Chosen behaviors

One of the many holes in civil-rights protections for minorities in Washington state is that it remains legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians -- in hiring and employment practices, as well as in housing.

It's one of our blue state's ugly little secrets, largely because the GOP remains a potent force. Changing the law, you see, would advance the "homosexual agenda," even if everyone knows that this kind of discrimination isn't right.

So with Democrats finally in charge of both houses of the Lege, party leaders had their sights set on rectifying that oversight. After a bill adding gays and lesbians to RCW 49.60, the state's anti-discrimination law, passed the House readily, some late maneuvering, and a couple of DINOs, have helped to apparently scuttle the bill in the Senate.

Interestingly, there was this:

The Senate Republican caucus yesterday handed out a five-page "talking points" document opposing the measure. One of the talking points states: "This bill establishes minority status for individuals based on sexual behaviors many believe they choose to engage in."

Ah yes. We've heard this line before. Because being gay is a "chosen behavior," it is undeserving of civil rights protections.

It's the same reason given by many evangelicals -- and particularly black and minority evangelicals, and people who claim they support civil rights -- for not supporting gays and lesbians in hate-crime protections: "You can't compare being gay to being black. One's immutable, one's chosen."

Well, yes, this is true when it comes to race. And even ethnicity. These are, after all, two of the three main legs of anti-discrimination and hate-crimes laws.

But it's not true of the third leg of these laws: religion. Last I checked, this too was a "chosen behavior."

In RCW 49.60, the matter of faith is defined more broadly as "creed." This thus includes atheism, agnosticism, and other belief systems.

Now, it's true that many people are born into faiths and don't really choose their creed, but it's also a fact that everyone is free to change their creed at any time of their choosing. It's truly a chosen behavior.

So I'm going to propose new legislation for Luke Esser and the rest of the Republican crew in Olympia to pursue, just for the sake of legislative consistency. I mean, if you're going to insist that anti-discrimination laws only affect "immutable characteristics" and not "chosen behaviors", then obviously, we're in serious need of reform here.

I propose that they seek to strip "creed" out of the state's anti-discrimination statutes, so that the only categories included are race, color, national origin, sex, or disability.

They should think about the advantages, especially from their viewpoint of advancing their traditional positions.

First of all, removing these protections would finally allow employers to refuse to employ atheists and agnostics and godless Communists if they so choose. And Lord knows those people don't deserve jobs. They're just amoral parasites who undermine moral society and righteous authority.

It would also allow housing discrimination against these losers. Throw them out of their homes. They don't deserve decent homes anyway.

And then we could cut off all those Muslims and Hindus and whatever else has been infesting our shores with eeebil terrorists all these years. No jobs, no homes, no nuttin'. Outta here.

And hey, while we're at it, we can finally go back to the good ol' days when you could discriminate against Jews, too. Considering how horribly those connivers have corrupted modern society, they'd have it coming too.

Oh, and, y'know, can't we do something about those Mormons, too? They're not really Christians, and they're secretly doing dirty things in those temple ceremonies. Actually, they're lunatics, even if they are good Republicans. That's a mitigating factor, sure, but I see no reason why they should have good jobs or homes.

And finally, don't talk too much about this, but we might be finally able to do something about those, y'know, Papists. You know what I mean. There are Catholics, and then there are real Christians.

Speaking of real Christians, we ought to be able to discriminate against any of those godless "liberal" churches like the Episcopalians and the United Methodists, who have proven their utter godlessness by allowing gay and lesbian clergy.

After awhile, we might finally see the kind of state Republicans have been hankering for: white, real Christian, and Republican. Real Republican.

I hope they take this under consideration. We know that Republicans in Washington state are big on consistency -- after all, they keep hammering King County for relatively minor inconsistencies in its voting procedures, none of them evidence of fraud or malfeasance.

So let's be consistent all around. Opposing extending basic civil rights to gays and lesbians because it is a "chosen behavior" demands that we deny those protections on the basis of religious faith, too.

But then, discrimination is a "chosen behavior" too. Even when someone uses their faith, or their constituents', to justify it.

Self-correcting indeed

So, can someone explain to me exactly how this "self-correcting nature of the blogosphere" thing is supposed to work?

Because it's just a masturbatory fantasy if the people who make mistakes fail to adequately correct themselves when their errors are pointed out.

Which means, when it comes to right-wing bloggers, we can pretty much fuggedaboutit. Being conservative, as we know, means never having to say you're sorry.

Case in point: Powerline, the Time "Blog of the Year."

Powerline, you'll recall, made its reputation for supposedly exposing "Rathergate," even though none of its claims held up under careful scrutiny. But stardom being what it is on Planet Conservative, no one paid that any mind.

So when Powerline began leading a fresh bandwagon questioning the authenticity of the Republican memo calling the Terri Schiavo matter a "great politicial issue" for the GOP, many wondered how it would turn out. Notably, Powerline, just as it did with the Rathergate memos, posted a copy of the memo, pointing to technical and authorial details it believed revealed that, once again, the memo was "fake" -- a characterization it maintained over subsequent weeks.

John Hinderaker, the chief author of the Powerline posts, went on to publish a piece in the Weekly Standard claiming it had the smell of a "political dirty trick" (talk about projection!), and even went into "Rathergate"-like ruminations on its authenticity:

Questions about the genuineness of the memo intensified when, later the same day, the far-left website Raw Story published, for the first time, a JPEG version of the scanned memo, which it said "[a] source on Capitol Hill has leaked." The print version of the memo, as posted on Raw Story, was identical to ABC's "exact, full copy of the document," except that the four typos that ABC had identified with a "sic" were all corrected. Interestingly, however, the fifth typo--"applicably" instead of "applicable" in the sixth paragraph--which ABC did not so identify, was not corrected in Raw Story's "leaked" version of the document.

Powerline's obsession with the "Schiavo memo" lasted for at least a couple of weeks. Throughout, it consistently called it "fake" or "apparently fake." It even repeated the charge opn Wednesday.

But then it turned out this morning in the Washington Post that they were all wet:

Counsel to GOP Senator Wrote Memo On Schiavo

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

It's noteworthy that, even when caught, the mendacity from Republicans continues. Martinez was effusive in his mea culpa, but then tried to claim that he "inadvertently passed it to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who had worked with him on the issue. After that, officials gave the memo to reporters for ABC News and The Washington Post."

Of course, this characterization of events -- from a senator whose previous veracity has not held up well -- was immediately seized upon by the bloggers whose own miserable relationship with the truth had just been exposed. Powerline does report the memo's authorship, but nowhere points out that its voluminous speculation on the matter, as well as its constant characterization of the memos as "apparently fake," was wrong, wrong, wrong. Then it goes on expend thousands more words explaining that it's all Tom Harkin's and Mike Allen's fault!

Roughly translated: "Yes, well, the memo was real, and we were kinda a little bit teensy wrong, mumble mumble. (If you're going to start talking about the gross irresponsibility of my groundless speculation, I'll just cover my ears.) But hey! We can still find someone else to blame."

One problem with that: Harkin says otherwise, according to the Post story:

Harkin said in an interview that Martinez handed him the memo on the Senate floor, in hopes of gaining his support for the bill giving federal courts jurisdiction in the Florida case in an effort to restore the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube. "He said these were talking points -- something that we're working on here," Harkin said.

Not only does conservatism mean never having to say you're sorry, now we can add a corollary: The blogosphere is self-correcting, but this only pertains to the left, since the right never needs correcting, because it is always right even when it is wrong.

UPDATE: Media Matters gives a thorough accounting.

C-SPAN plays the fool

Though it no doubt would like to have put the controversy behind it, C-SPAN's Sunday broadcast of its BookTV program on Deborah Lipstadt's book on her ordeal by libel trial with Holocaust denier David Irving wound up only demonstrating that the concerns over its highly questionable approach were indeed well grounded.

The chief guest on the program was Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid, who, as noted earlier, was probably not the best-informed "expert" the program could have featured. As Reid himself told the New York Sun, he has not read Lipstadt's book.

"I haven’t read her book. I told them that. I told C-SPAN I hadn't read the book," the reporter said. "They asked me to come and talk about a trial."

Why, one must ask, did a program about books ask Reid to come talk about a trial?

Moreover, he did not actually cover the trial, at least not in the traditional sense. Usually, covering a trial requires being there for most if not every session; he resisted reporting on it at all, did no pre-reporting on the case, and appears not to have been in court for many (if not most) of the days the trial was in session. He did not even file a story on the case until after the judge began deliberating, and then filed only one further report after the verdict was announced.

Even the one bit of exclusive reporting he was able to claim -- an interview with Irving the morning before the verdict was announced -- was extraordinarily slipshod. In the interview, Irving told Reid he expected to lose; but as Lipstadt's book makes clear, all the major parties in trial, including Irving, had been informed of the verdict the night before. So Irving was only telling Reid something he already knew. Reid failed to mention this, perhaps out of ignorance.

The BookTV interview reflected these shoddy foundations, revealing lack of a clear understanding of the issues at stake in the trial. Reid, for instance, described Irving as having said in his opening statement that no one denies that the Holocaust happened -- and therefore, Reid suggested, this was not really about "Holocaust denial."

