Politics

An Oklahoma law requiring that information about abortions be made public goes into effect. The law requires the collection of personal details about the women who have abortions, and mandates that the information be posted on a public Web site. The information includes:
Date of abortion;
County in which abortion performed;
Age of mother;
Marital status of mother (married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married);
Race of mother;
Years of education of mother (specify highest year completed);
State or foreign country of residence of mother;
Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother, including live births, miscarriages, and induced abortions.
The law does not collect names, addresses, or “any information specifically identifying the patient.” However, pro-choice group Feminists for Choice notes that the information that is collected can easily be used to identify a woman, especially in a smaller community. “They’re really just trying to frighten women out of having abortions,” says Keri Parks of Planned Parenthood. The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging the law. [Think Progress, 10/8/2009] Salon columnist Lynn Harris writes: “According to proponents of the law, this extensive abortion data—which will include the reason the procedure was sought—will help health officials prevent future abortions. Yeah, I can see that. Because the requirement itself would scare the sh_t out of me.” Harris continues: “It isn’t unique for a state to post health data on its Web site. However, Oklahoma’s requirements are by far the most extensive as such. The law’s supporters claim they want this information to be made public so it can be used for ‘academic research,’ but according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, its collection method makes it useless for that purpose.” [Salon, 10/7/2009]

Fox News host Glenn Beck accuses Missouri law enforcement officials of covering up the “savage beating” allegedly suffered by tea party activist Kenneth Gladney at the hands of “union thugs” at an August town hall forum in St. Louis (see August 6-8, 2009 and August 8, 2009). Beck asks: “Why haven’t charges been filed? I would like to know what game is being played.” Apparently Beck’s questioning of the lack of prosecution of Gladney’s “assailants” is sparked by a recent blog post by conservative Matthew Vadum, who alleges that the “cover-up” is being mounted because of the involvement of Buffy Wicks, the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, whom Vadum says organized an “Obama truth squad” at the St. Louis town hall forum. Media Matters columnist Eric Boehlert writes, “[T]he right-wing’s selfish, and often comical, attempt to turn Kenneth Gladney into a political martyr continues to be a sad spectacle to watch.” [Matthew Vadum, 11/4/2009; Media Matters, 11/5/2009] Misdemeanor assault charges will be filed against two union members (see Late November, 2009); both will be found innocent of any wrongdoing (see July 12, 2011). The only person injured in the altercation was one of the union members (see Mid-August, 2009), though Gladney falsely claimed to have suffered severe injuries in the altercation.

Fox News host Glenn Beck compares the National Education Association to Nazis. Beck, discussing a recent conference call by NEA officials in which artists reportedly discussed how “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda,” says that “advocating through art is known as propaganda. Hmm. You should look up the name Goebbels.” Beck is referring to Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda during the Nazi regime. [Media Matters, 11/3/2009]

An image of Dede Scozzafava, altered by a conservative activist to make her appear as Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold. [Source: Saberpoint (.com)]Democratic candidate Bill Owens wins an unexpected, narrow victory in a special election for the US House seat representing New York State’s 23rd District, a win widely seen as a setback to the national tea party movement. Owens ran against Conservative Party candidate Douglas L. Hoffman in a race that saw the original Republican Party candidate, Dede Scozzafava, drop out under heavy pressure from local, state, and national tea party organizations to give way to Hoffman, their preferred candidate. Scozzafava was the unanimous choice of the 11 county chairs of the district’s Republican Party organization. The 23rd District is traditionally Republican. Conservative figures identified with the tea party, such as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), who has presidential aspirations, came out strongly in favor of Hoffman and against Scozzafava, as did talk show hosts Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Fred Thompson, and the editorial pages of the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal. Scozzafava is a moderate Republican who supports gay and abortion rights, and the federal economic stimulus package promoted by the Bush and Obama administrations. The Republican National Committee (RNC), which had backed Scozzafava, applauded her decision to withdraw and endorsed Hoffman. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who like the RNC had supported Scozzzafava but in the days before the election endorsed Hoffman, says he worries that having third-party candidates routinely enter races would split conservative votes and give Democrats control of federal and state governments. “This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this,” he says.“If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make [Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA] speaker for life and guarantee [President] Obama’s re-election.… I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.” After Hoffman’s loss, some tea party figures blame the Republican Party for the defeat, saying that if the party had gotten behind Hoffman from the outset, he would have defeated Owens. Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, agrees, saying: “I think Doug Hoffman likely would have won if he had been the Republican candidate from the get-go. It wasn’t a spike in the end zone for the Democrats. They got that seat not because Democrats were brilliant, but because Republicans were stupid.” Some conservatives attempt to frame the loss as a victory because they forced the more moderate Scozzafava out of the race. Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) says, “Our number one goal was to make clear that the Republican Party cannot take someone as liberal as Dede Scozzafava and thrust her out on the voters and expect the voters just to accept it.” The seat became vacant after Representative John M. McHugh (R-NY) was appointed by President Obama to become secretary of the Army. After facing a barrage of heavy criticism from Limbaugh, Palin, and the like, Scozzafava abruptly withdrew from the race and threw her support to Owens. Some critics questioned Hoffman’s eligibility to run for the seat, noting that his home in Lake Placid, New York, is not in the district. The conservative Club for Growth spent $1 million promoting Hoffman’s candidacy, and other conservative organizations such as the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List and NOM also supported Hoffman. The groups funneled cash into Hoffman’s campaigns, printed up literature, and sent volunteers from other areas in the country to work for Hoffman. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who now heads the conservative lobbying group FreedomWorks (see February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, February 27, 2009, March 2, 2009, March 13, 2009 and After, April 14, 2009, and April 15, 2009), says the race proves Republicans need to stop fielding moderate candidates. “My own view right now is the myth that you have to be a moderate—a Democrat lite—to win in the Northeast probably has less standing now than in any time since I’ve been in politics,” Armey says. “The small-government candidate in the Republican Party—or running as an independent—is going to be the one to draw the energy of these voters.” Marilyn Musgrave, a former representative from Colorado who works for the Anthony List, says after the election that the conservative backing of Hoffman proves to Washington lawmakers that they should not take conservative votes for granted. “Don’t just assume we’re yours,” she says. [Christian Science Monitor, 10/29/2009; New York Times, 10/31/2009; New York Times, 11/3/2009]

Banner at the Capitol Hill rally depicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as an ‘Unamerican McCarthyite.’ [Source: MSNBC]Conservatives gather on Capitol Hill to protest the Obama administration’s push towards health care reform, in a rally featuring guest speaker Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN). [Media Matters, 11/6/2009] Bachmann called the rally the “Super Bowl of Freedom,” and told Fox News viewers that “socialized medicine is the crown jewel of socialism. This [health care reform] will change our country forever.” [TPM LiveWire, 11/3/2009; Mediaite, 11/11/2009] Actor Jon Voight, speaking to the crowd, says of President Obama: “His only success in one year as president is taking America apart piece by piece. Could it be 20 years of ‘subconscious programming’ from Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright [Obama’s former pastor] to damn America?” And House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) tells the crowd, “Pelosi care [referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA] is the greatest threat to freedom I’ve seen in my 19 years in Washington.”
Signs Use Racial Images; Call Obama Communist, Nazi - Signs visible in the crowd proclaim, among other sentiments:
“Get the Red Out of the White House”;
“Waterboard Congress”;
“Traitor to the US Constitution” (featuring a photo of Obama);
“Ken-Ya Trust Obama?” (referring to theories that Obama is a citizen of Kenya—see January 24, 2007, January 16, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, October 8-10, 2008, and August 11, 2009—and with autographs from Representatives Steve King, R-IA and Ron Paul, R-TX);
“Un-American McCarthyite” (featuring a photo of Pelosi);
“I’m the King of the World: Remember the Titanic?” (featuring a drawing of Obama as the “Jovial Sambo” character from the Jim Crow era);
“National Socialist Health Care” (featuring a photograph of a pile of corpses from the Holocaust, and claiming that health care reform is the next “holocaust”).
Nine rally participants are arrested for attempting to force their way into the Hart Senate Office Building. Hundreds more attempt to force themselves into nearby government office buildings while chanting, “Kill the bill!” [MSNBC, 11/5/2009]
Sponsored by GOP - MSNBC’s Domenico Montanaro writes: “It is important to know that this rally was set up by the GOP. While other groups certainly got people to show up, the folks who came here ultimately came at the invitation of the Republican Party. The GOP provided the speakers and the music, etc.” [MSNBC, 11/5/2009]
Fox Pundit Inflates Crowd Estimates - While other media sources use local police reports to estimate the crowd at around 4,000, Fox News’s Sean Hannity tells listeners that the crowd is closer to 20,000 in size. Hannity later drastically scales back this claim. Hannity, who along with other Fox News pundits and on-air anchors had heavily promoted the rally for days beforehand, predicted the crowd would be “massive” in the hours before the protest. On his radio show, aired on ABC Radio Network, Hannity tells listeners: “We announced on Hannity Friday night on the Fox News Channel, we had Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on, and she mentioned that there was going to be on Thursday, she was going to put together in less than a week a little town hall on—what do you want to call it—march on our nation’s Capitol. And anyway, 20,000 people showed up today.” Hannity echoes the claim several times on his radio show. However, with no explanation, he concludes his radio broadcast by saying, “I heard there was, like, 5,000 people plus there.” [MSNBC, 11/5/2009; Media Matters, 11/6/2009] On Hannity’s Fox News broadcast later that evening, he returns to his earlier estimates of “20,000” rally participants, and shows viewers old footage from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally (see September 12, 2009) to bolster his claim. [Crooks and Liars, 11/11/2009] On November 11, Hannity will admit that he “screwed up” in showing the footage, and claims it was merely “an inadvertent mistake.” [Think Progress, 11/12/2009] Hannity does not address how the mistake came to be made. [New York Times, 11/11/2009] Media critic Rachel Sklar will write, “It’s really blatant and remarkable… this sort of misrepresentation is simply not an accident.” [Mediaite, 11/11/2009] A week later, Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett will make a similar mistake (see November 18-19, 2009).

Portion of promotional poster for the HBO documentary ‘By the People.’ [Source: Wikimedia]Fox News falsely reports that President Obama watched, by himself, an HBO documentary about his 2008 presidential campaign instead of watching the election returns from races in Virginia and New Jersey during the evening of November 4. Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum tells viewers, “[Press secretary] Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went.” MacCallum goes on to note: “[W]e know that Michelle [Obama] and the girls [the Obama’s two daughters] went to [a] concert last night.… So he’s all alone in that big house, right? Nothing to do but sit back and watch—reminisce about the long campaign and watch HBO and the special.” [NewsBusters, 11/4/2009; Media Matters, 11/5/2009] ABC News’s Jake Tapper writes on his Twitter account: “Gibbs did NOT say that POTUS [President Obama] watched the HBO film last night. I think someone must have misunderstood.” [Raw Story, 11/4/2009] Gibbs previously told reporters that Obama had already seen the documentary. [TPMDC, 11/1/2009] The same day as the Fox News report, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh repeats the claim, telling his listeners: “I would be embarrassed if somebody put together a documentary about me the way this has been put together. I mean it is God-like.… If a documentary could get anal poisoning, this one could. I mean, it’s just kiss butt, kiss butt, kiss butt, and here he’s watching it.” [Raw Story, 11/4/2009; Media Matters, 11/4/2009] That evening, Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett says the report is erroneous and apologizes for what he calls his “mistake,” blaming himself for “mishear[ing]” Gibbs during the daily press gaggle. However, on November 8, panelists on Fox News Watch make the original false claim. Host Jon Scott tells viewers that instead of watching the election returns, Obama was “watching the HBO documentary.… Now, maybe that’s the one thing that could pull him away from—from election returns.” Other panelists react with what progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters calls “hysterical laughter.” One panelist, S. E. Cupp, says during the outbreak: “I’m sorry. I can’t even—I can’t even contain myself.” [Media Matters, 11/9/2009]

Wesley Pruden, the editor emeritus of the conservative Washington Times, says that President Obama’s current trip abroad proves that he is not a “real American” in his heart, but instead lacks a “blood impulse” for what America “is about” due to his “Kenyan father” and a “mother attracted to men of the Third World.” Pruden mocks Obama for bowing respectfully to foreign heads of state such as Emperor Akhito of Japan and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and notes: “Not bowing to foreign potentates was what 1776 was all about. His predecessors learned with no difficulty that the essence of America is that all men stand equal and are entitled to look even a king, maybe particularly a king, straight in the eye. Can anyone imagine George Washington, John Adams, or Thomas Jefferson making a similar gesture of servile submission? Or Harry Truman? Or FDR, who famously served the lowly hot dog, with ballpark mustard, to the king and queen of England? John F. Kennedy, on the eve of a trip to London, sharply warned Jackie not to curtsy to the queen.… But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy ‘60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to ‘hope’ for ‘change.’ It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what [America] is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World, and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.” [Washington Times, 11/17/2009] Pruden made similar assertions several months ago (see June 5, 2009).

