Sick sick sick sick sick.

If Bill Maher ever has Andrew Breitbart on his show again, I'm going to stop watching him for good. Why should we give air time to someone who hires people like this.

Oh fer God's sake....

Actual headline at Foxnews.com:



I'm with Zandar on this one:

...whenever the right pulls out ACORN to try to discredit anything, they have automatically lost the argument.

This is what "Let him die" looks like

This needs no further comment from me:



(via)

ACORN no longer even exists, but why let facts get in the way of a good metaphor for the "N" word?

All you have to do is say "ACORN!" and wingnuts go into a frenzy:

A non-existent organization that previously helped poor people "destroy the country" by voting could get up $15 billion in taxpayer money under Obama's jobs bill, according to conservative columnist Matthew Vadum.

Vadum, who previously wrote that it was "profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country," writes that a draft version of the jobs bill "makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding."

"Section 261 of the bill provides $15 billion for 'Project Rebuild.' Grants would be given to 'qualified nonprofit organizations, businesses or consortia of eligible entities for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed-upon properties and for the stabilization of affected neighborhoods,'" Vadum writes.

"Radical groups like ACORN won't get the whole $15 billion, though, because they will have to compete with state and local governments for the money," he continues.

This is all, of course, contingent upon the fact that ACORN exists. Which it doesn't.

Nevertheless, be on the lookout, says Vadum. "Like the T-1000 in "Terminator 2" ACORN can be slowed down but it will just continue to regroup under different names, and operate out of the same offices," reads the caption on the photo in his story.

One can only imagine what they do when the oak trees start dropping their squirrel food in the fall.

At last, someone points out the obvious

I never expected it to be Richard Wolffe, who's about as cautious as they come, but here you go:





Republicans hated Clinton too, but you never saw this level of contempt. And good for Wolffe for pointing out what's been obvious since January 20, 2009 -- that this country elected a black president and there are a sizable number of people, some of them Federal legislators, who simply can't deal with that.



The image I posted yesterday captured from Limbaugh's site embodies this perfectly -- a subordinate, supplicating black man, seemingly pleading with a white man, with Rush Limbaugh there with a megaphone shouting "NO!" Is there any image we've seen over the last nearly three years that more fully encapsulates the dynamic we've seen with this president's relations with the right? So good for Wolffe for going there.



Chauncey de Vega over at Alternet puts the disturbing dynamic of the whole jobs speech fracas -- a foofarah that is ultimately trivial in content but emblematic of the entirety of the Obama years so far, into historical perspective:

Where blacks had since slave days been expected to step off the sidewalk to allow white persons to pass unimpeded-failure to do so could result in being murdered-some communities with the new century began to require blacks to keep off the sidewalks altogether when any white children were occupying any part of them. Much the same held for the roadway, where blacks could expect to be stopped by police if they dared pass a white driver. So offensive to white sensibilities was a black driving an expensive car that even well-to-do African-Americans kept to older models so as not to give the dangerous impression of being above themselves…



One requirement was to sometimes illogically cede the right-of-way to a white driver-or even to a black driver who was chauffeuring white passengers. At many four-way-stop intersections in the South, the right-of-way was determined not by who reached the intersection first, but rather by the race of the drivers. When confronting a white driver who was female, a black male driver in the South could and sometimes did face a life-or-death decision. Compounding the difficulty facing African-Americans was the lack of universality of any of these conventions. In some places whites did maintain normal driving rules. But in others, Jim Crow was more important than highway safety.

Boehner just pulled a "boy you best get off the sidewalk and let a white man pass moment"; in his demand that the President reschedule his jobs speech scheduled for next week before Congress. If President Obama is not careful the Right may get him for “reckless eyeballing.”



Of course and once more, the Tea Party GOP are behaving like spoiled children.



Here MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe is spot on: to casual observers the spat over the time of the President’s speech on the economy, and how it “conflicts” with the Republican debate, seems mighty petty. This obstructionism on all things is the dominant political strategy by the GOP in the Age of Obama, and it is fueled by a deep hostility to Obama’s legitimacy as President.