That is, of course, an extraordinarily disingenuous -- not to mention absurdly credulous -- description of the matter. "Holocaust deniers" don't deny that many thousands of Jews and other "undesirables" were exterminated by Nazi Germany; what they deny is the scope and magnitude of those atrocities, as well as many of the essential mechanics of how the Holocaust occurred.

The Wikipedia entry on Holocaust denial explains this rather clearly:

Holocaust deniers prefer to be called Holocaust revisionists. Most people contend that the latter term is misleading. Historical revisionism is the reexamination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, and/or less biased information. Broadly, it is the approach that history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate and should be revised accordingly. Historical revisionism in this sense is a well-accepted and mainstream part of history studies. It may be applied to the Holocaust as well, as new facts emerge and change our understanding of its events.

... Holocaust deniers make all or most of the following claims:

1. There was no specific order by Adolf Hitler or other top Nazi officials to exterminate the Jews.

2. Nazis did not use gas chambers to mass murder Jews. Small chambers did exist for delousing and Zyklon-B was used in this process.

3. The figure of 5 to 6 million Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration, and that many Jews who actually emigrated to Russia, Britain, Israel and the United States are included in the number.

4. Many photos and lots of film footage shown after World War II was specially manufactured as propaganda against the Nazis by the Allied forces. For example, one film, shown to Germans after the war, of supposed Holocaust victims were in fact German civilians being treated after allied bombing of Dresden. Pictures we commonly see show victims of starvation or Typhus, not of gassing.

5. Claims of what the Nazis supposedly did to the Jews were all intended to facilitate the Allies in their intention to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and are currently used to garner support for the policies of the state of Israel, especially in its dealings with the Palestinians.

6. Although crimes were committed, they were not centrally orchestrated and thus the Nazi leadership bore no responsibility for the implementation of such a policy.

7. Historical proof for the Holocaust is falsified or deliberately misinterpreted.

8. There is an American, British or Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look like victims and to demonize Germans. Also, it was in the Soviets' interest to propagate wild stories about Germany in order to frighten related nations into accepting soviet rule (Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.). The amount of money pumped into Israel and reparations from Germany alone give Israel a strong incentive to maintain this conspiracy.

9. The overwhelming number of biased academics and historians are too afraid to actually admit that the Holocaust was a fiction; they know they will lose their jobs if they speak up.

10. In any event, the Holocaust pales in comparison to the number of dissidents and Christians killed in Soviet gulags, which they usually attribute to Jews.

Irving himself makes most of these claims, and in fact did so during the course of the trial.

Irving, for instance, has frequently argued that the common estimate of the numbers of Jews killed (between 5 and 6 million) is grossly inflated. In court testimony in 1988, on behalf of another Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel, he gave a base figure of 100,000 -- though in recent years he has upgraded that figure to 1 million.

Irving's rationale for these figures is extraordinarily revealing: Since many millions of the Jews who died in Nazi death camps actually succumbed to disease and starvation, he does not include them in his tally of people "killed." Apparently, in order to qualify as a Holocaust victim, one had to have been either gassed or shot. He also, of course, wholly bought into Fred Leuchter's phony claims that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

The worst part of Reid's description of the trial was his failure to explain the many historical facets that emerged, particularly the testimony of other historians that laid bare the utter poverty of Irving's methodology. He regaled the TV audience with quaint details about the courtroom setting and the appearances of the bewigged barrister, solicitors, and judge -- but seemed incapable of describing some of the key historical points involved.

Many of these would have made clear to both his readers and C-SPAN's viewers just how completely off the wall is Irving's approach to history. A prime example: While cross-examining historian Christopher Browning, Irving compared Hitler's original plan for dealing with the Jews -- a project to ship the entirety of European Jewry off to the island of Madagascar, where they could be supervised by the SS -- to the creation of the Israeli state:

Q. [Irving] In what way is Madagascar a fantastic plan?

A. [Browning] Fantastic in the sense that one is bizarre, the notion that you could take 4 million Jews and put them on ships and send them to Madagascar, and that anything other than the vast bulk of them would die under the conditions of being dumped into the jungle of Madagascar. Even that a plan that clearly in its implications involved vast decimation, they still talked in these words of resettlement.

Q. Is this not exactly what happened with the state of Israel? Millions of these people were taken and dumped in Israel, so to speak, although they did it voluntarily? It was an uprooting and a geographical resettlement.

Reid also was content to characterize the bulk of Irving's "Holocaust denial" as consisting of a claim he actually does make: that Hitler himself was unaware of the mass murder operation his underlings had set into motion. This is, of course, only a small portion of the distortions and falsehoods which he promotes.

The rest of the BookTV program was equally slipshod, and in its entirety it was clear that the producers were simply out of their depth in their handling of this matter.

At her blog, Lipstadt commented:

1. I wish CSpan had just admitted that they made a mistake from the outset and had not claimed that they were intending to just show a few clips of Irving. CSpan is an important national institution. It gets people to read and think about books. I have no desire to fight with CSpan, but they should have been more honest about how they messed up from the outset.

2. I wish TR Reid, who usually is a pretty careful journalist, had refamiliarized himself with the basic facts of the case before agreeing to talk about it. The case was not about whether Irving says Hitler knew about the Holocaust. It's about whether this man denies the most basic facts of the Holocaust and he does.

3. Finally, I was not trying to deny Irving a right to speak. I was simply refusing to be pushed into a debate which is no debate and with someone who is a proven liar. How can you debate a liar?

4. Never, in all the years I have been watching CSpan, have I seen a policy towards "balance." Why here?

That may be the most troubling question of them all.

C-SPAN has since issued a statement saying it regrets using the word "balance" to describe its plans, calling the term just "internal jargon" referring to the use of other voices.

Right. That would explain why no other book has ever been handled by either BookTV or its predecessor, BookNotes, in this fashion. In every previous broadcast of both shows, it has simply let the author come on and talk about his or her book. Why not Lipstadt?

Regrets about terminology notwithstanding, C-SPAN's approach to this subject makes clear that it has a great deal to learn about how extremists like Holocaust deniers operate. They count on the ignorance of those unfamiliar with their tactics to handle them "fairly" -- which is to say, to treat their lies as though they merely represent another viewpoint, and thereby spread their vicious falsifications into the mainstream,. Sunday's broadcast was a classic case of this.

Drinking Moderately

I'm really only a centrist drinker, but I've been invited to join the monthly Seattle gathering of Drinking Liberally tonight. It'll be at 8 p.m. at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave. E. Be there or be ... sober.

The cold embrace

A number of observers, both right and left, have concluded that the Terri Schiavo case was a watershed moment, a turning point of sorts in the national discourse.

On the right, they see it as the moment when the left's "culture of death" was seriously confronted for the first time. On the left, it's being hopefully viewed as the moment when the right finally jumped the shark and revealed their ugly, intrusive underside to the public at large.

It will take some time, of course, to ascertain which of these views is closer to the truth, though obviously I've already endorsed the latter wholly.

However, I think that we can defintively say that it was a watershed event in a gathering trend we've been observing for some time here: It clearly marked the open embrace of extremists by the mainstream Republican Party.

It was apparent that the "fight for Terri" attracted a large number of extremists to the cause, notably Bo Gritz and Hal Turner. But they were not as openly adopted by the supposedly mainstream conservatives who joined in the fray as the anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry.

Terry, of course, was everywhere: Popping up on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and various local networks as the chief spokesman for the Schindler family, who sought him out for support.

Numerous others have remarked on Terry's long career in anti-abortion radicalism, including Media Matters, Mark Kleiman, World O'Crap, and TalkLeft. Sean Baptiste has put together a six-part series on Terry that has even greater detail.

But what few have remarked upon is Terry's long history of association with the most violent elements of right-wing extremism, and his early role in fomenting the formation of "citizen militias" and the "Patriot" movement. Terry's extremism is very broad-ranging, and includes some of the most dangerous and nakedly anti-democratic elements in American society.

In fact, my first awareness of the existence of a "militia movement" came in 1994, when I watched a video tape of Terry and his frequent cohort, Matthew Trewhella, exhorting a gathering of Howard Phillips' U.S. Taxpayers Party (now known as the Constitution Party). Terry called for the "justifiable" killing of abortion doctors, while Trewhella painted militias as one of the solutions for dealing with abortion.

An earlier report from 1995 describes some of his activities in this regard:

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, is working with the radical right U.S. Taxpayers Party (USTP) launching a new "leadership institute" to train "militant" and "unmerciful" activists. Terry has recently assumed a leadership position at the USTP, writing newsletters and speaking at events. He says he plans to run as a USTP candidate in the state of New York in 1996. "I'm anxious to run," he said "I am chomping at the bit to actually be in office."

Terry said a new "leadership institute" will be held near his hometown of Binghamton, New York in October and will offer "three days of intense training on vision, courage, biblical ethics, raising up a cadre of people who are militant, who are fierce, who are unmerciful to the deeds of darkness, unmerciful to the ideologies of hell." At the same conference Matthew Trewhella, leader of Missionaries to the Pre-born urged delegates to form armed militias and to establish a "militia day" in their churches. Conference organizers sold copies of a manual on how to create an armed underground army. Jeffrey Baker, USTP National Committee member touted that "Abortionists should be put to death" during his convention speech. The audience erupted in applause.