Screenshot of Fox’s November 18, 2009 broadcast using 2008 footage to claim ‘huge crowds’ at Palin’s book tour. [Source: Media Matters]Fox News’s Gregg Jarrett, anchor of the Happening Now news broadcast, tells viewers that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is “continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book [her autobiography Going Rogue]. Take a look at—these are some of the pictures just coming into us. The lines earlier had formed this morning.” Fox News then cuts to film from the 2008 presidential campaign, where Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, was speaking to a large and enthusiastic crowd. The footage shows rally participants waving “McCain/Palin” signs while others hold pom-poms and cheer. Jarrett says, “There’s a crowd of folks.” [Media Matters, 11/18/2009; Think Progress, 11/18/2009; Chicago Tribune, 11/18/2009] Media Matters soon identifies the footage as being from a November 1, 2008 rally in Florida. [Media Matters, 11/18/2009] Progressive columnist and blogger John Amato, calling Fox News’s usage of the footage a deliberate “hoax,” writes that he has filed a complaint with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) over the use of the footage. [Huffington Post, 11/18/2009] Shortly afterwards, Fox News airs an apology, with another anchor saying in part: “We didn’t mean to mislead anybody. It was a mistake, and for that we apologize.” [Chicago Tribune, 11/18/2009] The next day, Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente blames a “production error” for the use of the inaccurate footage, saying: “This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video. There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday.” [Think Progress, 11/19/2009] Unnamed sources tell a Chicago Tribune reporter that “serious disciplinary action” may be taken against those responsible, and that Fox News executives consider it “a sloppy and unnecessary error.” [Chicago Tribune, 11/18/2009] The Tribune and a number of progressive bloggers note a similar error on Sean Hannity’s Fox News broadcast two weeks earlier (see November 5, 2009).

Former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino tells a Fox News audience that no terrorist attacks took place on American soil during President Bush’s two terms. Perino is forgetting, or ignoring, the 9/11 attacks, the most lethal and costly attacks in US history. On Sean Hannity’s Fox show, Hannity asks Perino if President Obama “really understand[s]” that the US has a national security concern about terrorism. Perino begins by denying that her remarks are political, then says that the US recently suffered “a terrorist attack on our country,” obviously referring to the 9/11 attacks. The Obama administration is loath to call the US’s involvement a “war on terror,” Perino says, when it should be labeled as such “because we need to face up to it so we can prevent it from happening again.” She says she does not know what thinking is going on in the Obama administration, “but we did not have an attack on our country during President Bush’s term. I hope they’re not looking at this politically. I do think we owe it to the American people to call it what it is.” Neither Hannity nor his other guest, Fox Business personality Stuart Varney, correct Perino’s statement; instead Varney begins questioning Obama’s commitment to fighting terrorism. [Media Matters, 11/24/2009] Perino had not yet joined the Bush administration in 2001, but was working as a public relations representative for a high-tech firm in San Diego. [Austin Chronicle, 9/21/2007]

Prosecutors in St. Louis file charges against six people in connection with an altercation outside a health care forum in August. Two of them are members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who are alleged to have beaten up a tea party activist, Kenneth Gladney (see August 6-8, 2009 and August 8, 2009). They each face a charge of misdemeanor assault against Gladney. Gladney and right-wing columnists, commentators, and bloggers have alleged that Gladney was “savagely beaten” by “union thugs,” who are also accused of using racial slurs against Gladney, an African-American (see August 7-8, 2009). Some have called the assault a “hate crime,” and some have accused the “beating” of being ordered by White House officials (see August 7, 2009 and August 10, 2009). The other charges are also misdemeanors. [Media Matters, 11/25/2009] Both SEIU members will be found innocent of any wrongdoing (see July 12, 2011). The only person injured in the altercation was one of the union members (see Mid-August, 2009), though Gladney falsely claimed to have suffered severe injuries in the altercation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton circulates a diplomatic cable that states Pakistani intelligence continues to support some Islamist militant groups. The cable is sent to US ambassadors and other US diplomats, and contains “talking points” to raise with host governments. In Pakistan, the diplomats are told to press the Pakistani government to take action against the Haqqani network, a semi-autonomous part of the Taliban operating in Pakistan, and to enforce sanctions against Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistani militant group linked to the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. The cable reads, “Although Pakistani senior officials have publicly disavowed support for these groups, some officials from the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) continue to maintain ties with a wide array of extremist organizations, in particular the Taliban, [Lashkar-e-Toiba], and other extremist organizations. These extremist organizations continue to find refuge in Pakistan and exploit Pakistan’s extensive network of charities, NGOs, and madrassas.” (A madrassa is an Islamic boarding school.) The contents of the cable will be made public by Wikileaks, a non-profit whistleblower group, in 2010. [Daily Telegraph, 5/31/2011]

Michael Savage, a conservative radio host, calls President Obama “Chairman Mao Tse-Obama” in a tirade about what Savage calls Obama’s desire to become a Communist dictator. Savage makes the reference while speaking against the “Communists” who “infest” the Obama administration. [Media Matters, 12/4/2009] Savage has called the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board “sickening” (see May 18, 2004), accused Obama of being educated in a radical Islamic madrassa (see January 10, 2008 and April 3, 2008) and being a potential “radical Muslim” (see February 21, 2008), called Obama’s presidential victory “the first affirmative-action election in American history” (see February 1, 2008), accused Obama of being sympathetic towards the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese of World War II (see March 13, 2008), said that homeless Americans should be put in “work camps” (see June 6, 2008), called Obama an “Afro-Leninist” (see June 6, 2008), said that welfare recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008), accused Obama of using his grandmother’s death to conceal his “efforts” to falsify his Hawaiian birth certificate (see November 10, 2008), accused Obama of planning to fire all the “competent white men” in government once he became president (see November 18, 2008), and accused Obama of desiring his own “Hitler Youth” program (see September 2, 2009).

Reporter Lee Fang of the liberal Center for American Progress writes an op-ed for the Boston Globe comparing the current political attacks against Democratic efforts to reform health care being coordinated by the Koch brothers (see 1977-Present, 1979-1980, 1981-2010, 1984 and After, May 6, 2006, April 15, 2009, May 29, 2009, and November 2009) with the efforts of their father, Fred Koch (see 1940 and After), to label former President John F. Kennedy a traitor and a Communist tool. David Koch recently helped coordinate, from behind the scenes, a protest that compared health care reform to the Holocaust, and other protests that have turned violent. More systematically, he and his reclusive brother Charles have funded such conservative organizations as Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see Late 2004) and other front groups, none of which bear the Koch name. Fang writes: “Americans for Prosperity’s tactics are not new. Just as Koch inherited his oil business from his father, Americans for Prosperity borrows from the ultra-right group also founded in part by his dad, the John Birch Society” (see 1945 and After, March 10, 1961, 1963, August 4, 2008, and April 26, 2010). Fred Koch helped conceive the far-right, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS), which, Fang writes, “cloaked its pro-business, anti-civil rights agenda in the rhetoric of the Cold War.” The JBS labeled Kennedy a Communist-inspired traitor and advocated his impeachment (see November 1963), stood against taxation as another aspect of “creeping Communism” inside the federal government, and claimed that the civil rights movement was being directed by the Soviet Union (see April 13, 2009 and December 11, 2009). The JBS helped promote the 1964 presidential candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and helped Republicans win key Congressional seats in 1966. AFP and the JBS are alike, Fang notes, in that they rarely acknowledge their funding from wealthy corporate magnates. Both portray themselves as grassroots organizations that are dedicated to promoting freedom. For a time, the JBS succeeded in aligning the interests of the very rich with the idea of anti-Communist patriotism. Similarly, AFP promotes the interests of the extremely wealthy, including the Koch brothers, as synonymous with patriotic opposition to health care reform, financial regulation, net neutrality, and the estate tax. All are labeled as “socialist,” a favorite JBS epithet. Fang concludes that “[w]ith his millions,” David Koch will have “contributed greatly to the obstruction of universal health care, the denial of climate change, and the derailment of much of President Obama’s domestic agenda. His dad would be pleased.” [Boston Globe, 12/6/2009]

Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor for Fox News, sends an internal email instructing his journalists and producers to slant their coverage of climate change stories in favor of questioning the validity of climate change claims. Sammon’s order is given during a series of global climate change talks, and less than 15 minutes after Fox News correspondent Wendell Goler told viewers that the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) had announced that 2000-2009 was “on track to be the warmest [decade] on record.” Sammon’s email says in part: “Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data… we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.” The email also comes amidst a steady promotion by the network of the so-called “Climategate” scandal, which hinges on misrepresentations of emails sent between climate scientists and supposedly casts critical doubts on the science behind the claims of climate change and global warming. Ultimately, all independent inquiries will clear the accused scientists of misconduct and manipulation, though these reports will receive less attention from Fox. And, though Sammon portrays his directive as an attempt to be fair and balanced, the “debate” is largely in the media, and fueled by conservative politics and by corporations and investors that would be impacted by regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. No national or international scientific body disputes that global warming is caused by human activities, and it is the consensus view of the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists that greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of the rise in the Earth’s average temperature since the 19th century. Goler had noted during his broadcast that in spite of “Climategate” claims, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) prove that the climate is indeed heating up due to a man-made increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Despite the facts, minutes after Goler’s report, Sammon sends his email to the staffs of Fox News’s “straight” news shows and others, ordering them to report that claims of human-caused climate change are controversial. That evening, news anchor Bret Baier introduces another report by Goler by saying in part that as “Climategate-fueled skeptics continued to impugn global warming science, researchers today issued new and even more dire warnings about the possible effects of a warmer planet.” After Goler’s evening report, Baier tells viewers that “skeptics say the recordkeeping began about the time a cold period was ending in the mid 1800s and what looks like an increase may just be part of a longer cycle,” and runs a clip by American Enterprise Institute scholar Kenneth Green impugning the credibility of climate change science. And a few minutes later, correspondent James Rosen falsely claims that climate scientists “destroyed more than 150 years worth of raw climate data” in order to promote the theory of climate change. [Media Matters, 12/15/2010]
Sammon Previously Manipulated Fox News Reporting - Less than two months ago, Sammon ordered journalists and producers to use the term “government option” instead of “public option” to describe a specific health care proposal by Senate Democrats, as his preferred term had been shown to be less favorable to that proposal (see October 27, 2009 and After).

A portion of the poster for the film ‘Invictus,’ starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. [Source: Movie-list (.com)]The John Birch Society (JBS—see December 2011), the anti-Communist far-right organization, condemns a recent film treatment of the life of South African President Nelson Mandela, who led the battle against white apartheid in that nation. The film is Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela and written/directed by Clint Eastwood, one of a relatively small number of Hollywood conservatives. The JBS is outraged by the film’s sympathetic depiction of Mandela. Art Thompson, writing for the JBS Web site, notes: “The ‘conservative’ President George W. Bush awarded [Mandela] the Medal of Freedom. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. The Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded him their prize, just as they did [President] Obama (see October 13, 2009). And, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics issued a commemorative stamp in his honor in 1988. This is a clue as to who Mandela really is.” Thompson labels Mandela a communist, citing “many, many pictures showing Mandela at communist functions, standing below the hammer and sickle and giving the communist salute. Presiding [sic] over communist conventions and other events staged by the South African Communist Party.” Thompson says the mainstream media chooses not to publicize these photographs: “A variety of techniques have been used to deprive us of pertinent facts, but none have been more successful than simply not reporting or showing the facts. You do not need to twist the facts, only withhold the facts.” Instead of being a hero of South Africa and for Africans worldwide, Thompson writes, “Mandela is nothing more than a communist terrorist thug, placed in prison because he was about to launch a terrorist campaign against South Africans, aimed more against the black population than the white.” He blames Mandela and his then-wife Winnie for “necklacing” black Africans, a practice carried out by both white apartheid supporters and black anti-apartheid activists in which opponents had gasoline-soaked automobile tires placed over their heads and set ablaze. Thompson claims that Mandela and his “thugs” “necklaced” their “anti-communist victims.” Americans have been lied to for years about Mandela, Thompson claims, and explains why: “Even today, Americans can not be allowed by our controlled media to understand that South Africa has a communist government. Africa is rapidly going communist as are the nations south of our own border. We are being manipulated into keeping our eyes on the Middle East. The danger looms elsewhere. Communism is really only dead in the minds of the American people. It is too bad that we do not see a reality show in television about that.” [John Birch Society, 12/11/2009] While there is no proof that Nelson Mandela endorsed or tolerated “necklacing,” it has been well established that his former wife Winnie did so during her time as a spokesperson for the African National Congress (ANC). [Associated Press, 6/13/1992; BBC, 11/29/1997] US Representative Ron Paul, seen by many as the “father” of the US “tea party” movement, is a staunch JBS supporter, though he is not an official member (see August 4, 2008). Paul has attacked Mandela in his newsletters, labeling him a “communist” (see 1978-1996).

