Michelle Malkin and Newt Gingrich Take Report on Rightwing Violence To Heart
Michelle Malkin is completely bent out of shape over the release of a Department of Homeland Security report analyzing the risk of violence in the coming years from radical right wing extremist groups. One of the reports rather obvious conclusions is that the combination of the current economic climate (record unemployment) and the current political climate (Democrats in control the government, black man with Muslim-sounding name as President) is a recipe for increased violence among fringe right wing groups.
Malkin seems to think this report represents some sort of plot by leftists in the Obama administration to target people like herself and her merry band of teabaggers. Implicit in her rant is the notion that there couldn't possibly be any legitimate concerns underlying this report. The reality, though, is that this report was almost surely written by a career analyst at DHS, not a partisan operative, and its conclusions are as obvious as they are non-controversial.
I wonder if Malkin happens to remember what the single deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil was prior to 9/11. That's right, it was the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people (many of them children) and wounded over 800. And it was carried out by right wing extremists. Moreover, in the years directly preceding the bombing, the country had been in recession and the Democrats had taken control of Congress and the White House. Indeed, the entire Clinton presidency was marked by increasing radicalism among fringe right wingers that eventually led to the creation of armed militia groups all over the country.
.....the rest at the link
More here, The ultimate reaping of what one sows: right-wing edition
Right-wing polemicists today are shrieking in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Department of Homeland Security sent to local police forces which warns of growing "right-wing extremist activity." The report (.pdf) identifies attributes of these right-wing extremists, warning that a growing domestic threat of violence and terrorism "may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration" and "groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority."
Conservatives have responded to this disclosure as though they're on the train to FEMA camps. The Right's leading political philosopher and intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, invokes fellow right-wing giant Ronald Reagan and says: "Here we go Again," protesting that "this seems so nakedly ideological." Michelle Malkin, who spent the last eight years cheering on every domestic surveillance and police state program she could find, announces that it's "Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real!" Lead-War-on-Terror-cheerleader Glenn Reynolds warns that DHS -- as a result of this report (but not, apparently, anything that happened over the last eight years) -- now considers the Constitution to be a "subversive manifesto." Super Tough Guy Civilization-Warrior Mark Steyn has already concocted an elaborate, detailed martyr fantasy in which his house is surrounded by Obama-dispatched, bomb-wielding federal agents. Malkin's Hot Air stomps its feet about all "the smears listed in the new DHS warning about 'right-wing extremism.'"
