None Dare Call It Sedition

-- by Sara

Sedition: Crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction -- Brittanica Concise Dictionary

Well, finally. It's high time somebody had the guts to say the S-word -- sedition -- right out loud.

When the indictments against the Hutaree were unsealed last week, the S-word was right there, front and center, in Count One. The Justice Department accused them of "seditious conspiracy," charging that the defendants "did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and other persons known and unknown...to levy war against the United States, and to prevent, hinder, and delay by force the execution of any United States law."

This is very serious stuff. But the Hutaree are getting nailed for sedition only because they crossed the line with inches to spare. They're by no means the only ones. Advocating, encouraging, and sanctioning sedition is the new norm on the conservative side.

We saw it again last Thursday, when the Guardians of the Free Republics -- a Sovereign Citizen group that believes that the oath of office taken by state governors is invalid under their twisted Bizarroland interpretation of the Constitution -- sent letters to most or all sitting state governors telling them to either a) take what they consider to be a legitimate oath of office; b) stand down; or c) or be removed "non-violently" within three days. The FBI, rightly, regards this as a potentially seditious threat against the governors.

These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.

This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.

Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.

At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is.

What is Sedition?
Before we start throwing around inflammatory terms like "sedition," it's essential that we understand the strict definition of the word -- and use it carefully and precisely, lest it lose all meaning.

(That's what happened with the word "fascism," which has been distorted into meaninglessness by hyperbolic overuse on the left and willful redefinition on the right. Once a word is abused and distorted this way, it's very hard to recapture it and restore its original meaning. And that's no small thing, because losing the word makes it functionally impossible to even discuss the political idea the word represents. Worse: as Orwell told us, when we no longer have the language to describe what we're dealing with, we also lose our ability to deal effectively with fascism at all. That's a real danger with loaded words -- so, please, let's be extremely careful about how we brandish this one.)

Here's the defining line we need to hold on to. People who promote subversive ideas, no matter how dangerous those ideas might seem, are completely protected under the First Amendment. Even calling for the overthrow of the government is protected (though not benign, as we'll see later, because it creates justification, permission, and incitement to seditious acts). That's why the conservatives have been safe -- so far.

It's only when those people start actively planning and implementing a government rebellion that it turns into criminal sedition. In this case: the weird rantings on the Hutaree website -- not seditious. The group's allegedly operational plans to assassinate a police officer, ambush the resulting funeral, and thus bring on a national militia uprising -- absolutely seditious, if the charges stick.

This bright-line distinction, which has been part of American sedition law for the past 50 years, parallels closely the line drawn by terrorism analysts in sussing out which groups are benign and which ones are headed for trouble. As I've noted before, one of the cardinal signs these experts watch and listen for is a fundamental shift in rhetoric. In the early stages of dissent, groups establish the lines of conflict by obsessively focusing on their enemies and loudly denouncing their essential evilness. You hear this kind of talk in politics all the time these days. It's always ugly, but not inherently dangerous.

But in the latter stage, the talk turns overtly eliminationist, and the group starts expressing its clear desire and intention to eradicate specific enemies. When they shift to that second stage, it's a sign that they've made the mental commitment to violent action -- and are more likely to be acquiring arms, selecting targets, and getting ready to act in the near future. When a group starts actively planning an attack on government offices or officials, it's officially crossed the line into sedition.

Sedition on The Right
Openly advocating acts of sedition has become the conservatives' main political stock in trade over the past year. (The SPLC offers a strong summary here.) You hear it everywhere from Rush to Glenn to Michelle Malkin to Michelle Bachman. Everybody on the right is now roundly convinced that the fairly-elected President of the United States isn't even a citizen. He's a Muslim, and thus in treasonous league with terrorists. The main goal of his administration is to turn the country over to the One World Government. He's a socialist. He's a fascist. All of these are direct attacks on Obama's fundamental legitimacy and authority to lead the country -- and thus a deliberate incitement to revolt against his administration.

These narratives are coupled with a rising us-versus-them blaming of progressives for all the problems of the country. These days, the screeds sound eerily like free-market fundamentalists freebasing Hitler: they're clouded over with the typical eliminationist vitriol that reduces liberals to subhuman vermin that must be violently exterminated from the body politic in order to restore the virtue of the country. (For those who groove on that sort of thing, there's even a slight dash of anti-Semitism in the mix.) This is dangerous stuff. And in the context of the conservatives' longstanding effort to delegitimize the government, it's also an open invitation to sedition.

This seditious intent is obvious in the increasingly overt firearms displays at right-wing events. The media took to their fainting couches, aghast, when a small handful of people showed up packing heat at last summer's Tea Party disruptions. Now, we've advanced the point where not one, but two, 100% gun-toting marches on Washington, DC are planned for this coming April 19. Their organizers are hoping the marches will draw tens of thousands of armed protestors. Get used to seeing guns in the streets wherever the law allows -- because the conservatives have told their base explicitly that they need to be "exercising their rights" on this front to the fullest extent. Carrying guns in public is now an essential symbol of how the the right defines freedom. It also expresses just how afraid they are, and what they're planning to do about that fear.

These escalating armed demonstrations, accompanied by belligerent sloganeering, are a clear signal that these folks are done talking -- and, worse, have already decided that democracy is futile, and taking up arms is the only appropriate response to the threats we now face. They're carrying weapons to scare us weak-kneed girly libs into submission, and to show us they mean business. Growing up in gun country, I was taught at my daddy's knee that when someone says they're going to shoot you, it's always smart to take them at their word and handle yourself accordingly. Right now, I think that's good advice for anybody in America who considers themselves a member of the reality-based community.

But it's not just armed individuals. They're also busily forming armed groups, which are gearing up for a fight. For the past five years, armed Minutemen have been usurping the job of the US Border Patrol. And within the past year, according to the SPLC, the number of right-wing militias has more than doubled to over 500, many of which present themselves as alternative law-enforcement posses that are adjunct to the ones staffed by the county sheriffs.

What these groups are telling us is that they no longer recognize the government's sole franchise on the use of force; and they're actively organizing to seize and exercise at least some of that power for themselves.

Most alarming of all: some of these right-wing warriors have advanced to the point of actual target acquisition. This should worry us, because law enforcement and terrorism experts know that when groups like this get to where they're settling on specific targets, they've reached the final stages of gearing up for violent confrontation.

When Bernard Goldberg wrote a book listing the "100 people who are destroying America" -- which included some government officials -- he was writing a target list with seditious intent. (And at least one guy took him up on it, in his own deranged way.)

When the "spiritual warriors" of the Transformations movement proudly announce that they've mapped every town in America -- literally creating target maps of "demonic activity" that pinpoint government offices, non-Evangelical houses of worship, clinics, theaters, Indian mounds and sites; or even just households with Muslims, neo-pagans, Goth-baby teenagers, or Obama stickers on their cars -- they're putting us on notice that they've identified the specific people and places that need to be "cleansed" in order to purify their communities. According to researchers Rachel Tabachnik and Bruce Wilson, these "transformation" attempts have already become government-level issues in New Jersey, Arizona, Texas, and Hawaii.

At present, they claim that they're only mapping their neighborhoods so they can pray over us all; and their attempts to take over local government are being done by purely democratic means. But, as has often happened before (yes, the Nazis started out just this way), the day may come when they'll decide that mere prayer and organizing is not enough. Like any street gang, they've taken proprietary responsibility for a piece of turf; and they believe God is holding them accountable for everything that happens there. The resulting performance pressure is a perfect setup to justify more aggressive cleansing tactics if they can't convert the town by peaceful means.

And some of these groups have already effectively crossed the line, in spirit if not in prosecutable fact. When the Christian dominionists train up "Joel's Army" by sending their sons to the US armed services so they can get the combat experience they'll need to set up a worldwide theocracy, that's evidence of an active plan to effect an armed government takeover. When senior US military officers put their commitment to Jesus ahead of their commitment to uphold the Constitution and regard the military as God's force in the world, we should be very afraid.