As I have suggested many times, the idea that a Black person could be in the White House is too much for the White Conservative Soul and the white racial frame to handle. The symbolism is anathema to their conception of America.



[snip]



When the Birthers, the Graders and Donald Trump led a witch hunt and demanded to see the transcripts of the President, a Harvard grad and University of Chicago professor, because he could not possibly have earned his bonafides (and they remain curiously silent about Rick Perry’s abysmal college career as a “Gentlemen D” student).



In sum, these are moments where black Americans as a community have been collectively slapped in the face and denied their dignity simply because of the color of our skin, and the ways that race works to locate people in a hierarchy of “naturalized” relationships. America no longer has laws demanding that blacks get off the sidewalk when whites pass, or that African Americans cannot try on clothes or hats at a store without buying them first.



But, the intangibles of full and equal respect from whites towards non-whites cannot be legislated: history’s weight is too great and private thoughts and attitudes are often immune from legal precedent. In the United States, one of white supremacy’s most damning and difficult legacies is that for centuries the lowest, most ignorant, stupid, lazy trashy White was elevated above the most educated, refined, literate, and hard working black person.

The Tea Party GOP and their foot soldiers are drunk on that legacy. They may claim to respect the Office of the President, but they most certainly don’t respect the man. And no small part of that is because he is Black.

Piss off Fox. Buy something from J. Crew

I'm not a J. Crew shopper. Frankly, I don't think much of their stuff, at least not from what I've seen on their web site; I don't care that Laurent Hutton DOES model for them. Usually you'll find me on the sale pages of J. Jill or the 30% off all clearance pages at Coldwater Creek. But tonight, I'm making a statement against idiocy by buying a shirt from J. Crew. In fact, I'm buying two. Want to know why? Here's why:

Use code MUSTHAVE to get 30% off all clearance through tomorrow night.

Jewy Jewy Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew.

Just as "ACORN", an organization that no longer exists, has become code for the "ZOMG BLACK PEOPLE ARE VOTING!!!", James O'Keefe, that sniveling little rat-faced git whom I'm sorry to say I had to pay property taxes for his public school education, is making clear that "George Soros" is code for "Jew"

It seems that JoJo the Rat Boy tweeted today, "NEW NPR TAPE: DIRECTOR ADMITS TO HAVING RECEIVED SOROS MONEY FOR YEARS..." As Media Matters reports, Soros' donations to NPR have never been secret:

Here's a 2000 NPR press release announcing that the Soros Foundation provided funding for an All Things Considered documentary on people who witness executions in Texas.

Witness to an Execution was funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Soros Foundation.

Here's a 2001 NPR press release announcing Open Society funding for their American RadioWorks documentary unit:

This American RadioWorks documentary aired on All Things Considered® from NPR News and was made possible through major funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, with additional project support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, the U. S. Institute for Peace, and the Glaser Family Foundation.

This information was obtained via a Google search. It took less than 10 minutes to find and was quite literally the bare-minimum of fact-checking one could do.

What a scandal: George Soros gives to NPR. You know what, O'Keefe? I'm a Jew and I do too. So Jewy Jew Jew Jew Jew to you.

And while Peter King is investigating Muslims....

White self-identified Christian racists (yes, racists -- take THAT, James O'Keefe...I paid property taxes for your highschool, you sniveling little rat-faced git) get to intimidate with impunity:

A Stevens County man charged with the attempted bombing along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane has links to a neo-Nazi group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Kevin William Harpham, 36, was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance in late 2004, Mark Potok, director of the center's Intelligence Project, said following Harpham's arrest Wednesday.

[snip]

Harpham has been charged with one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of knowingly possessing an improvised explosive device, according to a complaint unsealed Wednesday. The weapon of mass destruction charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

Now WHO are the terrorists again?

(via)

And when one of these nutballs finally does it, conservatives will say that their incendiary rhetoric had nothing to do with it

Another dispatch from Teabag America, in this case Athen, Georgia:

At Rep. Paul Broun’s town hall meeting on Tuesday, the Athens congressman asked who had driven the farthest to be there and let the winner ask the first question.