The U.S. Taxpayers party is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. In 1992 the USTP presidential candidate, Howard Phillips, ran a series of controversial campaign commercials which featured the photograph, name, and home address of medical directors at a Planned Parenthood in Iowa while the narrator stated "Howard Phillips urges you to contact these baby killers and urge them to mend their ways. A vote for Howard Phillips is a vote to prosecute the baby killers for premeditated murder."

Some other significant quotes from Terry make clear the depths of his anti-democratic inclinations:

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you... I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."

He also is clear in his advocacy of a singularly intolerant "Christian nation", especially for abortion providers:

"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it. ... I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed.

"You say, 'This is extreme!' Yeah, you're right. But imagine God Almighty sending people to hell just because they didn't follow His son? That's extreme. That's intolerance. Imagine Jesus saying that all other religions are false. Christianity claims to be the only way."

Terry also has a thing about insisting on masculine leadership:

"The greatest crisis we face is not child killing, it's not the sodomites, it's not land tax, it's not the intrusion of the federal government into our lives, our families, as they crush our liberties. The greatest crisis we face tonight is a crisis of leadership. We are facing a crisis of righteous, courageous, physically oriented, male leadership. Male leadership!

"God established patriarchy when he established the world. God established a patriarchal world. If we're going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again, if I may use a worn out expression, have righteous testosterone flowing through their veins. They are not afraid of the contempt of their contemporaries. They are not here to get along. They are not even here to take issue. They are here to take over!"

While Christian Reconstructionists often paint a benign picture of the "Christian nation" they intend to create, Terry is more straightforward:

"Christian government, folks, would prosecute abortionists. Christian government would say that consensual homosexual acts are a criminal offense. Christian government would say that the government cannot property tax your land. The foundation of self government is private ownership of land. Look at the Bible. Look at how much time God spent making sure that the land was distributed, and that you could never lose your land.

"Courage, by definition, is the willingness to die. You've got to be prepared to die before you can be the most courageous man or woman you can be. Because once you're prepared to die for something, or someone, you can't be intimidated; you can't be bullied; you can't be bribed; there's nothing that anyone can do to stop you."

Of course, this kind of rhetorical threatening was a significant part of the right-wing discourse in the Schiavo matter, promulgated at every step by Terry. Nancy Goldstein at Raw Story had an excellent summary of the way things quickly spiraled:

Invariably, things got a little out of hand, as things often do when people are encouraged to believe that innocents are being murdered and God sanctions their every retaliatory action. Typical theo-con incitement-to-riot rhetoric from the "Priests for Life" describes the courts as "un-elected judges" who "authorize violence," then prescribes revolt: "When government fails to protect life, the people must do so directly."

Incendiary rhetoric wasn’t contained to the fringes. House majority leader Tom DeLay warmed up the crowd with his declaration that "murder is being committed against a defenseless American citizen in Florida." And that's just what he said in public. In private, while speaking to the rabidly theo-con Family Research Council in remarks secretly taped and later released to the press by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, DeLay warned his audience of "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in," urged them to "participate in fighting back," and claimed that staying out of politics is "not what Christ asked us to do."

Of course, after Terri Schiavo finally died, DeLay continued the attacks on judges in a way that clearly smacked of the threat of violence:

Mrs. Schiavo's death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.

The same theme continued yesterday with similar remarks by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in -- engage in violence."

Who could have predicted that a United States Senator would begin channeling Hal Turner and other extremist ideologues who argue that judges have it coming when they make "bad rulings" (that is, rulings the right doesn't like)?

As Nancy Goldstein put it:

You'd better get to know these folks, because Schivao was a coming-out party for an emboldened radical right wing, not an isolated incident. The GOP gave theo-cons every indication that they would be allowed to set the agenda. The news media gave them carte blanche, never once explicitly connecting prime players like Randall Terry to their violent pasts. And the Democrats went limp. Now theo-cons are going to be taking their show on the road whenever and wherever they want: over the judiciary, gay marriage, and abortion -- whatever God wills.

The Schiavo case indeed could prove to be a watershed event. But if centrists and progressives cannot muster the will to make clear to the public just how deeply enmeshed with the mainstream the extremist right has become, it will not mark a happy turning point for our nation, but a disastrous one.

C-SPAN and Holocaust Denial

I think everyone believed that C-SPAN had simply embarrassed itself a couple of weeks ago when it tried to insist on a phony "balance" on the subject of Holocaust denial by demanding that author Deborah Lipstadt appear with hoaxter David Irving simultaneously to discuss her book on the libel trial to which Irving subjected her.

The last we heard about this from C-SPAN (back on March 19), they were reconsidering: "We are still discussing how to cover this book, and we don't have an immediate timetable."

Well, now we know how they're going to cover it: Neither Lipstadt nor Irving will discuss her book. Instead, they're going to assemble their own panel to talk about the trial, and by extension, the book.

They'll have done so without any consultation with Lipstadt, and with only the briefest of warnings. At least one of their leading "experts" is in fact problematic at best.

Here's the announcement for the show later this afternoon:

Book TV presents a look at the 2000 libel trial between World War II writer David Irving and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt. The trial is detailed in Dr. Lipstadt's newest book, "History on Trial." Guests include T.R. Reid of the Washington Post, who covered the trial, as well as video clips of Deborah Lipstadt and David Irving. Historian John Lukacs is also interviewed.

According to my friend Dan Yurman, Lipstadt told him by e-mail that she feels "blind sided" by C-SPAN's action. The network, he said, "resisted all efforts to respond to her communications and indeed refused to even answer her e-mails."

Here's the e-mail that C-SPAN sent to Lipstadt this morning:

Dear Dr. Lipstadt;

I'm writing to let you know that we have produced a program about your 2000 libel trial. It is scheduled to air on C-SPAN2 Book TV today, Sunday, April 3rd, at 4:30 pm eastern time (overnight re-air Monday morning at 3:00 am eastern time.) For more information you can go to our website at www.booktv.org

Connie Doebele Executive Producer Book TV

Lipstadt forwarded the e-mail to friends, with the attached note:

Date: Sun, 03 April 2005 11:20:19 -0400

I received the following email about an hour ago. I had no idea this was in the offing. I have no other knowledge of the program. And now I understand why Connie Doebele had not returned my phone calls last week.

Even more problematic than C-SPAN's dubious professionalism in their handling this was their selection of T.R. Reid, of the Washington Post London bureau, as one of the chief guests.

That's because even though the description says that Reid "covered" the trial, in fact he didn't attend any of the trial itself. He only covered the announcement of the verdict. That's because he resisted covering it, deeming it not newsworthy enough, and then finally jumped in at the last moment.

In an analysis of the media coverage of the trial for Idea Journal, Yurman pointed out that Reid's coverage of the trial stood out for his resistance to even reporting on it:

I corresponded via email with numerous journalists during the trial. In one instance I really thought I'd really hit the wall in my exchanges with T.R. Reid, the London correspondent for the Washington Post. He said he did not consider the trial a priority compared to his other assignments which included the Pinochet extradition controversy which was going on at the same time. I sent Reid copies of the media reviews trying to indicate I wasn't whistling in the wind and to show there was enormous media interest in the trial. He said he was too busy.

Eventually, he wrote about the trial and the decision, but after closing arguments. In fact, Reid actually wrote two major articles about the trial. The Washington Post also published an editorial about Judge Gray's decision. Reid made a comment to Prof. Lipstadt right after the verdict was announced in her favor. He said I "badgered him," about the trial, but he also said this, "Dan Yurman was right." It is not true that I badgered him. I was always polite, but I was persistent. I am indebted to Prof. Lipstadt for sending me this feedback.

I'll watch this afternoon and report back. But the signs are not encouraging. So far, C-SPAN's behavior has been not only unprofessional, it is entirely inconsistent with its previously established standards for "balance": When it broadcast conferences of the white-supremacist organizations American Renaissance and Council of Concerned Citizens, it felt no need to "balance" those discussions with opposing viewpoints. One has to wonder why, once again, truth and fact have to contend on an equal footing with lies and vicious slander.

Up to the Minuteman

Well, I kinda had a hunch the numbers of "Minutemen" might fall a little short of expectations.

Wouldn't you know it, journalists outnumber the Minutemen so far in Arizona, where only 120 of the supposed 1,000 managed to show:

About 400 people attended the opening day of the Minuteman Project Friday, coming from states as far as Pennsylvania and Tennessee to protest a lack of proper border enforcement.

Nearly half the gathered crowd was reporters, photographers and cameramen. Minuteman media liaison Mike McGarry put the number of volunteers at 120 or more.

"I wish I could shoot a picture without a journalist in it," one cameraman was heard to grumble as reporters darted from one volunteer to another.

