Richard Poplawski: Was Pittsburgh shooter driven by right-wing gun paranoia about Obama?

-- by Dave

We're gathering more information about Richard Polawski, the 23-year-old man who decided to kill four Pittsburgh police officers and wound five others because it appears he was afraid they -- at the behest of the Obama administration -- were going to take his guns away.

The initial reports indicated he was fearful that the Obama administration was going to "take away his guns."

A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

Three officers were killed, said a police official at the scene who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Police spokeswoman Diane Richard would only say that at least five officers were wounded, but wouldn't give any other details.

... One friend, Edward Perkovic, said the gunman feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said he feared that President Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."

Perkovic, a 22-year-old who said he was the gunman's best friend, said he got a call at work from him in which he said, "Eddie, I am going to die today. ... Tell your family I love them and I love you."

He feared an Obama gun grab? Gee, I wonder where he could have heard that.

Indeed, a story replete with NRA-style fearmongering about the looming "grab" -- which has been fueling a run on guns at local shops -- ran just three days ago in the Pittsburgh Tribune.

We've been reporting for awhile on the surge in gun sales, and how the paranoia around guns is making the more unstable elements of the right particularly edgy. Inevitably, that edginess is going to break out into actual violence -- as it appears to have done today.

Ironically, this is exactly the kind of incident that law-enforcement intelligence-gathering is supposed to help prevent -- intelligence like the Missouri State Patrol report so hysterically attacked by these same paranoid right-wingers. I tried to explain at the time that these kinds of extremists are in fact a very real danger to people in law enforcement, but all anyone on the right wanted to talk about was Ron Paul bumper stickers. Well, there you go.

Police say he was lying in wait in a carefully planned ambush:

Richard Poplawski, 23, met officers at the doorway and shot two of them in the head immediately, Harper said. An officer who tried to help the two also was killed.

Poplawski, armed with an assault rifle and two other guns, then held police at bay for four hours as the fallen officers were left bleeding nearby, their colleagues unable to reach them, according to police and witnesses. More than 100 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and Poplawski, Harper said.

And he was paranoid about the Obama administration taking people's guns away -- even though, of course, there have been no indications of any such plans beyond NRA rantings:

Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon," said Edward Perkovic, his best friend.

Perkovic, 22, said he got a call at work from him in which he said, "Eddie, I am going to die today. ... Tell your family I love them and I love you."

Perkovic said: "I heard gunshots and he hung up. ... He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot."

Poplawski had once tried to join the Marines, but was kicked out of boot camp after throwing a food tray at a drill sergeant, Perkovic said.

Dennis Roddy at the Post-Gazette has more:

Friends described a Richard Poplawski far different from the 22-year-old man accused of gunning down three police officers today -- a partier sometimes, a guy in search of an understanding of politics, even a walking comedian.

He was also convinced that the government wanted to take away his guns and his freedom.

There are bits about him out on the Internet. There are the MySpace photos, like the one above. He also seems to have co-created an "Insane Ownage" video for You Tube.

Perhaps just as interesting are the views of Poplowski's much-quoted "best friend," Edd Perkovic, whose MySpace page, as Troll Report notices, is rich anti-Semitic hate talk like this:

DOCUMENTS I RECCOMEND YOU READ BY GOOGLE: "Civil War II" by Tom Chittum "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" "The Turner Diaries" by Dr. William Pierce "Jewish Supremacy" by Dr. David Duke It Has Even Been Documented In The Communist Manifesto: "“We must realize that our party’s most powerful weapon is racial tension. "By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races that for centuries they have been oppressed by the whites, we can mold them to the program of the Communist Party. "In America we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the whites, we will endeavour to instill in the whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negros. "We will aid the Negros to rise to prominence in every walk of life, in the professions, and in the world of sports and entertainment.

Meanwhile, Fox also interviewed Tom Moffit, who was a neighbor of Poplawski's. He apparently believed that Poplawski was acting out of gun paranoia as well.



My new book is looking more timely all the time. We'll have an announcement about it Monday.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

O'Reilly in Bircherville: Obama's selling us out to 'one world government'

-- by Dave

Now there's what you would call a leading question:

Is President Obama selling out America?

That's how Bill O'Reilly started out last night's "Talking Points Memo" segment of his Fox News show: A question that none-too-subtly accuses the president of betraying not just his oath but the nation at large. Like the kind of thing John Birch Society members and militia leaders do reflexively.

And sure enough, he was off and running, helping promote the Bircherite notion that Obama is taking us toward a nefarious "one world government" in which America is enslaved under global rule:

Talking points believes fear is driving the president's numbers down -- some Americans believing he's not been effective on the economy so far, others feel his policies are too socialistic, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating the USA will run up about $9 trillion in deficit over the next ten years.

Some conservative pundits actually believe President Obama is a "Star Chamber" guy -- a man who secretly wants to turn America into a progressive country modeled on Western Europe. Also, they think, he wants to lessen the power of America and sign up for a one-world combine of governance.

In the past, that kind of thinking was labeled loony, but that's changing. Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, the former prime minister of Denmark said:

In Europe, we have been protected from the worst effects of the crisis thanks to welfare states built up over the past 60 years to cushion citizens from the threats posed by the free market. We can all count on state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support and other universal, tax-funded services. ...

The simplistic dictum of more markets and less government -- championed by Reagan, Thatcher and their ideological heirs -- has failed on a momentous scale. ...

I am hopeful that the G-20 will make progress ... We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone, and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice.

Well, Karl Marx could not have said it better. Global justice requires that a one-world government seize private property and distribute it so that every human being has roughly the same amount of resources.

So there you have it: "global justice" equals "one world government." Evidently, all that talk about cooperation is just

Now, when O'Reilly says "some conservative pundits" believe this stuff, he means far-right nutcases like Alan Keyes and the Birch Society. And while he tries to set position himself as being somehow slightly skeptical of such notions, in reality, this whole rant is nothing but an endorsement of their worldview.

Next: O'Reilly wonders aloud if a black man is capable of being president, because "some conservatives" have claimed all along he is incompetent by virtue of his mixed race ...

But what's noteworthy about this rant is that the basis for his thesis is, once again, entirely groundless -- because not only does Poul Nyrup Rasumussen, the European socialist whose op-ed he cites, have absolutely nothing to do with either President Obama or any of the G-20 leaders who met in London, but he doesn't actually promote a "global government" (beyond building an international framework for cooperation) or any of the other things O'Reilly characterizes the op-ed as saying.

You can read it yourself:

Note first of all O'Reilly's deceptive edit of the conclusive quote in his citation:

I am hopeful that the G-20 will make progress on these areas. But we cannot just leave it to them. We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone, and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice.

The "leave it to them" line makes irrevocably clear that Rasmussen sees the G-20 leaders as quite a separate entity from his own group of European Socialists. O'Reilly, however, is invested in suggesting that Obama is in bed with them, so of course it was edited out.

Indeed, Rasmussen even identifies himself with a separate group of socialists:

That's why, as the G-20 meets in London, an even larger group will meet in Brussels -- a group of progressive politicians, trade unionists, NGOs, academics and figures from major international institutions. This is the world conference of the Global Progressive Forum (GPF), which will bring together speakers from five continents to develop a new vision of a globalized world which benefits all. The GPF will take place in the European Parliament and will be opened by Bill Clinton. It will feature debates and discussions on the issues of global governance, trade, financial markets, decent work, migration and climate change, all aimed at coordinating global answers to what are global crises. It shows that the world's progressives are serious about making a solidaristic social model a reality for all.

This points up the larger problem: Rasmussen never argues for "global governance" beyond having a framework that creates international cooperation. He doesn't argue for "redistribution of wealth." None of this remotely suggests secret plans for creating a "one world government" -- unless you're a right-wing paranoid.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Projection much? Glenn Beck warns: 'Fascism is on the rise'

-- by Dave

Just a few weeks ago, Glenn Beck was shrilly declaring that America was marching toward Communism. It was the show's featured theme. Yesterday, he admitted he was wrong -- it's not Communism we're headed toward, it's Fascism!

