Friday Morning Reads
Posted: September 2, 2011 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, abortion rights, Barack Obama, commercial banking, Domestic terrorism, Economy, Elections, fetus fetishists, financial institutions, House of Representatives, morning reads, Planned Parenthood, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics | Tags: FED, fiscal stimulus, Goldman Sachs investigation, James Carville, Litton, Obama Polls, Obama speech schedule, Stonehenge, Subprime mortgages 24 Comments
Well, it looks like I’m in a tropical storm warning right now. I’m just hoping the electricity stays on as TD 13 becomes TS Lee when it drifts around and comes on shore some time on Saturday. I’m also hoping Hurricane Katia stays a fish storm but that’s looking less likely at the moment. Lot’s of us may get flooded yet again. I’m just hoping we can go get NJ Governor Chris Christie to go beat up Eric Cantor in the interim. Poor Vermont looks like it needs a lot of help right now! We’re expected to get rain that may fall at 2-3 inches an hour. I’m not sure if our pumps can handle that; especially the crappy ones the Corps bought from Jeb Bush that have been problematic since they were installed.
So, it’s nice to see that the FED has decided that Goldman Sachs is now under its jurisdiction and is ordering it to review its foreclosure practices of a former subsidiary. So many heads should roll over the subprime mortgage market mess and so few have to date. The Fed’s a pretty aggressive regulator when it feels some institution is in its charter. It’s good to see the charter is extending beyond commercial banks and thrifts now that the cheap lending has been extended to other financial institutions too. They take the truth-in-lending laws very seriously.
The Federal Reserve ordered Goldman Sachs Group Inc to hire a consultant to review practices of a former mortgage subsidiary on Thursday and said it plans to assess a monetary penalty for wrongful foreclosures.
The Fed’s crackdown sent Goldman shares down 3.5 percent on Thursday, even as the bank announced that it had completed the sale of Litton Loan Servicing LP, the mortgage-servicing business at the heart of its foreclosure problems.
Litton’s regulatory troubles stem largely from the practice of “robosigning,” in which bank employees signed foreclosure documents without reviewing case files as required by law.
Many large banks, including Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup Inc, have been targets of probes by state and federal regulators over the same issue, in the clean-up after a world financial crisis triggered in large part by bad mortgages in the United States and bonds backed by those loans.
The Fed cited “a pattern of misconduct and negligence” at Litton in announcing its enforcement action against Goldman.
The Economist has been having a reader debate on the necessity of Fiscal stimulus for the US. The Hell, Yes! vote appears to have it. The comments are about as interesting as the two economists debating the motion.
The American economy has remained extremely weak since officially leaving recession in mid-2009. The unemployment rate has barely fallen. Recent figures suggest GDP grew at less than a 1% annualised rate through the first half of the year and the odds of a return to recession have risen. The headwinds facing the economy are considerable: the private sector is still trying to reduce the burden of debt it is carrying from the pre-crisis boom years. House prices are still in the doldrums and mortgage credit is hard to get. State and local governments, which are required to balance their budgets, have been forced to cut spending, workers and hours to cope with falling tax collections. Many argue that in such a situation, the federal government is the only entity left that can provide a boost to overall demand and keep the economy from slipping back into recession or prolonged stagnation. At present, however, federal fiscal policy is scheduled to do the opposite: at the end of this year, a temporary payroll tax cut and enhanced jobless benefits expire.
“I do think this is a really big debate and I think the White House was out of bounds…in trying to schedule a speech during a debate,” Carville said on “GMA.”
This will be Gov. Rick Perry’s first debate, and as Carville said this morning the stakes are high.
“Given a choice between watching a debate and the speech I would have watched the debate and I’m not even a Republican or even close to being a Republican,” he said, adding it will be a “barn burner.”
The administration agreed to move the speech to Thursday- possibly competing with the kick off of the NFL season instead. The White House has been touting this jobs plan telling ABC News that he will propose tax relief, infrastructure investment and assistance for the long term unemployed.