A screenshot of a television news report showing County Commissioner Bill James asking fellow Commissioner Vilma Leake if her dead son was ‘a homo.’ [Source: Pam's House Blend (.com)]Bill James, a Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) commissioner, insults fellow commissioner Vilma Leake, who speaks out about her support for gay county workers receiving benefits if they are in committed relationships. After Leake’s presentation, James asks her, “Your son was a homo?” Leake responds: “Don’t make me hurt you. Don’t do that to me. Don’t talk to me about my son.” In a statement, James tells a local Fox News affiliate that Leake “is a religious hypocrite” because “[s]he was married to a bishop in the AME Zion church. This church has historically opposed homosexuality.” He vilifies Leake’s mention of “her son’s ‘lifestyle’ and his death from HIV-AIDS to justify voting for benefits to allow individuals to use tax dollars to engage in the same behavior that resulted in her son’s death. It is akin to someone whose son is an alcoholic and died from the disease, using his death from drinking as justification to have the taxpayers pay for more booze. Her position was that her ‘faith’ demanded that she do this to support her son and his ‘lifestyle,’ which she acknowledges killed him. In doing so, it is legitimate to ask her what ‘lifestyle’ and in particular whether her son was a homosexual. Her response was to threaten me with physical violence (typical for her). Of course, this isn’t the first time she has threatened elected officials. On the school board she had a long and checkered history threatening to harm those she disagrees with. Well, if she didn’t want to make her ‘son’ an issue—why did she use him, his lifestyle, and his tragic self-inflicted death from AIDS as the reason for her vote?” [Michael B. Hamar, 12/17/2009] The county commissioners approve domestic partner benefits for gay couples who work for the county, splitting along party lines in their 6-3 vote; James and his two fellow Republicans vote “no.” After the vote, a Mecklenburg County resident, Jason Colley, complains: “I’m from the old school and I know what is right and I know what is wrong. I know what is good and I know what is bad. I do not wish my taxes to go to something of this nature. It seems like to me the minorities always get their way in whatever minority class it may be. I thought we were governed by majority rule. It doesn’t seem that way.” George Dunlap, an African-American Democrat on the commission, tells Colley, “The majority hasn’t always been right.” Either James or one of his fellow Republicans attempted to influence the vote by submitting a report that claimed “the incidence of AIDS among 20- to 30-year-old homosexual men is roughly 430 times greater than among the heterosexual population at large.” The report was issued by the Corporate Resource Council (CRC), which issued it in efforts to derail attempts by local and state governments to approve domestic-partner benefits. The claim is from Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, an anti-gay activist who says Prozac can cure homosexuality and has made a number of other false claims. [Pam Spaulding, 12/16/2009] In 2005, James sent an inflammatory email vilifying homosexuals and using false statistics to back up his claims (see April 29, 2005).

A photo of a ‘mountain of skulls’ from one of the Khmer Rouge’s ‘killing fields.’ Michael Savage argues that this could be a scene from Obama’s America. [Source: Mormon Soprano (.com)]Michael Savage, a conservative radio host, tells his listeners that President Obama is a “baby dictator” comparable to Cambodian dictator and mass murderer Pol Pot. Savage reminisces about “Communists” in San Francisco giving out copies of “the little red book,” presumably a reference to Chinese dictator Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” that, Savage says, exhorted readers to kill anyone “with eyeglasses… members of the bourgeiosie… the entire middle class.” Savage tells his listeners that Pot used teenagers to carry out his orders, specifically targeting “teachers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, businessmen, businesswomen, you name it,” and others to either work in labor camps or for outright murder. “What does that have to do with Obama?” Savage asks rhetorically, and goes on to explain “why you should be very worried indeed.” Pot, a “mild-mannered college professor,” he says, “became radicalized” during his university studies in Paris, and brought an extremist Marxist ideology to Cambodia, which resulted, he says, in “a mountain of skulls.” Ideas, he says, “can be very, very powerful… ideas can also create horrors that are unimaginable to the average American. We can’t even imagine such a thing happening here, and we would say it can’t happen here. I would argue that it can happen here. And I would argue that only vigilance, only vigilance and resistance to this baby dictator and his band of terrorists can prevent this from occurring here. [Media Matters, 12/18/2009] According to a Yale University study, between 1975 and 1979, around 1.7 million Cambodians—a fifth of the nation’s population—died in what the study called “one of the worst human tragedies of the last century.… [T]he Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale.” In 2007, Pot, who died in 1998, was found to have committed “crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, homicide, torture, and religious persecution.” [Yale University, 2010] Savage has called the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board “sickening” (see May 18, 2004), accused Obama of being educated in a radical Islamic madrassa (see January 10, 2008 and April 3, 2008) and being a potential “radical Muslim” (see February 21, 2008), called Obama’s presidential victory “the first affirmative-action election in American history” (see February 1, 2008), accused Obama of being sympathetic towards the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese of World War II (see March 13, 2008), said that homeless Americans should be put in “work camps” (see June 6, 2008), called Obama an “Afro-Leninist” (see June 6, 2008), said that welfare recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008), accused Obama of using his grandmother’s death to conceal his “efforts” to falsify his Hawaiian birth certificate (see November 10, 2008), accused Obama of planning to fire all the “competent white men” in government once he became president (see November 18, 2008), accused Obama of desiring his own “Hitler Youth” program (see September 2, 2009), and compared Obama to Chinese Communist dictator Mao Zedong (see December 3, 2009).

Mary Matalin, the former press adviser for then-Vice President Dick Cheney, makes two false statements on CNN: the Bush administration inherited both a failing economy and the 9/11 attacks from the Clinton administration. The US entered a period of steep recession three months after Bush’s first term began, and the 9/11 attacks occurred eight months after Bush took office. On CNN’s State of the Union, Matalin says, “I was there, we inherited a recession from President Clinton, and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history.” A month ago, former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino made a similar claim about the timing of the 9/11 attacks on Fox News (see November 24, 2009). Lee Fang of the progressive news Web site Think Progress writes of the two statements, “Former Bush administration officials seem intent on misrepresenting history to pretend that the country never suffered its worst terror attack in history under Bush’s watch.” [Media Matters, 12/27/2009; Think Progress, 12/27/2009]

Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV), vying for the seat held by Harry Reid (D-NV), advocates armed insurrection to bring about conservative change in America, and implies that she is ready to use violence to defeat Reid in the race. Angle tells radio talk show host Lars Larson that she believes the US is ripe for an armed revolution, and if “this Congress keeps going the way it is,” Americans will implement “Second Amendment remedies.” The Second Amendment grants citizens the right to own firearms. Larson asks Angle where she stands on the Second Amendment, and she replies: “You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, ‘My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?’ I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.” Larson later says that he believes Angle means exactly what she says, particularly about supporting armed insurrection against Congress. “If it continues to do the things it’s doing, I think she’s leaving open that possibility,” Larson will say. “And I think the founders believed that the public should be able to do that when the government becomes out of control. It just matters what you define as going too far.” [Washington Post, 6/15/2010] At least one other time during the primary, Angle publicly advocates that Reid be “take[n] out” with “Second Amendment remedies” (see June 16, 2010). After winning the Nevada Republican primary for the Senate, Angle will retract her remarks (see June 30, 2010).
Recently Left Hard-Right Independent American Party - Angle is a relatively recent convert to the Republican Party. For much of the 1990s, she belonged to the Independent American Party (IAP), a hard-right group that combines libertarianism—gun advocacy, tax repeal, and states’ rights—with Christian social conservatism and an avowed fear of what it calls the “North American Union,” a supposed union of Canada, Mexico, and the US. According to IAP members, Angle left the party in 1998 when she ran for the Nevada state assembly. IAP executive director Janine Hansen will tell a reporter: “It was because she wanted to run for office. And it was difficult for members of our party to get elected at that time. It was a strategic move on her part.” The IAP considers the Republican Party “corrupt and socialistic,” according to its Web site. IAP founder David Hansen drew national attention in 1992 by bringing a sign to a political rally that read, “If Guns Are Outlawed, How Can We Shoot the Liberals?” [TPMDC, 6/15/2010]
Supports Violent Militia - Angle is also a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right group that enjoins its members—which include many soldiers and police officers—to refuse to follow orders they consider unconstitutional, and warns that the government intends to turn American cities into “giant concentration camps” (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010). The organization has been cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a violent militia group that is actively recruiting members for an upcoming armed revolt. Angle’s husband Ted Angle will say in June 2010 that while he is not sure whether he or his wife are full-fledged members, both of them stand firmly behind its principles. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes will later say that because neither Angle nor her husband are members of a uniformed service, they can only be associate members, and he is not sure whether Sharron Angle is a member. Rhodes will also deny that Oath Keepers is a militia. “We are an education outfit,” he will say. [TPMDC, 6/9/2010]

Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick falsely claims that “the two cases of domestic terrorism since 9/11” have taken place “on Obama’s watch.” In recent months, two former Bush administration officials have denied that 9/11 took place during the Bush presidency (see November 24, 2009 and December 27, 2009). The progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters will write, “Frederick joins [the] list of conservatives denying existence of terrorist attacks under Bush.” Frederick writes: “If this is what it takes to wake up Obama to the evils of this world, then he learned an easy lesson. But tell that to the personnel who lost their lives to terrorism at Fort Hood [referring to the November 9, 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, perpetrated by a Muslim US Army psychiatrist with suspected ties to extremist groups]. Then, as now, the Obama administration fails to swiftly acknowledge the threat. They demur in describing our enemy as radical Muslims. They plan to close the offshore prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and transfer the prisoners to the United States. They give the enemy combatants who killed more than 3,000 people on 9/11 the privilege of a civilian federal trial in New York City when a military tribunal is more appropriate. And for three days our president failed to address his people directly on Abdulmutallab’s failed effort to blow up a commercial flight over Detroit on Christmas Day [referring to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to detonate an explosive device carried in his underwear on a Northwest Airlines flight—see December 25, 2009]. All of this on top of President Obama’s noticeable refusal to characterize our struggle as a ‘war’ on ‘terror.’ In the wake of fierce criticism, Obama now talks tough about keeping America safe. But in the two cases of domestic terrorism since 9/11—both on Obama’s watch—red flags flew aplenty.” Frederick either forgets or ignores a string of domestic terrorist attacks on US targets during the Bush presidency, including the 2001 anthrax attacks (see September 17-18, 2001, October 5-November 21, 2001, October 6-9, 2001, and October 15, 2001); the attempt to blow up a transatlantic plane by “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, who has ties to al-Qaeda (see December 22, 2001); the 2002 attack on the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, designated by the Justice Department as an official “act of international terrorism”; the 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, DC, area, carried out by John Allen Muhammed, who was convicted of terrorism charges; and the 2006 attack on the University of North Carolina campus, where a Muslim student struck nine pedestrians in his SUV because, he said, he wanted to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.” [Media Matters, 1/6/2010]