We couldn’t hear the question in the back of the packed Oglethorpe County Commission chamber, but whatever it was, it got a big laugh. According to an outraged commenter on the article, the question was, when is someone going to shoot Obama?

I’ve asked Team Broun whether that was indeed the question and haven’t gotten an answer. The commenter accurately described the questioner and the circumstances, and no one has disputed his account.

Update: Broun’s press secretary, Jessica Morris, confirmed that the question was indeed, who is going to shoot Obama? “Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,” she said.

Here was Broun’s response:

The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

He then segued into Republicans’ budget proposal.

Got that? It's at a point now where a Republican Congressman doesn't even express outrage at a question about shooting the President of the United States. Three or four signs at a Wisconsin demonstration of fifty thousand equate Scott Walker with the worst despots in history, and the media goes into a frenzy of "Both Sides Do It." But on the right, it's perfectly OK to treat a question like this as simply "inappropriate."

Asking a Congressman when he stopped beating his wife (when he hasn't) is inappropriate. Asking a Congressman who is going to shoot the president is outrageous -- and should be treated as such. Even John McCain, who whored himself in the worst way to these people in 2008, finally drew the line at "I don't trust him...he's an Arab." Today Republicans don't even flinch when someone talks about shooting elected officials of the other party.

If telling people that people in the Administration should be shot in the head isn't going to drive someone to kill someone, what is?

I can't believe that we are reduced to running Tweety clips, but there we are:

The right has denied that anything said by Glenn Beck is going to drive anyone to violence. When Beck talks about shooting people in the head because they are destroying this country, does hereally think that no one is going to actually do it?

Right now there is an elderly professor named Frances Fox Piven, who in a recent column in The Nation, called on the unemployed to form a mass movement. Piven is one of Glenn Beck's favorite targets because of her advocacy of movements to produce social change. It's interesting that in Glenn Beck's sick, twisted world. a mass movement of peaceful action by the powerless and the disenfranchised is a threat to America, but a mass movement of people toting guns because of an imagined totalitarian threat led by the first Black president is what he wants to see.

Like Orcs, Beck's minions are already rising to their master's call:

These are not pretty e-mails, but they appear positively decorous compared with what has been written about her by commentators on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, where she's been the target of a relentless campaign to demonize her—and worse. There, under cover of anonymous handles, scores of people have called for Piven's murder, even volunteering to do the job with their own hands. "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back," wrote superwrench4. "ONE SHOT...ONE KILL!" proclaimed Jst1425. "The only redistribution I am interested in is that of a precious metal.... LEAD," declared Patriot1952.

I ventured into the cesspool that is The Blaze, and comments like this have been scrubbed -- not surprisingly, since there is undoubtedly someone out there right now preparing to take a shot at a 78-year-old professor no one had heard of until Beck decided to place her in his Pantheon o'Scapegoats.

The thing that's so dangerous about Glenn Beck is that I'm not convinced he's buying any of it. When you look at him, and his TV schtick, he seems more of a carnival barker than a right-wing rabble-rouser. I'm always reminded more of Andy Kaufman than of Rush Limbaugh when I see what Beck does, because while Limbaugh is a genuinely mean, greedy, hateful man who gets paid millions for stirring the rage pot of downwardly-mobile white American males, Beck seems simply to be a guy with a troubled background, steamer trunks of emotional baggage, who has found a form of performance art that has made him wealthy beyond his wildest imaginings.

The jury is still out on whether an overall climate of hate, of legitimizing violence against those who disagree with you politically, of scapegoating politicians for your own grievances, contributed to the Tucson shootings. I still maintain that when you create an echo chamber of violent rhetoric, you legitimize the plottings of those mentally ill who hear voices in their heads. After all, if the voices outside your own head confirm what the ones inside your own head are telling you, that must make it OK, right?

For eight years you could get kicked out of school for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt. Wal-Mart would rat you out for a photo of an anti-Bush poster you made and you'd get a visit from the Secret Service. Hang one in the privacy of your dorm room without even taking a photo and you'd also get a visit from the Secret Service. Nuns and Quakers were put on no-fly lists. And neither Glenn Beck, nor the frothing hysterics screaming about how Obama is going to take away their penis substitutes guns, said a word. But now, with a black man in the White House, the kind of lunatic ravings you used to hear on street corners by unhinged people distributing crude, homemade pamphlets, are pumped into people's homes and into the public consciousness every single night.