Obama has received advice from both sides with some arguing for an ambitious proposal and others recommending finding middle ground.
Carville, an ABC News consultant, told me it doesn’t matter what Obama proposes, it won’t get through Congress.
For the first time this year, Texas Governor Rick Perry leads President Obama in a national Election 2012 survey. Other Republican candidates trail the president by single digits.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows Perry picking up 44% of the vote while the president earns support from 41%. Given the margin of sampling error (+/- 3 percentage points) and the fact that the election is more than a year away, the race between the two men is effectively a toss-up. Just over a week ago, the president held a three-point advantage over Perry. (To see question wording, click here.)
Perry leads by nine among men but trails by five among women. Among voters under 30, the president leads while Perry has the edge among those over 30. The president leads Perry by 16 percentage points among union members while Perry leads among those who do not belong to a union.
I’d vote for a dead dog before I’d vote for Rick Perry, just in case you’re wondering where I stand. A Quinnipiac University poll also shows the President’s approval on handling of unemployment and the economy is still bleak.
President Barack Obama’s overall job approval rating has sunk to an all-time low, as American voters disapprove 52 – 42 percent, compared to 47 – 46 percent approval in July, and among whites and men his approval has dropped into the 30s, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Congressional leaders rate even lower in the public eye. Voters nationwide are more pessimistic about the economy, saying 49 – 11 percent that it is getting worse rather than improving, a precipitous drop from a July 14 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University, in which voters said 32 – 23 percent the economy was worsening and January 18, when voters said 36 – 20 percent it was improving. The economy is in a recession, 76 percent of voters say, and is not beginning to recover, voters say 68 – 28 percent. Voters trust Obama more than congressional Republicans to handle the economy 44 – 41 percent, but they say 46 – 42 percent that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would do a better job than Obama. They are split 43 – 41 percent on whether Obama or GOP candidate Rick Perry would be better on the economy.
This should be an interesting political season. My guess is that it’s going to get very ugly.
There’s some good news from NPR about the Obama Justice Department. It seems they have made a priority of keeping abortion providers and women seeking abortions safe from violence and protestor harassment.
The Obama Justice Department has been taking a more aggressive approach against people who block access to abortion clinics, using a 1994 law to bring cases in greater numbers than its predecessor.
The numbers are most stark when it comes to civil lawsuits, which seek to create buffer zones around clinic entrances for people who have blocked access in the past. Under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has filed eight civil cases since the start of the Obama administration. That’s a big increase over the George W. Bush years, when one case was filed in eight years.
“There’s been a substantial difference between this administration and the one immediately prior,” says Ellen Gertzog, director of security for Planned Parenthood. “From where we sit, there’s currently much greater willingness to carefully assess incidents when they occur and to proceed with legal action when appropriate.”
Over the past two years, the Justice Department and FBI have been meeting with abortion-rights groups and medical providers all over the country to explain their work and talk about a federal task force designed to prevent violence against doctors and women seeking abortions.
The National Abortion Federation, which tracks violent incidents, says major violence is down since the 2009 murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. The man who killed Tiller has been convicted, and a federal grand jury is investigating the conduct of his alleged accomplices.
But Sharon Levin, a vice president at the National Abortion Federation, says there are still some signs of trouble, including two incidents this summer involving Molotov cocktails and the arrest of a man who told police he wanted to shoot two abortion doctors in Wisconsin.
So I admit to being totally fascinated by Stonehenge. I wanted to share this Tomb find in the place where the famous stones were most likely quarried.
The tomb for the original builders of Stonehenge could have been unearthed by an excavation at a site in Wales.
The Carn Menyn site in the Preseli Hills is where the bluestones used to construct the first stone phase of the henge were quarried in 2300BC.
Organic material from the site will be radiocarbon dated, but it is thought any remains have already been removed.
Archaeologists believe this could prove a conclusive link between the site and Stonehenge.
The remains of a ceremonial monument were found with a bank that appears to have a pair of standing stones embedded in it.