For years now, we've dismissed all of this as crazy talk, the rantings of a loony fringe that will never get enough traction to become a material threat to our democracy. But we're well past the point where it's no longer quaint and funny, or an embarrassing breach of democratic etiquette that polite people should just ignore.

It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that lowers their base's inhibitions around violence -- and irresponsibly eggs on the handful of sociopaths in their midst who are already primed to kill. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit.

We'd be idiots not to regard this as an overt threat. Especially when they keep telling us, very explicitly, that they mean it to be. When somebody says they're going to shoot you, believe them.

We need to start talking about this for what it is, and calling it out whenever it happens. Leonard Zeskind points out that the feds have never been able to make a sedition charge stick against a right-wing group (if the Hutaree are convicted, it'll be a first); but the first step in stopping sedition is making sure everybody knows exactly what it is when they see it. And that means calling out the S-word every time we see the conservatives defiantly flinging their hands and feet out over that line to score a few cheap political points.

The challenge I once threw down on the conservatives still stands. Do they want a civil war? Are they out to overthrow the US government?

If this is just political grandstanding to energize the base, they're playing with fire, and they need to bring this incendiary campaign to a screeching halt. Right now. This Mickey Mouse pussyfooting around, play-acting at sedition is criminally dangerous chickenshit politics that puts the short-term needs of the Republican party ahead of the long-term viability of the American democracy they've sworn to uphold. In case the party leaders haven't noticed, their base has taken them as seriously as a heart attack -- and they're genuinely making ready for armed revolt.

On the other hand, if they're actually serious about seditious rebellion against the US government, then let them stand up, follow through, and face the charges. They're either Americans, committed to working in good faith within the democratic process to create our common future; or else they're seditionists in intention or fact -- and thus enemies of the state, plain and simple.

For the good of the country, we cannot continue to let them have it both ways. They need to choose whose side they're on: America's, or their own.

Tea Party Movement Is Really Just The Very White Sore Losers' Movement

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The apologists for the Tea Party are out in force today, citing poll numbers in a lame attempt to make their case that, really, they're not an overwhelmingly white movement riddled with Obama-hating sore losers who refuse to accept the results of the 2008 election and are hoping to overturn them.

Gallup: Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics

The Hill: Survey: Four in 10 Tea Party members are Democrats or independents

Myth-busting polls: Tea Party members are average Americans, 41% are Democrats, independents

Gallup's numbers are its own and really don't tell us much, except that the Tea Party has been wildly successful at drawing the bulk of its participants from the American mainstream, even though its leadership is from the extremist populist right.

But the really ludicrous headline is Malcolm's (and similarly The Hill's) because it conflates Independents with Democrats.

Hello? Have any of these idiots been paying attention to the Tea Party rhetoric, especially from their Uber-Leader, Glenn Beck? They specifically proclaim their independence from the Republican Party because it isn't far right-wing enough.

Look at the actual results from the poll they're citing (full PDF of data here):

Republican: 57
Democrat: 13
Independent: 28

Meanwhile, the Gallup poll notes that 70 percent of Tea Party followers identify as conservative, compared to only 40 percent of Americans generally.

Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the racial composition, as the same poll noted:



Yeah, that looks just like America to me.

Naturally, the Tea Partiers trot out their tiny handful of minority participants -- like Kevin Jackson, in the video above, being trotted out by Bill O'Reilly to somehow disprove the notion that the Tea Parties might be racist. It's reminiscent of the 2008 campaign, when every right-wing black person in America found themselves employed as a Fox political analyst.

At least The Hill notes:

The group also vehemently dislikes President Barack Obama – even more so than those who called themselves Republicans in the survey. Over 80 percent of Tea Party members disapprove of the job he’s doing as president, whereas 77 percent of Republican respondents said they disapprove of Obama. The Tea Party members are also strongly opposed to the Democrats’ healthcare plan, with 82 percent saying they oppose it -- only 48 percent of respondents overall were opposed.

Which brings up the point: Have any of you noticed that there is a simple question that is going unasked in all these polls? To wit:

Did you vote for Barack Obama for president in the 2008 election?

Because you know that the answer "No" will be in excess of 90 percent.

There are, after all, plenty of Democrats and Independents who did not vote for Obama.

I've attended a number of Tea Party events, and it's a question I consistently ask: "Did you vote for Obama?"

Uniformly and without fail, the answer has been: "No." Though some are quick to add that they have friends in the movement who voted for Obama. Probably all of them have the same five friends.

Then I ask them: "Then aren't you just being a sore loser? The majority of voters in this country approved of him and his programs when they voted for him. Aren't you just refusing to accept that verdict?"

Because it's increasingly clear that this is exactly what the Tea Party movement is: A movement of sore losers.

Usually, I get dirty looks or mumbling in response.

Greg Sargent and Steve Benen have more.

Countering Right-Wingers' Historical Revisionism: The Top 12 Things The Progressive Movement Has Given America

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Over the weekend, Steven Thomma at McClatchy News had a terrific piece that was a decent corrective to some of the bad history that's being bandied about by right-wingers like Glenn Beck these days:

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.
Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

Joe McCarthy? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

Some conservatives say it's a long-overdue swing of the pendulum after years of liberal efforts to define history on their terms in classrooms and in popular culture.

"We are adding balance," Texas school board member Don McLeroy said. "History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

The upshot of this wave of historical revisionism -- which was kicked off, in many regards, with the publication of Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent rewrite of history, Liberal Fascism -- is to depict the progressive movement as the source of all evils that have befallen America since the dawn of time.

That's why Glenn Beck has embarked on a campaign of eliminationism against progressives.

Beck provided a splendid example of this miscarriage of history last month when he ran a segment claiming that FDR actually admired Mussolini by citing a selective quote. (In fact, many people were enamored of Mussolini's words, early on, and then were disabused by his actions.) Somehow left out of the discussion: The fact that FDR declared war on Mussolini and effectively drove him from power. Yeah, that's some admiration society.

But really, the entire enterprise is utter bosh. As we've pointed, at least in respect to middle- and working-class economics, and civil rights, there's a whole bunch of things Beck and his cohorts are omitting from the picture.

Let's just talk, for a moment, about the many things Americans enjoy -- and largely take for granted -- that were the product of the progressive movement. Here, just off the top of my head, are my Top 12:

• The 40-hour work week.
• Weekends.
• Vacations.
• The right of women to vote.
• The right of people of all colors to vote.
• The right of people of all colors to use public schools and facilities.
• Public schools.
• Child-labor laws.
• The right to unionize.
• Health-care benefits.
• National Parks.
• National Forests.

Those are just for starters. I bet you can come up with some of your own.

Saying you believe the progressive movement has brought evil on the nation should logically suggest that you want to reverse the reforms that it has produced. That is, you're saying you want to take these 12 things away, too.

That might not be such a popular thing to do, ya know?

Foxheads Dismiss 'Patriot' Group's Threats To Governors As Harmless Hyperbole

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Coming on the heels of last weekend's arrests of a group of a militiamen in the Midwest for plotting to kill law-enforcement officers, you'd think people in positions of responsibility would take seriously some of the rising threats from right-wing extremists. And, judging from the story in the Washington Post, it would seem at least the FBI is:

The FBI is warning police across the country that an anti-government group's call to remove governors from office could provoke violence.

The group called the Guardians of the free Republics wants to "restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site. It sent letters to governors demanding they leave office or be removed.

Investigators do not see threats of violence in the group's message, but fear the broad call for removal of top state officials could lead others to act out violently. At least two states beefed up security in response.

But over in the FoxNewsiverse -- which operates on separate plane in which everything up is down -- it's not really a big deal. Just about the only discussion of the story on Fox yesterday came in the "All Star Panel" section of Special Report with Bret Baier, and it mostly elicited a big yawn.

Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard didn't really know what to make of it, but at least there seemed to be some agreement that even if these were just "kooky people," sometimes "kooky people" can inflict serious harm. Except for Charles Krauthammer, who thought it was all a non-story -- because, of course, activity by right-wing extremists is always a non-story to conservatives:

Krauthammer: Oh, come on. I get e-mails like that every week, and I don't even hold any office. And they don't always include the legally remove you, either.

... And lastly, loony anarchists aren't new in America. We've had 'em since Sacco and Vanzetti. It didn't start with health care reform.

Except, Charles, that these aren't anarchists. These people call themselves "constitutionalists". Just like your Fox colleague, Glenn Beck.

And yes, they've been known to blow stuff up, too.

As Lee Fang at Think Progress explains, the group making the threats is in fact a classic right-wing extremist organization:

While much of the rhetoric from the group resembles the style of patriot extremist organizations, their concerns seem to stem directly from economic anxiety. The group’s broadcasting affiliate, Republic Broadcasting Network, advertises survival kits, gold buying guides, and other hallmarks of a movement in America which believes that the country is heading towards economic collapse. The website also promotes tea party protests, calls for revolution, videos from Glenn Beck, and sympathetic articles about recent right-wing domestic terrorist activities, like the suicide attack on an IRS building in Austin earlier this year.

Guardians of the Free Republics’ call to dismantle the government has gained traction on right-wing tea party websites. The groups’ proclamation is posted on ResistNet, the popular tea party forum, as well as Tree of Liberty, a tea party forum known to have been frequented by users which supported Hutaree, the Christian militia recently arrested in Michigan.

One YouTube user, jonah70757, has enthusiastically posted links and audio broadcasts rallying support for Guardians of the Free Republics’ call for revolution. The user brandishes various weapons, seemingly in preparation for a violent revolution, and posts videos about militias, tea parties, and conspiracies about President Obama’s birth. Watch a ThinkProgress compilation of jonah70757’s videos:

All this is coming amid rising anxieties among government workers generally:

Four days after a gunman shot two federal policemen near the Pentagon entrance, federal employee Sandy Ressler posted a short essay online, expressing dismay at what appeared to be an increasingly hostile climate for government workers.

"I work for the government and I am NOT the enemy," read his March 8 post on the social networking site GovLoop. Ressler, a program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, lamented that the country is becoming "more and more polarized" and worried about growing misperceptions about federal employees. His post generated scores of sympathetic comments from fellow federal employees.

Their concerns are justified: Weapons violations on federal properties increased by 10 percent over the last year; threats against IRS facilities are up by 11 percent. And while threats are up, the level of protection at federal buildings is down. The Federal Protective Service has shrunk by 15 percent over the last seven years; hundreds of IRS buildings have no security at all.

Dozens of employees interviewed by Federal Times over the last two weeks say they have been concerned for months about security. They're worried about the anti-government rhetoric in the U.S.; they fear that the public is developing an impression of federal employees as overpaid, lazy and controlling.

"Fed-bashing may be the only true bipartisan issue," said Kenneth Goldman, a manager at the Naval Surface Warfare Center.

Worse, many say they fear violence against feds has been legitimized. They blame that on a number of culprits — extremist groups, the media and even some politicians.

And while the talkers who are irresponsibly spreading this extremism on the airwaves deserve the lion's share of culpability for this phenomenon, we mustn't forget the Beltway insiders who eagerly pretend it all away, and their role in making it happen, too.

Fox 'Analyst' Compares Obama Energy Policy To Tonya Harding: 'Break Your Opponents' Kneecap'. Bret Baier Chortles.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Boy, President Obama had better hope his three-dimensional chess skills are better than they look in his environmental policies -- especially yesterday's announcement about his offshore drilling plan, which was basically a gift to the oil industry and their conservative allies.

Because afterward, they showed their appreciation by largely savaging Obama, as John Boehner did in denouncing the policy for not going far enough. ("Far enough," in Republican parlance, means "total capitulation".)

And then there was yesterday's Special Report with Bret Baier -- you know, one of Fox News' vaunted "hard news" shows that's supposedly really "fair and balanced" -- discussing the policy, which brought on a fellow named Patrick Creighton from the Institute for Energy Research (an oil-industry front group), who made the following comparison:

Creighton: We call it the Tonya Harding approach, where you break your opponents' kneecaps to get ahead. This president and his environmental allies continue to tout that wind, solar, and other renewable fuels will displace fossil energy -- and that's just not the case.

Afterward, Bret Baier chortled over it with reporter Jim Angle:

Baier: The Tonya Harding approach. [laughs]

Angle: [Prolonged laughter]

And then they wonder where all those nutcase Tea Partiers get the ideas for their nutty signs.
Meanwhile, what Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes said.

My Chat With Rachel: Pondering The Meaning Of The Rise Of The Militias

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Rachel Maddow featured a segment last night on her MSNBC show questioning just how far removed from mainstream conservatism the resurgent militias -- embodied by the recently busted Hutaree militia in the Midwest -- really are.

Right-wingers like Bill O'Reilly are adamant that the militias have nothing to do with the Tea Parties and, by extension, the mainstream conservative party.

I had some trouble hearing Maddow, so I kind of blew a couple of the questions. To be clear:
-- What I expect at the April 19 militia march on Washington is, essentially, a smaller Tea Party with guns.

-- The main threat posed by the militias is not to average citizens but to law-enforcement personnel, who inevitably are the first people to have contact with these extremists that provokes violence.

Inevitably, innocent bystanders will be involved as well, as they were on April 19, 1995. And the truth is, your average American is far more likely to be harmed by a right-wing domestic terrorist than an international terrorist.

But the chief reason to fear violent militiamen is the threat they pose to our law-enforcement officers, and from a broader perspective, the toxic effect their acts have on our society and the ability of average citizens to feel safe.

In any event, I thought it was a useful discussion, even if the points I wanted to make weren't as sharp as I'd have liked.

Bill O'Reilly Denounces The Hate -- But Wants To Pretend It's The Same On Both Sides

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Last night Bill O'Reilly announced he was doing an admirable thing -- covering the legal expenses of Fred Phelps victim Albert Snyder -- and in doing so, seemed to express an admirable sentiment: hate talk is a bad thing, and all sides should eschew it.

Except, of course, by Bill's lights, the flow of hate is equal on both sides:

There is far too much hatred in America. That's obvious. It comes from both sides. The Michigan militia and the Westboro Baptist Church are far-right nuts, but there are just as many far-left idiots doing vile things.

Thirty-eight-year-old Norman Leboon has been charged with threatening to kill Republican Congressman Eric Cantor. Apparently Leboon wants to kill Cantor and his family and is now being held without bail. It looks like this guy is simply nuts. Ideology might not be in play.

However, a brick was thrown through the window of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Monday. Obviously that's political.

The point is that the situation in America is reaching critical mass. There is far too much hatred in the air.

The press is obviously pumping up inappropriate things that happen on the right and pretty much ignoring hateful things on the left. Bernie Goldberg and I established that on Monday.

But every member of the media should condemn all hate speech and violent activity. It is simply un-American.

Then O'Reilly had Laura Ingraham come on to point out that yeah, those left-wingers can be every bit as nasty as the right-wingers.

Tell you what, Bill and Laura. Come and talk to us again about how nasty and wrong hateful talk from the left is when:

-- A liberal walks into a church and opens fire on the congregation because they're all a bunch of conservatives and he wants to kill as many right-wingers as he can.

-- A liberal walks into another church and shoots a doctor in the head.

-- A liberal shoots three police officers who come to his door because he fears the president is going to take his guns away.

-- A liberal walks into the Holocaust Museum and shoots a guard because he hates Jews and believes it's time to start a race war.

-- A liberal walks into the Pentagon and opens fire because he believes the government is plotting against its citizens.