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks writes that the tea party movement mirrors what he calls the shift in the American public “from left to right,” and the correlation that “[e]very single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year. The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.… The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should ‘go our own way’ has risen sharply.” Brooks, who calls himself “no fan” of the tea parties, says that the movement has “all the intensity” that once belonged to supporters of President Obama, and the movement has the power to shape American discourse and policy for the next decade. The tea party groups, he writes, define themselves “by what they are against.… They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media, and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy—with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes, and intrusive regulation.” The tea party movement is quite popular among independents, according to some polls, and more popular than either Obama or the US Congress. Brooks expects the movement to “be transformed” in the coming year, probably to be headed by one or another charismatic, populist lawmaker such as Marco Rubio (R-FL) or Gary Johnson (R-NM). “If they succeed,” he writes, “their movement is likely to outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics. After all, it represents arguments that are deeply rooted in American history.” Brooks concludes: “In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party. It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction that suburban voters will not tolerate. But don’t underestimate the deep reservoirs of public disgust. If there is a double-dip recession, a long period of stagnation, a fiscal crisis, a terrorist attack, or some other major scandal or event, the country could demand total change, creating a vacuum that only the tea party movement and its inheritors would be in a position to fill.” [New York Times, 1/4/2010]

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a 2008 contender for the Republican presidential nomination, tells an ABC audience that the US experienced “no domestic attacks” during the Bush administration. Giuliani is forgetting, or ignoring, the 9/11 attacks, the most lethal and costly terrorist attacks in US history, a curious omission considering Giuliani was mayor when two hijacked jetliners struck New York City’s World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001, eight months into the Bush administration. In recent months, two former Bush administration officials have also denied that 9/11 took place during the Bush presidency (see November 24, 2009 and December 27, 2009), as has a Nevada newspaper publisher just days ago (see January 3, 2010). Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos begins by asking Giuliani about his opposition to trying suspected terrorists in civilian courts instead of in military tribunals (see November 13, 2001 and January 29, 2009). Giuliani asks “why stop” torturing suspects instead of putting them on trial, saying that the US may continue to get “good information” from them, presumably about plans for future terrorist attacks. Giuliani says that while Bush “didn’t do everything right” in the “war on terror,” what Obama “should be doing is following the right things [Bush] did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror, we had no domestic attacks under Bush, we had one under Obama.” Stephanopoulos notes that Obama has “stepped up” actions against terrorists, but does not correct Giuliani’s claim that the US “had no domestic attacks under Bush.” [Media Matters, 1/8/2010]

The book Game Change, an “insider” account of the 2008 presidential campaign by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, features what appear to be racially questionable remarks made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) about Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. Reid, portrayed by the authors as more enthusiastic about Obama’s candidacy than he publicly admitted, said in private that he believed the country was ready to accept an African-American as president, particularly a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” [The Atlantic, 1/8/2010] The day after the press reveals Reid’s remarks, he publicly apologizes for making them. “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” he says in a statement. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments. I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama’s legislative agenda. Moreover, throughout my career, from efforts to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry to opposing radical judges and promoting diversity in the Senate, I have worked hard to advance issues important to the African-American community.” President Obama responds in a statement that he and Reid discussed the matter: “I accepted Harry’s apology without question because I’ve known him for years, I’ve seen the passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice, and I know what’s in his heart. As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.” [The Atlantic, 1/9/2010; Washington Post, 1/9/2010] Conservatives have accused Reid of racism before (see December 5-8, 2004).

A protester holds a Confederate battle flag during a tea party rally in Olympia, Washington. [Source: credit Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights]Some 300 tea party members and supporters from throughout Washington State gather in Olympia for the “Sovereignty Winter Fest.” The rally features state legislators, candidates for state and federal seats, tea party leaders, and activists from a number of far-right and white supremacist groups. The rally is to support a number of “state’s rights” 10th Amendment “sovereignty” resolutions in the Washington legislature (see March 23, 2011). Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights later writes, “This turn away from anti-tax and anti-healthcare rhetoric towards state sovereignty language points to a possible radicalization of the [tea party] movement.” Many slogans and symbols associated with white supremacists are prominently displayed during the proceedings, including the Confederate battle flag and the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. Some signs read: “Kick _ss America. Remember 9-11”; “Armed and Dangerous with my Vote”; “Had enough? Reclaim State Sovereignty”; “The 10th Amend. States Rights. Yes We Can”; “FOX News for the truth”; and “Kill Government Take Over NOT our Freedom.” The first speaker is State Representative Matt Shea (R-Spokane Valley), who sponsored the so-called “State Sovereignty Resolution” that was recently defeated in the Washington legislature. The bill reads in part, “the State of Washington hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.” The bill also claims to “serve as a Notice and Demand to the federal government to maintain the balance of powers where the Constitution of the United States established it and to cease and desist, effective immediately, any and all mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.” The language of Shea’s bill mirrors almost exactly language used by far-right militias of the 1990s who agitated for “state sovereignty,” according to Burghart. State Senator Val Stevens (R-Arlington) confirms the link by telling ralliers: “When I first introduced the 10th Amendment [legislation] back in 1997, it was met with ‘oh gee wiz, what is she doing now.’ It was a national movement at that time of a few of us who recognized that we were being stepped on by our federal government. That much of what took place here in the state of Washington was the result of what our federal government was passing on us. And we wanted to maintain that we are sovereign, and that we do have rights. And we wanted to re-establish that 10th Amendment.” Stevens has long boasted of her links to state and regional militias. One prominent participant is Darin Stevens, head of the Spokane 9/12 project (see March 13, 2009 and After). With a pistol strapped to his hip, he reads a portion of the Declaration of Independence, then introduces Martin “Red” Beckman, a well-known anti-Semite, anti-tax protester, and militia supporter. Stevens introduces Beckman with a boast that Beckman is a veteran militia defender. Robertson also endorses the positions of the Reverend John Weaver, a Christian Identity (see 1960s and After) supporter and ardent neo-Confederate. A number of area tea party activists address the crowd, including attorney Stephen Pidgeon, who uses his time to accuse President Obama of not being an American citizen. And tea party leader Doug Parris tells the crowd how tea parties can take over Washington’s Republican Party precinct by precinct, saying that such a takeover is necessary because of the Republicans’ “Star of David” strategy (apparently referring to the Republican Party’s support for Israel). [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 1/19/2010]

Scott Brown. [Source: Boston Herald]Republican Scott Brown (R-MA) narrowly wins a special election for the US Senate seat vacated by long-time Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, who passed away in August 2009. Brown defeats Democrat Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general. The victory is seen as a strong victory for the “tea party” movement, which backed Brown, a former Massachusetts state senator, even though he is considered something of a moderate Republican. Brown raised over a million dollars in less than 24 hours, in large part due to money from lobbying groups that back tea party organizations. Brown’s victory makes the Senate makeup 59 Democrats and 41 Republicans, enough to allow Senate Republicans to mount filibusters against Democratic proposals without fear of party-line “cloture votes” that would let Democrats pass legislation without Republican support. [American Conservative Daily, 1/9/2010; BNO News, 1/19/2010; The Week, 4/15/2010] Brown went on Fox News a number of times in the days before the election to help raise his profile among conservative voters and donors alike. On January 11, Fox News analyst Dick Morris pleaded with Fox viewers to contribute money to the Brown campaign. [Media Matters, 1/11/2010] Some observers speculated that Brown’s choice to pose nude for a magazine centerfold in 1982 might hurt him with conservative voters, but Newsweek columnist Katie Connolly wrote that because Brown is male, voters would not hold it against him as they would a female. [Newsweek, 9/15/2009] Newsweek will later compile a number of sometimes-contradictory explanations for why Coakley loses the race. One is that Coakley ran a poor campaign, an explanation advanced by a number of Democratic figures and liberal commentators. New York columnist Jason Zengerle will write of the singular “ineptitude” of Coakley and her campaign. Some liberal commentators will accuse Democrats of taking Coakley’s victory for granted, backing their explanation with, among other evidence, a memo from the Coakley campaign that noted “apathy” among national Democrats and a lack of money from national sources. Some conservatives will say that voters are alienated by the aggression of the Obama administration and other liberals, which energized conservatives. Some, including White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, will note the “infighting” among Democrats over Obama’s health care reform compromises, and say that such infighting weakened voter support for Democratic candidates. A few liberal commentators will say flatly that Democrats did not do enough to promote Coakley’s candidacy and energize the base. Lastly, a number of liberal commentators, along with Gibbs, will say that Brown rode a wave of anti-Democratic support into office. Blogger Chris Bowers will write that the current “political environment is terrible for Democrats, and they are going to lose seats in 2010.” [Newsweek, 1/19/2010] Before the election, the Boston Herald noted that Brown had been “all but abandoned” by the Republican campaign committees, who apparently believed that he had little chance of winning and chose not to sink money into his campaign. [Boston Herald, 12/29/2009]

The pro-choice organization Physicians for Reproductive Choice releases two video clips featuring Dr. George Tiller, the abortion provider murdered by an anti-abortion activist (see May 31, 2009). The clips show Tiller explaining why he chose to provide abortions as part of his work. In the clips, Tiller, who called himself a “woman-educated physician,” harked back to his father, a doctor who during his practice offered then-illegal abortions. Tiller said: “The women in my father’s practice for whom he did abortions educated me and taught me that abortion is not about babies, it’s not about families. Abortion is about women’s hopes, dreams, potential, the rest of their lives. Abortion is a matter of survival for women.” By looking through his father’s medical records, Tiller learned that his father denied an abortion to one patient in the 1940s; the woman, a mother of two, told his father, “I can’t take it, can you help me?” Tiller’s father refused. The woman then sought out an unsafe “back-alley” abortion and died in the process. “There are all sorts of dangers [for] postal workers, firemen, police officers,” Tiller said; “everything has a risk to it. I would prefer, personally, to have a challenging, stimulating, and emotionally and spiritually rewarding career that is short, rather than having a long one that is filled with ho-hum, mundane mediocrity—feeling as if you don’t make any difference to people.” [Salon, 1/20/2010; Alex DiBranco, 1/21/2010]

Charles Dyer after being detained by Oklahoma law enforcement authorities. [Source: Duncan Herald]Ex-Marine Charles Dyer is arrested on child rape and federal weapons charges. Dyer, a declared member of the “Oath Keepers” organization (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010), is charged with raping a seven-year-old girl at his home in Marlow, Oklahoma. When Stephens County deputies search his home, they find a Colt M-203 grenade launcher they believe was stolen from a California military base in 2006. Dyer’s arrest causes a split among members of the far-right “Patriot” movement, with militia members rallying behind Dyer and organizations such as the Oath Keepers distancing themselves from supporting him. Dyer was charged with making disloyal statements when, as an active-duty Marine, he posted what Mother Jones calls “incendiary videos on YouTube” under the moniker “July4Patriot.” Wearing a skull mask that partially obscured his face, he called for armed, violent resistance against the US government, railed against the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990), and invited viewers to join him at his Oklahoma home for military training, at what he said the government “will call… a terrorist training camp.” Dyer was acquitted and continued making video protests and exhortations without the mask, becoming popular among fringe militia elements. In one video made after his discharge from service, he announced his intention of becoming a “domestic terrorist.” Dyer has been a visible and outspoken member of the Oath Keepers since the organization’s first rally, and for a time he was considered an Oath Keeper spokesman, and with Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes’s blessing represented the group at a July 4, 2010 tea party rally. He often featured Oath Keeper logos and materials on his YouTube videos, and wore an Oath Keeper sweatshirt on some of them. Following Dyer’s arrest, Rhodes removes Dyer’s postings and material from the Oath Keepers Web site, and denies Dyer had any official connection with the group. Rhodes insists that Dyer never paid his $30 dues to become a member, though the organization has always said it costs nothing to join, and says he asked Dyer to stop identifying himself as an Oath Keeper after he learned that Dyer was trying to recruit for an Oklahoma militia. A blogger for American Resistance Radio calls Rhodes “beyond cowardly” and labels Dyer the “1st POW of the 2nd American Revolution.” On the Oath Keepers site, a Marine from Arizona speculates that the charges against Dyer could be the start of a false campaign to arrest and detain American patriots. But if the allegations are true, he writes, “may he rot in hell.” [Duncan Banner, 1/16/2010; Mother Jones, 1/22/2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 1/22/2010; TPMMuckraker, 1/22/2010; Mother Jones, 3/2010]

Federal judge Vaughn Walker dismisses Jewel v. NSA, a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the National Security Agency and senior Bush administration officials over the administration’s warrantless surveillance program (see September 18, 2008). Walker rules that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a “particularized injury” but instead a “generalized grievance” because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service. EFF legal director Cindy Cohn says: “We’re deeply disappointed in the judge’s ruling. This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on executive power is one of the most important elements of America’s system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that.” EFF attorney Kevin Bankston says: “The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional. With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week… the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.” The EFF indicates it will appeal Walker’s decision. [Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1/21/2010] The Obama administration echoed claims made in previous lawsuits by the Bush administration, invoking the “state secrets” privilege (see Late May, 2006) and supporting previous arguments by the Bush-era Justice Department. The administration even went a step further than its predecessor in arguing that under the Patriot Act, the government can never be sued for illegal wiretapping unless there is “willful disclosure” of the communications. [Klein, 2009, pp. 116-117]

The Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller posts a scathing criticism of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision (see January 21, 2010) on the Foundation’s blog. Miller writes that the implications of the decision “are breathtaking—opening the floodgates of political money such as we have never seen before. If you thought Congress was ‘for sale’ to the highest bidder, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of our campaign finance laws is demanded as a result of today’s decision.” Miller writes that transparency in donations and funding is not “a panacea for the horrific consequences of today’s decision, it is critically important as the shredded system is rebuilt. Today’s decision underscores the necessity of creating comprehensive real-time disclosure for all election spending—across the board—from when and how often candidates, individuals, and PACs report their contributions and expenditures to those involved in independent expenditures, issue ads, or direct election advocacy.” Miller focuses on the portion of the majority opinion that claimed Internet-based disclosure is sufficient to keep the public informed about campaign finance practices. The opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, held: “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.… This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.… [M]odern technology makes disclosures rapid and informative.… A campaign finance system that pairs corporate independent expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today.” Miller agrees, but notes that “the disclosure system [Kennedy] describe[s] doesn’t yet exist. The current disclosure system is insufficiently ‘rapid and informative’ and does not make effective use of modern technology.” Miller predicts a “tidal wave of corporate campaign expenditures” that will not be exposed or held accountable by the current disclosure system. “The quarterly reporting system now in place is outdated and ineffective—ridiculous, in a word.” Miller concludes: “[T]his decision should trigger momentum toward ensuring that all election-related information is available online in real-time. Disclosure remains a crucial antiseptic to the corrupting influence of money in politics. We should ensure our system is as transparent as possible.” [Ellen Miller, 1/21/2010]

Ian Millhiser, a constitutional policy analyst and lawyer for the liberal Center for American Progress, writes of what he considers the disastrous effect that the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court (see January 21, 2010) will have on American politics. Millhiser says the majority ruling in the Citizens United decision is plainly wrong, and that the case presented to the Court had nothing to do with the First Amendment right to free speech. “Prior to Citizens United, no law prohibited anyone from saying anything they wanted,” he writes. “Corporate CEOs and other wealthy individuals could spend their own massive salaries to run political ads on TV. People who are less rich than corporate CEOs could pool their money together via organizations. The only thing that wasn’t permitted before Citizens United is that the CEO of Bank of America could not tap into Bank of America’s massive, multi-billion dollar treasury to defeat” a candidate he or she does not support. The decision not only “provide[s] Fortune 500 companies with a massive megaphone to blast their political views to the masses,” but “it also empowers them to drown out any voices that disagree with them.” Millhiser notes that the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns spent a combined total of $1.1 billion in 2008, a record-breaking sum. However, he goes on to note that because of the Citizens United decision, corporate donors could easily spend 100 times that amount if they wanted. ”$1.1 billion is nothing, however, compared to the billions of dollars in tax subsidies given to the oil industry every year, or the $117 billion fee President Obama wants to impose on the Wall Street bankers who created the Great Recession. Indeed, with hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate profits at stake every time Congress begins a session, wealthy corporations would be foolish not to spend tens of billions of dollars every election cycle to make sure that their interests are protected. No one, including the candidates themselves, have the ability to compete with such giant expenditures.” Until Congress can rein in what Millhiser views as the excesses of the Citizens United decision, “many extremely well-moneyed corporations will still succeed in unleashing their treasuries on the electorate, and drowning out opposing voices.” [Think Progress, 1/21/2010]

Loyola Law School Professor Richard Hasen writes that the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United ruling (see January 21, 2010) is a “bad day for American democracy.” The Court as headed by Chief Justice John Roberts is a conservative activist court, Hasen writes, determined to recraft “constitutional law in its image.” The Citizens United ruling opens up the American political system “to a money free-for-all.” Hasen originally thought the Court would make a narrow ruling in the Citizens United case, perhaps finding that the campaign finance law often referred to as McCain-Feingold (see March 27, 2002) does not apply to video-on-demand broadcasts. “That would be in line with some of the past decisions of the Roberts Court, when it had preferred to chip away at existing precedent rather than dramatically move the law rightward.” But during questioning, it became clear that the conservatives on the Court were ready to dismantle McCain-Feingold as opposed to merely chipping away at it. The Court struck down limitations on corporate spending entirely (see March 27, 1990) and much of the legal limitations on so-called “soft money” campaign funding (see December 10, 2003). Hasen says that the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy equates funding limitations with censorship. Hasen writes: “There are many responses to Justice Kennedy’s reasoning. He wrongly assumes that corporations or unions can throw money at public officials without corrupting them. Could a candidate for judicial office, for example, be swayed to rule in favor of a contributor who donated $3 million to an independent campaign to get the candidate elected to the State Supreme Court? Justice Kennedy himself thought so in [a previous case]. And yet he runs away from that decision in today’s ruling. Justice Kennedy acknowledges that with the ‘soft money’ limits on political parties still in place, third-party groups (which tend to run more negative and irresponsible ads) will increase in strength relative to political parties. And that possibility raises the real chance Congress will repeal the ‘soft money’ limits, thereby increasing the risks of quid pro quo corruption.” Hasen believes that Kennedy is enshrining a fundamental principle of financial inequality—that wealthy individuals and corporations now have the legal right to unduly influence elections via their money. Money, Hasen writes, should not be equated with speech, as Kennedy has found. Instead of doing what the Court traditionally does, Hasen writes, and taking a narrow view of a constitutional issue as it has in a recent case (see June 22, 2009)—the time-honored principle of “constitutional avoidance”—this time the Court has gone to the extreme to transform the constitutional interpretation of electoral procedures. “[T]he Court went out of its way to overturn its own precedent, in violation of its usual rule of stare decisis, which calls for respecting past rulings for the good of reliable law-making. And it did so violating its usual rule, which it cited even yesterday, that it does not generally reach issues not raised in the initial petition to the Court. In short, the Court did not have to do what it did today.… This is a Court that has taken a giant leap toward deregulation of the electoral process.” [Slate, 1/21/2010]

OMB Watch, a nonprofit government accountability organization, issues a press release blasting the controversial Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court (see January 21, 2010), which allows corporations and labor unions to spend unrestricted amounts of money in support of, or opposition to, federal candidates. OMB Watch calls itself “disappointed” in the decision, and writes that it “fears [the decision] will lead to moneyed interests drowning out the voices of citizens and smaller advocacy organizations.” OMB Watch contends that the decision was wrong in stating that corporations and unions were denied access to campaigns and the election process—denied free-speech protections—by previous campaign finance law. “[P]rior to today’s decision, corporations were not stripped from political speech entirely during campaigns,” the organization says. “Rather, corporations and unions could pay for federal election spending through political action committees. The ruling will certainly alter corporate and union spending on future elections. This decision will have a profound impact on the 2010 midterm elections and 2012 presidential election.” The release quotes Lateefah Williams, a nonprofit speech rights policy analyst at OMB Watch who specializes in nonprofit voter engagement issues, as saying: “It will allow corporate interests to significantly impact those races by funneling massive amounts of money to support or oppose candidates.… Our fear is that the voices of large portions of our citizenry and the charities that advocate on their behalf will be drowned out in the process.” OMB Watch calls on Congress and the White House to pass legislation that would curtail the effect of the decision. [Brian Gumm, 1/21/2010]

President Obama sharply criticizes the controversial Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court (see January 21, 2010), which allows corporations and labor unions to spend unrestricted amounts of money in support of, or opposition to, federal candidates. Obama says: “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington—while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.” [Palm Beach Post, 1/21/2010; Think Progress, 1/22/2010]

Many Republican lawmakers and their supporters celebrate the controversial Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court (see January 21, 2010), which allows corporations and labor unions to spend unrestricted amounts of money in support of, or opposition to, federal candidates. Most observers believe that Republicans will benefit from the ruling, as large corporations who can now spend large amounts on influencing elections tend to support more conservative candidates and causes (see January 21-22, 2010). Most Republicans who praise the decision do not mention the presumed financial advantage they may now enjoy, but instead focus on the issue as one of freedom of speech. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) says of the decision: “It is about a nonprofit group’s ability to speak about the public issue. I can’t think of a more fundamental First Amendment issue. [The ruling could] open up resources that have not previously been available [for Republicans].” Representative Steve King (R-IA) says: “The Constitution protects the rights of citizens and employers to express their viewpoints on political issues. Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms the Bill of Rights and is a victory for liberty and free speech.” Fellow Republican House member Mike Pence (R-IN) agrees: “If the freedom of speech means anything, it means protecting the right of private citizens to voice opposition or support for their elected representatives. The fact that the Court overturned a 20-year precedent speaks volumes about the importance of this issue.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says the ruling is a big step towards “restoring the First Amendment rights [of corporations and unions].… By previously denying this right, the government was picking winners and losers.” Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele says: “Today’s decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC serves as an affirmation of the constitutional rights provided to Americans under the first amendment. Free speech strengthens our democracy.” And US Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R-FL) says, “Today’s SCOTUS decision on McCain-Feingold is a victory for free speech.” One of the few Republicans to speak against the decision is Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who calls it “regrettable” and “disappointing.” Snowe is joined in her criticism by fellow Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the co-author of the legislation partially overturned by the ruling (see March 27, 2002), who also says he is “disappointed” by the decision. [Associated Press, 1/21/2010; Think Progress, 1/22/2010]

The New York Times calls today’s ruling in the Citizens United case (see January 21, 2010) “disastrous,” saying that “the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century.” The Court has used the excuse of the First Amendment (see January 21, 2010) to “pave… the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.” The Times recommends that Congress should “act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.” In essence, the Times writes, lobbyists for corporate, labor, and special interests now have the power to sway elections in the directions they prefer. And the ruling gives those same interests the power to intimidate and even coerce candidates. “If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest,” the Times writes, “its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.” The Times notes that since the inception of the nation, its founders have “warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections—the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.” Corporate money has been banned from elections since 1907 (see 1907), and that ban has been in place, in one form or another (see June 25, 1910, 1925, 1935, 1940, June 25, 1943, June 23, 1947, March 11, 1957, February 7, 1972, 1974, May 11, 1976, January 30, 1976, January 8, 1980, March 27, 1990, March 27, 2002, and December 10, 2003), until today. The Times accuses the Court of “overreach[ing],” using “a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign (see January 10-16, 2008). The Court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity (see June 29, 2009), and it scheduled arguments during its vacation” (see September 9, 2009). The Times says the ruling is “deeply wrong on the law,” particularly in declaring corporations as equivalent to people, with the same First Amendment rights. “It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.” And the Times derides the statement in the Court’s majority opinion that says independent corporate expenditures “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” citing Senator John McCain (R-AZ)‘s characterization of the Court’s reasoning as being plagued by “extreme naivete.” The Citizens United case is, the Times writes, “likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore (see 9:54 p.m. December 12, 2000). With one 5-to-4 decision, the Court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.” The only two ways to rectify the situation, the Times concludes, are to overturn the ruling via Congressional legislation and have a future Court—with a different makeup—overturn the decision itself. [New York Times, 1/21/2010]