The bluestones at the earliest phase of Stonehenge – also set in pairs – give a direct architectural link from the iconic site to this newly discovered henge-like monument in Wales.
The central site had already been disturbed so archaeologists chose to excavate around the edges
The tomb, which is a passage cairn – a style typical of Neolithic burial monument – was placed over this henge.
How cool is that?
So, that’s my contribution for the day. Hopefully, I’ll be on line through the weekend but if you don’t see me, you’ll know what happened!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Profiting from Torture, War, Outing CIA agents, and Ruining America
Posted: August 30, 2011 Filed under: Central Intelligence Agency, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Crime, cyber security, Democratic Politics, Diplomacy Nightmares, Domestic terrorism, toxic waste, U.S. Military | Tags: Dick Cheney 18 Comments
Now, ask me how I really feel about the dueling book tours of war criminals Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld?
Better yet, ask me why I disagree with President Obama who hasn’t said anything about the Dark Lords’ Book Tours and still thinks we should just put all this behind us?
MSNBC and NBC interviewed the vile creature that was our vice president, and I’ve actually watched the interviews. One of the most disgusting parts of the book and of the interviews was his continued plea for exoneration of Scooter Libby for all the lying and law breaking he did to cover up Cheney’s role in the outing of Valerie Plame. He continues to point the finger at Colin Powell for the investigation and seethes about Dubya’s refusal to pardon Libby. He also characterizes Condoleeza Rice as “tearful” for her public apology on the 16 words that drove Joe Wilson to the op-ed pages to try to stop the incredible mistake that was and is the Iraq war. If there ever was a reason to never bring Republicans back to a realm where they can influence the foreign policy of the U.S., Cheney is out there making that case right now. How can so few people cost one nation so much in lives and treasure and then be allowed to go out and profit from their reckless, stupid, costly, deadly ideology and policy?
Here’s a link to The Atlantic to remind us “Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney”. There’s a huge, long list that includes Halliburton, spying on Americans, indefinite detentions, torture, and the radical view of executive power that haunts us today. Each item on the list comes from a long list of books that investigated Cheney’s misdeeds and each of them should be enough to start a righteous Justice Department investigation of his actions while in office. Here’s the conclusions from author Conor Friedersdorf.
Dick Cheney was a self-aggrandizing criminal who used his knowledge as a Washington insider to subvert both informed public debate about matters of war and peace and to manipulate presidential decision-making, sometimes in ways that angered even George W. Bush.
After his early years of public service, he capitalized on connections he made while being paid by taxpayers to earn tens of millions of dollars presiding over Halliburton. While there, he did business with corrupt Arab autocrats, including some in countries that were enemies of the United States. Upon returning to government, he advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail.
Glenn Greenwald got a jump on the corporate media by publishing his diatribe in Salon on Thursday. Oh, wait the corporate media is being somewhat deferential to grab the interviews. Greenwald lists the results of the poison fruits of elite immunity. While CNN is fretting about the dying Lockerbie bomber who killed hundreds, here’s what’s going on with Dick Cheney, who is responsible for the senseless deaths of hundreds of thousands.
That’s what happens when the Government — marching under the deceitful Orwellian banner of Look Forward, Not Backward — demands that its citizens avert their eyes from the crimes of their leaders so that all can be forgotten: the crimes become non-crimes, legitimate acts of political choice, and the criminals become instantly rehabilitated by the message that nothing they did warrants punishment. That’s the same reason people like John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales are defending their torture and illegal spying actions not in a courtroom but in a lush conference of elites in Aspen.
The U.S. Government loves to demand that other countries hold their political leaders accountable for serious crimes, dispensing lectures on the imperatives of the rule of law. Numerous states bar ordinary convicts from profiting from their crimes with books. David Hicks, an Australian citizen imprisoned without charges for six years at Cheney’s Guantanamo, just had $10,000 seized by the Australian government in revenue from his book about his time in that prison camp on the ground that he is barred from profiting from his uncharged, unproven crimes.