-- A pack of gun-loving liberals forms a plot to kill law-enforcement officers and start a revolution.

See, that isn't happening. But it is happening with characters from the right, opening fire on various perceived "liberal" targets, law enforcement officers, and government employees. (In order, they've happened in Knoxville, in Wichita, in Pittsburgh, in Washington, twice, and this past weekend in the Midwest.)

No doubt there are some liberals who use ugly and sometimes even violent rhetoric. But there's a big difference between what's actually happening on the ground in terms of the behavior of right-wingers and left-wingers when it comes to acting on the rhetoric: The fanatics on the right are decidedly more violent, and act out violently with much greater frequency.

Why is that? Well, there are two big differences between left-wing and right-wing hate talk, one qualitative, the other quantitative:

-- Right-wing talk is decidedly more violent and openly eliminationist -- which is to say, it speaks more openly about eliminating entire blocs of their fellow Americans, and it does so by harkening to violent themes with much greater frequency.

-- The sheer volume of right-wing hate talk is so much greater. Not only are there more examples, by an exponential factor, of right-wing hatefulness, but the talk is emanating from the upper reaches of the right-wing hierarchy: on TV and radio talk shows with hosts who spew eliminationist hatred daily to audiences of millions daily, and among politicians who represent the supposed mainstream of officialdom, and thus lend their imprimatur to such behavior.

The talk shows, in particular, are a real problem. Especially when you have hosts who repeatedly call someone a "baby killer" day in and day out.

Now that's hate talk. But of course, Bill O'Reilly will never admit to that.

O'Reilly Says It's Unfair To Smear Tea Parties With The Nutcases They Attract. Also, It's Possible Obama Will Take Our Guns.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly was all worked up last night on his Fox News show, claiming that the "liberal media" are waving the bloody shirt again, using the violence and extremism and racism of a handful of joiners to smear an otherwise entirely innocent movement.

First, his Talking Points Memo segment was devoted to the notion that "the Tea Party as a whole is not responsible for the loons who may lurk among them."

Which is, you know, pretty much true. Unless, of course, the movement seems to attract a high percentage of loons, and especially if the movement itself employs loons as their speakers and representatives.

Which is the case with the Tea Parties.

This is pretty funny, really, coming from the guy -- as Matt Corley at ThinkProgress notes -- who only a couple of years ago was culling off comments at DailyKos to smear the entire liberal blogosphere as the equivalent of Nazis.

O'Reilly brought on Rev. Al Sharpton, who seems to have figured out how not to let O'Reilly make him into a punching bag, because he pretty effectively rebutted most of O'Reilly's points. Nonetheless, Monsieur Falafeloofah managed to assert that the "liberal media smear" of the Tea Parties by blaming them for their kooks is "unfair!"

This was followed by a segment with Mary Katherine Ham and Juan Williams. And Williams set off O'Reilly by pointing out that the Tea Parties are fundamentally a rebirth of the Patriot/militia movement of the 1990s:

WILLIAMS: You know, people who's have a lot of hateful attitudes towards President Bush and then somebody who is extremist on the fringe, yes. And if that was also to be then the case with the Tea Party, yes, that's too much and unfair. But, when you start to see militia groups start to associate with the Tea Party --

O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me stop you there. I haven't seen militia groups associating with the Tea Party.

WILLIAMS: Oh, let me tell you something, the Tea Party flag is now, you know, for example they use the same to....

O'REILLY: The don't tread on me flag?

WILLIAMS: Yes, the one.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: That's from the revolutionary war.

WILLIAMS: No, no, no. But it's taken away, obviously, it's not the same flag. It's not the same flag that you see flying up in the New England States. If the separated flag, if the new flag that they created. Like the same imagery that was on Timothy McVeigh. You know, I mean, this is the kind of thing that is worrisome to me.

O'REILLY: Oh, come on, Juan. You are smarter than that. You can't possibly think the Tea Party is taking any cue from Timothy McVeigh. That's suicide.

WILLIAMS: Oh no. You misheard me. I said if fringe elements. In other words, it's just like you were saying. If people speak out and fringe elements take it, distort it, pervert it and then translate into violence. You can't hold that leadership responsible.

Evidently, O'Reilly has already forgotten his interview with Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, which is unmistakably a Patriot organization, minus the militias -- because it recruits from the military, Oath Keepers eschews overt or official involvement with militia organizing, since membership in a militia is cause for dismissal from the military. And as O'Reilly knows well, the Oath Keepers are intimately involved in the Tea Parties.

Indeed, the case of Charles Dyer, the onetime Oath Keepers figure arrested on charges of child rape, demonstrates clearly how the lines get crossed. Because Dyer was also active in forming militias in Oklahoma, he evidently did not hold an actual membership in the Oath Keepers, something the organization eagerly pointed out when it disavowed him. However, he was close enough to the Oath Keepers leadership that he was chosen to represent the Oath Keepers -- with Rhodes' blessing -- at a Tea Party on July 4 in Oklahoma.

But facts have never been an impediment to O'Reilly, who then goes on to actually repeat one of the right's favorite nutty talking points:

WILLIAMS: In a situation where you have more Americans worried about their second amendment rights and stocking up on bullets and buying guns because they think that President Obama is going to take away their guns or bullets.

O'REILLY: Oh, he is he a left wing guy, President Obama. That is not out of the realm of possibility.

In other words, O'Reilly doesn't think the Tea Parties are nutty -- because, after all, they're only repeating the nutty things he says.

And for many of them, that's actually true.

It's laughable for O'Reilly and the rest of the Right to pretend that the fact that the Tea Parties attract a sizable number of loons is purely a coincidence, a natural occurrence.

The cold hard fact is that the Tea Parties are a giant magnet for kooks because so many leaders in the movement, from Glenn Beck on down, regularly tell their audiences that provably untrue things are true. They foist nuttiness upon their mass audiences, and the nuttiness then manifests itself in violent extremist groups rising and coalescing with mainstream-right groups.

The best evidence of this is the speech given by Joseph Farah, the publisher and editor of the far-right Patriot-friendly WorldNetDaily, in February at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville:



The speech was largely a defense of the "Birther" conspiracy theories:

I have a dream. My dream is that IF Barack Obama even seeks re-election as president in 2012, he won’t be able to go to any city, any town, any hamlet in America without seeing signs that ask, “Where’s the birth certificate?

It’s a simple question and it has not been answered despite what Bill O’Reilly will tell you.

The rest of the media think it’s ridiculous, which makes me certain it’s one of the most important questions we can be asking. It really hits the target. Polls now show 33 percent of Californians either believe Obama was born outside the country or have doubts about his alleged Hawaiian birth. Nationwide it’s closer to 50 percent. Even significant numbers of Democrats have doubts.

But the media and the politicians keep pretending it’s all been settled.

I say if it’s been settled, show us the birth certificate.

Now, Bill O'Reilly has done whole segments denouncing the "Birthers" as loons.

But then he attacks anyone who suggests that the Tea Party is riddled with extremist nutcases precisely because it is encouraged at the very top ranks of the movement.

Go figure. It's O'Reilly.

FBI Busts Of Michigan Militias' Hutaree Sect Once Again Rip The Facade Away From Patriots' Civil Pose

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The case of this weekend's busts of seven militiamen in the Midwest, all affiliated with the Hutaree "Christian militia" -- apparently on bomb-making charges, though more factual details are expected today -- is deja vu all over again.

It very much reminds me of the Washington State Militia, the group whose bust and subsequent federal trial I covered in 1996-7. The WSM was a lot like the Michigan Militia in that it liked to sell itself as a civic-minded group whose main purpose was to defend citizens from government oppression and to perform various civic function. I'll never forget John Pitner, the WSM's "commander," telling reporters outside a meeting hall in Mount Vernon in January 1996 that he and his members had been heavily involved in sandbagging efforts to combat the floods that had hit local rivers the week before.

