The Department of Homeland Security has recently released a report on the threat posed by right-wing extremist terrorism to the U.S. The usual suspects are throwing a hissy-fit about how the Obama Nation is unfairly targeting them and their precious tea parties. Please Michelle, do me a favor and Ctrl+f the PDF file and search for "tea party" or "tea parties." The report does not in any way shape or form "indict" the entire conservative movement. What it does target is a very specific sub-set of the far-right that, in the report's words:
focus on the economy, the perceived loss of U.S. jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and home foreclosures. Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish "financial elites."
In other words, the report is about the black helicopter, paleocon crowd. You know, the types who like Ron Paul and post on Stormfront. The types who did the OKC bombing and recently murdered three cops.
There is also a huge double standard at work here in Malkin's latest faux-outrage.
CQ Homeland Security, 25 March 2005:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation’s security.
According to the list — part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security — between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.
It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.
WHERE THE HELL WAS MICHELLE MALKIN ON THIS LITTLE DISCREPANCY?!
The Bush administration completely neglected to even mention the existence of right-wing extremist terrorists in the U.S., despite their responsibility for numerous acts of terror and murder. Anyone who reads David Neiwert's blog knows that they engage in many underreported acts of violence that can cause a great deal of damage. Incidents like these:
* June 1994: White supremacist Robert Joos is charged with resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon following a traffic stop confrontation with Missouri State Highway Patrol officers.
* July 1994: Steven Garrett Colbern is pulled over in a traffic stop in Upland, California, but resists arrest and has to be subdued by five officers. His car is found to contain an assault rifle, a silencer, and a part necessary to convert the rifle to full automatic file (he is later briefly thought to be the John Doe #2 sought after in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation).
* October 1994: A routine traffic stop of three Michigan militia activists near Fowlerville, Michigan, uncovers loaded three semi-automatic rifles, four other guns, armor-piercing ammunition, and night vision goggles. The militiamen are arrested but never show up in court for their trial (later, one of the fugitives allegedly murders another one).
* Early 1995: Tim Hampton is charged with assaulting a police officer near Dallas, Texas, over an incident that occurred at a traffic stop.
* May 1995: James Boran is pulled over because of outstanding traffic warrants in Massachusetts. Boran refuses to exit his van and instead drives away. After his path is blocked, he continues his escape on foot, barricading himself in his apartment. After he finally surrenders, police find bombmaking materials and militia manuals.
* June 1995: Michael Hill, a militia and common law court activist in Ohio, is shot and killed by a Frazeysburg, OH, police officer after pulling a gun on the officer during a traffic stop.
* October 1995: Donald Lee Smith, of Cherokee County, Georgia, is pulled over for a traffic stop, resists arrest and is found to be in possession of a concealed assault weapon.
* November 1995: "Sovereign citizen" Reinaldo A. DeJesus of White Creek, New York, is arrested for numerous traffic and vehicle charges, and two charges of resisting arrest, following a traffic stop for a burned-out headlight.
* January 1996: Larry Martz, a militia and common law court activist in Ohio, attacks a Highway Patrol trooper during a traffic stop near Cambridge, OH. Martz had 23 weapons in his truck.
* February, 1996: Washington militia leader Bruce Alden Banister is pulled over for expired license tabs. The confrontation which follows ends with him eventually convicted of third-degree assault of a police officer and resisting arrest.
* August 1996: Kim Lee Bonsteel of Franklin, North Carolina, is convicted on 18 charges stemming from a 1994 incident in which he led law enforcement officers on a chase through three counties after he refused to produce his driver’s license or get out of his truck at a traffic stop. The chase destroyed several patrol cars, injured three officers, and caused a sheriff’s deputy to die of a heart attack.
* January 1997: A routine traffic stop involving skinhead and militia leader Johnny Bangerter of Utah turns into a chase and brief standoff at a trailer park.
* February 1997: Cheyne and Chevie Kehoe engage Ohio law enforcement officers in two well-publicized gun battles following a traffic stop in Wilmington, Ohio.
* March 1997: Aryan Nations member Morris Gulett rams a police cruiser during a chase following an attempt to pull him over for going the wrong way down a one-way street. Gulett claimed he drover away because he did not have a drivers’ license and he "was just in one of those moods." One week earlier, another Ohio Aryan Nations member was arrested following a traffic stop during which police found that he had a loaded handgun stuffed in a beer carton.
* August 1997: In New Hampshire, Carl Drega is stopped near a supermarket in Colebrook, New Hampshire, because of the rust holes in his pickup. Drega opens fire on the state trooper, killing him, then kills his partner as well. Drega then drives into town and kills two more people before fleeing into Vermont, where he has a final gun battle with police there. He dies, but not before injuring three more officers.
* September 1997: Craig and Doug Brodrick, two brothers who had recently moved to Boise, are stopped for failing to signal. They begin a gun battle which results in their own deaths as well as the death of a Boise police officer and the wounding of another.
Busted-up post-9/11 plots like these:
The far-right "Patriot" who constructed a sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing hundreds.
-- The Alabama militiamen who plotted to go on an anti-Latino killing rampage.
-- The ex-Army Ranger who planned an anti-abortion killing spree.
-- The young skinheads who wanted to kill 107 black people and cap it off with Barack Obama
See also this, this, and this.
Right-wing extremism is a problem in America. Undiluted, It can be equally potent as al-Qaeda's ideology. This has shit to do with tea parties. It has everything to do with the Klan, neo-Nazis, militia groups and other assorted monsters.
Malkin knows this and is trying to use concern about it against Obama. In her perfect world, violence by reactionary whites would go completely unnoticed by the feds, who apparently should focus and rounding up and abusing brown people. She's playing with fire in this case, and she knows it.
As a side note, anyone catch the irony of Malkin looking at descriptions of various far-right terrorist groups and thinking "ZOMG they're watching us." She's unintentionally fingering her own movement as one of bigotry and violence.