Glenn Beck has as much right to rant and rave as the street corner guy used to. What he does not have is a right to have the public airwaves on which to do it.

First stop should be James O'Keefe's residence

Because his fingerprints, along with those of his mentor Andrew Breitbart, are all over this:

Planned Parenthood, a perennial protest target because of its role in providing abortions, has notified the FBI that at least 12 of its health centers were visited recently by a man purporting to be a sex trafficker but who may instead be part of an attempted ruse to entrap clinic employees.

In each case, according to Planned Parenthood, the man sought to speak privately with a clinic employee and then requested information about health services for sex workers, including some who he said were minors and in the U.S. illegally.

Planned Parenthood's vice president for communications, Stuart Schear, said the organization has requested an FBI probe of the man's claims and has already fielded some initial FBI inquiries. However, Schear said Planned Parenthood's own investigation indicates that the man has links with Live Action, an anti-abortion group that has conducted previous undercover projects aimed at discrediting the nation's leading abortion provider.

Lila Rose, Live Action's founder and president, described Planned Parenthood's assertion as "very interesting." She declined to confirm or deny that the clinic visits were part of a Live Action operation, but did indicate in a telephone interview that an undercover videotape project of some sort was in the works.

"The story that speaks loudest will be in the evidence," she said. "I can't comment until we release the visual evidence."

The visits were made between Jan. 11 and Jan. 15 to health centers in Virginia, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Arizona. Among them was a clinic in Tucson, Ariz., which Planned Parenthood said was visited on the 15th, a week after the shooting rampage in that city that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Last week, Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder summarizing the visits and requesting an FBI investigation. If the man's assertions were true, she wrote, they would indicate possible violations of federal laws dealing with interstate sex trafficking of minors.

However, Richards said the visits could be part of a hoax resembling some past actions by anti-abortion activists.

"Once inside, these people have recorded `undercover' videos of their conversations with our clinic staff and then selectively and maliciously edited the videos," she wrote. "This may be happening once again. If so, this kind of activity should be firmly condemned."

Posted without comment

In the interest of dialing it back a notch, I'll refrain from snarking:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said he has not decided whether to seek a heart transplant for what he called his “end-stage heart failure” but said he will make that decision “at some point.”

[snip]

Regarding his heart, Mr. Cheney said that he might be able to live for years with the new device implanted in his chest.

“The technology’s gotten better and better and we’ve gotten more and more experience with people living with this technology,” he said. “So I’ll have to make a decision at some point whether or not I want to go for a transplant. But we haven’t addressed that yet.”

Have at it.

Meet your new RNC Chairman

It's all part of the right's plan to reload, rather than retreat, in eliminationist rhetoric against anyone who doesn't goosestep to their tune.

Meet Reince Priebus, the new Republican National Committee Chairman:

Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, referred to the "execution" of Obama three separate times during a recent media conference call.

"Feingold had mentioned that he thought that it would be good if we captured Obama in the battlefield setting and that he suffered the quote-unquote ultimate punishment there," Priebus told reporters while attempting to explain that Sen. Feingold (D-Wis.) was "out of the mainstream" because of his opposition to using capital punishment -- even on Osama bin Laden -- as a tool of the American criminal justice system.

"I find this point that he's made to be completely disgusting. I think it's offensive to the people of Wisconsin, I hope he has an explanation as to why he thinks Obama ought not to be executed and why he thinks we ought to bring Osama bin Laden to the United States that he should be captured alive and actually have a trial," Priebus said later.

Probed by reporters on how Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson would feel on these issues, Priebus surmised that he would also favor the execution of "Obama."

"My guess is he would believe that Obama should be executed and he oughta be treated as a war criminal," Priebus explained.

A reporter from WisPolitics later pointed out his use of Obama instead of Osama.

"You mean Osama bin Laden I take it," the reporter said.