Three of the Supreme Court justices in the majority decision: Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, and Anthony Kennedy. [Source: Associated Press / Politico]The Supreme Court rules 5-4 that corporate spending in political elections may not be banned by the federal government. The case is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205. The Court is divided among ideological lines, with the five conservatives voting against the four moderates and liberals on the bench. The decision overrules two precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, and rules that corporate financial support for a party or candidate qualifies as “freedom of speech” (see March 11, 1957, January 30, 1976, May 11, 1976, April 26, 1978, January 8, 1980, November 28, 1984, December 15, 1986, June 26, 1996, June 25, 2007, and June 26, 2008). The majority rules that the government may not regulate “political speech,” while the dissenters hold that allowing corporate money to, in the New York Times’s words, “flood the political marketplace,” would corrupt the democratic process. The ramifications of the decision will be vast, say election specialists. [Legal Information Institute, 2010; CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, 1/21/2010 ; New York Times, 1/21/2010] In essence, the ruling overturns much of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold law (BCRA—see March 27, 2002). The ruling leaves the 1907 ban on direct corporate contributions to federal candidates and national party committees intact (see 1907). The ban on corporate and union donors coordinating their efforts directly with political parties or candidates’ campaigns remains in place; they must maintain “independence.” Any corporation spending more than $10,000 a year on electioneering efforts must publicly disclose the names of individual contributors. And the ruling retains some disclosure and disclaimer requirements, particularly for ads airing within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The Los Angeles Times writes: “The decision is probably the most sweeping and consequential handed down under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. And the outcome may well have an immediate impact on this year’s mid-term elections to Congress.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/21/2010; OMB Watch, 1/27/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 2/2/2010; National Public Radio, 2012]
Unregulated Money Impacts Midterm Elections - The decision’s effects will be felt first on a national level in the 2010 midterm elections, when unregulated corporate spending will funnel millions of dollars from corporate donors into Congressional and other races. President Obama calls the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.” Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, says the Court “took what had been a revolving door and took the door away altogether. There was something there that slowed the money down. Now it’s gone.” [Legal Information Institute, 2010; CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, 1/21/2010 ; New York Times, 1/21/2010; Los Angeles Times, 1/21/2010; Think Progress, 1/21/2010]
Broadening in Scope - According to reporter and author Jeffrey Toobin, CU lawyer Theodore Olson had originally wanted to present the case as narrowly as possible, to ensure a relatively painless victory that would not ask the Court to drastically revise campaign finance law. But according to Toobin, the conservative justices, and particularly Chief Justice Roberts, want to use the case as a means of overturning much if not all of McCain-Feingold (see May 14, 2012). In the original argument of the case in March 2009 (see March 15, 2009), Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart unwittingly changed the scope of the case in favor of a broader interpretation, and gave Roberts and the other conservative justices the opportunity they may have been seeking. [New Yorker, 5/21/2012]
Majority Opinion Grants Corporations Rights of Citizens - The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, reads in part: “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.… The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.” In essence, Kennedy’s ruling finds, corporations are citizens. The ruling overturns two precedents: 1990’s Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates (see March 27, 1990) in its entirety, and large portions of 2003’s McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (see December 10, 2003), which upheld a portion of the BCRA that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions. Before today’s ruling, the BCRA banned the broadcast, cable, or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations or labor unions from their general funds in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections. The law was restricted in 2007 by a Court decision to apply only to communications “susceptible to no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate” (see June 25, 2007).
Encroachment on Protected Free Speech - Eight of the nine justices agree that Congress can require corporations to disclose their spending and to run disclaimers with their advertisements; Justice Clarence Thomas is the only dissenter on this point. Kennedy writes, “Disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way.” Kennedy’s opinion states that if the restrictions remain in place, Congress could construe them to suppress political speech in newspapers, on television news programs, in books, and on the Internet. Kennedy writes: “When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”
Fiery Dissent - Justice John Paul Stevens, the oldest member of the court, submits a fiery 90-page dissent that is joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor. Kennedy is joined by Roberts and fellow Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Thomas, though Roberts and Alito submit a concurring opinion instead of signing on with Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas. “The difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind,” Stevens writes in his dissent. “And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one’s behalf.” Stevens writes that the Court has long recognized the First Amendment rights of corporations, but the restrictions struck down by the decision are moderate and fair. “At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.” Speaking from the bench, Stevens calls the ruling “a radical change in the law… that dramatically enhances the role of corporations and unions—and the narrow interests they represent—in determining who will hold public office.… Corporations are not human beings. They can’t vote and can’t run for office,” and should be restricted under election law. “Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”
Case Originated with 2008 Political Documentary - The case originated in a 2008 documentary by the right-wing advocacy group Citizens United (CU), called Hillary: The Movie (see January 10-16, 2008). The film, a caustic attack on then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Democrats in general, was released for public viewing during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. When the Federal Election Commission (FEC) won a lawsuit against CU, based on the FEC’s contention that broadcasting the film violated McCain-Feingold, the group abandoned plans to release the film on a cable video-on-demand service and to broadcast television advertisements for it. CU appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, and most observers believed the Court would decide the case on narrow grounds, not use the case to rewrite election law and First Amendment coverage. [Legal Information Institute, 2010; CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, 1/21/2010 ; New York Times, 1/21/2010; Los Angeles Times, 1/21/2010; Think Progress, 1/21/2010; Associated Press, 1/21/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 2/2/2010]
Case Brought in Order to Attack Campaign Finance Law - Critics have said that CU created the movie in order for it to fall afoul of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, and give the conservatives on the Court the opportunity to reverse or narrow the law. Nick Nyhart of Public Campaign, an opponent of the decision, says: “The movie was created with the idea of establishing a vehicle to chip away at the decision. It was part of a very clear strategy to undo McCain-Feingold.” CU head David Bossie confirms this contention, saying after the decision: “We have been trying to defend our First Amendment rights for many, many years. We brought the case hoping that this would happen… to defeat McCain-Feingold.” [Washington Post, 1/22/2010]

Liberal MSNBC commentator and talk show host Keith Olbermann devotes one of his “special comments” to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited corporate donations in elections (see January 21, 2010). Olbermann starts by reminding his viewers of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott ruling by the Court that found no African-American could be considered a US citizen (see March 6, 1857). Olbermann compares Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of the Citizens United decision, unfavorably to the much-maligned chief justice who wrote the Dred Scott ruling; Olbermann says that the Citizens United decision “might actually have more dire implications than” the 1857 finding. Olbermann says: “In short, the First Amendment—free speech for persons—which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections. None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want—sooner, rather than later—they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from president to head of the Visiting Nurse Service. And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.” Corporations can, in essence, buy and sell politicians at will, Olbermann says, and those politicians can change laws as their corporate donors dictate. “[A]ny legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now. And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.… Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within 10 years, every politician in this country will be a prostitute.” Labor unions, Olbermann says, will quickly be “strangled” by corporations “so they pose no further threat to the corporations’ total control of our political system.” Taxes on the wealthy and on corporations will be slashed, and social programs will be eliminated, “because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.” Wars that benefit the military-industrial complex will become the norm. Racial and religious profiling will become commonplace, because the corporations will want to shift blame from their own machinations onto someone else, and people of different religions or ethnicities are easy targets for such blame. The “poor dumb manipulated b_stards” of the “tea parties” will “have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system,” until they are “banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American freedom.” The Obama administration’s bank reforms will be eliminated by “his successor purchased by the banks.” Corporations will buy and control government entities from federal agencies to town councils. Billionaires will “buy and install their own city governments.” The mainstream media as we know it will disappear, because the corporate-owned government will require media outlets to reassure the populace that “everything’s great” and no one is needed to speak out against the government. The Internet, currently a venue that allows the most disparate of opinions to be voiced and shared, will be corralled and brought to heel. Olbermann concludes by saying: “The right wing won’t even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.” [MSNBC, 1/21/2010]

Liberal MSNBC commentator and talk show host Keith Olbermann devotes one of his “special comments” to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited corporate donations in elections (see January 21, 2010). Olbermann starts by reminding his viewers of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott ruling by the Court that found no African-American could ever be considered a US citizen (see March 6, 1857). Olbermann compares Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of the Citizens United decision, unfavorably to the much-maligned chief justice who wrote the Dred Scott ruling; Olbermann says that the Citizens United decision “might actually have more dire implications than” the 1857 finding. Olbermann says: “In short, the First Amendment—free speech for persons—which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections. None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want—sooner, rather than later—they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from president to head of the Visiting Nurse Service. And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office, soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.” Corporations can, in essence, buy and sell politicians at will, Olbermann says, and those politicians can change laws as their corporate donors dictate. “[A]ny legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now. And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.… Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within 10 years every politician in this country will be a prostitute.” Labor unions, Olbermann says, will quickly be “strangled” by corporations “so they pose no further threat to the corporations’ total control of our political system.” Taxes on the wealthy and on corporations will be slashed, and social programs will be eliminated, “because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.” Wars that benefit the military-industrial complex will become the norm. Racial and religious profiling will become commonplace, because the corporations will want to shift blame from their own machinations onto someone else, and people of different religions or ethnicities are easy targets for such blame. The “poor dumb manipulated b_stards” of the “tea parties” will “have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system,” until they are “banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American freedom.” The Obama administration’s bank reforms will be eliminated by “his successor purchased by the banks.” Corporations will buy and control government entities from federal agencies to town councils. Billionaires will “buy and install their own city governments.” The mainstream media as we know it will disappear, because the corporate-owned government will require media outlets to reassure the populace that “everything’s great” and no one is needed to speak out against the government. The Internet, currently a venue that allows the most disparate of opinions to be voiced and shared, will be corralled and brought to heel. Olbermann concludes by saying: “The right wing won’t even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.” [MSNBC, 1/21/2010]

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) calls the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” overturning of corporate campaign finance restrictions (see January 21, 2010) a disaster. Schumer says, “With a stroke of a pen, the court decided to overrule the 100-year-old ban on corporate expenditures and override the will of millions of Americans who want their voices heard in our democracy.” Other Democrats agree. When questioned about Schumer’s comments by reporters from the Tampa Bay Times’s PolitiFact investigative arm, Schumer’s office says that the “100-year-old” reference refers to the 1907 Tillman Act (see 1907), and cites Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent, which stated: “The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907.” PolitiFact finds that Schumer’s characterization is “a stretch” because of the differences between independent expenditures and direct contributions. Independent expenditures are monies spent by corporations to support or oppose an issue or a candidate. Direct contributions are donations to a candidate’s campaign. Corporations may not make direct contributions to campaigns; they have to form political action committees (PACs) for that purpose. The Citizens United decision does not affect that portion of the law. According to PolitiFact, the Tillman Act applies more to independent expenditures than to direct contributions, as does the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act (see June 23, 1947). Schumer’s characterization, PolitiFact finds, is not entirely accurate. “[H]e ignores the fact that the ban on direct donations from corporations to campaigns still exists,” PolitiFact writes. “And the oldest law that specifically banned independent expenditures dated to 1947. You could also argue that we should be dating this from the 1970s campaign finance laws, or even the 1990 Austin case (see March 27, 1990). So he’s exaggerating the scope of the ruling and how long the laws have been on the books.” [Tampa Bay Times, 1/22/2010] Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) joins Schumer and other Democrats in criticizing the ruling, calling it the “worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case” (see March 6, 1857). [Think Progress, 1/22/2010]

The press reports that the US Chamber of Commerce and other lobbying organizations are the biggest winners in the controversial Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court (see January 21, 2010), which allows corporations and labor unions to spend unrestricted amounts of money in support of, or opposition to, federal candidates. The Chamber of Commerce spends more on promoting Republican and conservative candidates than almost any other organization outside of the Republican Party itself. Other trade organizations, which tend to support Republicans, will almost certainly up their spending on behalf of their candidates, or in opposition to Democrats, according to experts interviewed by reporters, as will most corporations.
Unrestrained Spending to Favor Republicans - Democratic lawyer Marc Elias says: “It is a sweeping decision. In one opinion, the Court struck down all bans on corporate independent spending.” GOP lawyer Robert Kelner says that the ruling “will reflect a huge sea-change in campaign finance law. The Court went all the way. It really relieves any restrictions on corporate spending on independent advertising.” Another GOP lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, says: “It’s going to be the Wild Wild West. If corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts… it means that the public debate is significantly changed with a lot more voices, and it means that the loudest voices are going to be corporations and unions.” Former Federal Elections Commission member Brad Smith says, “This case will lead to more spending, I think, in political elections.” Lawrence M. Noble, the former general counsel for the FEC, says a lobbyist can tell a candidate, “We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you—whichever one you want.” Political science professor Robert Watson, who has consulted with Democratic campaigns, says: “It’s a game changer. And the last thing we need is for major corporations and nonprofits to have unlimited access to buy their members of Congress.” The New York Times writes: “It is expected to unleash a torrent of attack advertisements from outside groups aiming to sway voters, without any candidate having to take the criticism for dirty campaigning. The biggest beneficiaries might be well-placed incumbents whose favor companies and interests groups are eager to court. It could also have a big impact on state and local governments, where a few million dollars can have more influence on elections.” The National Journal states: “Over the long run, the ruling is likely to favor GOPers more than it does Dems. While it does apply to unions and corporations equally, Elias said the presumption is that corporations have more money to spend.” Major corporations will not openly run their own advertising, Kelner says, but they will funnel millions into trade associations such as the Chamber of Commerce. “If people think that individual companies are going to go out and buy ads, there may be some of that, but for the most part companies are going to flow this money through trade groups and other outside groups,” Kelner says. “This will open the floodgates for money flowing through groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and other associations [that] spend money on political advertising.… There was always a cloud of doubt around outside groups and trade associations, and this lifts those clouds of doubt and leaves behind clear skies.” Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) general counsel Joe Sandler says the ruling may open the door for more attacks on incumbents by corporate and other entities eager to spend money to ease them out. “You will see more sharp-edged, candidate-specific ads on the air closer to the election,” Sandler says. “That could make it more difficult for incumbents to take tough votes in an election year.” [Palm Beach Post, 1/21/2010; National Journal, 1/21/2010; New York Times, 1/21/2010] Think Progress, the liberal news Web site affiliated with the Center for American Progress, writes, “The ruling is a giant win for the US Chamber of Commerce and the big corporations, which tend to donate heavily to Republicans.” [Think Progress, 1/22/2010]
Citizens the Real Losers? - Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center calls the ruling a complete loss for citizens, saying: “[T]he Supreme Court majority declared that corporate speech trumps the rights of American voters to government free of corporate corruption. The Court has nominally upheld campaign finance disclosure requirements applicable to corporations, but I think time will prove that those disclosure requirements are largely ineffective when dealing with contributions.” Brad Ashwell of the Florida Public Interest Research Group calls the ruling a “shocking burst of judicial activism.” Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) calls the ruling “a terrible mistake,” and says the Court “chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns.” Feingold and other Congressional Democrats want to pass legislation that would curb the decision as soon as feasible. [Palm Beach Post, 1/21/2010; National Journal, 1/21/2010; New York Times, 1/21/2010]
Republicans Celebrate Victory for Free Speech, Say Decision Will 'Level Out' Spending - But Marco Rubio (R-FL), running for Florida’s open Senate seat, says, “Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a victory for those who truly value the freedoms outlined in our First Amendment.” And Republican consultant Ed Brookover, who represents Republican House candidate Allen West (R-FL), says he believes spending from liberal groups such as MoveOn.org will equal spending by corporations, and “level out” spending for the two parties. [Palm Beach Post, 1/21/2010; National Journal, 1/21/2010]
President Critical of Decision - President Obama speaks out against the decision (see January 21, 2010).