By rather stark contrast, Dick Cheney will prance around the next several weeks in the nation’s largest media venues, engaging in civil, Serious debates about whether he was right to invade other countries, torture, and illegally spy on Americans, and will profit greatly by doing so. There are many factors accounting for his good fortune, the most important of which are the protective shield of immunity bestowed upon him by the current administration and the more generalized American principle that criminal accountability is only for ordinary citizens and other nations’ (unfriendly) rulers.
Even George Will says that Dick Cheney–at the very least–owes the world and the US an apology.
Five hundred and sixty five pages and a simple apology would have been in order in some of them. Which is to say, the great fact of those eight years is we went to war—big war, costly war—under false pretenses. And…to write a memoir in which you say essentially nothing seriously went wrong…if I wrote a memoir of my last week, I would have things to apologize for.
From what I can tell from these bits and blurbs from the interviews with NBC, Cheney thinks everything he did was right and every one else is wrong. This includes the President he served and the people he served with maybe the exception of Donald Rumsfeld. It’s a little odd, don’t you think, that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Dubya can’t leave the country for fear of being sent directly to The Hague to be tried for Crimes against humanity? Yet, Cheney can’t think of one thing that he wasn’t right about.
If you can stomach it, here’s a Youtube of NBC’s ‘exclusive” with Dick Cheney. Isn’t this just ducky? Oh, and his book is up there on the bestseller list now. How on earth could we let this vile creature out on a rehabilitation tour and enrich him for his inhumane agenda?
Oh, and just in case you’re inclined to give our President a Break, here’s a little reminder on something from Wikileaks via Jonathan Turley and David Corn from 2010 w/ht to Susie Madrak.
One of the little reported details from the latest batch of Wikileaks material are cables showing that the Obama Administration worked hard behind the scenes not only to prevent any investigation of torture in the United States but shutdown efforts abroad to enforce the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. This includes threatening the Spanish that, if they did not derail a judicial investigation, it would have serious consequences in bilateral relations. I discussed these cables on Countdown.
For two years, President Obama has worked to block the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration — even as both Dick Cheney and George Bush publicly admit to ordering waterboarding of suspects.
David Corn in Mother Jones has an interesting posting today on the issue.
A “confidential” April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department discloses how the Administration discarded any respect for the independence of the judiciary in Spain and pressured the government to derail the prosecution of Bush officials. Human rights groups around the world had called for such enforcement in light of Obama promise that no torturers would be prosecuted and Holder’s blocking of any investigation into war crimes.
The Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had filed a demand for prosecution with Spain’s National Court to indict former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon’s former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. It had a compelled factual basis that these men ordered or facilitated war crimes — a record that has only become stronger since this confrontation.
American officials pressured government officials, including prosecutors and judges, not to enforce international law and that this was “a very serious matter for the USG.” It was Obama’s own effort at creating a “Coalition of the Unwilling” — nations unwilling to enforce treaties on torture and war crimes when the alleged culprits are American officials.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) joined the embassy’s charge d’affaires in the secret campaign to block the prosection of Judge Baltasar Garzón.
Friday Reads
Posted: March 11, 2011 Filed under: collective bargaining, Domestic terrorism, Environment, Environmental Protection, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, right wing hate grouups, The Media SUCKS, the villagers | Tags: Climate change, General Clapper, Islamophobia, Libya, Peter King, polar ice sheet mass loss, Senator Lindsay Graham, Wisconsin 19 Comments
Good Morning!
I’ve noticed that we seem to be seeing a lot of change recently along with a lot of people that would prefer to stick their heads in the sand and try to legislate the world back 100 years. It really seems like science, voter sentiment, and the world are at odds with the vision of our leaders these days. Here are some examples.
A study done by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was just published in Geophysical Research Letters here provides some pretty clear evidence that the polar ice sheet mass loss is accelerating at a rate that is increasing exponentially.
It’s been clear for a while that the polar ice sheet mass loss is accelerating (see Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: “Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier”).