That was how they behaved when out in public, trying to recruit mainstream conservatives to their cause. Then we discovered that what they were saying in private was quite a different thing altogether.

Pitner and six of his comrades were arrested in July 1996 and hit with a variety of charges, most notably for making pipe bombs. At the trial, it emerged that the FBI had videotaped many of the militiamen's meetings, and so both the trial audience and the jury got to hear Pitner and his cohorts planning various acts of violence, including bombing a local reporter's home and a nearby train tunnel.

The Hutaree group -- which made the above video sometime last year, demonstrating their tactics for attacking an outpost of the oppressive blue-helmeted United Nations, at the culmination of which they burn the U.N. flag and raise the flag of the "CCR" -- the Colonial Christian Republic, which the Hutaree folks promote.

Interestingly enough, the authorities in Bridgewater Township actually asked local militias to help them search for a couple of missing persons. Among them were members of the Hutaree militia:

While the SMVM training is public, Hutaree, a Christian-oriented group, shies away from public attention.

Wendy Lineweaver, 43, of Manchester Township, a Hutaree member, participated in both searches in the township.

She joined the tightly-knit unit after meeting several members at a Ron Paul rally several years ago in Ann Arbor. Lineweaver opposes surveillance cameras on streets, the use of body scanners at airports and fears the government may microchip people.

“If you really want to try and install a police state in this society, you’re going to hit a brick wall, meaning us,” she said. “That’s what we’re preparing for.”

Militia members are politically active, but have the same concerns as everyone else, said Rivka Pratt of Hamburg Township, who is Schiel’s fiancée. The mother of two is a member of Schiel’s unit.

“We all live normal lives,” she said. “We all worry about paying the bills. How the kids are doing in school…You don’t live your life worrying about the government.”

You even had the local Republican councilwoman whose brilliant scheme this was praising them afterward:

“Based on what I have observed of our local militia’s efforts, I highly recommend that other municipalities coordinate with and get to know their local militia members."

Meanwhile, their fellow militiamen are now busy throwing the Hutaree folks under the bus:

Mike Lackomar, of Michiganmilitia.com, said both The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia and the Michiganmilitia.com were not a part of the raid.

Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations.

"Last night and into today the FBI conducted a raid against homes belonging to the Hutaree. They are a religious cult. They are not part of our militia community," he said.
Lackomar said he was told there were five arrests Saturday and another five early Sunday. The FBI declined to comment.

One of the Hutaree members called a Michigan militia leader for assistance Saturday after federal agents had already began their raid, Lackomar said, but the militia member -- who is of Islamic decent and had heard about the threats -- declined to offer help. That Michigan militia leader is now working with federal officials to provide information on the Hutaree member for the investigation, Lackomar said Sunday.

"They are more of survivalist group and in an emergency they withdraw and stand their ground. They are actively training to be alongside Jesus," he said.

Of course, they'll all be clamoring to assure us that they're really just a bunch of civic-minded folks, honest. They just happen to be a little paranoid is all.

Hutaree Militia Planned To Attack, Kill Law-enforcement Officers And Their Families

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Well, the facts are now being made public in this weekend's militia bust in the Midwest, and it isn't pretty:

Six Michigan residents, two Ohio residents and an Indiana resident have been indicted on charges of attempted use of weapons of mass destruction in connection with their membership in a Lenawee County Christian militia group.

Members of the Hutaree -- including a Michigan couple and their two sons -- conspired to oppose by force the authority of the U.S. government, according to a release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

The indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court today claims that the Hutaree planned to kill an unidentified member of local law enforcement and then attack the law enforcement officers who gather in Michigan for the funeral. According to the plan, the Hutaree would attack law enforcement vehicles during the funeral procession with improvised explosive devices rigged with projectiles, which constitute weapons of mass destruction, according to the announcement by U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade.

You can read the indictment as a PDF here. Of particular note is this:

The general concept of of operations provided that the Hutaree would commit some violent act to draw the attention of law enforcement or government officials and which would draw a response by law enforcement. Possible such acts were discussed including killing a member of law enforcement after a traffic stop, killing a member of law enforcement and his or her family at home, ambushing a member of law enforcement in rural communities, luring a member of law enforcement with a false 911 emergency call and then killing him or her, and killing a member of law enforcement and then attacking a funeral procession motorcade with weapons of mass destruction. These acts would intimidate and demoralize law enforcement, diminishing their ranks and rendering them ineffective.

The general concept of operations further provided that, once such action was taken, Hutaree members would then retreat to one of several "rally points" where the Hutaree would wage war against the government and be prepared to defend in-depth with trip-wired and command detonated anti-personnel Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), ambushes, and prepared fighting positions. It is believed by the Hutaree that this engagement would serve as a catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the Government.

CNN explains further:

According to the plan, the indictment said, the Hutaree wanted to use improvised explosive devices to attack law enforcement vehicles during the funeral procession. The indictment said those explosive devices, commonly called IEDs, constitute weapons of mass destruction.

Subsequently, the indictment said, Hutaree leader David Brian Stone obtained information about IEDs over the Internet and e-mailed diagrams to a person he believed could manufacture them.

He then had his one of his sons, Joshua Matthew Stone, and others gather materials necessary to manufacture IEDs, the indictment alleges.

According to the indictment, David Brian Stone and David Brian Stone Jr. taught other Hutaree members in June how to make and use explosive devices.

The only funny aspect of all this: As Blue Texan at FDL observes, the right-wing blogosphere is falling all over itself to dream up excuses for these guys.

Meanwhile, Ed Brayton reports that Mike Vanderboegh, the ex-militiaman who called for bricks to be thrown through Democratic office windows, has simultaneously denounced the Hutaree and then suggested that the arrests could still spark "civil war" from the militias.

Hmmm. I can remember when I was being called an "alarmist" for pointing out that we were heading down this road.

Fox Talker Cal Thomas: Pelosi Walking Past Tea Partiers Was Like Neo-Nazis Marching In Skokie

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The right-wing media -- particularly Fox -- are stumbling all over themselves to castigate anyone who dares suggest that the ugly rhetoric that's been unleashed in the wake of the passage of health-care reform is anything but a bipartisan affair. Indeed, this has been the standard talking point on Fox for the better part of the past several days.

It continued Saturday on Fox News Watch, when Jon Scott's assembled panel -- Judith Miller, James Pinkerton, Ellis Henican and Cal Thomas -- chewed over why the librul media are so intent on making the threats out to be a right-wing affair. Miller, to her credit, tried to inject some sanity into the discussion, but she was knocked down by a lying (par for the course) Pinkerton:

Scott: Back to the issue of those threats, though, Judy, the broadcast networks led with the stories of threats against, you know, Democrat supporters of the health-care bill. It seemed like it was very much driven, you know, from the Democratic side of the equation.

Miller: Well, because most of the threats seemed to come the Right. I mean, the bullet through the window, which now turns out to be somehow unrelated to any anger, an accident, that was a --

Pinkerton: Now, Judy, you're a skilled reporter. Just think of the two things you said, that the threat -- the bullet through Eric Cantor, a Republican's window, seems to be unrelated. But most of the threats seem to come against -- to be made by Republicans, neither of which you can prove, and your saying them is helping to feed the narrative, which is that Republicans are the bad guys again.

Bzzzzt!!!! Sorry, Jim, but just like you did when you tried to claim you had nothing to do with the Willie Horton ads, you're lying. Because Miller's claims are both easily proven, and you know it:

A: Local police have declared that the shot that hit Cantor's window was "random gunfire" -- it was, in fact, a spent round falling to earth, which means it could not have been intentionally fired through Cantor's window.

B: Any kind of tally will demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of threat and actual violence are being directed at Democrats by angry right-wingers. Besides the well-reported threats against Bart Stupak and Louise Slaughter, probably the most prominent instance of this involved Alabama ex-militiaman Mike Vanderboegh's call for angry Tea Partiers to smash Democratic Party office windows -- after which there was a spate of such smashings.

But that story, in fact, has never been reported on Fox.

Cal Thomas, however, came up with the most novel attack on Democrats for having let themselves be the subject of such violent rhetoric and behavior -- essentially a variation on Glenn Beck's theory that Obama and the Democrats are intentionally trying to provoke a violent response from the extremist right:

Thomas: Look, when Nancy Pelosi walked through those Tea Partiers, it was like -- what should analogize this to? Ah, the march through Skokie, Illinois, by the Nazis? It was deliberately provocative! They wanted a reaction!

Lessee ... Pelosi and the Democrats were making what was a normal, everyday trek from the floor of the House to their offices, and were confronted by angry Tea Party protesters. Imagine if they had turned back and found another route to their offices; then Cal Thomas would be declaring that they were "running and hiding" from the protesters, wouldn't he?

Instead, they're just like nasty neo-Nazis trying to provoke a crowd.

Sigh. These people simply occupy a Bizarro Universe full-time now.

Chatting With Laura Flanders: Why Violent Eliminationist Rhetoric Is Becoming A Real Concern

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I've been a popular guy this week; been doing a lot of radio interviews. I also was on GritTV earlier this week, chatting with Laura Flanders about the wellsprings of the extremist rhetoric that is unleashing all this unhinged behavior from sore-loser Tea Partiers.

I'm still recovering from my jet lag and I look like crap, but I think I was at least reasonably coherent.

If not, let's talk about it here.

Eric Cantor Blames Democrats' Concerns About Violence For Shot Fired At His Office. Except There Wasn't.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

All of Fox News was atwitter yesterday morning with the big break news that someone had taken a shot at the office of Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Minority whip. Cantor himself went on TV and pronounced:

Just recently I have been directly threatened. A bullet was shot through the window of my campaign office in Richmond this week.

Moreover, he blamed all of this violent behavior breaking out everywhere on the Democratic congressmen who are standing up and calling it out:

It's reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain. That is why I have deep concerns that some - DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen and DNC Chairman Tim Cain, in particular - are dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon.

But then the whole story came out:

In a news release Thursday, police said the bullet struck at about 1 a.m. on Tuesday. The preliminary investigation showed that "a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman."

The building, which has several tenants including an office used by Cantor, was unoccupied at the time, the news release said.

Richmond police spokesman Gene Lepley told CNN Friday that it was the result of "random gunfire."

Gee, sounds awfully familiar. This is just like Lou Dobbs' attempts to gain martyrdom.

Meanwhile, none of the right-wing bloggers who raced to get this story up -- folks like RedState, Gateway Pundit, Schmuck of Spades, and Daily Caller -- have bothered to update their posts and correct the record for their readers.

Which means, of course, that you have a broad swath of wingnuts who really believe Eric Cantor's office was shot at too.

Yet another addition to the already ridiculously long list of provably untrue things right-wingers believe.

Beck Clarifies His Theory: If Violence Breaks Out From The Right, It Will Have Been Intentionally Provoked By Obama

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Just in case there was any doubt about what he was implying the day before, Glenn Beck yesterday cleared things up and removed all doubt about the meaning of his garbled rant about administration radicals who advocated violence:

Beck: You see, what they've done is they've radicalized The Man. These people are in the center, but who's down here? They know that these people always lose -- because they experienced it. The crazy teabaggers in the streets.

Why would a government continue to poke you, and poke you, and poke you, and poke you? Why would they say these things? Why have these people said these things about good Americans? Because they need to separate these people from these people.

They know exactly how you feel when the president of the United States says that. ... These guys remember. When these guys said, 'These crazy dope-smoking hippies,' they knew how it felt. They knew and it drove them nuts, and it drove some of them -- it drove this guy and this guy -- to start throwing bombs!

They're counting on it. The Man made them do it. And they learned that once they threw a bomb, they were done. Martin Luther King changed the world without a single act of violence. Gandhi was right in many ways.

This might be the most dangerous monologue I've ever done, because I am telling you now: They need you to be violent. They are begging for it! You are being set up! Do not give them what they want.

The rest of the rant is an ass-covering plea for non-violence -- a lame attempt to cover the fact that he's spent the past year using violent rhetoric to whip people into a state of hysterical paranoia.

And best of all, what Beck's doing here is providing right-wingers with a ready-made excuse for the violence when it does break out: Why, this was what the liberals were planning all along! It's their fault! Even if they are the victims of it.

Beck Goes Nuts Over HCR, Concludes Evil Progressives Are Trying To Provoke An Armed Revolution

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck long ago went around the bend and over the cliff rhetorically. Indeed, he has gone around several bends in the past year. So it was no big surprise that his big defeat with the passage of health-care reform sent him at warp speed round yet another.

This time, it seems he went around the penultimate bend: At the end of two days' worth of ranting, he evidently concluded that the Obama administration and the cadre of evil "progressives" in government are intentionally taking up immigration reform in the wake of the health-care vote because they hope to provoke an armed insurrection.

That's not quite justifying armed revolution, but it sure is nuzzling right up next to it by giving it an excuse.

This conclusion was one he built up over two days, beginning Monday with the usual deprecations about the motives of the people who supported health-care reform:

"You always thought the bad guys always lost in the end."

"All of the pressure and the bribes went to the dirty congressmen on the left, on the Democrats."

"They [Democrats] have finally been toppled, forced to submit."

"They sold their souls for this vote."

"Well, what they've become is ruthless, amoral, ends-justify-the-means, Saul Alinskyites who will do anything, including eat their own to get what they want."

Oh, and lest anyone forget: Michael Moore is fat.

"Because the average Democrat is not the California hippie Marxist Socialist Communist Progressive, sticking flowers in the barrel, sitting around smokin' dope all day during college and talkin' about how they can destroy the evil American empire."

"America changed for me this weekend. I don't see it anymore as this television set used to show me. I mean, I never thought I would see the kind of corruption, the backroom deals, the bribes, the out and out ... scumminess ... that got us to this health-care vote."

Beck again compared it to Pearl Harbor -- and then added the St. Valentine's Day Massacre "when the Mob came in and cleaned things up"), Chamberlain meeting with Hitler, and tossed in Jimmy Carter's election (huh?) and the burning of the Hindenburg (which he said is a picture of Medicare and Medicaid). He finished:

It will be remembered as a black spot in our nation's history, it will be. It will be -- ah well, depending on who wins the war. Because those are the people that will write the history books.

What's that? War? What war would that be? We're not sure at first, but he drops a few hints later, after disparaging his opposition as Marxists, professors, dupes, and leeches:

I got news for you, gang: The game is on. We're going to win. They might win a few battles. We'll win the war. Because we'll never give in. Never.

This part you can believe. Because that's been obvious since the day Barack Obama was elected -- Beck and his fellow conservatives would never concede the results of the election, would never respect the outcome politically, and would never stop fighting by whatever means necessary to stop any progressive agenda.

The next day, he began by calling upon his audience to respond to the passage of health-care reform the same way an earlier generation responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor:

"This is the biggest thing we have ever faced. This is our Pearl Harbor, our Normandy, our Custer's Last Stand."

(Eh? Not sure what the most one-sided and foolishly led massacre in American military history has to do with Normandy, but whatever.) But what is the real cause for alarm?

Beck: Just after winning the contentious, unpopular, rip-us-apart health-care-bill battle by jamming it down the throats of the American people, by hook or by crook, they're now talking about comprehensive immigration reform. This week!

Yeah, who could have imagined they'd be talking about it after a crowd at least twice as large as your much-hyped "9/12 March on Washingonton turned out at the National Mall to demand it? Of course, Beck's audience wouldn't know about that, since Fox did almost no reportage on it whatsoever -- in stark contrast to the wall-to-wall coverage for the 9/12 event.

At this point, Beck indulged in some really bizarre paranoia:

Holy cow! You've broken three commandments, three of them! Three of them, all in one principle. That's amazing. And for those of you in the administration who are coming after me on this one, I mean, remember, you've broken three, let's not make it four: 'Thou shalt not kill.'

Yes, Beck must keep an eye on his back at all times to watch for the evil Obama administration evildoers who are plotting to kill him. Oy.

But all this leads to his final conclusions:

Beck: Why would the president take up immigration right away, after he's just punched you in the face with health care?

Beck then compared health-care reform to spanking, saying that loving parents hug their kids after they spank them, and that's not what the Obama administration did:

Beck: So what happened, what happened this week? Haven't we just been spanked? Hasn't most the country -- doesn't most the country feel like they've been spanked?

[Um, actually, Glenn, no. Most of the country is glad it passed.]

Beck: If you loved us, what would you do? You would hug us. But they're not. They're going for illegal immigration, which almost tore us apart just a few years ago. Why would you do that?

Hmmm. That's a really hard one to figure out. Why exactly would the people who have been demonized as "cancer" out to "destroy America" on a daily basis by people like Glenn Beck and his adoring followers want to lift a single finger on their behalf? Why would anyone love people who make careers out of sliming and smearing them? Eh? Simple answer: Nobody loves you.

Why are the Tea Parties always being labeled as terrorist? Why is it? "They're extremists, they're terrorists, they're hatemongers, they're dangerous!"

What is it that these revolutionaries want? You'd pick up a gun? You ever thought of that? These people have. Because possibly, maybe the question should be asked: Maybe they're tired of evolution, and they are waiting for revolution.

Beck's clearly implying that the administration is deliberately trying to anger the Tea Partiers so much that they take up arms and start a "revolution."

In other words, if violence breaks out, it'll be because the Obama administration deliberately provoked it.

Which means the black helicopters are about to come take Glenn Beck away.

Yes, The Health-Care Reform Bill Is Now Law. Read It And Weep, Republicans

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

President Obama wasted no time this morning signing the health-care reform bill into law:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama capped a yearlong political drama Tuesday, signing into law a landmark health care reform bill that had been seen as impossible just two months ago.

The president said the law "will set into motion what a generation of Americans have fought for."

He said he was confident the Senate would make fixes to the legislation "swiftly."

The president praised those House members who had "taken their lumps" during the overhaul debate. Shouted one lawmaker in the audience to laughter, "Yes we did!"

This wasn't just a major victory for Obama. This was a resounding defeat for the increasingly marginalized Republican Party and its controlling and now thoroughly repudiated conservative movement.

Make no mistake: Conservatives opposed this bill tooth and nail not because of its contents, but because they knew that success breeds success, and that the field is now much clearer for progressives to advance their agenda and heal the damage wrought by eight years of conservative rule. And the voters will continue to reward that success.

They fought this because they feared their own inconsequence. And in the process, they only made themselves even more so.

Just ask Russell King at TPM.

And if you needed any better evidence, check out the scene from today's pre-signing press conference by the GOP:



Talk about irrelevant.

The Ominous Side Of The Tea Partiers' Defeat: They Really Believe Their Own Outlandish Rhetoric

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I got to witness a little bit of history Sunday night in Washington, sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives as the vote was tallied for final confirmation of the health-care reconciliation package. It was a pleasure seeing the beaming faces of Democrats (and there was no small bit of schadenfreude in seeing Republicans' scowls), especially people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who looked fresh and energized despite probably having had no sleep for 72 hours or more, and my own representative, Jim McDermott, who has fought consistently for health-care reform for several decades now.

Of course, I only sort of witnessed the final vote. You see, security was rotating groups of about 18 people in and out of the seats every 15 minutes, because demand was so high; and my group's time ran out just as the count reached 200. I returned quickly to the item-return room (you had to leave behind your cell phones), where a big screen ran the tallies on C-SPAN; when the vote hit 216, a loud cheer erupted among the 30 or so of us gathered to watch.

Not all of us cheered, of course. A sizable portion of the crowd forming those long lines, in fact, comprised Tea Partiers who had spent the day outside the Capitol protesting, "Kill the Bill!" And they scowled and booed while the rest of us cheered.

I had, in fact, spent a portion of my day among these Tea Party protesters, wandering among them with a video camera in the hours before that afternoon's massive March For America. (And it has to be mentioned that this crowd, of several hundred at best, was utterly dwarfed by the crowd of immigration-reform activists behind them, estimated to be 200,000 strong, a contrast that must -- or should -- have struck some of them as a wee bit ominous for their Beckian claim that "We Surround Them".)

As you can see, some of the leaders of the chants were not above some ugliness in the process. A woman reporter from the local ABC affiliate was mercilessly harassed by one of the bullhorn holders, as you can see. And there was no shortage of kooky signs, including:

I DID NOT SERVE SO THAT DICTATORS COULD RULE
Obama
Take Your Flight
Now And Don't Ever
Come Back
We'll Manage!

A brief exchange of insults occurred when a middle-aged man in a blue soccer shirt made clear he adamantly supported health care, and a man in Michigan Militia T-shirt said, "F--k you," to which the older man responded in kind. Someone in the crowd (the guy holding the "Take Your Flight Now" sign, in fact) called out, "Commie!"

(And yes, the incessant chant of "Kill the Bill!" did start to remind one, after awhile, of the crowd of zombies chanting "Im-ho-tep!" in The Mummy.)

Media Matters spent all day among them and produced some even more disturbing clips.

Dave Weigel at the Windy also found some prime violent wingnuttery:

As a Democratic victory looked more and more likely, Tea Partiers got more ornery about the liberals who’d showed up to cheer for reform and take commemorative photos of what, to them, looked like the end of a year of agenda-slowing right-wing activism.
“Look at that idiot!” said Linda Cocsy, a New Yorker who’d spent the weekend in Washington for the protests, pointing at one of the young Democrats who’d infiltrated the protest, holding up a pro-reform sign provided by a pro-choice Catholic group. “This one, here with the stupid grin on his face! He looks likes he’s brainless. You look at these people and, they really look like jerks. You look at the other people, with the Don’t Tread on Me [flags], and they look like real people!” Cocsy stared off at another protester, waving a sign he’d picked up from a pro-immigration reform protest that had broken up around the time that Stupak announced his flip. “I just wanna kill them!” said Cocsy.

Meanwhile, the NY Daily News reports that one right-wing blogger called for Obama to be shot:

Solomon "Solly" Forell tweeted: "ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. We'll surely get over a bullet 2 Barack Obama's head."

The crazy talk isn't just coming from the rank and file. Some of the Tea Partiers' favorite congressmen are saying similarly nutty things, such as Rep. Steve King's call for secession (via Amanda Terkel) as a response to HCR, following up on his earlier call for an armed revolution.

So it was very interesting listening and observing their responses that evening as we all crowded together into a line to watch the House vote -- Tea Partiers and reform supporters together, required to remain quiet and civil with each other, upon pain of being immediately removed by security.

For the longest time, it seemed, there were about a hundred of us lined up along the long corridors leading to the House gallery, where we had to run a gauntlet of security checks. I was right behind as group of middle-aged Tea Partiers who were dead set against reform and talked among themselves with the usual talking points: "It's just too much government control," "We're talking about one-sixth of the economy", etc. etc., all straight out of Fox News.

But directly behind me was a boisterous young man from Tulsa who was an ardent supporter of health-care reform, and he made his feelings known as well, talking loudly about the vote count as it trickled in on the preliminary vote to advance the measure -- which, had it failed, would have ended the counting for the night. When it passed, he and others in the line cheered loudly.

One of the Tea Partiers ahead of me said to his fellows: "I can't believe all these people want health care."

Because I was being quiet and civil, I refrained from saying: "Yeah, who'da thunk?"

About the same time, a group of people who had been watching in the gallery and whose time had expired began filing past us, some of them beaming. The young Oklahoman began high-fiving them and cheering. But one middle-aged woman refused:

"It's the night America died!" she said.