There were a number of anti-project protesters as well. This is especially clear from reading this Freeper's-eye view of the goings-on:

The rousing speeches ended and I found myself outside amid the din of the crazy protestors. I tried to carry on a conversation with someone right in front of the building rented for the MMP but it was impossible because of the noise. I grabbed one of the ACLU Legal Observers to file a complaint against the protestors and she laughed me off. I searched out another one and actually got him to write up a formal complaint. I explained that the MMP's freedom of speech and right to peaceable assembly were being infringed by the disrupting protestors. He wrote it all down and said he would see what they could do with my complaint. I urged several others to do the same thing - to file a complaint - and several did.

Such sensitive folks. Lord knows they would never engage in disruptive activities.

I did get a kick out of the response from the mayor of Douglas when Minutemen organizer Chris Simcox accused him of spreading Aryan Nations recruitment fliers calling for members to participate:

Chris Simcox, the editor of a local newspaper and a project organizer, has refuted any link between the Minutemen and white supremacists or any other racist organizations. Simcox has accused Douglas Mayor Ray Borane, a frequent critic, of distributing the fliers in an attempt to smear the project.

"I wonder what he's smoking," the mayor replied. "He has no idea the kinds of people they're going to be attracting."

Well, actually, he probably has a pretty good idea. Now, Michelle Malkin?

Mainstreaming extremism

One of the more troubling realities about white supremacists, as I've written at length, is their seeming normalcy, and how it plays a key role in their ability to worm their way back into the mainstream of American culture.

An instructive example in how this works recently cropped up in Montana, where an avowed white supremacist is running for the school board in Bozeman:

White separatist Kevin McGuire has qualified to run as a candidate for the nine-member Bozeman School Board.

Four candidates filed papers as of Thursday's deadline to run for three open seats in the May 3 election, according to Lori King, assistant to the assistant superintendent for business.

McGuire, an activist with the National Alliance, which advocates creating a whites-only, non-Jewish society, responded to the Chronicle by e-mail, saying he was running to encourage school programs that "foster a sense of racial identity, pride and belonging."

"Our children are taught about the histories and cultures of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews and Native Americans but any sense of White racial solidarity or White racial pride is condemned as White racism; and that is not right," McGuire wrote.

"I stand against the homosexual agenda currently in our school system which not only preaches acceptance of homosexuality but actively encourages it."

Thirty-nine people, including a Bozeman teacher, signed McGuire's petition to be a candidate as he walked up and down South Third Avenue and nearby streets.

As Wulfgar says, this candidacy is a ripe opportunity for progressives to stand up to the growth of these kinds of forces. More to the point, I think they'll have a lot of support. It seems highly likely to me that McGuire will be trounced at the polls: I know my way around Bozeman a little, enough to sense that people there recognize that people like McGuire are blots on their communities.

Of course, it probably won't help McGuire that the voters who signed his petition are now saying they were bamboozled by his nice-seeming appearance:

Benjamin Bennett said he had a "horrible, sinking feeling" when he read Friday that a young white separatist had qualified as a candidate for the Bozeman School Board.

"I feel so taken for a ride," said Bennett, 33, an advertising agency owner.
Bennett was one of 39 people, living in some of the most liberal voter precincts in Bozeman, who signed the candidate's petition for National Alliance activist Kevin McGuire.

Bennett said three or four Sundays ago, McGuire and a buddy wearing a cowboy hat and long coat appeared at his doorstep. McGuire was soft-spoken, looked nice and neat, and seemed timid.

"I was impressed that somebody so young was trying to be on the School Board," Bennett said. "I asked why he decided to run. He said, 'I want to try to help the School Board evolve and do things for children.' ... He never said, 'I intend to educate children against homosexuals and Jews.'"

Another petition signed who was taken in by his "nice appearance" was the one schoolteacher on the list:

Rick Hannula, a Chief Joseph Middle School teacher, said he had asked questions before signing McGuire's petition. McGuire gave him the impression he was an engineering student at Montana State University, although MSU's registrar said on Friday that McGuire is not and has never been an MSU student.

"He said, 'I want to make some changes in the community,'" Hannula said. "I asked, 'Any other agendas?' He said, 'Well, I just want to make some changes.'

"He definitely was less than honest, by omitting what his agenda was," Hannula said. "I felt almost violated, used."

That is, unfortunately, exactly what these folks are all about: white supremacy itself is a profound kind of charlatanism, after all.

But even though McGuire will lose, his whole campaign will have accomplished exactly what it set out to do: Create an image of white-supremacist ideology as a normative part of the community, lending it an air of legitimacy it might otherwise not have.

Inch by inch, it worms its way in. What that means, of course, is that communities have to remain constantly on guard. After the campaign -- and during it -- will come a recruitment drive. They'll keep beating their drums. And as always, the answer is not to silence them, but to outdrum them.

Just a minute, men

Well, the anticipation is palpable now as participants in the so-called "Minuteman Project" are gathering near the Mexican border even as we speak to defend Mom and apple pie against an invasion of anchor-baby-carrying brown people. We've been promised 1,000 of them.

And hey, even Michelle Malkin has endorsed them, calling the project "the mother of all neighborhood watch programs." Funny, that: That happens to be exactly how John Trochmann described the Militia of Montana to me. But then, these ideas are the products of people who have been organizing "border militias" all along -- that is, they are bona fide extremists.

Actually, we'll be very fortunate, as always, if the month of April -- supposedly the duration of the project -- passes uneventfully without some tragedy occurring. Because that's what's we're asking for here.

The project is noteworthy alone for having the potential to create a genuine international incident. The president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, earlier demanded that President Bush do something about the Minutemen. When they met last week in Texas, Bush took the unusual step of speaking out against them:

Last week, President Bush stepped into the controversy over border issues, saying he opposed the Minuteman Project.

"I'm against vigilantes in the United States of America," Bush said during a meeting in Texas with Mexican President Vincente Fox and Canadian Prime Minster Paul Martin. "I'm for enforcing law in a rational way. It's why we've got a Border Patrol, and they ought to be in charge of enforcing the border."

Simcox said Bush's statement was disrespectful to citizens who simply want to help solve border problems. "We challenge the president to join us and come down and see for himself what's really going on," he told CNN.

Fox has also expressed concern over citizen border patrols. He told reporters he was watching the Minuteman Project carefully and would take action in U.S. courts or international tribunals if any activists break the law.

"We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups," Fox said. "We will use the law -- international law and even U.S. law -- to make sure that these types of groups ... will not have any opportunity to progress."

"We don't have any evidence or any indication either that terrorists from al Qaeda or any other part of the world are coming into Mexico and going into the United States," Fox said, countering recent statements made by senior Bush administration officials. "If there is any of that evidence, we will like to have it. But as I said, it does not exist."

The genuinely ugly side of the Minuteman Project and the related border vigilantes was limned by a recent story in the Arizona Daily Star:

The stories of illegal entrants abused by Cochise County vigilantes are buried in sheriff's deputy reports -- complaints of guns drawn, dog bites, shouts and humiliation -- in official language, using terms such as aggravated assault and disorderly conduct.

Since 1999, the Mexican consul in Douglas, Miguel Escobar, has documented 65 cases in which illegal border crossers reported being detained by U.S. citizens in Cochise County.

In at least six reports taken by Cochise County Sheriff's Department deputies, illegal entrants have reported being kicked, shouted at, bitten by dogs and had guns pointed at them -- yet there's never been a single Cochise County resident prosecuted in these cases.

Human-rights activists say it's because there's a culture of looking the other way when it comes to illegal-entrant abuse. Cochise County law enforcement officials say it's because the victims -- illegal entrants -- choose not to pursue charges. And without witnesses, there are no cases.

The debate has led to civil lawsuits involving millions of dollars. And it has fueled concerns by activists that lax enforcement will allow participants in the upcoming Minuteman Project to abuse illegal entrants without fear of prosecution in Cochise County.

The story also reported that the Aryan Nations was working hard to recruit for the project:

The Minuteman Project is being touted now as a "political assembly" promising to bring 1,022 people to the banks of the San Pedro River for a monthlong protest of border enforcement, starting Friday. But activist groups point to elements within the group and cite a potential for violence.

Last year, one of its leaders, Chris Simcox, was convicted on federal weapons charges. More recently, the white supremacy group Aryan Nation has openly recruited for the Minuteman Project, promoting the monthlong protest as a "white pride event."

Organizer James Gilchrist said he didn't know the Aryan Nation was promoting the event.

Some neighborhood watch you've got there, Michelle.

Finishing off the whole toxic mix is a healthy dose of paranoia, also given a "mainstream" shot in the arm, from the Washington Times, which is reporting that Latino gang members are planning to show up and run counter-actions:

Members of a violent Central America-based gang have been sent to Arizona to target Minuteman Project volunteers, who will begin a monthlong border vigil this weekend to find and report foreigner sneaking into the United States, project officials say.

James Gilchrist, a Vietnam veteran who helped organize the vigil to protest the federal government's failure to control illegal immigration, said he has been told that California and Texas leaders of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, have issued orders to teach "a lesson" to the Minuteman volunteers.

"We're not worried because half of our recruits are retired trained combat soldiers," Mr. Gilchrist said. "And those guys are just a bunch of punks."

More than 1,000 volunteers are expected to take part in the Minuteman vigil, which will include civilian patrols along a 20-mile section of the San Pedro River Valley, which has become a frequent entry point to the United States for foreigner headed north.