But you guys keep denying that you're a bunch of racist bigots and that you're "constitutional originalists." Not that anyone believes you anymore, but keep it up.

Side note (sorry, I can't take credit for this one): If you remove all the vowels from RNC chairman Rience Priebus' name you get: RNC PR BS.

And in a gun-crazed society, he has the means to do it

OK, so we have a young man in Tucson shooting 19 people who is probably a paranoid schizophrenic, so the right can absolve itself that way.

How then, do they explain away this:

A New York money manager with a long history of legal battles with the government has been charged with threatening to kill 47 U.S. officials, including the nation's top securities and commodities regulators.

Vincent McCrudden, 49, last month allegedly posted online an "execution list" naming officials, including Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.

Federal prosecutors said the threat came shortly after the CFTC brought an enforcement action accusing the former commodities trader and two of his companies with operating unregistered investments.

McCrudden threatened officials at the SEC, CFTC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the National Futures Association, authorities said.
"Go buy a gun, and lets get to work in taking back our country from these criminals,"

This is your Tea Party, America

Now let me see if I have the twisted Teabagger mindset straight: In Teabag America, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are victims because people say their rhetoric is unnecessarily inflammatory, but Gabrielle Giffords had it coming:

In March 2010, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) warned that the rhetoric from the tea parties and Sarah Palin was potentially dangerous. “I can say that in the years that some of my colleagues have served — 20, 30 years — they’ve never seen it like this…when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there’s consequences to that action,” she said on MSNBC. Tuscon Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries called Giffords’ previous concerns about violent rhetoric “political gamesmenship,” claiming that if Giffords was so concerned, then she is to blame for Saturday’s shootings because she “had no security whatsoever”:

“It’s political gamesmanship. The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?” he said. “For all the stuff they accuse her [Palin] of, that gun poster has not done a tenth of the damage to the political discourse as what we’re hearing right now.”

Humphries also told the Guardian that Saturday’s shootings in Tuscon are “evolving into a conspiracy to destroy his organisation and silence criticism of the government.” Watch excerpts of interview here:

Real classy, asshole.

Still trying to claim that right-wing hate rhetoric breeds violence, are ya?

I don't know what would give anyone that idea:

Authorities responded Monday to a threat against Sen. Michael Bennet's (D-Colo.) Denver office, Bennet's spokesman said.

The FBI and U.S. Capitol Police arrested an individual suspected of making a threat to the Colorado Democrat's state office, said Adam Bozzi, the senator's communications director.

"We can confirm that there was a threat against Senator Bennet’s office and that the FBI is working with the Capitol Police to have arrested the individual responsible for the threat," Bozzi said in a statement.

Monday Big Blue Smuf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: None other than the Shrill One himself, Paul Krugman, on the right wing Climate of Hate.

Money quote:

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Meanwhile, Ross the Douchebag joins Matt Bai in trying to distance Jared Lee Loughner from any of the violent anti-government rhetoric that's making a few individuals who identify themselves as "simply entertainers" preposterously wealthy.

Conspiracy theories, Paul Wellstone, and the thuggishness of the right

As I head off to Florida next week to visit family, I'm reminded of another visit there, mere weeks before the 2002 midterm elections. Wellstone was running in a tight race against an empty suit named Norm Coleman for a seat that the Bushista Republicans wanted very, very badly, when the plane in which he, his wife, and daughter were traveling crashed less than two weeks before the election. I remember coming into the house and my father telling me that Paul Wellstone was dead, and without even a second thought, I blurted out, "They killed him. They wanted that seat and they killed him."

As it turns out, the FBI had been tracking Paul Wellstone's every move from the time he was a 25-year-old college professor:

The FBI's files on Paul and Sheila Wellstone, many of which are being made public for the first time, shed new light on the extent of the relationship between the FBI and the political activist who would go on to become a U.S. senator from Minnesota.

Some of the information uncovered in the 219 pages was new to one of his closest confidantes, former Wellstone campaign manager and state director Jeff Blodgett.