The Wall Street Journal celebrates the Citizens United Supreme Court decision (see January 21, 2010) as a victory for “free speech” (see January 21, 2010). In an unsigned editorial, the Journal celebrates the decision by stating that the Court used the Constitution to “rescue” the political system from “marauding government” elements, particularly a “reckless Congress.” The Journal claims that the Citizens United case rested on the Federal Election Commission (FEC)‘s refusal to allow the airing of a 90-minute political attack documentary on presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) because the film was “less than complimentary” of her. In reality, the FEC considered the film “electioneering” by the organization that released the film, Citizens United, and prohibited it from being shown on pay-per-view cable access (see January 10-16, 2008). The Court rejected campaign finance law’s limitation on corporate spending, prompting the Journal to state, “Corporations are entitled to the same right that individuals have to spend money on political speech for or against a candidate.” Any other state of affairs, the Journal writes, constitutes censorship. The Journal criticizes President Obama for speaking out against the decision (see January 21, 2010), saying that Obama put “on his new populist facade to call it ‘a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies,’ and other ‘special interests.’ Mr. Obama didn’t mention his union friends as one of those interests, but their political spending will also be protected by the logic of this ruling. The reality is that free speech is no one’s special interest.” The Journal dismisses promises by Congressional Democrats to pass legislation or even bring forth a constitutional amendment limiting corporate donations by stating, “Liberalism’s bullying tendencies are never more on display than when its denizens are at war with the speech rights of its opponents.” The Journal concludes by advocating that the Court overturn its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision (see January 30, 1976) that placed modest limits on corporate spending, in essence advocating the complete deregulation of campaign financing. “The Court did yesterday uphold disclosure rules, so a sensible step now would be for Congress to remove all campaign-finance limits subject only to immediate disclosure on the Internet,” the Journal states. “Citizens United is in any event a bracing declaration that Congress’s long and misbegotten campaign-finance crusade has reached a constitutional dead end.” [Wall Street Journal, 1/22/2010]

In his weekly radio and Internet address, President Obama denounces the recent Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that lets corporations and labor unions spend unlimited amounts on political campaign activities (see January 21, 2010). “This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” he says. “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.… This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way—or to punish those who don’t.… The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.” The decision, Obama says, will make it harder to enact financial reform, close tax loopholes, promote energy independence, and protect patients from health insurance abuses. “We don’t need to give any more voice to the powerful interests that already drown out the voices of everyday Americans,” Obama says. “And we don’t intend to.” He says he is asking Congress to work with the White House to “fight for the American people” and develop a “forceful bipartisan response” to the decision. “It will be a priority for us until we repair the damage that has been done.” Norm Eisen, Obama’s special counsel for ethics and government reform, has already met with Democratic Congressional leaders Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) to begin talks on how Congress might respond. [New York Times, 1/24/2010; Associated Press, 1/25/2010]

James Bopp Jr. [Source: Associated Press / Politico]A former lawyer for Citizens United (CU), James Bopp Jr., confirms that the organization had a “10-year plan” that culminated in the recent Citizens United ruling that overturned most of US campaign finance law (see January 21, 2010). Bopp has been battling government restrictions on abortion (see November 1980 and After) and campaign finance (see Mid-2004 and After, January 10-16, 2008, and March 24, 2008) for much of his 35-year career. He calls his opponents, including President Obama, “socialists,” and justifies his views by citing the First Amendment. Bopp did not argue the case before the Supreme Court; Citizens United replaced him with what the New York Times calls “a less ideological and more experienced Washington lawyer” (see March 15, 2009). But Bopp is the lawyer who advised CU to use its documentary about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY—see January 10-16, 2008) as a test case to push the limits of corporate spending. He says his strategy continues, with the ultimate goal of deregulating campaign finance completely. “We had a 10-year plan to take all this down,” Bopp says. “And if we do it right, I think we can pretty well dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law.… We have been awfully successful, and we are not done yet.” Law professor and campaign finance law expert Richard Hasen says the CU case “was really Jim’s brainchild.” Hasen explains: “He has manufactured these cases to present certain questions to the Supreme Court in a certain order and achieve a certain result. He is a litigation machine.” Bopp has other cases on appeal with various courts, all designed to do what the Times says “chip away at some of the disclosure laws left intact by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case.” One of Bopp’s main goals is to end the ban on direct donations by corporations to candidates, a goal law professor Nathaniel Persily says is logical in light of Bopp’s earlier efforts: “If you cannot ban corporate spending on ads, how is it that you are allowed to ban corporate contributions to candidates? That is the next shoe to drop.” He also wants to end all disclosure requirements, explaining, “Groups have to be relieved of reporting their donors if lifting the prohibition on their political speech is going to have any meaning.” Forcing groups who buy political commercials to disclose their donors is nearly as punitive, he says, “as an outright criminal go-to-jail-time prohibition.” Bopp says he harbors no ill will towards CU from replacing him with another lawyer to argue the case before the Court. “I understand that law is art,” he says. “Picasso, Van Gogh, Michelangelo—they are all very different, but all create masterpieces.” [New York Times, 1/25/2010]

Jan Witold Baran. [Source: Metropolitan Corporate Counsel]Author and law professor Jan Witold Baran cheers the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that allows virtually unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions in political campaigns (see January 21, 2010). Baran, who alerts readers that he filed an amicus curiae brief with the Court in favor of plaintiff Citizens United, characterizes the ruling as allowing “corporations and unions [to] spend money on political advertising that urges the election or defeat of a candidate for public office.” He cites President Obama’s warning that the decision will unleash a “stampede of special-interest money in our politics” (see January 24, 2010), and derides that warning. He reminds readers that the decision retains the ban on direct contributions by corporations and unions, and that corporations and unions may not “spend money in cahoots with political parties,” but must remain “independent” and not coordinate with candidates or their campaigns. He also tells readers that the decision mandates disclosure, saying that the ruling “upheld the laws that require any corporate or union spender to file reports with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours of spending the first dime.” Because of these retentions, Baran writes, there will be no “stampede of special-interest money.” The ruling will put an end to so-called “issue ads,” Baran predicts (see March 27, 1990 and June 25, 2007), the ads that either support or attack an issue and then urge the viewer to contact their congressperson. Because of the new ruling, the ads can now exhort viewers to vote for one candidate or against another because of the issues. Baran goes on to write, “There is also no factual basis to predict that there will be a ‘stampede’ of additional spending.” Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia already have laws permitting some corporate and union spending, he says, and notes: “There have been no stampedes in those states’ elections. Having a constitutional right is not the same as requiring one to exercise it, and there are many reasons businesses and unions may not spend much more on politics than they already do. As such, the effect of Citizens United on the 2010 campaigns is debatable.” He says that the ruling is primarily a blowback against Congress’s meddlesome penchant to restrict “campaign speech.… Congress interpreted its power to regulate campaigns as a license to limit, restrict, burden, and confuse anyone who wished to engage in political campaigns.” Now, he says, the Court has reminded Congress that the First Amendment trumps its ability to regulate (see January 21, 2010 and January 22, 2010). The ruling is “a breath of fresh air” for everyone except Washington lawyers, Baran says, and concludes: “The history of campaign finance reform is the history of incumbent politicians seeking to muzzle speakers, any speakers, particularly those who might publicly criticize them and their legislation. It is a lot easier to legislate against unions, gun owners, ‘fat cat’ bankers, health insurance companies, and any other industry or ‘special interest’ group when they can’t talk back.” [New York Times, 1/25/2010; Wiley Rein LLP, 2012] Many observers besides Obama predict dire consequences as a result of the Court ruling (see January 21, 2010, January 21, 2010, January 21, 2010, January 21, 2010, January 21, 2010, January 21, 2010, January 21-22, 2010, January 21, 2010, and January 26, 2010). And unfortunately for Baran’s predictions, a March 2010 appeals court verdict (see March 26, 2010) will join with the Citizens United ruling, particularly a loophole in the ruling (see February 27, 2010), to unleash just the kind of corporate spending that Baran says would never happen.

US News and World Report reporter Paul Bedard notes that CNBC commentator Rick Santelli is being lauded as a “founding father” of the right-wing “tea party” movement. Santelli is cited in a number of sources, including the recently published A New American Tea Party by former Bush administration official John O’Hara, as having “kicked off” the tea party movement with his “impromptu” rant against the Obama administration’s economic policies on CNBC (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009). Santelli has refused to become a tea party spokesman (see April 2, 2009), but he says, “I still think that all the dynamics that I felt as it was happening are still in place today.” Santelli adds that like many “tea partiers,” he opposes the Obama administration’s health care reform efforts. O’Hara has written, “Santelli was very important” to the tea party movement. Before Santelli’s on-air rant, most Americans had just accepted the Bush and Obama administration claims that they had to bail out Wall Street and Detroit to avert catastrophic failures. “Santelli said what a lot of people were thinking and afraid to say” when he told viewers that “government is promoting bad behavior.” Santelli says: “It’s very gratifying to me that four minutes out of my life made a difference.… It seems to me that any reason for people getting more active in running or taking part in politics and government I think is just terrific.” Santelli says he has repeatedly turned down offers to run for public office in his home state of Illinois. [US News and World Report, 1/25/2010] In an interview shortly after the US News and World Report article is published, Santelli says that he and the “tea parties” share many goals and beliefs. “I feel bad to a certain extent because, even though I may share many of the philosophies of the tea party and many believe I was instrumental in being a catalyst for its formation, I also think that considering what I do for a living—and I take it very seriously—I try to avoid political ties.” He then criticizes the mainstream media for not paying more attention to the tea parties and the economic issues that motivate them, saying: “Most of the mainstream coverage of most of the crisis—the economy, the road to get here, and the tea party—has been very much lacking. The fact that many traditional media avenues that have ignored or belittled the tea parties all of a sudden seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time trying to understand and explain them, I think that alone gives credibility to their girth.” [Daily Caller, 2/2/2010]