About 40 percent of the 1.15 million foreign nationals caught last year by the U.S. Border Patrol trying to gain illegal entry to the United States were apprehended along a 260-mile stretch of the Arizona border here known as the Tucson sector.

Having sat around many a Patriot campfire, and heard many a tale of a looming army of well-armed brown people, often gang members, preparing to attack the patriotic militiamen defending their country, well ... I think it's highly likely the Times reporter was being, shall we say, a bit credulous.

In fact, given their propensity for jumping to the wroung conclusions and attacking innocent people, their fondness for heavy weaponry, their itchy trigger fingers, and the heavy paranoia in which they have been bathing themselves, I'd say we have, as the Star's editors put it, a recipe for disaster.

Just about the time some hapless family stumbles across one of their watchpoints at about, say, Day 17 of the Project, when everyone is tired of waiting for something to happen and worked into a paranoiac state of frenzy.

Saved

I must be a member of the Culture of Death, because I find myself relieved that Terri Schiavo finally passed away this morning.

But largely because it prevents folks like Bo Gritz and Norm Olson and the Michigan Militia from "rescuing" her:

Norm Olson, senior adviser to the Michigan militia and pastor of a strong right-to-life church in Wolverine, said Tuesday he had put together an unarmed coalition of state militias that were prepared to storm the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo has been left to die, and take her to a safe house.

Olson said he needed only the OK from Schiavo's father, Robert Schindler, either directly or through his attorney David Gibbs, to put the plan, called "Operation Resurrection," into action on Sunday.

But Olson said Gibbs contacted the FBI instead of passing his message on to Schindler.

Olson said the FBI had been monitoring e-mails within militia groups and on Tuesday, March 29, sent an agent from Traverse City to his home in Alanson and other agents to militia leaders in the South to question them about the plan.

The FBI was unavailable for comment.

Olson said that last Thursday he phoned Gibbs' secretary with a message that he had organized 1,500 to 2,000 militia members from Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia and Michigan, who were ready to remove Schiavo from the hospice and take her in a convoy to a safe house.

Olson said he never was able to speak directly to the Schindlers or Gibbs.

"Gibbs probably told the Schindlers not to get the militia involved. That's why Schindler came out with statement that he did not want any civil disobedience. Now they're begging for someone to do something, but it's too late," Olson said.

Olson said the militias needed time to arrange for an ambulance, medical support staff and a safe house before the plan could be put into action.

"We would have overwhelmed the local law enforcement," Olson said, adding the militias would not have been armed.

The story also includes a rundown of Olson's e-mails to his supporters:

Wednesday, March 23:

"Are there militia in Florida who are willing to go rescue Terri?

"How about Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana?

"I've got some very angry Michigan militia folks chomping at the bit ..."

"Shall we save Terri Schiavo?

"The Courts say NO

"The Law Makers say NO

"The Executives say NO

"It's time for us to say: 'Let's Roll!'

Thursday, March 24:

"Florida Militia: Please contact me. We're going to need several hundred willing to storm the building. I suspect that hundreds of 'civilians' may go with us. There is very little time, but I've got people ready to roll tonight."

"Failure is very probable, but not to try is to fail already."

"Too small of a force will mean total failure. It is a 'Bridge Too Far' but with enough people it may work.

"It isn't a commando raid or sneak attack. It is a mass saturation of people able to overwhelm the minimal forces there at this time."

"A large scale military assault need not be bloody. As much as we might like to, care must be taken to avoid inflicting injury on the bad guys."

Reality check: I met Olson at the Freemen standoff in Montana. He, like about 99 percent of all militiamen, is a loudmouthed fantasist whose chief combat capabilities involve scratching their posteriors. Olson has no significant remaining influence within the Patriot movement. If he actually gave such a call, it would be ignored. The only thing Olson seems capable of doing anymore is attracting attention to himself and pretending to represent a large movement, when in fact his supporters probably number in the low double digits --if that high.

But it is well worth noting just how avidly the Schiavo cause was adopted by right-wing extremists. Bill Berkowitz at Media Transparency has already detailed the far-right money trail in this brouhaha, especially the prominent role of the noxious Randall Terry, who earned special notice for accusing Michael Schiavo of adultery, a point on which Terry himself lives in something of aglass house. Terry, along with his cohort Matthew Trewhella, was one of the first public advocates of forming militias, back in 1994.

'Anchor babies' away

Calling Michelle Malkin! We need your expertise, on a key immigration issue. It should be right up your alley.

Maybe you've heard about this. One of the more audacious efforts of the anti-immigration crowd with whom you've aligned yourself -- you know, Tom Tancredo, Nathan Deal, those folks -- has arrived in the form of legislation that would strip the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States of citizenship rights:

[A] bill co-sponsored by Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea, would deny citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants in the United States, but opponents say the bill uses immigrants as a scapegoat for poorly developed policies.

"If you're coming here illegally, you shouldn't be benefiting from it," Miller said. "If I rob a bank, and left some money to my kids, should they be allowed to keep it?"

About 1 million people legally enter the United States from other countries each year, and an additional estimated 500,000 cross the border undocumented, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports the bill.

The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to individuals born in the United States, though the 1868 ratification of the amendment was intended to give citizenship to freed slaves, according to federation spokesman Ira Mehlman.

"It was intended to apply to a specific group of people -- it wasn't likely that people could travel thousands of miles to give birth to a child in a different country," Mehlman said.

The chief sponsor of the bill in Congress is actually Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who hails from a part of the country that is wrestling with old demons when it comes to the new wave of Latino immigrants.

California, where Miller hails from, is another such place. Miller, in fact, is rated the most conservative member of the California delegation, which is saying something. Meanwhile, Miller's own press release reiterates the hoary charge that the 14th Amendment was never meant to include these people:

"More than 120 nations, including Germany, Japan and Italy, do not grant automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants," said Miller. "The United States must wise up and join the rest of the industrialized world in acknowledging that caring for, educating and integrating unregulated waves of immigrants is not sustainable."

The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to individuals born in the United States, though the 1868 ratification of the amendment was intended to give citizenship to freed slaves. Miller argues the authors of the amendment would not approve of its current application.

There's no sign the legislation will actually succeed, and considering how radical it is in nature, it seems unlikely; but then, a couple of months ago, it seemed unlikely that Congress would meet in special session in an attempt to butt its nose into a family tragedy involving a brain-dead woman. So you never know.

Another of the obvious hurdles the bill will have to face is that it is nakedly unconstitutional and is nearly certain to meet an ugly fate in the courts. But that's never stopped the True Believers of the right before, has it? They can just declare the judges who slap them down as "judicial activists," and right-wing radio creeps will begin broadcasting their home addresses.

Well, the mere fact that a number of Republicans have signed on to support it should give pause to anyone who thinks that so-called "pro-life" issues are the only ones to have been hijacked by wackaloons and yet pandered to by politicians. Of course, we know you're not among that crowd, Michelle.

Still, I'm having trouble seeing you support this. Even you must realize that immigration, after all, has for all of this nation's history been closely associated with citizenship, and the familial ties that spring from having citizen children has always been an essential ingredient in that formula. You have a little personal experience in that area, right?

I mean, even the normally quite conservative San Diego Union-Tribune blasted this legislation:

Actually, it's not enough to say that this bill would simply deny U.S. citizenship. Since the people impacted are already citizens under current law, what this legislation really intends to do is to revoke one's citizenship. That's a punishment so severe that it is usually reserved for traitors and enemies of the state. And this bill would mete out that punishment to children. And what did these pint-size subversives do to deserve all this? Absolutely nothing. They only managed to be born to parents who entered the country illegally.

Now this is not exactly a new phenomenon. One is likely to find this story told over and over again in the pages of U.S. history. Scores of pregnant women boarded ships in Italy or Ireland, headed for Ellis Island -– not always with the proper documents -– so that their children could enter the world as U.S. citizens. That's a beautiful tradition, and it's one worth preserving.

Such sentiments, of course, carry little weight with the anti-immigrant crowd, which is, as always, intent on its pound of flesh.

Indeed, you can find examples of it throughout history, always associated with Nativism and the worst, most bigoted elements of American society.

For instance, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Senator Tom Stewart of Tennessee proposed stripping citizenship from anyone of Japanese descent: "A Jap's a Jap anywhere," he said.

This proposal had wide support on the Pacific Coast. Fairly typical was a letter to the Post-Intelligencer from Charlotte Drysdale of Seattle:

It has been interesting to note how many contributors have been afraid we would have no garden truck if the Japs are sent to concentration areas. We had gardens long before the Japs were imported about the turn of the century, to work for a very low wage (a move for which we are still paying dearly) and we can still have them after we have no Japs.

Isn't that discounting American ability just a little too low?

And by Americans I mean not the children of the races ineligible to naturalization. The mere fact that a child is born in this country should not give him the rights and privileges of citizenship.

The fourteenth amendment, granting automatic citizenship to American born, was placed there for the protection of the Negro and at that time the great infiltration of Japs was not even thought of. In recent years there has been so much fear of hurting the feelings of these people that no one has had the courage to try to rectify the situation. Now it would seem that the time is ripe to put things right, for once and for all time.