The files show that although the FBI initially took interest in Wellstone as part of the broader surveillance of the American left, the agency later served as his protector, investigating death threats the freshman senator received for his views on the first Gulf War, and, in the end, helping sift through the wreckage of the fatal plane crash that killed Wellstone and seven others eight years ago.

Wellstone's surviving sons declined to comment on the documents, which were obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by MPR News.

The U.S. Department of Justice released 88 of the 125 pages in Sen. Wellstone's FBI file, and 131 of the 227 pages in his wife's file. All of the documents included in Sheila Wellstone's file are related to the plane crash that killed the couple and their daughter Marcia.

The FBI did not include 76 pages related to the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that investigated the crash. A request for those records is pending.

[snip]

Within the first two weeks of his term, Wellstone began receiving death threats for his views on the war. The FBI files provide a detailed description of the angry and sometimes violent calls the Democratic senator received. One man called Wellstone's office and threatened to "throttle" him. A caller from Faribault said, "If I had a gun, I'd come after you, you SOB." Another caller said that if his son dies during his military service in the Persian Gulf, "then Wellstone will die."

"We were shocked and surprised by these kinds of calls," Blodgett said in an interview last week. "We certainly didn't expect that death threats would be part of the job of being a U.S. senator or taking death threats would be part of the job of Senate staff."

"There were threats on my life," Wellstone wrote. "I wished I had never been elected."

The FBI files indicate that the agency took the threats seriously. Investigators tried to track down the threatening callers and kept detailed information about their efforts.

The documents show that an FBI agent traveled to "Marine," (sic) Minn. on January 29 to meet with the man who threatened to "throttle" Wellstone. The man, whose name has been redacted from the documents, admitted that he called the office and said that he wanted to wring Wellstone's neck and throttle him.

The man told the FBI agent that the receptionist was "snotty" and hung up on him. He said he called back and spoke to a "polite receptionist." He told her, "Tell Senator Wellstone that Saddam Hussein appreciates what he's doing."

Federal prosecutors declined to file charges against the caller, and the FBI was unable to locate the other callers. Wellstone continued to receive threats, including a call from a man in February 1995 who said, "I'm watching you senator and I'm going to kill you within the week." Wellstone was assigned a protective detail for the week of the threat.

[snip]

The FBI took note of the bushy-haired college professor when he was arrested on May 7, 1970 at a protest against the Vietnam War at the Federal Office Building in downtown Minneapolis. Wellstone and 87 others were arrested for disturbing and obstructing access to a federal building.

Most of the names in the 1970 documents have been redacted, making it impossible to separate Wellstone out from the other defendants. One defendant pled guilty, another had the charges dismissed, and another was acquitted. The documents state that the rest of the defendants were found guilty during a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis and received fines of either $35 or five days in jail.

Neither the FBI files nor available court records indicate how Wellstone's case was resolved.

In a document sent to FBI headquarters, the head of the FBI's Minneapolis office said the case warranted "considerable investigation." The document notes that U.S. Attorney Robert Renner "could foresee the potential blockage of federal buildings throughout the country" if the anti-war protesters were acquitted.

The FBI obtained a copy of Wellstone's fingerprint card from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office and sent it to FBI headquarters to keep on file. A related FBI document notes that Paul David Wellstone, age 25, weighed 150 pounds, stood 5'6," and had brown hair and brown eyes.

O'Hara, the former head of the FBI's Minneapolis office, said that the FBI used to routinely investigate protests that occurred on federal property.

"There were sit-ins. There were break-ins. There was blood spilled over Selective Service files," he said. "There were a number of minor federal crimes committed. And back then, there maybe wasn't the patience that there might be now."

O'Hara joined the FBI as a special agent in 1963, but did not work in Minnesota until he was transferred to the Minneapolis office in 1991. He said he was not familiar with the arrests.

This report refers to an FBI criminal investigation following Wellstone's plane crash, in light of the many death threats Wellstone received during his career, including one received the day before the crash, and paints the FBI as a "protector" of Wellstone against these death threats in the years after J. Edgar Hoover's Cointelpro operation ended.

