They provide absolutely no evidence at all for it, and in fact repeat over and over again that they don’t have that data in a hail of May Bes.

Ed is a very gud riter.

Perhaps Utah’s shortage of SPLC-recognized hate groups has to do with the Mormon church, which is not a hate group but certainly contains a large number of somehow-pacified folks who would be right at home in hate groups. Lots of good people too, but on the whole Mormons are alarmingly authoritarian and I’d hate to see what would become of the state if any threats, real or perceived, popped up in the absence of a fed. govt. that could keep a lid on it.

You must not watch Rachel Maddow much.

Well, except for the leftbloggers covering it, like Greenwald and Crooks and Liars, to name two biggies. Just cuz we like Obama better than Bush doesn’t mean we pretend he farts perfume.

By contrast, here in Montana we are chockablock full of hate groups despite having the third lowest population density in the country (actually because of it). I guess you could call it pure distillate of rightwing whackaloon.

Nothing says Christmas like pepper spray.

“Our Pepper Sprays are safe and non toxic and will incapacitate an attacker for over thirty minutes”.

Hilarious. I’ve added this to my Stupid Web Shit file.

I don’t believe any of these are leftwing, but visit the SPLC to see for yourself.

There’s a few that are ostensibly left-wing (I see some Voz de Aztlan groups and a couple New Black Panther Parties), but the majority is white nationalists, Ku Klux Klan groups and neo-Nazis.

The Beltway consensus has long been fixed on extreme, unworkable solutions as a cornerstone of national security. Clearing out any but the most egregious garbage is legitimately kicking a nest of hornets within Washington; before that can happen, the President needs to give the firm impression to people with their heads up their asses on policy that his coattails are safe.

This is going to mean a fairly slow and often maddeningly statusquotarian process of deescalation of Bush’s poor policy choices. I’m personally convinced that until either the constituency exists to safely replace Gates or he can be dragooned into resigning without incident, it’s going to be basically impossible to get most of the civil libertarian stuff Obama got into office promising done.

Obama is now embracing and defending the worst anti-Constitutional and human rights positions of Bush, and LeftBloggers are deftly avoiding notice or comment on it.

Unfortunate, but (unlike Bush) it’s not really an exceptional case – the general trend in American governance has been a stronger executive branch and less respect for human rights. While as a justification or excuse it’s total bullshit, the ‘otherwise occupied with the current economic implosion’ line – especially in light of the feeble but well-funded and constantly media-hyped efforts to “oppose” any measures taken towards recovery – works well enough as an explanation for why nobody’s particularly keen on forcing Obama to own up.

That is, outside of exceptional cases. Where it’s become obvious that his White House is, out of inertia, institutional carryover (esp. w.r.t. the Pentagon, many of whose worst Bushleaguers are still in office), or simple policy laziness, actively fighting the fights that got Bush his bad name – not so much.

There are people who will defend his behaviors out of a sheer cultishness, but the general impression is
a) Obama doing the same shit or worse that Bush did on human rights and the executive branch makes him a shithead, but
b) The people throwing billions of dollars at everything from destroying any industry they can freak out stockholders in to mainstreaming a flat tax represent bigger fish right this second.

(Also, this particular blog is devoted to right-wing idiocy, so with the exception of the strange week indeed where the rightbloggers are jerking off all to themselves and Obama’s being an odious shithead, I wouldn’t expect to hear much.)

We’re too busy getting teabagged.

Way to go, brown loving people.

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out to Get You [Mark Hemingway]
Jonah, Mark S., and Mark K. have all made good points about the problems with the DHS report. I wonder if the thing isn’t so boneheaded it actually emboldens the people they seek to warn us about. Now, I think these so-called “right-wing” extremist groups are pretty low on the list of threats to American society, but to the extent they are a problem, they thrive on paranoia. They usually have to gin-up conspiracies about the federal government persecuting them — so why would the DHS actually produce a legitimate document that justifies their paranoia and can be used as a recruiting tool?

This is from someone writing at the Corner, mind you, the house organ of the Glorious War for Iraq movement of 2002-2008, that most successful and emboldening of all terrorist recruiting tools. Everyone who writes there is a recruiting tool. Or just plain tool.

I’m not sure I agree that pepper spray is an appropriate response to being asked to sign a petition.

Ah, how the tone changes.

From here:

ACORN is “gate busting” Tea Parties nationwide. These far-left goons are attending them and mispresenting their allegiance. They are getting petitions signed, misrepresenting them as opposition to the Obama agenda. They explain something different than that written on the petition. More fraud, and lies from Obama Acorn people. Please be careful when signing your name to anything at these Tea Parties. We are still not sure what these whackjobs are using the names for, these people are known for violent criminal acts,bullying tactics, fraud and harrassment (just to name a few). Groups like ACORN and CODEPINK are nothing but Anti-American criminal organizations. BEWARE. I just stocked up on Pepper spray at http://shop.christmascentral.com/items/item.aspx?itemid=63674 JUST IN CASE
http://teapartymay16.ning.com/forum/topics/warning-acorn-alert

I love the guy further down who says:

I’m not sure I agree that pepper spray is an appropriate response to being asked to sign a petition.

The Jeffs and sundry other localist or non-aligned fundamentalist hate groups are categorized as apolitical. They’re not the actual problem, though – the problem is infiltration, the behavior of groups who assert hypernormality and want into the police and military just to prove what good, upstanding patriots they are – because not only do they then turn around and use state resources to kill people, they promote to the public and their peers in the armed civil service a corrupt worldview in which civilian deaths are situationally laudable.

There are a very small and very uninfluential number of people on the left who believe this, but they’re not typically members of the local police.