Er, um, now that I think about it, maybe you'd have actually agreed with Mrs. Drysdale, wouldn't you, Michelle?

It's all so confusing. You are, after all, so devoted to all major immigration issues that I see you've even begun a separate blog devoted to the subject. So far -- and hey, it's early in the thing, so maybe I'm just impatient -- you don't seem to have managed to address H.R. 698. Nor have you seem to have written on it at your regular blog. Though I see your colleagues at VDare have done so enthusiastically.

But everyone has to wonder if there's at least a possibility that, were this bill to pass, you yourself could be stripped of your citizenship, Michelle Maglalang Malkin. After all, it doesn't take much to be declared an "illegal alien"; all you have to do is miss some paperwork or lack certain documents, and under this legislation, voila! Your children are no longer citizens.

You, like many other citizen children of immigrants in this country, might have your citizenship revoked if it is found that, at the time of your birth, your parents did not qualify as "legal residents." Now, I'm not impugning them or their reputations -- I'm sure they were here perfectly legally in every jot and tittle at every step of their residency -- I'm just pointing out that such vagaries are fairly common for most children of immigrants, and sometimes involve obscure paperwork the children might not even be aware of.

And like most of us descended within a few generations from immigrant forebears, I'm sure this smacks of a betrayal of our heritage as a nation of immigrants to you just as it does to me. It's one thing to argue for smarter immigration; it's another to deny children their traditional birthright. A birthright I'm sure you treasure as deeply as do I.

Maybe you can clear up the confusion for us.

In the meantime, I'll sure you'll be happy to note that not only has this bill found great favor at VDare (itself designated a "hate group" by the SPLC), but it also has drawn the full-fledged support of the the fine folks at White Revolution.

I guess that's called "expanding the base." Or is it?

Priorities

So far, most of the evidence that the Bush administration is mishandling the domestic side of the "war on terror" has been a matter of omission, that is, what isn't being done: We haven't caught the anthrax killer. The William Krar case was swept under the national carpet. Even the recent concerns raised by the Lefkow killings raised nary an eyebrow.

There have been clearer indications that this administration is playing politics with the "war on terror," particularly in the skewing of priorities at the FBI, where investigators who specialize in right-wing extremists have been shunted to the back, and the FBI instead has announced "eco-terrorists" as the top domestic-terror threat.

There is also, of course, the clear failure of this administration to recognize the asymmetrical nature of terrorism, embarking on a costly and diversionary war in Iraq that has so far only worsened the root causes of terrorism in the Middle East (current right-wing optimism notwithstanding; we've heard rose-petal scenarios before). As I've argued before, this kind of mishandling of our response to the threat of terrorism only ensures that we'll have more of the same soon.

Now comes a report from Congressional Quarterly that makes clear just how badly the federal agencies supposedly in charge of confronting terrorism have skewed their priorities:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation's security.

According to the list -- part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security -- between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.

It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.

DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment or confirmation of the document's authenticity.

The report makes clear that this is, by nearly any standard, a gross misappropriation of priorities, especially when it comes to the level of actual threat represented:

Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries.

"They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat," said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. "If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that," said German, who left the FBI last year. "Hopefully it's an oversight."

James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. "The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future."

Here's a reality check for the Department of Homeland Security: After the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, through Jan. 1, 2000, there were over 40 serious cases of domestic terrorism -- some of it realized, some of it thwarted -- committed by right-wing extremists.

These were not petty or mere property crimes. They included the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics and abortion clinics by Eric Rudolph; a plan to attack a gathering of military families in the Midwest; and a plot to blow up a California propane facility. In every instance, the planned or perpetrated act involved serious violence in which potentially many people could be killed or injured.

Since that time, the rate has declined dramatically, but the cases keep occurring with some regularity, and the lethal nature of the threat has if anything become worse. Since 2000, we're talking about an actual anthrax attack; plans to set off cyanide and sarin bombs; more planned bombings of abortion clinics; and threats against federal judges. All emanating from either lone wolves or organized extremists from the far right.

These are not torchings of SUVs and vacant condos or trashing of research laboratories, which are bad enough, and certainly a problem worth confronting on a level deserving the actual threat they pose. But the level of violence, and the lethality of the threat posed, is of another order altogether when it comes to right-wing extremists.

The CQ report does point out that eco-terrorists are in fact seemingly more active now, which may be why they are more on the radar. But no one should be fooled by the current lull in the numbers participating in far-right groups. They have always been cyclical in nature, and during downswings like the current ones, the remaining True Believers tend to become even more radicalized, and are far more likely to spin off into violence.

The report also makes clear that this apparently is only a draft version of the list of apparent threats. But if it emerges that this in fact is the DHS view of domestic terrorism, then it should be clear there is something seriously wrong with its priorities.

And then, perhaps, we should begin asking some of the uncomfortable questions that naturally arise, to wit: Does this administration's heavy rightward political tilt have any role in its failure to recognize right-wing extremists as the serious security threat that they objectively are?

It seems, after all, a perfectly logical question to ask.

Blogging about

I've got a fresh post up at the newly redesigned American Street titled "Right wing scamsters," a follow-up to the recent post about the "Little Shell Pembina Band."

Eriposte has put together all the links to an excellent series at the Left Coaster on "How the Liberal Media Myth is Created." Be sure to check it out.

Philosoraptor has the definitive assessment of David Brooks' latest installment in his long-running "liberals are moral-relativist weenies" crock o' bobo.

Sean-Paul Kelly at the Agonist has posted an open letter to the National Press Club regarding its latest panel on blogs and journalism -- which includes faux journalist James Guckert, but no bloggers -- urging it add John Aravosis to the panel. I'm signing it; you should too. (Via Majikthese.)

And Part 1 of Natasha's "A Canticle for Lieberman" at Pacific Views is a must-read.

'Balance' and the tipping point

A lot of people see the Schiavo case as a kind of tipping point in the Culture War, though exactly what kind depends on the perspective. My old friend Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times sees it as the demise of the conservative movement. Tristero goes even farther, declaring it the point at which we jumped the shark into full-fledged fascism.

Even the normally reserved editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times (which called it a "constitutional coup d'etat") and the New York Times were alarmed by the behavior of Republicans in this matter:

President Bush and his Congressional allies have begun to enunciate a new principle: the rules of government are worth respecting only if they produce the result we want. It may be a formula for short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and protect a great republic.

Most of the well-earned opprobrium has been directed at the politicians in this fiasco. But just as worthy for its behavior has been the nation's supposedly "mainstream" media -- because its handling of the Schiavo case has revealed, irrevocably, the utter bankruptcy of what it nowadays calls "balance."

As much as right-wing politicians have leapt into the breach to exploit Terri Schiavo for their own purposes, it's the media who have driven the story incessantly.

Feeding frenzies are typically the product of two common traits of editors and producers: a pack mentality, and a craven impulse to provide the public with stories they think will drive up their respective shares of the audience. The former often leads them to misjudge the latter, as in the Schiavo case: It's clear that the public's disgust with the politicians' behavior is primarily over their grotesque invasion of an agonizing private family matter, and on that score, the media's behavior is even more reprehensible.

What is especially appalling about the media treatment of the Schiavo case is how ardently, and unmistakably, it has adopted the supposedly "pro life" side of the argument. This ranges from outrageous bomb-throwing like that from Fox's John Gibson, to fingerpointing from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, and Rush Limbaugh, to subtler bias like the omnipresent "Fight For Terri" label that is being used by half the networks to accompany their coverage logos.

We're seeing reporters credulously refer to highly dubious medical claims waved by Schiavo's parents -- including the recent claim that she indicated to them she did not want her tube removed -- as though they had anything other than the thinnest veneer of truth to them. We're watching news anchors openly accuse Michael Schiavo of being a bad husband. If there's a propaganda line out there that isn't being parroted in the mainstream media as fact, it might only be Bo Gritz's buffoonery. And they're working on that.

They're wallowing in it. Cheering it on. Even if it is only the viewpoint of about 20 percent of the country, at best, that politicians and reporters have any business, as Knute Berger put it, poking their ugly noses inside the dying room.

This is the way "balance" manifests itself in journalism nowadays.

Now, there is such a thing as real balance. Real balance is a genuine striving for truth: a willingness to both recognize and honestly explore the multiplicity of viewpoints as well as facts that are part of the naturally complex nature of truth. It is complicated and hard work. Of course, real, hard truth is elusive and rare; but the striving is what brings us closer to it.

However, a genuine balance does not countenance obvious falsehoods where it encounters them. It does not treat misinformation as a legitimate "counter" to reasonably established facts, as though a falsehood were just another opinion. It does not put lies on an even footing with facts.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have gotten, in increasing doses, as standard practice from the nation's press for the past decade. As I argued previously regarding the growth of "intelligent design" as a right-wing religious stratagem:

The key piece of illogic is one that has especially lodged itself in the media in recent years: The notion that a demonstrably true fact can be properly countered by a demonstrably false one -- and that the two, placed side by side, represent a kind of "balance" in the national discourse. This is the Foxcist model of Newspeak, in which "fair and balanced" comes to mean its exact opposite.

This kind of "balance" is a direct product of the right-wing myth of the "liberal media". Having worked in the media for many years, I can attest that it may often exhibit a bias, but it is not a liberal one; it is a self-interested one. And having dealt with many ideologues of all stripes in my various media capacities over the years, one of the distinguishing characteristics of movement conservatives that I observed is their knee-jerk and oft-shouted belief that any position contrary to or critical of their official party line is, by definition, "liberal."

What "balance" has become, in essence, is a fig leaf for broadcasting falsehoods on behalf of right-wing propaganda efforts. In the process, it has become a major means for transmitting extremist beliefs into the mainstream. The Schiavo matter is only the most prominent recent example of this.

Perhaps less noticed, but even more illustrative, was the recent case of C-SPAN's decision to "balance" its coverage of Deborah Lipstadt's book on her ordeal with Holocaust denier David Irving by insisting that Irving be given equal airtime.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post (who has, it must be noted, been known for succumbing to right-wing notions of "balance" himself) was the first to raise the issue, in a column that gets it right, for once:

You will not be seeing Deborah Lipstadt on C-SPAN. The Holocaust scholar at Emory University has a new book out ("History on Trial"), and an upcoming lecture of hers at Harvard was scheduled to be televised on the public affairs cable outlet. The book is about a libel case brought against her in Britain by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, trivializer and prevaricator who is, by solemn ruling of the very court that heard his lawsuit, "anti-Semitic and racist." No matter. C-SPAN wanted Irving to "balance" Lipstadt.

The word balance is not in quotes for emphasis. It was invoked repeatedly by C-SPAN producers who seemed convinced that they had chosen the most noble of all journalistic causes: fairness. "We want to balance it [Lipstadt's lecture] by covering him," said Amy Roach, a producer for C-SPAN's Book TV. Her boss, Connie Doebele, put it another way. "You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN," she told me. "We work very, very hard at this. We ask ourselves, 'Is there an opposing view of this?' "

As the New York Times reported, this raised immediate concerns among historians:

More than 200 historians at colleges nationwide sent a petition to C-Span yesterday to protest its plan to accompany its coverage of a lecture by Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University, with a speech by David Irving, who has argued that Hitler was not fully responsible for the mass murder of Jews.

"Falsifiers of history cannot 'balance' histories," said the petition, delivered to Connie Doebele, the executive producer at C-Span who planned the coverage. "Falsehoods cannot 'balance' the truth."

Mr. Irving, a British writer, sued Professor Lipstadt for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier, but the British Royal High Court of Justice dismissed the lawsuit on April 11, 2000, concluding that Mr. Irving was anti-Semitic and racist and that he persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.

Professor Lipstadt has been promoting her new book, an account of the case titled "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving," which Ecco published last month.

C-Span wanted to feature the book on its weekend program "Book TV" and asked Professor Lipstadt if it could record a speech she was making on March 16 at Harvard Hillel, a Jewish organization at Harvard University.

But when Professor Lipstadt learned that the cable network planned to include a lecture by Mr. Irving along with her remarks, she refused to allow C-Span to tape the event.

"I called the producer at C-Span and told her that this was a man who was a Holocaust denier, and this idea of using both of us made no sense to me," Professor Lipstadt said.

She and many of her supporters believe that including such a figure in an account of her views would be as wrongheaded as accompanying a story on slavery in the United States with remarks from someone who said that slavery never happened.

"I told C-Span that I assumed that if they weren't going to tape my lecture, they also wouldn't use David Irving, but they said no, they were committed to having him on," Professor Lipstadt said yesterday. "This is a man who's said that Holocaust survivors are all liars, and that more people died in Senator Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers."

C-Span did tape the speech Mr. Irving made last weekend at the Landmark Diner in Atlanta. But Peggy Keegan, a spokeswoman for the network, said in an interview yesterday that its plans were now up in the air.

Indeed, as the Los Angeles Times later reported, C-SPAN is in full "reconsideration" mode on this decision.

It must be noted that this isn't the first time that C-SPAN has pandered to right-wing extremists. In the past, it has broadcast conferences of Jared Taylor's American Renaissance organization, as well as Council of Conservative Citizens conferences. Both are white-supremacist organizations, designated hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. And no, C-SPAN didn't see fit to find "balancing" viewpoints to these conferences. I wonder if might have been hard to find someone who would go on-air and to argue that blacks, contra Taylor, aren't a "retrograde species of humanity."

What was most amusing about this, though, was the way right-wing bloggers used the matter to position themselves on the side of the angels. Even the hatemongers at Little Green Footballs and Free Republic got into the act.

Roger Simon hit the truly classic note in all this:

It seems that C-SPAN has lying confused with opinion. How pathetic and shameful.

Yes, that is precisely the problem with this model of "balance." But what seems to have eluded everyone on the right is that this is not an isolated problem with C-SPAN. It is, in fact, pervasive throughout the media -- and particularly from self-identified "conservative" media like the "fair and balanced" Fox. And it has been going on for a long time now.

It was not uncommon, in the 1990s, to see clearly outrageous liars like Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and L. Jean Lewis treated not only with kid gloves, but as the chief source of supposedly credible "investigations" into Bill Clinton's private life.

As impeachment fever reached its crescendo in 1999, this willingness to treat blatant falsehoods as "the other side of the story" became pervasive. It was not uncommon to see Barbara or Ted Olson, or Mark Levine, or Ann Coulter, or some other congenital frothing-at-the-mouth Clinton-hater fulminate all over the tube daily with some bizarre speculation or other based in nothing but groundless conspiracy theories and a heavy dose of bile. It continued through the 2000 election, when we were told constantly that "Al Gore says he invented the Internet" and, later, that machine recounts were more accurate than hand recounts.

And it has continued apace since. We've been continually bludgeoned with weapons of mass destruction, orange-code warnings, Swift Boat Veterans and the phony "Rathergate" brouhaha -- all of them exercises in overt mendacity, all designed to bolster conservative-movement propaganda, and all accorded respectful treatment by a "balanced" media.

Perhaps the defining moment was the treatment given to Michelle Malkin, whose book defending the Japanese-American internment was boosted by a fawning press (and right-wing blogosphere) onto the New York Times bestseller list, despite the fact that it represented, rather clearly, an extension of David Irving-style historical revisionism. If Irving is so reprehensible to the folks at Little Green Footballs, why isn't Malkin?

Such hypocrisies, though, are second nature to today's conservatives, which is how they can continue to complain about a "liberal media" (the entire purpose of the "Rathergate" fiasco) even as right-wing propaganda overwhelms mainstream reportage. A quick survey of the Schiavo coverage only makes abundantly clear how far gone are the bulk of our "mainstream" media.

It is one thing, of course, to point out that both our politicians and our media are being grossly irresponsible. What's equally important is to recognize the potentially horrific consequences of this.

Hateful propaganda is just the beginning, because it creates an army of True Believers -- who I previously described as "their oxyconned, Foxcized, Freeped-out, fanatic army of followers" -- who will not be as restrained, either in their words or their actions, as their leaders. The limits on awful behavior are already being pushed to extremes by people like Randall Terry and Bo Gritz.

The vultures are already coming to roost. Hal Turner has been calling for the use of force to "save" Terri Schiavo, and killing anyone who interferes. And sure enough, someone has already been caught putting out a bounty on Michael Schiavo, while another man was arrested for stealing a gun in hopes he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo."

As John Cole has been pointing out, genuine conservatives should be as horrified by these events as liberals -- and at some point, must come to grips with the fresh monsters in our midst. All of us: citizens, politicians, the media.

It won't happen, though, until we recognize the current model of "balance" for what it is: an open invitation to the spread of lies and misinformation. And get back to the time-honored traditions of striving for the truth.

The Succubus

There are many kinds of evils, but there is a truly unique and awful quality to the evil produced by naked racial and religious bigotry. People in Red Lake, Minnesota, can tell you all about it.

What the strange saga of Jeff Weise reveals is one of the more remarkable qualities of that evil: Even when consigned to the fringes and shadows, it retains a kind of vampiric half-life that has an ability to not only survive but adapt, finding fresh clawholds wherever it can, and then fester and grow -- almost inevitably exploding in violence.

Many of the attempts at analysis so far have emphasized the peculiarity of a minority -- Weise was Native American -- adopting neo-Nazi beliefs. But for researchers of the far right, it's perhaps not so surprising. After all, it has been known for some time that the Ku Klux Klan has actively attempted to recruit tribal members from the Lakota Sioux and other reservations for years.

Some Indian leaders who have caught wind of these activities have undertaken high-profile efforts to combat recruitment by extremist organizations within the tribes, partly because the far right's virulent anti-government beliefs struck a chord with some Indians. Some adherents of the white-supremacist Christian Identity movement are known to argue that Indians are Aryans, while others voice admiration for Native Americans who insist on marrying only within their tribal nations. Such notions of "racial purity" obviously were all the common ground a kid like Jeff Weise needed.

There is also a real fascination on the far right with Native American tribal sovereignty and how it might relate to their shopworn theories about "sovereign citizenship, which was a staple of the Posse Comitatus and Montana Freemen, as well as numerous militias. Tribal sovereignty, in essence, offers the far right whole new horizons in kookery. In recent years, this has mutated into such far-right scams as the Little Shell Pembina Band.

At the same time, there is little question that the racist right has been stepping up its recruitment efforts, particularly among young people. I've discussed this phenomenon and its ramifications numerous times over the past year. It should be clear that Weise's rampage is the kind of ramification I've been warning against.

There's no sign of it slowing down, either -- largely because the issue has been getting zero attention from the Fifth Estate. But nature abhors a vacuum, and the succubus loves the shadows.

Just recently, the white supremacists at the National Vanguard [warning: hate site] boasted of their "successful" roadsigns in Florida:

In the distance, another billboard, set apart from the rest, comes slowly into focus. It shows a lovely White woman seated in a field of flowers. She has no Black arm around her. She is part of no multiracial "team." Her fair skin is softly shining in the lights as you get closer. She is the image of natural beauty, innocence, wholesomeness. You notice she bears the symbol of life on her simple White dress. The message, too, is simple: "News. For us. For a change." And then the url of our news site, NationalVanguard.org, in letters thirty feet across. Different enough and intriguing enough to get people to visit -- our kind of people. Our people.

"News. For us. For a change." Seems like a message tailored to an audience conditioned by Fox News and its conception of "balance." [More on that soon.] Which is, of course, exactly what they intend: Make themselves look like normal people. Because, for all intents and purposes, they are.

The Vanguard also boasted of another billboard in Las Vegas demanding, "Stop Immigration." Again, tailored to resonate with mainstream conservatives, at least those of the Michelle Malkin/VDare crowd.

The haters on the far right are also becoming much bolder about operating openly. The same characters at National Vanguard also organized an attack on various supposedly "pro-Jewish" professors:

A few weeks ago, participants on an anti-Semitic Web site became angry when a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles refused to participate in an exchange of e-mail messages.

The professor was Jewish, and the Web site responded by placing photographs of and biographic material about UCLA professors and anti-Semitic diatribes online. In recent days, the Web site ? Vanguard News Network ? has expanded its campaign, which it says is designed to draw attention to the high percentage of Jewish professors on law schools? faculties.

The Web site is now publishing a variety of information ? photographs, results of Google searches, phone numbers ? of faculty members who are Jewish (or have Jewish-sounding names) at leading law schools all over the United States.

Among the institutions who have faculty members discussed by name on the Web site are Georgetown, Harvard, New York, Stanford and Yale Universities; and the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Most of the comments attack Jewish faculty members at law schools, with a theme being that they make up a larger share of law school faculties than do Jews in the U.S. population, and that this over-representation signifies Jewish control of American society.

The attacks were inspired by the wise refusal of Eugene Volokh to participate in an exchange with them.

All this is happening even as the far right, to all appearances, is at a real low tide in sheer numbers. A recent Judy Thomas piece in the Kansas City Star explored this further:

Despite disarray in the anti-government movement, no one should let their guard down, said Leonard Zeskind, director of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.

"At the end of the day, this movement never loses the impulse for violence," Zeskind said.

"They reconfigure it, and they think about whether they need small cells, big cells, underground armies, lone-wolf killers. But the fact of the matter is the pulse of violence just never goes out on this thing. And that's really the ugly truth."

Those left in the white-supremacist movement agree that the turmoil in their organizations could lead to increased violence.

"What's changed is that because of the way the country's going, it's basically sent the luke-warmers and the fence-sitters running for cover,? said August B. Kreis III, national director of the Aryan Nations, a white-supremacist group. "And the only people that will really stay are the hard-core people."

But Kreis said he preferred it that way.

"I want the hardest of the hard," he said. "When enough white people say that we've had enough, we're not going to take it any more and we realize now that blood is going to have to be spilled, then it's going to get bad. I really believe that, and I'm really hoping I'm here to see that."

A former Kansas City Ku Klux Klan leader also says the movement today is not for "wimps."

"After the bomb went off in Oklahoma City, the White Knights completely collapsed," said Dennis Mahon, who now lives in Tulsa, Okla. "They shut down the post-office box, they shut down the hot line. They were scared to death. They just went down the hidey hole."

The militia movement also went into hiding after the bombing, Mahon said. He said now a different strategy is needed.

"There'll be a time when we can go ahead and go with leadership movements," he said. "But right now, I think it's just we all want to overthrow the government and get a state of our own. There's many ways to do that. It's called small cells and lone wolfism."

The apparent downturn is deceptive in another important way: It lulls the rest of society into thinking the problem has been licked. But what we have known historically of the far right is that it is cyclical in nature -- and the low tides are almost inevitably followed by a waxing and finally a high tide. What's more, the remaining "true believers" who are active during the low periods inevitably seem more radicalized, more likely to spiral crazily into violence.

As Lenny Zeskind says, these haters never really go away. They're like demonic versions of the Energizer Bunny: Combined, they become part of the Succubus, which just keeps on going and going and sucking the life and souls of whatever hapless victims it encounters.

And chief among these are people like Jeff Weise: vulnerable, angry, unstable. Ready to explode.

People who study the far right have known many of these people over the years: Gordon Kahl. Robert Matthews. Tim McVeigh.

One of the most memorable of these, for me, was a man named David Lewis Rice.

On Christmas Eve 1985, Charles and Annie Goldmark were at home with their sons Derek, 12, and Colin, 10, preparing for a holiday dinner when the doorbell rang. It was Rice, a 27-year-old unemployed transient, posing as a taxicab driver delivering a package. He brandished a toy gun and forced his way into their home, then set about using chloroform to render all four Goldmarks unconscious. He then proceeded to kill them slowly, using a steam iron and a knife that he used to insert into at least one of the victim's brains. Annie was pronounced dead on the spot, Colin pronounced dead on arrival, while Charles died there a short while later; Derek finally succumbed 37 days later.

But Rice wasn't just a deranged loony -- though he probably fit that description too. He also was a deranged loony who had been set into action by the malicious lies of a group of right-wing haters, whose venom became his inspiration, as the HistoryLink piece explains:

David Rice, a former steel worker from Colorado, joined an extremist group in Washington called the Duck Club. Although the Duck Club was almost defunct, the Seattle chapter still functioned. The group convinced Rice that Charles Goldmark was Jewish and a Communist. (Charles Goldmark's parents, John and Sally Goldmark, had won a highly publicized libel case in 1964 when they were accused of being Communists.)

The Goldmark case is a centerpiece of James Aho's study of the far right, This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy (which I've discussed previously). Aho goes into more detail about what drove Rice, as well as the circumstances surrounding his decision to kill:

Conversion (resocialization) ... occurs not through brainwashing of passive victims or through obsessive self-conversion. It takes place through active efforts of the disciple, sometimes indifferent to ideology or theology as such, to solidify and preserve social ties with his mentors.

... Ed Fasel [fictitious name] was head of the local Duck Club chapter. It was from Ed that Rice received the tragic misinformation that Charles and Annie Goldmark were leading Seattle Communists. In the course of discussions concerning local subversives and crooks who were presumably frustrating Rice's efforts to secure a job, Fasel, mistaking Charles for his father John, related to Rice that the Goldmarks had been investigated and that Charles was "regional director of the American Communist Party." Rice took this to mean that Charles was the "highest obtainable target I could reach, the greatest value informationally." After handcuffing the Goldmarks, Rice intended to interrogate them about the next person in the conspiratorial hierarchy, possibly to preempt at the last moment the impending invasion of alien troops [a conspiracy theory to which Rice subscribed].

What occasioned Fasel to dredge up a name associated with an event that had occurred two decades previously in another part of the state? In a Seattle Port Commission election during the summer of 1985, one of the candidates was Jim Wright, a Republican. Wright's campaign manager was none other than Ashley Holden, a defendant in the Goldmark trial. [Holden had been a leading torchbearer in the McCarthyite "Red fever" that swept Washington state in the late 1940s and '50s, and had been one of the people who falsely accused the Goldmarks in print of being part of the Communist Party.] Upon discovering this unusual link, the Seattle media jumped on it, and the name "Goldmark," with its unfortunate connotations, "got out again," to use one informant's phrase.

In my interview with him, Holden convincingly insisted that he knew nothing of the Duck Club nor any of its members. "I deplored the murder," he said. "There is no question," he went on, parroting local wisdom, "Rice was demented."

I have met some of the old leaders of the Duck Club, including "Fasel" -- whose real name was Homer Brand. They reminded me of Richard Butler: they had a moral stench about them like rotting corpses. Of course, they never faced legal liability for their role in the murders. But they had blood on their hands, just as surely as does the "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party" and whoever else gave Jeff Weise his inspiration.

Much of the conventional wisdom coming out of the Red Lake massacre was that Jeff Weise was "deeply troubled." No doubt in coming days and weeks we'll hear how this was an "isolated incident." How "the only person responsible" for what happened was Weise himself. Heaven forfend that anyone should suggest that the kind of hatred of multiculturalism so common on the mainstream right nowadays -- and so significant a factor in Weise's beliefs -- might have played a role in fueling this rampage.

That's how the Succubus lives. It dwells in the shadows -- unseen by those who purposely deflect their vision from it, because it serves their own interests to do so -- until it becomes strong enough to venture out into daylight. And then it kills.

Every time.