Of course, he only looked the definition of the word up the day before, so you know, he may change his mind again. But whatever:

Beck: Like it or not, fascism is on the rise. And that doesn't mean the Adolph Hitler kind of fascism. It's fascism with a happy face. I'll explain the exact definition of fascism in a second, and it will boggle your mind.

Well, as someone who's studied fascism in the flesh, this had me interested. So he brought on libertarian economist Sheldon Richman to talk about what it all means:

Beck: I looked up the definition of fascism yesterday, and I want to break it down. The first part is: "Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners." Wouldn't you say this is what's happening with GM right now?

Um, no Glenn, not really. You see, the means by which the Nazis achieved "domination" of private owners was violence and thuggish intimidation. I could be mistaken, but I don't think that's what's happening to GM right now. But that's what's missing from your how you're depicting fascism.

You see, Beck is quoting from Richman's article on fascism in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, which is a libertarian site. He and Richman go on to discuss fascism in purely economic terms.

But fascism was an economic phenomenon only secondarily at best. Primarily, fascism is a political and cultural pathology; its leading ideologues in fact explicitly rejected economics as a driver in human affairs. Fascism was all about blood and iron and will, a love of violence and a contempt for the weak. Only in its mature stages -- when it has actually obtained power -- do economics come into play for fascism.

Moreover, fascism was always populist -- a very specific, producerist kind of right-wing populism. That's hardly what has proceeded from Obama and the Democrats, who if anything are looking more corporatist by the day.

So when we look at the reality of fascism, both historically and in the present, the only serious likelihood of any coming strain of fascism is proceeding, as we might expect, from the populist corners of the right, especially as it indulges and encourages eliminationist rhetoric directed at various "liberal" and minority targets (Latino immigrants in particular).

How far out to lunch was Beck here? Well, one of the goofier moments in this whole charade came when Beck trotted out the back of an old American dime -- first minted, as Beck says, in 1916 -- which has a fasces, the fascist symbol, on its reverse side:



This is the famed "Mercury dime", which was designed by sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who won a 1915 competition: "The reverse design, a fasces juxtaposed with an olive branch, was intended to symbolize America's readiness for war, combined with its desire for peace."

Now, the fasces has a long history of inclusion in various parts of American symbology besides just this dime. You can find it in the Oval Office, on National Guard Bureau insignia, on the American flag that flies in the U.S. House, in the Mace of the House of Representatives; on the seal of the U.S. Senate, on the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building, and on a frieze on the facade of the United States Supreme Court building. Fasces are incorporated into the Lincoln Memorial.

But then, fascism as a political movement was not born until 1919. So for sculptor Weinman to have intended the fasces on the Mercury dime to imply a "fascist" intent, he'd have had to have jumped in a time machine, traveled to the future, met Mussolini, and come back to 1915 with that nefarious design in his head. Somehow I doubt this.

But that's just a small example of how badly Beck has distorted the public's understanding of fascism with this segment. By way of remediation, let me offer the definition of fascism from someone other than a libertarian economist -- in this case, from Roger Griffin, the renowned Oxford Brookes scholar who has authored, among other studies, The Nature of Fascism. This is from a survey article he authored:

Fascism: modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy. Despite the idealistic goals of fascism, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that caused millions of deaths. As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence.

Or Robert O. Paxton, in The Anatomy of Fascism:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

As you can see, none of these would exactly be a handy definition for Beck's purposes, since very little of what they describe fits the politics that are currently proceeding on the main American stage.

Beck's mistake is in attempting to view fascism through an economic prism, when its essence was always political and cultural. Indeed, it's important to understand that fascists rejected economic analyses of the world. This reflected both their devout opposition to socialism (which indeed primarily was preoccupied with economic matters) as well as their core impulse -- the raw will to power, enabled by a discrete set of what Paxton calls "mobilizing passions" (such as a fanatical belief in national ethnic unity, devotion to the instincts of their leader, fear of liberalism, a love of violence, and so on). Maybe Mussolini expressed it clearest when he uttered: "The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our program? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo."

As Paxton puts it in Anatomy of Fascism (more here):

Even at its most radical, however, fascists' anticapitalist rhetoric was selective. While they denounced speculative international finance (along with all other forms of internationalism, cosmopolitanism, or globalization -- capitalist as well as socialist), they respected the property of national producers, who were to form the social base of the reinvigorated nation. When they denounced the bourgeoisie, it was for being too flabby and individualistic to make a nation strong, not for robbing workers of the value they added. What they criticized in capitalism was not its exploitation but its materialism, its indifference to the nation, its inability to stir souls. More deeply, fascists rejected the notion that economic forces are the prime movers of history. For fascists, the dysfunctional capitalism of the interwar period did not need fundamental reordering; its ills could be cured simply by applying sufficient political will to the creation of full employment and productivity. Once in power, fascist regimes confiscated property only from political opponents, foreigners, or Jews. None altered the social hierarchy, except to catapult a few adventurers into high places. At most, they replaced market forces with state economic management, but, in the trough of the Great Depression, most businessmen initially approved of that.

What's the most fascistic thing to appear on the American political horizon in recent months? Glenn Beck and his "912 Project" and the accompanying apocalyptic fearmongering. He's a right-wing populist, and that never seems to turn out well.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bachmann-Turnip Overdrive: Clueless 'global currency' paranoia in high gear

-- by Dave

It seems to be slowly sinking through the addled pates of Michelle Bachmann and her avid codependents, like Glenn Beck (henceforth dubbed "the Turnip"), that all this talk about "replacing the dollar with a global currency" has nothing to do with what America wants to do.

But that doesn't mean they're going to abandon their glorious quest to protect Americans from having to buy their groceries with BigBrotherBucks or NewWorldOrderNotes or some such "one world government" currency imposed on us by nefarious "internationalists" in the Obama administration. Ohhh, no.

Bachmann went on Beck's show yesterday to natter at length about Bachmann's bill to block the U.S. from ever joining any such plan. And instead of suggesting, as they have previously, that we all might be forced to start using some new global currency in lieu of the dollar, they fudged the thrust of their conversation a bit without abandoning the conspiracism at all:

Beck: OK, here's the one thing that comes to mind, Michelle. And that is: We can pass anything that says we're not going to recognize any currency -- but that won't keep the value of the currency. The only thing that will keep the currency -- uh -- value -- the only reason why we would look to another currency is because ours sucks because we've devalued it by spending and borrowing and printing. So this legislation really in the end means nothing if we don't stop the spending.

Bachmann: The spending is the key to everything. But it seems like right now there are so many leaks in the dam from every different area. We're fighting out-of-control spending on one hand, out-of-control taxation on another. And now we're talking about the International Monetary Fund being expanded to take on a new, expanded set of responsibilities it was never designed to take on, and that would be expanding the Special Drawing Down Rights for every country, and taking the dollar off as the medium of exchange. That in itself would devalue our dollar lower than we ever seen before in the history of our country. I don't want to see that happen.

There are some glimmers of understanding there, but it's clear that Bachmann is again transmitting to us from Planet Wingnuttia, since this has little to do with the text of her bill.

Beck is shocked, shocked that only 30 congresscritters have signed onto Bachmann's bill. But that might be because they've read its actual text:

`The President may not enter into a treaty or other international agreement that would provide for the United States to adopt as legal tender in the United States a currency issued by an entity other than the United States.'.

Nevermind that this is a Constitutional amendment (which requires subsequent passage by the legislatures of all 50 states). What's clear is that this is a bill intended to prevent a "global currency" being forced upon Americans.

The problem, of course, is that no one is even remotely suggesting such a thing.

Note that Beck describes the bill as "prohibiting the United States from recognizing any other currency besides the greenback," which it manifestly does not do; after all, that would mean we'd refuse to recognize pesos or Canadian dollars or Euros or yuan as well, which would mean the end of foreign trade.