Finally, we made our way through the last security gate and took our seats, just as the votes came in on Republicans' last-gasp delaying attempt came in, and then we watched as the counting began on final confirmation. Just as the vote count in favor reached 200, the security men came and escorted us out, leading to our final hurrah at the item-return station.

I caught the last Metro back to the condo where I was staying (thanks again, Darcy!) and sat alone near the door. There were only about six of us in the entire car, but right behind me was as glum-faced middle-aged couple. Their expressions alone made clear they had been among the Tea Partiers, as did their conversation on the way back.

"I have to wonder, when we wake up in the morning, whether this will still be a free country or not," said the husband.

"I know," said his wife. "It's so sad."

Again, self-restraint (and fatigue) were all that kept me from standing up and saying to them:

"Good God, people, get a grip! Do you still have freedom of speech? Freedom of association? The right to vote? To choose your religion? To live where you want, choose your own occupation, decide what kind of family you want to have? Because those are real freedoms. You haven't lost any of that! It's still the freest country on earth, you loons! If you think that paying taxes means a loss of freedom, you're wrong -- it just means you're living up to your end of the social contract. Are you part of that, or not?"

Well, those were the words in my head, anyway. And I realized then that, for all these people who have been watching Glenn Beck and Fox News and listening to Limbaugh and Palin and Hannity lo these many moons, that really is their stark reality now: Sunday night was "the night America died."

And that's really a dangerous prospect. Because it means the American Right has come completely unhinged. And unhinged people begin not just saying unhinged things, but doing them.

There's a reason John Amato and I have just finished up work on our new book, Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (which you can pre-order at Amazon, though it won't be out till June 1, and no, that's not our final cover, and the foreword is by Digby, not Rick Perlstein).

It's becoming more timely by the day.

My Chat With Numbers USA's Roy Beck: Those 200,000 Immigration Marchers Are All 'Thieves'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Here, as promised, is my interview with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, at yesterday's March For America in D.C. Judge for yourself how the exchange went.

A couple of the more interesting exchanges:

Beck: But the fact is, is that the amnesty that's being promoted here allows the people to steal the thing they came to steal. People come here illegally --

Me: So you're calling them thieves.

Beck: They are thieves.

Me: [Laughter]

Beck: Of course they're thieves. No look. What is a thief? A thief is somebody who takes something that does not belong to them. They come here and take jobs that do not belong to them. They take wages from the most vulnerable members of the society.
So the thing is -- I'm not saying -- I think most of them are probably good people. I think most of them don't even think of themselves as thieves. They've been taught since they've been young that that border isn't really that important. I don't blame them, I blame our government. But the fact is, those are people who came to steal a job, and what everybody's lobbying for today is to keep the job that they stole.

This, from a guy who leads off the "About Us" section of the NumbersUSA website proclaiming: "No to Immigrant Bashing."

Dunno about you, but calling 200,000 people -- no, make that 12 million -- "thieves" sure sounds like immigrant-bashing to me.

Also, I got a kick out of this exchange:

Me: Do you guys think you could get 100,000 people out here to rally against amnesty?

Beck: No. See, the trouble is, there's no amassed money to be made from bringing immigration back down to traditional levels. The uh -- I mean, the kind of money it takes to put on one of these things is just gigantic.

There's so many people making money off of high immigration, they can afford to do that. Our people are just unemployed people all up and down the line. And they would have to pay for it all themselves. Now they could get here, but they couldn't do this kind of -- this kind of expensive thing.

Yeah, because those 100,000 and more are drawn from all over the country just because their costs get covered.

March For America: Over 100,000 Gather In D.C. To Demand Immigration Reform

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It's been an insanely busy day here in Washington today. All the news folks have been focused on health care reform, and there are Tea Partiers up at the Capitol chanting, "Kill the Bill!" I'll have video from them tomorrow -- hell of a day for my laptop to up and die on me, isn't it? And I'll be trying to cover the vote from the House floor tonight too.

But all this was a tiny scene compared to what was really happening on the National Mall today: the massive crowd of over 100,000 people who showed up today to demand comprehensive immigration reform.

Let there be no doubt about this: Once health-care reform is accomplished, immigration reform is going to be the next big issue on the national plate. The huge crowd -- one estimate placed it at 500,000 -- sent a powerful signal that they will not be content to let Congress shuffle off this massive responsibility for yet another year, as we're already hearing that many of them want to do.

There was an impressive array of speakers -- I managed to catch snippets from Jesse Jackson and Geraldo Rivera here, and you can go to America's Voice for a fuller lineup (I spent a lot of time observing some of the nutcases who showed up; I'll have that video tomorrow too). You can see for yourself just how massive it was.

Indeed, this crowd was significantly larger than the much-promoted "9/12 March on Washington" last September, even though that event was endlessly promoted for over a month by Fox News (I know, I know; they like to claim they had 1.2 million people there, but the reality was that it was actually about 70,000).

Yet, strangely enough, there was only ONE Fox News crew on hand to cover the immigration march today. I spoke with the reporter for this crew, and he told me Fox News had several other crews on hand today -- but they were all up covering the Tea Partiers and the health-care vote.

And in case you're wondering, there were exactly ZERO stories on Fox News reporting on this march in advance. ZERO. I couldn't find any at CNN or MSNBC either.

But then, when people genuinely care about real issues that affect real lives, instead of imaginary descents into "socialism," they don't have to be ginned up by right-wing propaganda organs.

WorldNetDaily's Peterson Unleashes Nutty Rant: Obama Is 'Destroying America Based On Lies'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've known for some time that the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson -- the WorldNetDaily's favorite black columnist -- is a Real Piece of Work. On Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night, he demonstrated it once again with this rant about health-care reform:

Peterson: But to be honest with you, this whole thing is -- I remember, George Washington built America based on truth. Barack Obama is destroying America based on lies.

This thing is about the redistribution of wealth, it's about Black Liberation Theology. Obama lied on the primaries, he's been lying ever since. And the sad thing about it, some Americans -- most Americans are starting to see it, but they don't realize that they've been seduced by this man, and he doesn't care about what is right.

We see what he's doing, bowing down to everybody around the country --

Hannity: Around the world.

Peterson: And around the world. Look what's happening in Israel right now, he's never really supported Israel. This guy is not on our side.

He's -- Obama, in all honesty, is the Congressional Black Caucus, he is Louis Farrakhan, he is Rev. Wright, his minister, he is all of them wrapped up in one -- and he's gonna take -- if we allow this health-care thing to happen, he's gonna turn America into Detroit.

And we cannot let this happen.

Gee, this has a familiar ring to it. Maybe because it's just a recycled version of an earlier Peterson rant:

Barack Obama hates white people -- especially white men. Sorry folks, but the truth will set you free!

Why else would Obama falsely accuse Sgt. James Crowley and other Cambridge Police officers of "racial profiling" and claim they "acted stupidly" -- creating a national racial controversy?

For months, I have said that Barack Obama was elected as a result of white fear (guilt) and black racism. Whites voted for him because of guilt and the fear of being called "racist." And the 96 percent of blacks who voted for the "Messiah" did so because of his race and his "spread the wealth" notions.

[...]

Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus! He embodies the aspirations of every left-wing black group that wants to tear down this country and take power away from the "oppressive" white man. He's not an obvious race hustler like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson; but Obama is a smooth pathological liar -- with a wicked heart.

That was published in WorldNetDaily -- you know, the folks who brought you the Birther Conspiracy Factory. The same magazine that speculated that Obama was the anti-Christ. The same fine rag that published Jerome Corsi's theory that Obama was building concentration camps for rounding up conservatives -- along with a whole menu of similar far-right anti-Obama fever dreams.

The only question is: Why are we getting this far-right extremism broadcast into our living rooms by a supposedly "mainstream" cable-news operation?