Interesting in the light of current events: A law enforcement agency whose leaked report suggesting militia members tend to favor certain political candidates sparked outrage among conservatives has no immediate plans to compile other such intelligence reports, an official said Wednesday. Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. James Keathley told a special House committee that the intelligence assessments compiled by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, which is part of the Highway Patrol, contain valuable information but that there were no immediate plans to draft new reports. "I don't know if we will ever get back in the business of producing strategic reports to be very honest with you," Keathley told committee members. "This report created us a lot of harm, a lot of problems. I'm not going to stand here and say anything other than that, we all know that's why we're all here." I give Keathley a lot of credit here, even this late in the game. But...

... by arguing (with real facts) that the DHS Rightwing Extremism report was politically slanted and horribly flawed. This is apparently the case that DelawareDem seeks to make by including my name in a thread in which I was not commenting: Steve Newton, I am so relieved you that you and other right wingers saved us from the hellfire known as the DHS Report. Yeah, right wing extremists are not violent at all. OK, asshole, I've had enough. You want to make the charge that I ever said there were no rightwing extremist groups, or that law enforcement should not investigate legitimate leads on groups or individuals? Back it up. Here's the link to virtually everything I have written since the DHS report came out. Find it, or have the stones to admit you're wrong. Here's what I actually said: Don't get me wrong: there are violent, nasty people out there: skinheads, black separatists, eco-terrorists, Muslim honor-killers, fag-bashers, beltway snipers.... There are also ...

Governor Bill Ritter (D) recently signed a bill that stymies the US Army's attempt to expand training areas into Colorado ranchland. I have absolutely no idea whether or not this is a good bill, but I hardly think it merits this response from Representative Mike Coffman (R): “The Governor clearly has no concept about the training and readiness needs of our combat forces. By signing H.B. 1317, a bill that blocks the Army’s ability to expand training areas, the Governor has sent a very clear message that the men and women who serve our nation in uniform are not welcome here. I think he would be more sympathetic if the U.S. Army were to declare itself a terrorist organization - since he is going out of his way to block the Army while at the same time laying out a welcome mat to house terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.” The Colorado Independent points out a bizarre twist to this story : the MSM is apparently refusing to cover it: Equally curious to Coffman’s over-the-top rant is the ...

...into admitting his assorted crimes .... Here is part of my answer to the folks who think that the government can simply be trusted with the power to conduct surveillance against our citizens and ignore their constitutional rights because they're a threat... Like evangelical home-schooled Christian Ashton Lundeby: Ashton Lundeby has been held in a Federal detention center in Indiana for 2 months without being charged with a crime or afforded due process. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents stormed his home that night, insisting that he had made several bomb threats from his computer including one to Purdue University on February 15 at 9:05 Central time (10:05 ET in North Carolina where Lundeby lives). Lundeby has multiple witnesses that will verify that he was at Union Chapel Church with his family until after 9 p.m. ET that evening. Union Chapel Church is 35 minutes from the family's Oxford, North Carolina home. On the way home that evening, the family stopped at a groce...

Now we are discovering that the infamous DHS report on rightwing extremism was preceded by an equally dismal product (which DHS top brass actually recalled before it was leaked) titled Domestic Extremism Lexicon . This is not so much a report, as a handy-dandy glossary for law enforcement officials to know what to call the different varieties of dangerous violent extremists. In it, you get defintions of animal-rights extremists, anti-abortion extremists, black separatist extremists, yada yada yada. First, I could have reduced the content of this report to one sentence: Any group which advocates or conducts violent acts in pursuit of its political/ideological goals may be characterized as extremist. But that would be too easy. Instead, the report goes into detail that would often be amusing if it were not potentially alarming. Take the definition of Racist skinheads : (U//FOUO) Groups or individuals who combine white supremacist ideology with a skinhead ethos in which “white power” mu...

DelawareDem has a thoughtful piece up on our various differences regarding rightwing extremism and political rhetoric (and our mutual appreciation for a recent comment by Anonone, of all people), which contains this paragraph: But a problem remains. Right now, that violent fringe is being catered to in the extreme by the mainstream of the Republican party and the conservative movement, so much so that it is beginning to be difficult to tell the difference. They are being told that President Obama is a tyrant intend on taking their guns. They are being told that America is dying because of government spending. That Obama plans on opening large reeducation camps. That he is a terrorist, a muslim, a radical black Christian. That he is a fascist. That is both exploiting the violent fringe and empowering them. I want to try a little non-confrontational parsing here, paying particular attention to a couple of the charges. They are being told that President Obama is a tyrant intent on taking...

First, a semi-random sampling of a local blogger doing her bit to sell the narrative that anyone who is not a liberal Democrat should have to spend all his/her time running around condemning violent extremists because they are to be portrayed as responsible for everything from Glenn Beck to the guy who killed cops in Pittsburgh: This kind of violent rhetoric is exactly the refuge of the worst of the current wingnuts and exactly why they got their outrage on over the DHS report. You can’t protect your own bullying and violent speech without having to cover for the terrorists in your midst too. This comes from the same little merry band that lined up to label Resistnet.com a potentially violent rightwing extremist group that should be on a DHS watch list somewhere. When I examined all their material and failed to find the slightest inkling of violent intent (in fact, quite the opposite), the rejoinder was--I kid you not: What do they mean by keep the powder dry ? Bath powder? So much...

The mantra I now hear daily on talk radio is that investigations into torture (excuse me, enhanced interrogation techniques) will only target the people who kept us [the ungrateful wimps who care about human rights] safe . They argue that if it took 183 applications of water to Khalid Sheik Muhammed or 83 to Abu Zubayah in a single month to gather actionable intelligence that saved American lives, then even torture is justified... Except that information is now coming to light that the harsh treatment of KSM and AZ may not have occurred in pursuit of actionable intelligence after all , but was instead ordered by the Bush administration to create a pretext for the invasion of Iraq . From McClatchy : WASHINGTON — The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a...

... for the DHS report on rightwing extremism, even though she's apparently trotting it out all over the place: WaPo : Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized directly today to Commander Dave Rehbein, head of the American Legion, after a recently leaked DHS intelligence report suggested that right-wing extremist groups might recruit military veterans returning from overseas deployments. The 45-minute meeting occurred at DHS headquarters in Washington this afternoon. A detailed account of the meeting from the American Legion states that "Hunched forward with head bowed, the Secretary of Homeland Security looked the National Commander of The American Legion straight in the eye and said, very quietly, 'I’m sorry, Dave.'" “The report was not worthy of this department, or of veterans,” Napolitano said to Rehbein, according Legion spokesman Craig Roberts, who attended the meeting. "It was very badly written and should never have been released,"...

... is that there was no story. Here are the most important paragraphs from MSNBC in July 2008: White-supremacist groups have recruited 203 people who served in the U.S. military or who claim to have U.S. military backgrounds , according to a new report by the FBI. The unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, issued last week and obtained by NBC News, cautions that white-power extremists are trying hard to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “White supremacist extremists hope to revitalize the white supremacist movement by exploiting antigovernment sentiment among opponents of the overseas conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the FBI report states. It adds, however, that the effort is not going particularly well. “Although some veterans of these conflicts have joined the extremist movement, they have not done so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist organizations, nor has their participation resulted i...

Some of our friends continue to try to move the bar to redefine certain political topics as extremism, connect them with violent actors, and call for government surveillance of ... quite frankly, some pretty ordinary citizens with different political views. The most recent example comes in a post that labels concerns over recent homeland security reports as Last week’s manufactured outrage over the DHS Threat Assessments deserves abit more information — especially as the remarkable dishonesty around all of this is being used to not just work the refs but to also try to normalize the violent rhetoric that they so like bullying people with. But the truly interesting part arrives in a comment (#5) by one of the multiple bloggers at the site [in other words, not a passerby]: In addition to violent rhetoric, the right wing nut bags are fond of “military” sounding jargon. Take a look at the email I got just this morning: SCCOR Member - Do you have an interest in helping the Resistance? Is t...

... because there are subtle re-framings of reality taking place all over the place. At odds: two DHS reports on extremist threats ( rightwing and leftwing ) and all the attendant chatter. Some of the most inaccurate and irresponsible of which is coming from our own beloved Delaware blogosphere. First, let's get the chronology straight: there are two DHS reports that have been leaked to the wider world: one on rightwing extremism (dated 7 April 2009 and leaked the following week) and one on leftwing extremism (dated 26 January 2009 and not leaked until the other one had caused such a furor). Here's what one local blogger picks out as significant about the two reports: There was a left-wing extremist report released in January, that we haven’t heard anyone whine about yet. Any thoughts as to why? Both of these reports were commissioned by BushCo, and were released after Bush left. The current energy that conservatives are putting into this misses the point of these docume...

... and both are worth serious examination. The first, from Dave Sirota, argues that the GOP is now seeking its future in mainstreaming rightwing extremism: In my book, The Uprising, I have a chapter on the Minutemen that's called "Mainstreaming the Militia." I think between the media coverage of yesterday's Tea Parties and the national Republican Party effectively coming to the public defense of right-wing extremist groups against the Department of Homeland Security, that mainstreaming has gone into overdrive. I'm not saying everyone - or even a majority - of those who attended the Tea Parties are violent extremists. But I am saying that there is a very calculated and coordinated campaign to mainstream extreme right-wing politics - and this shouldn't be surprising. The uprising that I reported on last year has only intensified since I reported the book, and as I noted at the time, that uprising is both a left and right phenomenon. Indeed, the battle for the ...

For all of our friends who placed so much immediate stock in the hopelessly flawed DHS report on Rightwing extremism , maybe it would be a cautionary suggestion to take a look at where else DHS and our Federally supported fusion centers are seeing potential domestic terrorism. The ACLU reports the following : A May 7, 2008 report entitled “Universal Adversary Dynamic Threat Assessment” authored by a private contractor that labeled environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Audubon Society as “mainstream organizations with known or possible links to eco-terrorism” ; A potential abuse of authority by DHS officials who improperly monitored and disseminated the communications of peace activists affiliated with the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) ; A report produced on February 19, 2009 by the North Central Texas Fusion System entitled “Prevention Awareness Bulletin” which described a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying gro...

This comment in Delawareliberal's coverage of the DHS report of rightwing extremism intrigued me into following up the link: And if you think I’m over-reacting, consider this: The Southern Poverty Law Center also reports that the “number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 - an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama. The link, I might add, doesn't take you directly to the Southern Poverty Law Center, but to a Reuters story: MONTGOMERY, Ala., Feb. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 - an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama , according to the "Year in Hate" issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report released today....

Updated : Once you've read this, for a real laugh visit the Delawareliberal thread that (a) attempts to make something substantive out of this report; (b) features Cassandra intentionally missing/misrepresenting the point of this entire post; and (c) illustrating the blandness/blindness we've all come to expect from those who do not see that certain topics of legitimate political discussion are slowly edged toward the dangerous and extremist categories. Particularly revealing is the failure of DL posters to see any problem with the report's repeated insistence that returning disgruntled veterans are likely targets for extremist recruiting, which stops just an intellectual step short of recommending the profiling of discharged soldiers so that we can follow the potentially dangerous. My point below--that there is evidence of dissonant voices/dynamics in the DHS report is, sadly, pretty much beyond them. Next time, just for a few people, I'll try it with one-syllable ...