But the new study is a bombshell because of its credibility and thoroughness — and because it provides perhaps the most credible estimate to date of the sea level rise we face in 2050 on our current emissions path, 1 foot.
The JPL news release runs through the calculation that leads to the 1-foot estimate:
The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.
It is always worthwhile to make clear that the projections are uncertain. On the other hand, one would have to say that the uncertainty is greater on the high side — since the rate of human-caused warming is itself projected to accelerate, and the poles are the place where the planet is heating up the most, much faster than expected (see “Deep ocean heat is rapidly melting Antarctic ice: Oceanographer at AGU: Western Antarctic Peninsula is seeing “the highest increase in temperatures of anywhere on Earth”).
Senator Lindsey Graham wants Director of National Intelligence General Clapper to resign because he answered a question truthfully. It’s even unclear if Graham was even in the hearing for the entire committee interview.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an exclusive interview with Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron, called for Gen. James Clapper to resign or be fired as Director of National Intelligence, citing his comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, on which Graham sits.
Clapper had stated his belief that the Qaddafi regime, in the long term would “prevail” in Libya, and also assessed China and Russia to be primary threats to the United States.
Graham told Cameron that he lacks confidence in Clapper’s understanding of his job, that President Obama should “repudiate” Clapper’s remarks, and that this is the third time Clapper has faltered in this way.
Clapper clarified that North Korea and Iran are “of great concern,” but questioned whether they pose a “direct mortal threat” to the United States. The intelligence chief seemed to be focused on which countries have the capability, not necessarily the intent, to threaten the United States.
WonktheVote posted a thread earlier this week showing that the threat of terrorism in the US comes more from white, right wing military groups than from radicalized American Muslims. This evidence contrasts Peter King’s McCarthyism style hearing yesterday which relied on only personal stories. There were no people invited to testify from law enforcement, the FBI, or Homeland Security. Understandly, so there’s more evidence on who we should fear at C&L. Dave Niewert must’ve read her!!! Niewert document 22 cases in these kind of violence in the last tw0 years and shows a map. They’ve occurred all over the place.
In their eagerness to promote Peter King’s dubious and nakedly Islamophobic hearings on homegrown Islamic-radical terrorism, O’Reilly and his Fox colleagues have openly sneered at suggestions that we ought to do the same for right-wing extremists and their mounting acts of violence. This case definitively underscores that need, embodied in the 22 cases we’ve documented over the past two and a half years:
Simultaneously, it’s also not very clear that the Islamic radicals pose a serious threat in terms of domestic terrorist activity. Certainly, there’s plenty of reasons to believe that the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism is wildly overstated — not least of which is the fact that, as Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress reported, terrorism incidents in the USA have been coming from non-Muslim sources at nearly twice the rate as that of Muslims.
Lexington at The Economist had this to say about the hearings.
It is indeed hard to find much to like in Mr King. The representative for Long Island has approached this most sensitive of subjects with the delicacy of a steamroller, plus an overactive imagination and a generous dollop of prejudice. To be clear: he may not be prejudiced against America’s Muslims (the “overwhelming majority” are “outstanding Americans”, he says) but he long ago prejudged the question his own hearings are supposed to answer, being already firmly of the view that the country’s Muslims are doing too little to counter radicalisation within their ranks. He is the author of a novel, “Vale of Tears”, in which a heroic version of his thinly disguised self busts a home-grown al-Qaeda cell at a Long Island Islamic centre. His own attitude to terrorism, though, is conveniently elastic. In the 1980s this Irish-American Catholic sympathised strongly with the Irish Republican Army, going so far as to compare Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the terrorist group’s political wing, to George Washington.
Beyond these objections to his person, prejudices and past, most of the available evidence suggests that Mr King’s central thesis is overblown, if not flat wrong. Muslim co-operation with the authorities is not perfect, but by most accounts—including those of Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, and Eric Holder, the attorney-general—the community has in general worked hard to expose terrorist plots in its midst. In one prominent case last year, for instance, five men from northern Virginia who had travelled to Pakistan in search of jihad were convicted after their families tipped off the FBI. The Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security, a research group affiliated with Duke University and the University of North Carolina, reported recently that 48 of the 120 Muslims suspected of plotting terror attacks in America since the felling of the twin towers in 2001 were turned in by fellow Muslims.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker the “mobilizer of the year”.