I am, and will always be skeptical. Remember, this is the FBI under George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and this was a Senator who voted against the resolution to allow Bush to invade Iraq on his trumped-up premise. There is a fair amount of evidence to contradict the FBI's conclusion of equipment issues as the cause of the crash, and there will always be questions in my mind as to what happened, despite this attempt to paint the FBI as Wellstone's "protector" from the threats against him.

Wellstone's death is old history now, and Al Franken has been an admirable, if belated, replacement. But as we head into an election which will likely see at least some adherents to the inflammatory, murderous rhetoric of the right, elevated to national office, it's important to remember how the right operates, how it seeks to not just defeat its opposition, but silence and murder it if necessary. When talk of "second amendment remedies" "Don't retreat, reload", and "violent overthrow" become acceptable; when Democratic congresspeople who voted for health care reform are threatened with death; when a GOP Congressional candidate tells his supporters to make his opponent "afraid to come out of his house"; when this sort of talk becomes an acceptable campaign tactic, it sends a message that violence is an acceptable way of dealing with election disappointment, that violence is an acceptable way of defeating your opponents, and that violence is in general acceptable if it's committed by people wearing flag pins and worshipping Jesus.

Black Gold, Texas Tea

Pastor Stephen Broden is pure black gold and Texas Tea. If only every Congressional district in the country could field someone as spectacularly insane and as shamelessly disingenuous as Pastor Steve, there wouldn't be any more of this nonsense from the MSM about the GOP retaking either chamber of Congress (You have my guarantee that, while the Democrats' majority will erode in both, the GOP is not going to take either.).

And Pastor Stevie isn't even saying anything new. Other GOP candidates in the past had also threatened the establishment with revolution (like these idiots, for instance) if not enough of them come out to vote for some of the most extreme fringers running for office. Democracy, for Republicans, is only viable and a hallowed institution if they win or get to steal every election with impunity.

Oh, sure he was talking about revolution at the ballot boxes... after the 2010 midterms, not now. Broden's comments were obviously a desperate Hail Mary pass thrown in the hopes that the Tea Baggers will come out in force for him and save him from a humiliating 30 point loss to the corrupt incumbent Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (who has some ethical issues she doesn't want to talk about).

And when you lose the prior support of the right wing Dallas Morning News and even Glenn Beck, who's also threatened open insurrection that led at least one guy to literally take up arms, you know it's time to shut your pie hole.

What I can't understand is, why hasn't this guy's church lost its tax-exempt status when he's plainly getting involved in politics?

A demand for an apology is not "reaching out"

It's hardly surprising that Ginny Thomas would pull something fucked up like this; after all, what would you expect from someone who would marry Clarence Thomas?

Virginia Thomas, the wife of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, left a message last weekend on the voice mail of Anita Hill, who accused her husband of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings, a spokeswoman for Ms. Thomas confirmed on Tuesday.

[snip]

“I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get past what happened so long ago,” Ms. Thomas said in a statement provided to The New York Times.

“That offer still stands,” her statement went on. “I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended.”

Ms. Thomas did not explain why she had reached out to Ms. Hill at this time. Ms. Hill did not respond to calls to her office at Brandeis.

While Ms. Thomas described the call as an attempt to reach out, the university appeared to be taking the matter more seriously.

Andrew Gully, senior vice president of the Brandeis University communications office, confirmed that Ms. Hill had received the message and that she had turned it over to the campus department of public safety. That office, in turn, passed it on to the F.B.I.

ABC News quoted from the voicemail:

“Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginny Thomas,” it quoted from the voicemail. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”

Ms. Thomas has long been active in conservative circles in Washington, and in the past year has rose to greater prominence as the founder of a new nonprofit activist group, Liberty Central, which opposes what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats.

Her activities with the group have raised questions of judicial ethics because the group, which pays her, has accepted large contributions from unidentified donors. She began the group with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000 from undisclosed contributors, tax forms show.

I'm sorry, but demanding an apology is not "extending an olive branch." Ginny Thomas is just another teabagger throwing her weight around. I would regard it as a threat too if I were Anita Hill.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who pointed out the absurdity of the notion that this was "reaching out." Google News still shows references to the Times' original headline:

...but now, the headline accurately reflects Mrs. Thomas' phone call: