "Fannie and Freddie did it" narrative has been ridiculed from a number of market and economic experts. As Barry Riholtz put it:

Some people (especially the political hacks) are focusing their energies in the wrong places. According to a recent investigation by Barron’s, Fannie’s biggest problem was not the subprime mortgages they bought — it was the better quality Alt A mortgages that caused their demise ...

The folks who want to place the entire crisis at FNM/FRE ‘s doorstep miss the point — and let me hasten to add that I was never a fan of the company, and we were short FNM from over a year ago, at $42+ — these people seem to miss all of the big picture issues, and are focsing on minor factor and outright irrelevancies.

... While I understand that reducing the complexities of economic history into bumper sticker phrases is politically expedient, it does not help us understand the root cause of the problems. And, it gets in the way of helping us fashion a solution for the future. Hence, why I hold the weasels who are attempting to obscure reality and rewrite history in such disdain.

For the non-partisan, non hacks amongst you, for the policy makers and academics and economists who are truly interested in how this came to pass, and what we can do to fix it, the bottom line remains: The CRA was irrelevant to the current crisis, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were mere cogs in a very complex financial machine, with many moving parts.

But the primary cause of the mess? Not even close . . .

Ritholtz -- like hundreds of other economists and market experts who understand what happened -- says the primary cause, in fact, were "a nonfeasant Fed, that ignored lending standards, and ultra-low rates."

This nonfeasance under Greenspan allowed banks, thrifts, and mortgage originators to engage in all manner of lending standard abrogations. We have detailed many times the I/O, 2/28, Piggy back, and Ninja type loans here. These never should have been permitted to proliferate the way they did.

The fact that they did proliferate as they did, in fact, can be laid directly at the doorstep of conservative ideologues, whose mania for deregulation -- particularly in the financial-services sector -- is what led directly to the policies creating, condoning and even encouraging such dubious financial instruments.

Though one might argue, in fact, that this kind of depredation committed by the oligarchical class, with working-class people taking the hit, and with little if any consequence whatsoever to the wealthy, is a kind of terrorism -- economic terrorism against working Americans. But don't expect the experts and anchors at Fox News to ever let you hear that.

-- Oh, and about those bailouts: Not only were they a success, they also wound up being a lot cheaper than everyone expected. That seems to be a bit of the "history" that never makes it onto Fox News, either.