While blasting Walker and Wisconsin’s Republican legislators for their “absolute corruption of democracy” in passing an anti-labor bill, the leader of the nation’s largest union group thanked the governor for getting activists fired up. “We probbably should have invited him here today to receive the Mobilizer of the Year Award,” Trumka said Thursday morning while speaking to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “Wisconsin is the beginning — it’s pushing the start button” for pro-labor activism.
ED Kain at Forbe’s American Times says that the GOP’s war on collective bargainning will turn out to be its Waterloo.
And not just Wisconsin, but also Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and the rest of the over-reaching state Republicans. Governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and Jan Brewer are riding on the coattails of the Tea Party, but they’ve become blind to the dangers of their radical policies.
In Wisconsin, Democrats are already promising to step-up recall efforts. But the recalls are only a small part of what is likely going to be a huge anti-Republican backlash across the nation, as working Americans finally realize what that party actually stands for: an playing field heavily tilted toward the rich and powerful, toward corporate power, and against worker rights.
Wow, what a week! What’s been on your mind and your reading and blog list?
Homegrown terror and the return of McCarthyism
Posted: March 9, 2011 Filed under: Domestic terrorism | Tags: McCarthyism, MLK Day bombing attempt, Rep. King's "hearings" on "radical Islam" 24 CommentsA day before Rep. King’s “radical Islam” hearings, a white supremacist is arrested for the attempted MLK Day bombing in Spokane, Washington.
From the Spokesman-Review — “Suspect in MLK bomb tied to racist movement“:
Kevin Harpham in a 1990 Kettle Falls yearbook photo. (Courtesy Photo/The Spokesman-Review)
An ex-soldier with ties to the white supremacist movement has been taken into custody in connection with the planting of a backpack bomb along the planned route of the Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane, authorities have confirmed.
Kevin William Harpham, 36, of Colville, could face life imprisonment on charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an unregistered explosive device, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court. An initial court appearance is scheduled for this afternoon.
Harpham was arrested this morning during a raid at his home at 1088 Cannon Way near Addy, Wash., by dozens of federal agents who had been assembling in Spokane during the past few days.
More details from the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Harpham was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance in late 2004. It was not known when Harpham joined or if he was still a member. The National Alliance was one of the most prominent hate groups in America for decades, but has fallen on hard times since the 2002 death of its founder, William Pierce. Pierce is the author of The Turner Diaries, a race war novel often referred to as the Bible of the radical right.
Our research indicates that Harpham was apparently in the military in 1996-97, when records suggest he was part of the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Lewis, Wash. The SPLC reported in 2006 that Fort Lewis was one of several military installations with a concentration of secret extremist members.
Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress also has a related piece up that is a must-read — “As King Targets Muslims, There Have Been Almost Twice As Many Plots Since 9/11 From Non-Muslim Terrorist“:
Yet as a January 2011 terrorism statistics report — compiled using publicly available data from the FBI and other crime agencies — from the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) shows, terrorism by Muslim Americans has only accounted for a minority of terror plots since 9/11. Since the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, Muslims have been involved in 45 domestic terrorist plots. Meanwhile, non-Muslims have been involved in 80 terrorist plots.
In fact, right-wing extremist and white supremacist attacks plots alone outnumber plots by Muslims, with both groups being involved in 63 terror plots, 18 more plots than Muslim Americans have been involved in. Here is a breakdown of attacks by group, along with a few examples of plots by some of these groups:
Anti-Government/Anti-Tax Extremists: There have been 36 plots by right-wing extremists since 9/11. These attacks include Joseph Stack’s suicide attack on a Texas IRS building and Joshua Cartwright, who became enraged after the election of Barack Obama and “believed that the US Government was conspiring against him.”
KKK/NeoNazi/White Supremacist: There have been 27 plots by white supremacists since 9/11. These attacks include a 2004 letter bombing of the Arizona Office of Diversity and Dialogue that injured three employees.
Unknown/Miscellaneous: There were five attacks that federal crime officials did not categorize.
Christian Extremists/Anti-Abortion: There were three attacks by anti-abortion extremists and Christian extremists. The killing of abortion provider George Tiller is the most prominent of these attacks.
Black Supremacist Cults: There were two plots by black supremacist cults.
Jewish Extremists: There were two plots by Jewish extremists. The most prominent of these was a plot by Robert Goldstein to attack a local Islamic center with home made C4 and other explosives.
Extreme Anti-Immigrant: There were two plots by anti-immigrant extremists. One of these was the attack by Shawn Forde, who murdered a Queens deli clerk and was motivated by racist and anti-immigrant feelings.
Anti-Jewish: There was one plot by an anti-Semitic extremist. Norman Leboon made anti-Semitic threats against Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA).
Anarchist: There was a single plot by an anarchist. Joseph D. Konopka “wreaked havoc in 13 counties by setting fires, disrupting radio and television broadcasts, disabling an air traffic control system, selling counterfeit software, and damaging the computer system of an Internet service provider.”
So why (and that’s a rhetorical why) on earth are our public officials wasting time on the following…
Preview of tomorrow’s “hearings” from the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein:
After weeks of speculation and controversy, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) released Monday night the names of witnesses for his first House hearing on domestic radicalization among American Muslims.
The six witnesses who will speak Thursday before the Homeland Security Committee come from a range of backgrounds. They include:
— a father and an uncle of young American Muslims whose faith turned radical and violent. One young man was killed in Africa; the other went on a shooting spree on a military base and is in prison.
— an Arizona internist and Muslim who believes Islamic leaders in this country need to speak out more aggressively for reforms of the Koran and be less defensive.
— Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who was called by the minority Democrats on the committee and has spoken often in recent weeks about his cooperative relationship with Muslim Americans.
— Two congressmen coming from very different perspectives. Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, Congress’s first elected Muslim, will likely bring reams of data about Muslim cooperation and will criticize the idea of a hearing focused on one faith group. Virginia Republican Frank Wolf currently oversees the budget of the FBI and the Justice Department through his work on a House subcommittee.
Extremism, fundamentalism, violence, and domestic terrorism are real problems. Having hearings that scapegoat minorities in this country doesn’t solve those problems. It only puts more fuel on the fire.
Stacyx (aka SecretaryClintonBlog) put up a great rant last week about Rep. King reviving “The Ghost of McCarthy”:
The irony of Peter King calling these hearings is rich indeed given he is a long time supporter of the Irish Republican Army– a group most of the world considers a terrorist group until they agreed to demilitarize. I guess whether one is a terrorist depends on a) the color of their skin, b) their religion and c) whether one personally identifies with the group doing the terrorizing. I think we can all see the problem with that- one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter- just ask Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, whose parents were Irgun terrorists but whom she describes as “freedom fighters.”
[…]
It’s interesting that the only form of violent extremism Rep. King is concerned with is Muslim in nature- I guess bombing abortion clinics, murdering women’s health providers and violence directed at the federal government doesn’t count? Interesting, that.
Of course, none of this helps Obama and Secretary Clinton reach out to the Muslim world at a critical time. The Arab world is changing- in a very positive way- and what does the GOP do? Focus on the negative and provide a great propaganda opportunity for people like Al Qaeda and Hamas. It could hurt our already damaged reputation in the Muslim world. And then of course, there is the simple fact that such intolerance and overgeneralizing about an entire group of people is just un-American.
I think we can weed out potentially violent extremists in our midst without putting an entire religion on trial.
I agree — and I think putting an entire religion on trial is, among other things, another distraction away from the economy and jobs and a tool of division to keep people from demanding people be put before profit.
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