But incoherency is what this whole argument is about. It's about preying on people's gross misunderstanding of international finance and how reserve currency works. Bachmann seems to think America can somehow control what the world uses as its medium of international trade, and seems to now be fearful that international trade will no longer be pegged to the dollar.

But that particular horse has been long gone from that particular barn. The Bretton Woods system, which in fact pegged international trade to the dollar, expired in 1971 thanks to policy changes made by the Republican administration of Richard Nixon. Since then, the dollar has remained the de facto "reserve currency" of choice -- mainly because the United States has remained the world's preeminent economy.

Now, thanks to conservative mismanagement of the past decade and more, that position is in serious jeopardy -- which is why the international community is looking to create a more stable form of reserve currency in which they can invest. It doesn't mean dollars will cease being bought by other nations -- if our economy rebounds to its former strength, the dollar will remain a favorite form of reserve currency --

But reading the text of her legislation, it's clear that the dollar's trade value is not what this bill was about. As Greg Sargent reported:

“She’s talking about the United States,” Keller said. “This legislation would ensure that the U.S. dollar remain the currency of the United States.” Of course, no one had been discussing any change in U.S. currency in the first place….

Indeed, Bachmann's continuing suggestion that Tim Geithner lied to her is manifest evidence of her utter incomprehension -- her complete, bass-ackwards, afactual idiocy:

“Yesterday, during a Financial Services Committee hearing, I asked Secretary Geithner if he would denounce efforts to move towards a global currency and he answered unequivocally that he would," said Bachmann. "And President Obama gave the nation the same assurances. But just a day later, Secretary Geithner has left the option on the table. I want to know which it is. The American people deserve to know."

Asked today about a currency proposal from China at a Council on Foreign Relations event, Secretary Geithner stated he was open to supporting it. Despite attempts to clarify his remarks later in the day, the unguarded initial response calls into question his true intentions.

Although Title 31, Sec. 5103 USC prohibits foreign currency from being recognized in the U.S., the President has the power to engage foreign governments in treaties, and the President is principally responsible for the interpretations and implementation of those treaties according to the Constitution. As a result, legislation prohibiting the President and Treasury from issuing or agreeing that the U.S. will adopt an international currency would need to come in the form of a Constitutional Amendment differentiating a treaty used to implement an international currency in the U.S. from other types of treaty agreements.

Once again, here's what Geithner actually said:

"I haven’t read the governor’s proposal. He’s a very thoughtful, very careful distinguished central banker. I generally find him sensible on every issue," Geithner said, saying that however his interpretation of the proposal was to increase the use of International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights -- shares in the body held by its members -- not creating a new currency in the literal sense.

"We’re actually quite open to that suggestion – you should see it as rather evolutionary rather building on the current architecture rather than moving us to global monetary union," he said.

"The only thing concrete I saw was expanding the use of the [special drawing rights]," Geithner said. "Anything he’s thinking about deserves some consideration."

The continued use of the dollar as a reserve currency, he added, "depends..on how effective we are in the United States...at getting our fiscal system back to the point where people judge it as sustainable over time."

Memo to Michelle Bachmann: Special drawing rights are not a new currency. We won't be buying our groceries with them.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Morris, Hannity agree: The black-helicopter crowd was right

-- by Dave

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I think Sean Hannity must be looking over his shoulder at Glenn Beck these days and realizing that he really needs to start cranking up the Batmobile if he wants to keep up with that kind of crazy. So he did his best last night on his Fox show, with Dick "Suck On These" Morris doing the honors by schlepping the discussion right into Outer Wingnuttia.

You knew it was going to be surreal from the outset with Hannity sneering at Obama's handling of the auto-industry bailout as "commander and CEO," saying that Obama is "on a mission to hijack capitalism in favor of collectivism": "the Bolsheviks have already arrived."

Morris -- who these days is coming to resemble the Glowering Gnome who lives under the bridge -- predicted doom and gloom for the Obama presidency from here on out, because GM is going to become an economic deadweight around his neck. Hannity, meanwhile, was into Naked Fearmongering mode:

Hannity: The federal government -- and I don't think I overstate this for our audience -- is destroying our economic system as we currently know it. You have written that it is socialism, and that it's mismanaged socialism.

Morris: Well, what it is, is he's deliberately making it fail. When he gets up there -- Obama -- and he says in December of this year, Volcker is supposed to report on a sweeping overhaul of the tax code, and Geithner is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the regulatory structure, what businessman in his right mind is going to make an investment when he doesn't know the tax consequence and he doesn't know the regulatory consequence.

Hannity: Here's what's frightening. And I think Americans tonight should be frightened... Spending trillions of dollars -- even David Broder of the Washington Post realizes that the CBO says unemployment is going to hit 10 percent, that we are going to have a trillion dollars of debt a year here.

They went on to describe the hell into which Obama is taking us. Morris predicted that "he's going to absolutely fall apart". And then they both began channeling Michelle Bachmann:

Morris: But there is a big thing that's going to happen in London at this G-20 -- and they're hiding it, they're camouflaging it, they're not talking about it: Coordination of international regulation. What they are going to do is to put our Fed and our SEC under the control, in effect, of the IMF.

Hannity: Oh come on. You don't think they'll do this.

Morris: That's what was in the draft agenda. They call it coordination of regulation. What it really is, is putting the American economy under the control of international regulation. And those people who have been yelling, 'Oh, the U.N. is going to take over, global government -- '

Hannity: Conspiracy theorists.

Morris: They've been crazy. But now, they're right! It's happening!

Hannity: Well, when Geithner said last week he would be open to the idea of a global currency last week -- those conspiracy people had said -- have suggested that for years. You're not wrong.

Man. You'd think these geniuses -- or at least their genius producers, or somebody with a grounding in the real world -- could figure out what a reserve currency actually is.

Trotting this stuff out as portending a "one world currency" and a takeover of the American economy is just so crudely afactual that it almost transcends the intentional disinformation it otherwise is.

But when you start telling us that the John Bircher and anti-Semitic wings of the American Right -- both of whom have long touted these sorts of theories -- were actually right, well, it becomes clear just whose agenda Fox News is now in the service of.

As we and others have already explained:

[I]t seems that on Planet Wingnuttia, the proposal by China that the rest of the world go off the dollar as its chief unit of global exchange in fact actually means that the United States will have to go off the dollar too.

Now, down here on Planet Earth, China's proposal has nothing to do with what currency we use in the United States; it has to do with what kind of currency the rest of the world uses as its "reserve currency." We could pass Bachmann's law and throw a big fat national hissy fit if we wanted, and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference. Because the proposal is one that would be decided by each and every other sovereign nation on the planet, choosing for themselves what kind of currency they choose to use.

A little history about reserve currency might help:

After World War II, the international financial system was governed by a formal agreement, the Bretton Woods System. Under this system the US dollar was placed deliberately at the centre of the system, with the US government guaranteeing other central banks that they could sell their US dollar reserves at a fixed rate for gold if they so desired. European countries and Japan deliberately devalued their currencies against the dollar in order to boost exports and development.

In the late 1960s and early 70s the system came apart under pressure from the rising prominence of the other countries, as well as growing deficits in the US. The US dollar remained central due to the lack of competitor currencies.

Recently, nations, especially in Asia, have been stockpiling reserves at levels previously unknown, especially in US dollars, in an effort to strengthen export competitiveness by weakening their own currencies, and also to contain quick and large inflows of capital and buffer against financial crisis such as the Asian financial crisis.

But truthfully, these people are beyond help.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Gingrich: We should have Singapore-style drug tests for Americans

-- by Dave

Newt Gingrich followed Bill O'Reilly's lead last night on The O'Reilly Factor, talking about how Americans' drug use -- and not horribly wrong-headed American drug laws -- are responsible for the border wars being waged by Mexican cartels.

O'Reilly seemed to think that Singapore might be a model to follow, since things work so swell over there:

O'Reilly: I don't know whether you know this, but I did one of my papers at Harvard on this -- on how to reduce demand for drugs. But the United States has never figured it out. You can't lock up drug users, I mean, that doesn't work. And you can't force them into rehab, you have to want rehab, and even if you want it, it's very hard to get off hard drugs and alcohol. Very hard.

What you can do, though, is sanction people along the way. And this is what they do in Singapore. If you're caught possessing drugs -- and that means drugs in your bloodstream, they have a little hair thing, and they put it in there -- then you have to go to mandatory rehab. And they have centers where you go.

Now, they have no drug problem in Singapore at all, number one, because they hang drug dealers -- they execute them. And number two, the market is very thin, because when they catch you using, you go away with a mandatory rehab. You go to some rehab center, which they have, which the government has built.

The United States does not have the stomach for that. We don't have the stomach for that, Mr. Speaker.

Gingrich: Well, I think it's time we get the stomach for that, Bill. And I think we need a program -- I would dramatically expand testing. I think we have -- and I agree with you. I would try to use rehabilitation, I'd make it mandatory. And I think we have every right as a country to demand of our citizens that they quit doing illegal things which are funding, both in Afghanistan and in Mexico and in Colombia, people who are destroying civilization.

Of course, mandatory testing means that everyone is a suspect, and everyone must submit. Aren't these the same right-wingers who are complaining loudly that Obama's supposed "socialism" is all about taking away our rights and enslaving us in a totalitarian state?

I keep hearing that Newt is trying to position himself for a 2012 presidential run. Nice to know what he has in mind for us citizens.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio says hi to his neo-Nazi supporters, poses for pix

-- by Dave

I've been reporting for a long time on the many ways that the immigration debate has served as a critical nexus in the intersection between right-wing extremism and mainstream conservatism.

Last weekend, Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- the quasi-fascist chief law-enforcement officer of Arizona's Maricopa County, currently under DOJ investigation for his refusal to abide by court orders and his rampant racial profiling -- provided us with a crystalline example.

Because we got to see a classic case of someone in a position of real power lending the authority of his office to the empowerment of far-right radicals -- unintentionally, perhaps (though not likely), but with the same result regardless.

On Saturday, May 2, several thousand people came out to march in protest of Arpaio's increasingly thuggish tactics.

And as is often the case with such events, there was a little knot of neo-Nazis out there to counter-protest. This meant they were out there to support Arpaio.

The first part of the above video is taken from footage shot by one of these counter-protesters. A little ways in, you'll see a black Cadillac pull up containing none other than Sheriff Joe himself, who has decided to stop by and say hello to his supporters. He lets one of them pose for a picture.

As it happens, the young man posing for him is none other than Thomas Coletto, aka "Vito Lombardi" -- who, as Stephen Lemons reports, is not only the local leader of a neo-Nazi outfit, but was also busted for burglary in a supposed "Columbine"-type plot two years ago.

After posing with Arpaio, Coletto posted the shot on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.

And it's not as if Arpaio recoiled and hurried on when he figured out who he was talking to. You can see in the video he pulls over and shakes hands with someone in group standing with a Confederate flag.

The rest of the video is compiled from other footage available on YouTube, particularly the work of 287gGots2go, who let us see what this little clutch of white nationalists was like from the other side of the camera.

I think it tells everything we need to know about who Sheriff Arpaio counts on for his support. It also tells us everything we need to know about how these people feel empowered enough to come crawling out from under the rocks beneath which they usually hide.

Dan Weiss at Imagine 2050 has more.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

The evil librul media pays homage to Glenn Beck

-- by Dave

I suspect it was just an evil librul media ploy on the part of the New York Times to run such a fluffy little piece on Glenn Beck as this one:

Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star

Because, you know, Glenn's best new pal, Bill O'Reilly, has declared war on the NYT. Right-wingers being the good paranoid types they are, no doubt it crossed their minds that this was a classic wedge ploy. Especially when it features nice complimentary remarks from another O'Reilly bete noire, MSNBC:

And always, Mr. Beck’s emotions are never far from the surface. “That’s good dramatic television,” said Phil Griffin, the president of a Fox rival, MSNBC. “That’s who Glenn Beck is.”

The piece does feature some interesting quotes:

Mr. Beck says he believes every word he says on his TV show, and the radio show that he still hosts from 9 a.m. to noon each weekday.

He says that America is “on the road to socialism” and that “God and religion are under attack in the U.S.” He recently wondered aloud whether FEMA was setting up concentration camps, calling it a rumor that he was unable to debunk.

At the same time, though, he says he is an entertainer. “I’m a rodeo clown,” he said in an interview, adding with a coy smile, “It takes great skill.”

And like a rodeo clown, Mr. Beck incites critics to attack by dancing in front of them.

“There are absolutely historical precedents for what is happening with Beck,” said Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There was a lot of radio evangelism during the Depression. People were frustrated and frightened. There are a lot of scary parallels now.”

Yes, there are.

In any event, we've prepared a compendium of Beck's greatest hits of the past three months on Fox. Just so you all can be reminded just how swell he really is. And start your office pools for when Beck is going to completely go berserk (my prediction: when his ratings begin their inevitable decline).

Or you can just go read the posts from the past few weeks.

Will Bunch has more, as does Eric Boehlert at Media Matters' County Fair.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Jonah's roadmap for conservatives has a few gaping holes in it

-- by Dave

Jonah Goldberg was part of a panel discussion broadcast on CSPAN this weekend put together by Commentary magazine titled "The Future of Conservatism."

Goldberg, as is his wont, tried to explain the need to humanize conservatives by whining about how tough it's been to get people not to see them as humorless, out-of-touch whiners:

There's a lot to be said for sort of -- David Brooks came up with a great anthology of conservative writing. And a huge chunk of it was just trying to remind people that conservatives are in fact people. You know, that we're nice people, that we are -- with human ambitions and human desires, and compassion and all of the rest. Because we already had the arguments about economics and all of that, and foreign policy pretty well nailed down when this book came out, it was to convince people that you were not a bad person to be a conservative.

Now, I think in some ways that fight has kind of been won, or at least we've made a lot of progress in that fight. The problem is that in the process, we are now going back to New Deal economics and all of the rest, and all of the other issues, on foreign policy we're sending out lovely videos to Iran and that's about it. And so the job for conservatism is again to go back to these arguments that we thought we had won a long time ago, and that's a worthy fight to have.

These sorts of ruminations tell us a great deal about how conservatives see themselves, which (as is usually the case with conservative self-mythology) has the cognitive-dissonance-producing problem of not being particularly well grounded in reality. Indeed, as in Goldberg's peroration here, it's practically an alternative-reality fantasy, a distinctly backward-looking one that refuses to acknowledge current realities on the ground.

Conservatives indeed had economic arguments won for much of the past thirty years -- Reagan's "small government" ethos was present in Bill Clinton's administration as well, embodied by his willing signature on the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act back in 1998.

What Goldberg and his fellow conservatives are loath to admit is that this approach to economics and fiduciary responsibility has been proven irrevocably to be an unmitigated disaster, and a return to FDR-era regulation is not only warranted but necessary for our economic survival.

This reality on the ground changes the arguments for conservatives in fundamentally profound ways -- which they, in their ongoing state of denial, stubbornly refuse to acknowledge. One of these is that the old, stale argument about whether conservatives are nice people or not is rendered utterly useless.

It is, in fact, quite possible for perfectly nice people to believe things that produce perfectly bad outcomes for the rest of society. That's as true of liberals as it is of conservatives. And what's become clear is that movement conservatism produces all kinds of bad outcomes. Those nice people make for really bad governance.

Indeed, those nice people can even politely applaud while real evil proceeds. Torture, anyone? Katrina? The list of actual evils produced by conservative governance is quite long.

Sure, we can acknowledge that most conservatives are in fact nice people. But they're nice people who have nearly ruined the country. That's an argument conservatives can't really engage, though, without losing -- because they've already lost it.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, and the militias

-- by Dave

On the same day he was decrying a Missouri State Patrol's intelligence report on militia activity in their state by pointing to a black cop-killer in California, Glenn Beck brought on his old friend Ron Paul for an interview.

It was mostly a chance to sneer at the report because it mentioned the likelihood that some extremists might display third-party political stickers for such candidates as Paul and Chuck Baldwin. The purpose of the exchange was to sneer at the report's concerns, and of course eventually veered into distortion falsification on Beck's part, and paranoia on Ron Paul's part:

BECK: Let me ask you this. We looked up today, and we couldn't figure out why Missouri was putting this whole report together because nobody has been killed in Missouri by a militia member. There was one that I think — where did we find it, in Michigan? And it was an alleged militia member. Yet, ELF has done unbelievable damage, 2,000 crimes since 1979 and over $110 million in damage, but nobody seems to be looking at radicalized terror groups like ELF. Why is that?

Factual point here: Obviously Beck didn't look very hard, since Missouri was notable for having law enforcement officers tangle with hardline "Patriots" during the 1990s, as we detailed here. Did he and his crack research squad somehow overlook Timothy Thomas Coombs?

PAUL: Well, I guess they're in charge and we're not. Sometimes I think, you know, when they attack anybody outside the mainstream means that if our conclusion is correct, that both major parties are about one party, then they want no opposition whatsoever.

But those who are in charge of this must have liberal leanings if they never addressed any liberal groups that commit violence. So it is a pretty good question or pretty good point. Hopefully, it will wake up more Americans to what is going on.

BECK: I mean, we called the FBI. The FBI has four ELF members on their most wanted list — four. But there's not a single person from a militia. Congressman Paul, do you believe this is some sort of a setup? I mean, why all of a sudden the interest in these militias?

Once again, this is a flat-out falsehood. One of the most prominent names on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list is Edward E. Harper, wanted on a variety of child-molestation charges; Harper, as you can see, "reportedly subscribed to Sovereign Citizen ideology and claimed to be a member of the Montana Freemen, a group involved in domestic terrorism activities".

PAUL: Well, it may be a backhanded compliment, because a lot of us have worked real hard to change our government. We have addressed the subject of sound money and foreign policy and limited government. And you know, we even mentioned the Constitution.

And if you have too many people believing that way, we challenge the status quo. So I think if they see us as a threat, they may come out with these tactics to try to demonize us. So it's best to look at it as a more positive thing.

BECK: OK.

PAUL: And interestingly enough, you know, we are having a rally out there in St. Louis, Missouri coming up this weekend. Maybe it had something to do with them. Maybe they wanted to discredit what we were trying to do in St. Louis.

The whole episode was designed to let Beck and Paul scoff at the accusations that Ron Paul's followers might be militia members, or that Ron Paul himself might promote Patriot-movement beliefs.

The problem with that: Paul in fact has a long history not just of associating with the extreme populist right, but of promoting their beliefs in the public square:

-- He has been proclaiming that Obama is installing a "New World Order" regime for months now.

-- This reflected his long record of public associations with the far-right Patriot movement in the 1990s.

-- These views were manifested in his 1990s newsletters.

-- They were also reflected in his radical-right record in Congress.

-- This included a horrendous record on the Martin Luther King holiday.

More on that record here and here.

-- As a result of all this, he also has attracted a powerful bloc of militiamen and white supremacists.

-- This turned up especially in his recent presidential campaign. More on that here and here.

Somehow, I bet that Glenn Beck never winds up discussing this.

Is Oakland somewhere near Missouri? Watching Glenn Beck, it's hard to tell

-- by Dave

Glenn Beck spent a little while on his Fox News show yesterday explaining to his audience that law enforcement in Missouri shouldn't be concerned about right-wing extremists because the real problem is cop-killing parolees on the loose in Oakland, California.

Or something like that. It was hard to piece the argument together, but the nub of it seemed along those lines. First he went on at length about how the weekend's horrible shootout in Oakland, which left four police officers dead alongside the shooter/parolee, was another sign of things going to hell in California. OK, whatever. But then he makes the big leap:

Beck: Next, look at the government's priorities. This is an actual cop killer, who clearly wasn't rehabilitated. But the Missouri State Troopers now -- and wait until you hear the rest of the story, the update on this one coming up in a few minutes -- they're worried about militias.

Beck then goes on to mostly regurgitate last week's rant about a Missouri State Patrol intelligence report discussing the recent resurgence of militia activity in their neck of the woods specifically and in the country generally.

But as we reported then, the report (you can read it for yourself here) is in fact entirely factual, and simply a normative report giving an accurate profile of right-wing extremists' behavioral tendencies.

Beck added some new charges to his already dubious case:

Beck: Let's put this into perspective here: Our researchers couldn't find a single report of a single death specifically linked to a militia group, or an individual member of a militia, in over a decade. Yet an average of more than 150 officers die every year nationwide. Have you counted the number of dead police officers in Philadelphia? And militia numbers are reportedly down after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 -- seems it gave them a bad name. So why are militias getting so much attention from Missouri?

Well, it might just have something to do with the fact that, per square mile, the Ozarks have as rich a history of right-wing extremism as any section of the nation. And while they haven't been making news in recent years, the very report that Beck dismisses in fact details not just the decline of the militias after 1995, but also their current ongoing revival, particularly in the wake of Barack Obama's presidential victory.

Included in the report are such incidents as the Montana Project 7 gang, which was plotting to kill local police officers; a plot by Idaho militiamen to murder a federal judge; and the Alabama militiamen who were plotting to murder as many Hispanics as they could get away with in a shooting spree.

What all of these cases have in common, of course, is that in fact they were all potentially deadly situations all nipped in the bud. And how did that happen? Through effective local law-enforcement work that relied on intelligence-gathering like this.

Beck wants to fob this kind of activity off as disenfranchisement, but when it comes to these folks -- especially in places like rural Missouri -- it's something much deeper and much uglier. (Just read the above link to the piece about Ozark extremism to see what I mean.) So while he's busy showing off pictures of black cop killers from Oakland by way of attacking a police intelligence report in Missouri, I'd like to introduce to him to someone from Missouri.

Glenn Beck, please meet Timothy Thomas Coombs:



Here's what Coombs did back in 1994:

In 1994 authorities in McDonald County raided the Sacerdotal Order of the David Company and were stunned at what they found.

Stockpiled inside the compound were weapons, ammunition and dynamite. The group's leader, Pastor Robert Joos, claimed the weapons were meant for trading.

Unfortunately for Joos, authorities didn't see it his way. Police say the religious leader forged an illegal court document and served it to a Missouri State Trooper.

When authorities went to his compound to arrest Joos, cops say he put up a fight and had to be maced. Joos was released from jail in April of 1997, but one member of his militant group vowed revenge---that man was Timothy Coombs.

Investigators say that on the evening of September 16, 1994, Timothy Coombs went to the home of the man who busted his friend and religious leader.....Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper Bobby Harper.

Harper, who was recovering from liver transplant surgery, was making a bowl of ice cream when he was shot sniper-style through the kitchen window of his McDonald County home. The bullet ripped through his stomach and newly transplanted liver.

The Trooper's 12-year old daughter, who was standing near him when he was shot, wasn't hurt in the attack.

Yes, you say. This was back in 1994. But Coombs is in fact still at large.

Indeed, right-wing extremists -- not just militiamen, but their more virulent cousins, the white supremacists -- are still a potent presence in Missouri. See, for instance, the ADL's reported activity in Missouri just in 2009:



In recent years, there have in fact been killings in Missouri (not to mention elsewhere) associated with the extremist right: A white supremacist who stomped to death a man he thought was Jewish. A white supremacist who stabbed his African-American co-worker to death. Five men charged in a brutal, racially motivated assault. You get the idea.

And it's particularly a challenge for law enforcement, who face special risks from right-wing extremists that we know about:

Law enforcement officers have many safety concerns, ranging from domestic disputes to belligerent drunk drivers, and they will likely face those situations far more often than situations involving extremists, who by their nature are a minority of the population.

Nevertheless, officers need to be alert to possible encounters with extremists and the safety issues involved. Even if members of hate groups are less common than spouse abusers, officers will eventually encounter them. Generally speaking, extremist criminals pose all the same risks to officer safety as other criminals. However, because of their beliefs, extremist criminals also pose additional risks and concerns.

Three particular factors underscore the importance of officer safety when dealing with extremists.

* First, law enforcement officers are often the people most likely to confront extremists who have committed criminal acts.
* Second, criminals motivated by extremism very often act in distinctly different ways than criminals motivated by traditional motives such as greed or anger.
* Third, for a variety of reasons, extremist criminals may often specifically target law enforcement officers.

It's true that in the past eight years, while going mostly into hibernation, the violent side of right-wing extremists has been largely dormant. But it's worth remembering what occurred in the 1990s, when they were very active:

* June 1994: White supremacist Robert Joos is charged with resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon following a traffic stop confrontation with Missouri State Highway Patrol officers.

* July 1994: Steven Garrett Colbern is pulled over in a traffic stop in Upland, California, but resists arrest and has to be subdued by five officers. His car is found to contain an assault rifle, a silencer, and a part necessary to convert the rifle to full automatic file (he is later briefly thought to be the John Doe #2 sought after in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation).

* October 1994: A routine traffic stop of three Michigan militia activists near Fowlerville, Michigan, uncovers loaded three semi-automatic rifles, four other guns, armor-piercing ammunition, and night vision goggles. The militiamen are arrested but never show up in court for their trial (later, one of the fugitives allegedly murders another one).

* Early 1995: Tim Hampton is charged with assaulting a police officer near Dallas, Texas, over an incident that occurred at a traffic stop.

* May 1995: James Boran is pulled over because of outstanding traffic warrants in Massachusetts. Boran refuses to exit his van and instead drives away. After his path is blocked, he continues his escape on foot, barricading himself in his apartment. After he finally surrenders, police find bombmaking materials and militia manuals.

* June 1995: Michael Hill, a militia and common law court activist in Ohio, is shot and killed by a Frazeysburg, OH, police officer after pulling a gun on the officer during a traffic stop.

* October 1995: Donald Lee Smith, of Cherokee County, Georgia, is pulled over for a traffic stop, resists arrest and is found to be in possession of a concealed assault weapon.

* November 1995: "Sovereign citizen" Reinaldo A. DeJesus of White Creek, New York, is arrested for numerous traffic and vehicle charges, and two charges of resisting arrest, following a traffic stop for a burned-out headlight.

* January 1996: Larry Martz, a militia and common law court activist in Ohio, attacks a Highway Patrol trooper during a traffic stop near Cambridge, OH. Martz had 23 weapons in his truck.

* February, 1996: Washington militia leader Bruce Alden Banister is pulled over for expired license tabs. The confrontation which follows ends with him eventually convicted of third-degree assault of a police officer and resisting arrest.

* August 1996: Kim Lee Bonsteel of Franklin, North Carolina, is convicted on 18 charges stemming from a 1994 incident in which he led law enforcement officers on a chase through three counties after he refused to produce his driver’s license or get out of his truck at a traffic stop. The chase destroyed several patrol cars, injured three officers, and caused a sheriff’s deputy to die of a heart attack.

* January 1997: A routine traffic stop involving skinhead and militia leader Johnny Bangerter of Utah turns into a chase and brief standoff at a trailer park.

* February 1997: Cheyne and Chevie Kehoe engage Ohio law enforcement officers in two well-publicized gun battles following a traffic stop in Wilmington, Ohio.

* March 1997: Aryan Nations member Morris Gulett rams a police cruiser during a chase following an attempt to pull him over for going the wrong way down a one-way street. Gulett claimed he drover away because he did not have a drivers’ license and he "was just in one of those moods." One week earlier, another Ohio Aryan Nations member was arrested following a traffic stop during which police found that he had a loaded handgun stuffed in a beer carton.

* August 1997: In New Hampshire, Carl Drega is stopped near a supermarket in Colebrook, New Hampshire, because of the rust holes in his pickup. Drega opens fire on the state trooper, killing him, then kills his partner as well. Drega then drives into town and kills two more people before fleeing into Vermont, where he has a final gun battle with police there. He dies, but not before injuring three more officers.

* September 1997: Craig and Doug Brodrick, two brothers who had recently moved to Boise, are stopped for failing to signal. They begin a gun battle which results in their own deaths as well as the death of a Boise police officer and the wounding of another.

If they become active again, these kinds of incidents will return. Glenn Beck may weep for Ron Paul bumper-sticker owners. The rest of us will weep for the widows of the police officers killed by the violent nutcases Beck wants you to forget about. When he's not busy promoting them and their conspiracy theories, that is.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Fox News' ambush crews: A flagrant abuse of media power

-- by Dave

Gobsmacking. There's no other word for it. What else can you call it when a national TV network's most popular anchor goes onscreen and reports a story that not only completely inverts reality, but does it by unleashing a camera crew that engages in the behavior of stalkers, actually tracking down a woman blogger on her weekend getaway and ambushing her at her hotel? It's not just hypocrisy: This is a psychotic perversion of press rights in a way that violates basic American privacy rights. And it's dangerous as hell.

That's what Bill O'Reilly did tonight on the O'Reilly Factor. Here's the report from O'Reilly's own sector of Planet Wingnuttia:

O'Reilly: Now, for the evil part. Last month, after the charitable event was announced, a bunch of far-left loons picked up some propaganda from the hate group Media Matters, that said I am unsympathetic to the plight of crime victims -- a preposterous lie. Along with America's Most Wanted, the Factor has done more for the victims of crime in America than any other television program on the air. The loons pointed to a Radio Factor episode from three years ago. We've posted the entire commentary on BillOReilly.com.

Elements at NBC News then encouraged the loons to protest the Alexa Foundation, causing Alexa and her family major grief.

That's right: O'Reilly is claiming that these reports actually harmed rape victims, since the Alexa Foundation was probably acutely embarrassed by the reports. So to prove his sensitivity to rape victims, he sent out a news crew to stalk a woman on her private weekend getaway.

What so infuriated O'Reilly was a Think Progress report -- itself a pickup from NewsHounds, and which in turn was picked up by MSNBC -- pointing out that while O'Reilly was going to give a speech before the Alexa Foundation, which benefits rape victims and their families, he had something of a history of gross insensitivity to the victims of rape himself. Here's what Amanda Terkel at Think Progress actually reported:

Our post — which never criticized the Alexa Foundation — highlighted the fact that in the past, O’Reilly has implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped. Here is what he said on his radio show on Aug. 2 about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered:

Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.

O’Reilly’s comments about Moore were part of a larger segment about the dangers of drunkenness. His other example was Mel Gibson going on a drunken tirade and yelling anti-Semitic comments. “I think it’s safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn’t get drunk, he wouldn’t be in this terrible situation he finds himself in,” said O’Reilly. “And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, NJ, didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.”

No doubt O'Reilly is still reeling from the embarrassment of a previous case where his grotesquely insensitive remarks came back to haunt him: namely, the Shawn Hornbeck incident, in which O'Reilly first suggested that a boy who had been kept a captive of a child molester for years had somehow "wanted it." As it happened, he was scheduled to speak before a conference for the families of missing kids. The ensuing uproar didn't subside until his appearance was cancelled.

In other words, the guy who should have at some time apologized for belittling the victims of sexual assault -- and never has -- instead is claiming that his critics "hurt a rape victim and her family."

The Alexa Foundation is sticking with O'Reilly (a spokesperson was on afterward to fiercely denounce the protests). There apparently were pickets outside O'Reilly's appearance, and a groups called Concerned Women Against Sexual Violence created a petition of protest as well -- which got a big shout-out from Keith Olbermann.

So of course, Bill O'Reilly sent out his flying monkeys -- namely, the same ambush news crews, headed by an uber-cretin named Jesse Watters, who have attacked other hapless miscreants who had the audacity to bother O'Reilly's august ego -- in swift and nasty retaliation, as Terkel describes:

- The Stalking: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.

– The Ambush: Shortly after checking into our lodgings, we emerged and immediately saw two men walking toward us calling out my name. Watters said he was from Fox News, but never said his or his companion’s name, nor did he say he was with The O’Reilly Factor.

Read the rest to see how the rest of the encounter went. Then compare it to O'Reilly's version above.

This whole episode itself is a gross bit of hypocrisy, considering that O'Reilly himself has complained about journalists invading celebrities' privacy -- a point for which he was recently slammed by Jon Stewart.

And that raises an important point about press ethics. O'Reilly's ambush crews claim to be "investigative journalists" acting in the crusading tradition of the old '60 Minutes' crews of the '70s and '80s. And indeed those journalists did excellent and serious work tracking down various official miscreants.

But they did it at their offices or their places of work. They didn't invade their homes.

Moreover, there is a big difference between people who anger you, or people with whom you disagree, and public officials or powerful people who have abused their positions. I think we all can understand why it's ethical for journalists to pursue the latter, and why everyone who has a shred of ethical decency as a journalist pauses long and hard while considering the former.

The power of the press is very easily abused, especially against ordinary private citizens who aren't celebrities, and whose privacy is every bit as sacred as Bill O'Reilly's.

If this kind of harassment continues, however, then it may comes time to turn the tables -- and they've picked a set of victims more capable of fighting fire with fire than they reckon. O'Reilly and his crew may not like it when bloggers start camping out on their lawns and demanding answers to insultingly partisan questions, shouted aggressively, as they try to get to their cars. Jesse Watters, what's your address?

In the meantime, here's John's now-classic guide for dealing with O'Reilly. We recommend frequent if not constant repetition of the words, "Andrea Mackris."

UPDATE: Amanda Terkel chimes in on tonight's BillO report. As noted above, there was a lot edited out by O'Reilly.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Pelosi outrages wingnuts with cold truth: Immigration raids are "un-American"

-- by Dave

Greater Wingnuttia wants to get all in an uproar about Nancy Pelosi's remarks the other night in San Francisco before a pro-immigrant gathering:

"Who in this country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families? It must be stopped. ... What value system is that? I think it's un-American."

Of course, Michelle Malkin and her wingnutospheric band of flying monkeys are in a nice little tizzy about this.

The clip also has been all over Fox News. Sean Hannity was all outraged about it Thursday night, and then yesterday it turned up again with the "All Star Panel."

But Juan Williams -- who often goes soft on liberal issues -- hit back hard at Charles Krauthammer, affirming that, indeed, these kinds of raids are un-American. He also managed to get to the heart of the matter -- namely, that our immigration laws themselves are profoundly un-American:

Williams: That's an unjust, wrongheaded law, and you see people who are benefiting this economy, people who are struggling for American values, absolutely being abused. It's an outrage.

Krauthammer: Controlling our borders is un-American?

Williams: It's not controlling our borders to go knocking on somebody's door in the middle of the night!

Krauthammer: You're enforcing the law.

Williams: You're enforcing an unjust law, and they are right to challenge it. She's saying it's wrong.

Williams is right, while Krauthammer is, well, Krauthammer. Ever since Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began their campaign of massive raids last spring, they have terrorized Latino communities -- including the substantial portion of those communities that are here legally. There was also, from the outset, a decided and obvious racial component to the raids.

Perhaps the most searing indictment of the raids was Roberto Lovato's portrayal in The Nation of the situation in Georgia:

From the living room of the battered trailer she and her mother call home, Mancha described what happened when she came out of the shower that morning. "My mother went out, and I was alone," she said. "I was getting ready for school, getting dressed, when I heard this noise. I thought it was my mother coming back." She went on in the Tex-Mex Spanish-inflected Georgia accent now heard throughout Dixie: "Some people were slamming car doors outside the trailer. I heard footsteps and then a loud boom and then somebody screaming, asking if we were 'illegals,' 'Mexicans.' These big men were standing in my living room holding guns. One man blocked my doorway. Another guy grabbed a gun on his side. I freaked out. 'Oh, my God!' I yelled."

As more than twenty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounded the trailer, said Mancha, agents inside interrogated her. They asked her where her mother was; they wanted to know if her mother was "Mexican" and whether she had "papers" or a green card. They told her they were looking for "illegals."

After about five minutes of interrogation, the agents--who, according to the women's lawyer, Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Law Center, showed no warrants and had neither probable cause nor consent to enter the home--simply left. They left in all likelihood because Mancha and her mother didn't fit the profile of the workers at the nearby Crider poultry plant, who had been targeted by the raid in nearby Stilwell. They were the wrong kind of "Mexicans"; they were US citizens.

That was in one state. As I described elsewhere, this happened all over the country, producing scenes like the one in Idaho:

One family with members who are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents said they were terrified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who came to their home in the predawn hours accompanied by Blaine County sheriff's deputies. No one in their home was arrested.

"They pounded on my door so hard that my walls shook," Dana Ayala, a Wood River Valley resident and U.S. citizen, told the Idaho Community Action Network. "My 19-year-old son opened the door to see what was happening, and six agents armed with guns, Tasers and flashlights pushed their way into my home."

... "It is clear that ICE agents terrorized the community, including U.S. citizen children who were sleeping when the raid occurred," said Leo Morales, a community organizer for ICAN. "In several homes, children were left crying as ICE agents interrogated parents and hauled them away.

Testimonies gathered on Tuesday also indicated that in several instances ICE agents walked into the home looking for individuals not living there, then arrested the people in the home with no proof of immigration status.

In some instances, federal agents rushed into the house when a child opened the door."

Once arrested, the detainees were treated like cattle, too. The most public of these raids was the mass crackdown in Postville, Iowa, where the federal legal apparatus crossed the line into outright police-state behavior.

The most pointed portrait of this came in the form of an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language court interpreter who was called in to help process detainees in the raid. It makes the devastating case that the Department of Homeland Security, in collusion with the Justice Department, is (in the words of one observer we heard from about this case) "basically gaming the Federal judiciary using existing law, rules and regulations to force the judiciary to act as a coerced agent of the executive to imprison undocumented workers, after which they are deported with a prison record."

As Camayd-Freixas makes clear, these workers were charged improperly with a crime of which they were innocent as the means of forcing them to plead guilty to a lesser charge, for which they then accepted five-month prison sentence.

The New York Times, in reviewing the evidence, editorialized:

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

I particularly found this portion of Camayd-Freixas' essay chilling:

When the executive responded to post-9/11 criticism by integrating law enforcement operations and security intelligence, ICE was created as “the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” with “broad law enforcement powers and authorities for enforcing more than 400 federal statutes”. A foreseeable effect of such broadness and integration was the concentration of authority in the executive branch, to the detriment of the constitutional separation of powers. Nowhere is this more evident than in Postville, where the expansive agency’s authority can be seen to impinge upon the judicial and legislative powers. “ICE’s team of attorneys constitutes the largest legal program in DHS, with more than 750 attorneys to support the ICE mission in the administrative and federal courts. ICE attorneys have also participated in temporary assignments to the Department of Justice as Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys spearheading criminal prosecutions of individuals. These assignments bring much needed support to taxed U.S. Attorneys’ offices”. English translation: under the guise of interagency cooperation, ICE prosecutors have infiltrated the judicial branch. Now we know who the architects were that spearheaded such a well crafted “fast-tracking” scheme, bogus charge and all, which had us all, down to the very judges, fall in line behind the shackled penguin march. Furthermore, by virtue of its magnitude and methods, ICE’s New War is unabashedly the aggressive deployment of its own brand of immigration reform, without congressional approval.

This, I suspect, may be what Pelosi had in mind in her fuller remarks on this matter:

"Also of great importance to the border communities is of course the issue of immigration. And by that I mean we need comprehension immigration reform. For the first time in a long time, the opportunity exists to enact comprehensive legislation. President Obama has made this a priority for his Administration. I know that yesterday he met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to reiterate his commitment to immigration reform.

"The CHC, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has long taught the House Democratic Caucus and indeed the entire Congress what comprehensive immigration reform would look like. It would of course, secure our border, it would protect our workers, it would prohibit the exploitation of workers coming into our country and it would unite our families. Family unification is an important principle of our immigration and always has been.

"About a week and a half ago, Congressman Gutierrez was in San Francisco on a Saturday night. We were packed and jammed in St. Anthony's Church, hundreds and hundreds of people came. We heard from families who have had raids into their homes and into their families where families were separated. And at the time, I said it there and I'll say it here, that raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in the middle of the night, taking father, a parent away, that's just not the American way. It must stop. It's just not the American way. So we need this comprehensive reform, and we need it soon. And we need to stop those kinds of ICE raids in the meantime.

The wingnuts may stamp their feet and have a fit. But what must really anger them -- and maybe frighten them a little -- is the knowledge that a lot of Americans very much agree with her.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Yes, Glenn Beck, militias can be very ordinary-seeming. That's their purpose.

-- by Dave

I'll wager that Glenn Beck, like a lot of people, has heard the famous Thomas Jefferson quote:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Maybe he's even seen one of the T-shirts bearing that inscription.

But then, there's one of these T-shirts that's especially notable: It was the one Timothy McVeigh was wearing when he was arrested for blowing up 168 people at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City back in 1995.

Does this mean that anyone wearing one of these shirts, or expressing these sentiments, is a crazed militiaman eager and willing to blow up government workers and their children? Er, no. But at the same, the meaning of that T-shirt is actually critical to understanding what happened in Oklahoma City.

The Missouri State Patrol's information arm recently compiled a report about militias (you can read it here), largely as a way of helping to inform their officers in the field, who are the people most at risk when it comes to random encounters with armed right-wing extremists.

The report, unsurprisingly, created a firestorm among the conservatives who suddenly found they had more of a resemblance to a right-wing extremist than they thought:

A new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism for some of the warning signs mentioned.

The Feb. 20 report called "The Modern Militia Movement" mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.

"It seems like they want to stifle political thought," said Roger Webb, president of the University of Missouri campus Libertarians. "There are a lot of third parties out there, and none of them express any violence. In fact, if you join the Libertarian Party, one of the things you sign in your membership application is that you don't support violence as a means to any ends."

But state law enforcement officials said the report is being misinterpreted.

Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said the report comes from publicly available, trend data on militias. It was compiled by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a "fusion center" in Jefferson City that combines resources from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. The center, which opened in 2005, was set up to collect local intelligence to better combat terrorism and other criminal activity, he said.

"All this is an educational thing," Hotz said of the report. "Troopers have been shot by members of groups, so it's our job to let law enforcement officers know what the trends are in the modern militia movement."

When I saw this story a few days ago, I knew that sooner or later it was going to get trotted out on Glenn Beck's Fox News show as proof of evil government perfidy. After all, it's already become an Alex Jones special -- which is to say, the air is thick with black helicopters and jetstream contrails.

Sure enough: Yesterday on his show Beck had a segment in which he and Penn Gillette discussed how crazy it was for law enforcement to be profiling people as potential domestic terrorists for behaviors that ordinary citizens like themselves indulge happily, as they should.

They noticed, at one point, that there's actually very little about Patriot movement beliefs to which they subscribe. It's just that their libertarianism might trip some of the outward indicators suggested in the report.

One of the people interviewed in the Kansas City report expressed similar views:

But Tim Neal, a military veteran and delegate to last year's state GOP convention, was shocked by the report's contents.

"I was going down the list and thinking, 'Check, that's me,'" he said. "I'm a Ron Paul supporter, check. I talk about the North American union, check. I've got the 'America: Freedom to Fascism' video loaned out to somebody right now. So that means I'm a domestic terrorist? Because I've got a video about the Federal Reserve?"

Neal, who has a Ron Paul bumper sticker on his car, said the next time he is pulled over by a police officer, he won't know whether it's because he was speeding or because of his political views.

Here's the catch: There's nothing even remotely inaccurate in the report. Every fact that it reports can be readily substantiated.

More to the point, there's nothing in the report suggesting that any of these traits taken individually is a sign of radicalism. Rather, officers are expected to be able to take in certain signals simply as warning signs and indicators, not evidence of either criminal intent or radical behavior.

What the report reflects is a reality that law enforcement trying to deal with domestic terrorism in America must confront: Their subjects are thoroughly American; many of the people drawn into these movements are, if anything, "hyper-normal." Their version of "patriotism," for instance, is so extreme that they actually hate not just their government but their fellow citizens -- in essence, their country: because, you see, it has been "perverted" from its original purposes.

The hyper-normality is a kind of intentional camouflage. The Patriot movement, and militias in particular, were a very specific and intentional strategy adopted in the 1990s by the white supremacists and radical tax protesters of the American far right -- and the whole purpose of the strategy was to mainstream their belief systems and their agendas. The tactic was to adopt the appearance of normal, "red-blooded" Americanism as a way of pushing out the idea that their radical beliefs are "normal" too.

In the process, they often adopted time-worn "patriotic" sayings and symbols, such as the "Don't Tread On Me" flag Beck wears, as their own -- though with a much more menacing meaning. If you've seen that flag at an Aryan Nations compound, as I have, you never quite look at it the same.

This is why the meaning of Thomas Jefferson's quote above is quite different for them than it is for you and me. To all outward appearances, it is just an expression of avid patriotism. But to a Patriot movement follower, it means something potentially deadly.

This is especially the case for law-enforcement officers in the field:

Any time law enforcement offices encounter people with extreme ideologies, safety issues potentially arise. However, for a variety of reasons, certain circumstances pose a heightened threat of violent confrontation. Some situations, for instance, are particularly stressful for extremists, increasing the chances that they may lash out or overreact.

... Traffic stops are potentially some of the most dangerous situations that law enforcement officers can face when dealing with extremists. Numerous officers have been killed, wounded, shot at, or attacked during traffic stop incidents involving extremists during the past twenty years.

Some of these confrontations have been well-publicized. In 1997, television audiences across the country watched a police car video of a shootout in Ohio between two white supremacists, Cheyne and Chevie Kehoe, and local police officers. Yet some of the more incredible incidents have received remarkably little publicity. In one recent case in March 2000, three anti-government extremists (Lloyd Burrus, his son Jeff Burrus, and Cheryl Kate Maarteuse) were stopped for speeding by a Nevada highway patrol officer about sixty miles north of Las Vegas. The officer spotted a shotgun in the vehicle and radioed for backup. While he waited, the extremists sped off. During the ensuing chase, they shot at police vehicles from both Nevada and California, then turned off-road, where their BMW became stuck. Burrus and his accomplices abandoned the vehicle but took their weapons and ammunition, which they used to shoot down a California Highway Patrol helicopter that had arrived on scene. Eventually, after a twelve hour standoff involving over a hundred law enforcement officers, they gave themselves up.

There's nothing in the Missouri report that suggests anyone of the Patriot persuasion be arrested or treated as a terrorist -- because it's perfectly legal, in fact, to hold as radical beliefs as one likes in this country. The report simply tries to give officers a factual overview of some of the motivations of right-wing extremists, and what kinds of things are likely to set them off.

What's not legal is to act criminally on behalf of those beliefs. Unfortunately, Patriot beliefs -- particularly the more radical beliefs about the government's legitimacy (or lack thereof) -- actually tend to help induce such behavior. The police officers whose job it is to stop such criminality need to be able to assess what they're dealing with on the ground -- whether someone they've pulled over for not having license plates on their car is likely to pull something stupid.

Law enforcement officers need complete and accurate information in order to survive in the field. Maybe Glenn Beck is more worried about the tender paranoias of your average Ron Paul supporter -- none of whom have been affected in the least by this report in any real-world way -- but I tend to stand with the men and women who keep us safe.

Especially when it comes to making sure they have complete and accurate information. The more they know, the more likely they are to both enforce the law appropriately, and to stay alive at the same time.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.