April 19, 2005 by s.z.

Domestic Terrorism: Beware the ELF! ABC News reports that they obtained "a secret FBI report" which identifies 22 domestic terror organizations as the current subjects of 338 active FBI field investigations, and notes that white supremacist groups are prominent among the groups the FBI is investigating. The Aryan Nations, and other white supremacist groups, are cited in the report for hate crimes, fire bombings, threats via mail, as well as robberies and murders. The National Alliance, one of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the world, is subject to 51 FBI investigations alone, according to the report. In fact there are "ticking time bombs," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, "who have the capacity, skill and hatred to carry out acts worse that what Timothy McVeigh carried out 10 years ago." Levin, and other terrorism experts, say that the Internet has become the principal recruitment tool, attracting the loners and the disturbed who boast of finding viable U.S. targets. [...] Just recently, officials in Riverside, Calif., discovered a huge collection of automatic weapons, narcotics, and Nazi paraphernalia — the efforts, they suspect, of a volunteer high school football coach and the teenagers he had recruited for a neo-Nazi group. Among the weapons cache, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputies and the FBI found over 75 firearms, 15,000 rounds of ammunition, and several bulletproof vests. The coach and 18 others are awaiting trial. Of course, the Spectator couldn't leave this unchallenged, because the disturbed loners of the far-right are their people.  Here's part of a column by Andrew Cline: In the decade since the Oklahoma City bombing, the media have remained interested in the right-wing crazies, but have almost entirely ignored the left-wing ones -- those committing most of the terrorist acts inside the United States. Left-wing terrorist groups have been responsible for almost all of the recent domestic terrorism. The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism maintains a terrorism database. According to its files, as the Baltimore Sun reported on Sunday, fully 22 of the 25 terrorist attacks inside the United States since 2003 are believed to have been the work of environmental extremists. Yeah, those enviromental extremists are always causing property damage, which goes to show how truly dangerous they are! It is true that right-wing nuts such as Eric Rudolph, Matt Hale, and Timothy McVeigh have earned notoriety by attacking or planning to attack people instead of housing developments or Hummer dealerships. But the Unabomer attacked people. Yes, the Unabomber should be counted as a left-wing terrorist because (a) he was against techology; (b) he said he was an anarchist, even though he seems to have just gotten the word from Conrad; and (c) because it's not fair that the far-right has to claim all the really dangerous nuts. Even as left-wing terrorism is on the rise, the media still focus on terrorists who lean to the right, or what they call the right. And the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing is another opportunity for the media to discuss the threat from "right-wing" crazies. "10 years after terror, radical right still a threat," read an MSNBC headline on Monday. The threat to democracy posed by the "radical right" is a constant theme in the press, whether those radicals be Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, abortion opponents, born-again Christians, mythical legions of "angry white men," or gun-toting survivalists. Or mythical gun-toting neo-Nazis with 15,000 rounds of ammunition.  In any case, as the people you really should be worrying about are those ELFs, because they're always burning down housing developments!  Even when it turns out that they really didn't ... 7:09:57 AM

The Things That One Learns from Lucianne.com! I don't go there that often (because even I can take only so much wingnuttery), but I think it's useful to check the threads there ocasionally, just to see what the true believers are muttering about.  I think the following post shows how some of the people are being fooled all of the time.  It's from a thread about the CybercastNewsService story Frist Associating With 'Ultra-Right-Wing Crackpots' (as you might imagine, both CNS and the Lucianne folks hate it that Begala referred to Dobson and his buddies in such a manner).  But this post why Republicans must take over the judicary -- because, over the past ten years, the Democratic judges have made Christiam illegal!   Anyway, the items in the post seem like they were taken from a list of talking points that somebody has prepared and disseminated to the "grassroots," so I think it's worth taking a look at, just to see what color the sky is in WingnutWorld. Reply 7 - Posted by:[ ]  4/19/2005 12:04:09 AM It is a decade or too late for Republicans to "inject religion into the judicial process". Over the last two decades, the United States has experienced the court system's successes in accomplishing the following: Legalized euthanasia I assume this refers to the Schiavo case, although it's more dramatic to say that the judges sentenced Terri to a death more cruel than the ones even terrorists and animals get in this country. The banning of prayer in schools and athletic events. Ban of the display of the Ten Commandments on public property. Ban of Nativity displays on all public areas. Removal of the word “Christmas” from all communication. I think these last two points may have come from Bill O'Reilly, the guy who defended Baby Jesus from the Macey's Grinch. Ban of references to God and religious images on currency, state seals and governmental buildings. You do recall when they removed all references to God from our currency, don't you? Attempt to remove the words: “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. In some courts, banning the Pledge of Allegiance completely from schools and athletic events. Basing U.S. Supreme Court decisions on laws of other nations Forcing the Boy Scouts and similar organizations (including churches) to place homosexuals in positions of leadership. Remember that Boy Scout leader who was recently arrested for possessing kiddie porn?  I bet the judges forced BSA to hire him.  Oh, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if foreign judges (the ones who make those laws on which our own corrupt Supreme Court keeps basing its decisions) forces the Catholic church to select a homosexual as Pope -- because that's just the kind if thing they would do (and do here all the time, apparently)! Separation of the Boy Scouts from association with public schools, military reservations and church organizations. Yes, the courts both forced the Boy Scouts to put homosexuals in positions of authority AND made them sever ties with public schools (and churches, even).  Man, those judges really have it in for the Boy Scouts!  (I'm guessing that some of the Boy Scout points came from Phyllis Schlafly.) Complete protection for all kinds of pornography. Well, they did keep a law on the books dealing with Boy Scout leaders who possess child pornography, but that's just because they hate Boy Scouts. Creating hate crimes laws to punish those who verbalize their belief that homosexuality is wrong. You remember how the late Pope got arrested for this during his last visit to America? Delegating religion to secondary status in the culture. Would you say that it is past time for Republicans to involve themselves ? Senator Frist, your points are noted, but since they are silly, you can't have your "nuclear" option.  (But we will give you some nuclear waste as a consolation prize.)  6:13:40 AM

The News That Really Matters! Yes, the Ann Coulter Time cover photo.  Here's what the NY Post had to say about the matter: ANN Coulter liked the idea of being immortalized on the cover of Time magazine, but she doesn't like the photo — shot with a fish-eye lens that distorted the image of the pretty blonde to make her legs look freakishly elongated and her feet tremendous. "Why can't they just photograph conservatives straight?" Coulter moaned to cybergossip Matt Drudge. Matt replied, "Yeah!  It's the liberal media's fault that I never look straight in photos!"  (As you know, Matt can't be gay, because he almost got married once.  However, per Time, Ann almost got married THREE times or so, so obviously there is nothing wrong with her either.  In fact, she is three times more normal than Matt!) The author of "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism" and "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right" posted on her Web site a horrifying picture of Time's photo editor, Mary Anne Golon, as she would look through a fish-eye lens. Here's the "horrifying" photo of Ms Golon from Ann's site: Wow, Ann sure showed Mary Anne!  I bet that the evil photo editor commits suicide or something now, due to the shame and horror. Fellow conservative Lucianne Goldberg said the "nasty" Time cover made Coulter look like "an insect . . . a daddy longlegs or a praying mantis." "I think they were trying to be funny, but to a woman, it's not funny." And Ann didn't find it funny either.  (She doesn't have much of a sense of humor, does she?  But then, she told Time that "most people miss her humor," so I guess on her planet, "humor" has a different meaning than it it does in ours.)  BTW, I heard that the spiders and mantises are suing Ms. Goldberg for slander. Anyway, while Ann is royally pissed about her cover photo, I don't hear her complaining about Time's most egregious distortion: the statement that while Ann has a reputation for "carelessness with facts," Time "didn't find many outright Coulter errors." But back to Lucianne: Goldberg said the disfigurement was intentional because the cover was shot by Platon, the same photographer who made Bill Clinton look sinister in a pose for Esquire. "So they knew what they were doing," Goldberg said. Here's the photo of Lucianne from the NY Post: what kind of lens do you think they used to distort Ms. Goldberg's image? And speaking of Ann, Newsweek has a column about the tradition of pie-ing.  The author, Gersh Kuntzman, claims that there is nothing wrong with tossing a pie at deserving targets who need to have their pomposity deflated.   While I don't agree with that, I also don't agree that throwing a pie at someone is a serious assault along the lines of a punch to the kidneys or breaking a kneecap, and I certainly don't think a pie-ing should be met with deadly force, like Ann seems to believe.  Here's another snippet from Time: Ever since two men threw pies at her at the University of Arizona last year, she has traveled with a bodyguard, a bourbon-drinking ex-cop who says, quite believably, that he can kill with his bare hands. The message: throw any pastry at Ann, and her bodyguard will break your neck! Anyway, here are a couple of comments from the Lucianne.com thread about the Newsweek column: Reply 5 - Posted by: [ ] 4/18/2005 7:26:07 PM Leftists are anti-Americans and on the verge of becoming fascist jackboot thugs. However, real Americans will squish them like a bug if this gets out of hand. Reply 14 - Posted by:[ ] 4/18/2005 8:30:25 PM When we decide to fight back, it won't be with pies... So, I guess Ann isn't alone is believing that pie poses a deadly danger -- not just to conservative life and limb, but also to our beloved Republic.  But just wait until the Lucianners start squashing leftists like bugs for their terrible culinary crimes against wingnut pundits.  When that day comes, they won't be fighting back with pies!  No, it will be with, um, stale dinner rolls.  Really hard ones! Oh, and speaking of bad photos, what happened to Washingtonienne?  I mean, she used to be attractive enough (for a skank), and she even got that Playboy spread (sure, it was only the online version of Playboy, but still, I assume that had some sort of standards).  However, per her USA Today picture, she seems to have de-hotified drastically -- is that the hidden price one pays for having had too much butt sex?  Oh, well, at least she has the book deal. 5:09:55 AM