During a conference at Georgetown University Law Center, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is “obliquely” critical of the recent Citizens United decision allowing corporations and labor unions to fund political activities without spending limits (see January 21, 2010), in the words of New York Times reporter Adam Liptak. Liptak describes O’Connor as “not sound[ing] happy” about the decision, but notes that instead of giving a pointed critique of the ruling, she advises her audience to see the McConnell decision she co-wrote banning corporate spending in political campaigns (see December 10, 2003)). Of the current Court’s ruling, she says, “Gosh, I step away for a couple of years and there’s no telling what’s going to happen.” Since her retirement from the Court, she has become a vocal advocate for doing away with judicial elections in the states; she says that the Citizens United ruling will likely create “an increasing problem for maintaining an independent judiciary.… In invalidating some of the existing checks on campaign spending, the majority in Citizens United has signaled that the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections might get considerably worse and quite soon.” She says that with the combination of unlimited corporate and union spending, and the practice of electing state judges, “We can anticipate that labor unions and trial lawyers, for instance, might have the financial means to win one particular state judicial election. And maybe tobacco firms and energy companies have enough to win the next one. And if both sides unleash their campaign spending monies without restrictions, then I think mutually-assured destruction is the most likely outcome.” [New York Times, 1/26/2012] Days after the Times reports on O’Connor’s remarks, Times editorial writer Dorothy Samuels will agree, writing that “[t]he Citizens United ruling promises to make that problem worse, possibly much worse.” The title of her editorial is “Hanging a ‘For Sale’ Sign Over the Judiciary.” [New York Times, 1/29/2012]

Testimony by Patrick F. Kennedy, an under secretary for management at the State Department, before the House Committee on Homeland Security confirms that US intelligence officials prevented the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The 23-year-old Nigerian student, whom US intelligence believed was working with the Yemeni arm of al-Qaeda, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on December 25, 2009 (see December 25, 2009). Kennedy informs the committee’s chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS): “We will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’ And one of the members—and we’d be glad to give you that out of—in private—said: ‘Please do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.’” With the exception of a story appearing in the Detroit News, this revelation will go unreported in mainstream news media outlets. [US Congress. House. Committee on Homeland Security, 1/27/2010; Detroit News, 1/27/2010]

Fox News host Glenn Beck says that Social Security and Medicare are “socialist” programs that “should have never been created.” Beck tells his viewers: “Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should have never been created in the first place?… I’m an American. I read. I believe in the Constitution. And, of course, Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should have never been created. Since FDR and his progressive buddies started Social Security, not our Founding Fathers, that should be fairly obvious to people.” Beck tells his viewers that Social Security was created by Harry Hopkins, an adviser to then-President Franklin Roosevelt who, Beck says, “had a relationship with [Josef] Stalin,” the then-dictator of the Soviet Union. Therefore, Beck says, Social Security is a Stalinist “redistribution of wealth” program that is inherently Marxist in its nature. [Media Matters, 1/27/2010; Media Matters, 9/7/2010] Beck’s allegation that Hopkins was some sort of “Stalinist” is false. The allegation originally came from KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, who wrote a sensationlist book, KGB: The Inside Story, where he alleged Hopkins was “an unconscious spy” for the Soviet Union during World War II. In reality, Hopkins was the top official in the Roosevelt administration charged with dealing with Soviet officials during World War II. His job involved explaining American policies and positions to Stalin and other top Soviet officials. Since Soviets who spoke to Hopkins routinely reported the contacts to the Soviet national security agency, the NKVD, Hopkins was listed as a “source” or “agent” of information for Moscow. No evidence has ever surfaced that Hopkins provided any classified or unauthorized information to the USSR, or in any way worked to advance the cause of Soviet Communism. [New York Times, 10/28/1990]

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito listens to President Obama’s State of the Union address. [Source: Renovo Media]President Obama sharply criticizes the recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, giving corporations and unions the right to give unlimited and anonymous donations to organizations supporting or opposing political candidates (see January 21, 2010), during the annual State of the Union address. Obama gives the address to a joint session of Congress, with three Supreme Court members in attendance. “With all due deference to the separation of powers,” Obama says, “last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.” Democrats in the chamber applaud Obama’s remarks, while Republicans do not. In his response, Justice Samuel Alito, one of the five conservatives on the Court who joined in the majority decision, shakes his head and mouths, “Not true, not true” (some lip readers will later claim that Alito says, “That’s not true”). It is highly unusual for a president to so directly criticize a Supreme Court ruling, especially in a State of the Union address. The next day, Vice President Joe Biden defends Obama’s remarks in an appearance on Good Morning America. Biden says: “The president didn’t question the integrity of the court. He questioned the judgment of it. I think [the ruling] was dead wrong and we have to correct it.” Supreme Court expert Lucas A. Powe says, “I can’t ever recall a president taking a swipe at the Supreme Court like that.” Experts say that the closest precedent they can find is President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 criticism of the Court in his address to Congress. Yale law professor Jack Balkin says, “The important thing to me is that the president thinks the Citizens United decision is important enough that he would include it.” Reactions are split along ideological lines. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) calls Obama “rude” to criticize the Court’s verdict. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) calls Alito’s reaction “inappropriate.” Legal expert Barbara A. Perry of Sweet Briar College says both Obama and Alito were in the wrong, calling the interaction “an unfortunate display for both branches.” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton says: “One of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of the government at high levels can disagree in public and in private. This is one of those cases.” Alito refuses to comment. Alito and Obama have a contentious history. As a senator, Obama was one of the most outspoken voices against Alito’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice (see October 31, 2005 - February 1, 2006), saying then of Alito, “[W]hen you look at his record—when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I have found that in almost every case, he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless; on behalf of a strong government or corporation against upholding American’s individual rights.” For his part, Alito snubbed the formal visit paid by Obama and Biden to the Court. [New York Daily News, 1/28/2010; Washington Post, 1/28/2010] Months later, Obama’s warning will be proven to be correct, as a media investigation will show the US Chamber of Commerce using foreign monies to fund attack ads and other political activities under the cloak of the Citizens United decision (see October 2010).

A number of conservative media outlets accuse President Obama of engaging in “demagoguery” in his recent comments that warned the Citizens United decision (see January 21, 2010) could open the door for foreign corporations to contribute money for use in American elections (see January 27-29, 2010). [Media Matters, 1/28/2010] National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru writes, “The most demagogic moment (so far!) came when the president claimed, falsely, that the Supreme Court had given a green light to foreign corporations to run political ads.” [National Review, 1/27/2010] Law professor and former Federal Elections Commission member Bradley A. Smith echoes Ponnuru’s accusation, writing that Obama “engaged in demagoguery of the worst kind.… The president’s statement is false.… This is either blithering ignorance of the law or demagoguery of the worst kind.” [National Review, 1/27/2010] Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), the vice-presidential candidate on the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008, says on Fox News that Obama’s criticism “may not be true,” and accuses Obama of “embarrassing our Supreme Court.” She says: “This is why people are disenchanted and are becoming more and more disengaged really from what their government is doing, because when we see an issue like this—words spoken that may not be true coming from our president and embarrassing our Supreme Court and not respecting the separation of powers—we have a problem. And that’s illustrated there by that justice mouthing those words, ‘not true.’ Now, one or the other is being disingenuous here—either our president in what he just claimed, or the Supreme Court justice.” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough calls Obama’s warning “just not the truth,” saying that Obama’s statements were “not based in fact [or] the law.… So the president was not served well last night; he went out and said something that just wasn’t the truth. And I’m sure that that was very difficult for the Supreme Court to sit there and have the president tell America and the world these jokers on the front row just opened up American campaigns to foreign entities when that in fact is just not the truth.” [Media Matters, 1/28/2010] Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners, “It’s clear the president didn’t know what he was talking about or he was just out-and-out lying because he knows he’s not going to be fact-checked on matters like that by most in the state-controlled media.” [Media Matters, 1/28/2010] Prominent conservative blogger “Allahpundit” accuses Obama of “demagoguing the First Amendment” [HotAir (.com), 1/27/2010] , an accusation echoed by conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds, who responds to Allahpundit’s post by writing that Obama’s “demagoguery [will turn] into a negative for him.” [Glenn Reynolds, 1/27/2010] The next day, the Wall Street Journal will demand that Obama “get his facts straight” about the issue (see January 29, 2010). The liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Obama’s concerns were echoed by the four dissenting Supreme Court Justices in the Citizens United decision, as noted in the dissent by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The majority decision, Stevens wrote, “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.” Cornell law professor Michael Dorf agreed with Stevens, telling a reporter that “[i]t is a plausible inference from the court’s opinion that [foreign] money can’t be restricted.” Dorf’s position is echoed by campaign finance reform advocate Fred Wertheimer and the leaders of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, Media Matters notes. [Media Matters, 1/28/2010] And the day after the decision was rendered, Smith, who accused Obama of either “blithering ignorance… or demagoguery,” told a reporter that though the law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing money to groups involved in election politics, “To the extent that there may be some foreign corporations that don’t fall under the category of foreign nationals [and could contribute to election organizations], that might be something Congress can deal with.” [Washington Independent, 1/22/2010]

President Obama meets with House Republicans in a meeting designed to bridge something of the gap between the two sides. During the meeting, Obama advises the House Republicans to put an end to the bitter partisan attacks they routinely launch at him and his administration if they are serious about wanting to work with the White House on health care reform. “If you were to listen to the debate, and frankly how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this was some Bolshevik plot,” he says. He continues: “If the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me. I mean, the fact of the matter is that many of you—if you voted with the administration on something—are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion. Because, what you’ve been telling your constituents is: this guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.” Obama calls the legislation to reform American health care “pretty centrist” and notes that it incorporates many aspects of Republican proposals (see April 21-May 12, 2009, August 20, 2009, September 12, 2009 and After, and September 16-17, 2009). He reminds the Republicans that they will need to negotiate with Democrats to incorporate some of what they want into the final legislation. “Most independent observers would say” it is “similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton,” Obama adds; many of the ideas in the legislation were first suggested in 1994 by then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS). Obama tells the assemblage that their proposals on health care are largely comprised of “political assertions that aren’t substantiated”; he reads from a summary GOP ideas booklet, and says that most of the claims of how Republican health care reforms would work are “not true.” Mike Pence (R-IN) counters that the ideas in the booklet are “backed up precisely by the kind of detailed legislation that Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA] and your administration have been busy ignoring for 12 months.” Obama says several times that he has read Republican proposals, but cannot find evidence supporting their efficacy. Citing a GOP counter-proposal for the economic stimulus bill passed in 2009, he says, “I couldn’t find credible economists who could back up the claims.” Tom Price (R-GA) later tells a Daily Caller reporter that Obama is only listening to “leftist” economists. Amid the accusations, several Republicans, such as Peter Roskam (R-IL), complain that the Republicans have “really been stiff-armed by Speaker Pelosi… there really is this dynamic of frankly being shut out.” Obama concludes the meeting by saying: “What I can do maybe to help is to try to bring Republican and Democratic leadership together on a more regular basis with me. That’s, I think, a failure on my part, is to try to foster better communications even if there’s disagreement. And I will try to see if we can do more of that this year.” The meeting is described as “contentious” by the conservative news blog Daily Caller, with Republicans flinging accusations at Obama, and Obama answering them and returning accusations and admonishments of his own. After the meeting, Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) says, “I give the president an enormous amount of credit, because I’m sure that there wasn’t a person in the room that’s been elected that hasn’t had to go in to an adversarial setting, and be heavily outnumbered and yet stay that long and take those questions.” Price says that many of his colleagues laughed when Obama told them he was not an ideologue, “because I don’t think the American people believe that.” [Think Progress, 1/29/2010; Daily Caller, 1/29/2010]

In an unsigned editorial, the Wall Street Journal lambasts President Obama for his recent comments that warned the Citizens United decision (see January 21, 2010) could open the door for foreign corporations to contribute money for use in American elections (see January 27-29, 2010). “[C]ould a graduate of Harvard Law School at least get his facts right?” the editorial asks. The Journal accuses Obama of reciting a number of falsehoods in his comments on the decision, and accuses him of using the term “foreign” in “a conscious attempt to inflame public and Congressional opinion against the Court. Coming from a president who fancies himself a citizen of the world, and who has gone so far as [to] foreswear American exceptionalism, this leap into talk-show nativism is certainly illuminating. What will they think of that one in the cafes of Berlin?” [Wall Street Journal, 1/29/2010] The day before the editorial, the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters noted that Obama’s concerns were echoed by the four dissenting Supreme Court Justices in the decision, as well as by a number of legal experts (see January 27-28, 2010).

The US Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility refuses to refer two former Bush administration officials to authorities for criminal or civil charges regarding their authorizations of the torture of suspected terrorists (see Before April 22, 2009). John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, two senior officials in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, provided the legal groundwork that allowed American interrogators to use sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and other torture methods against terror suspects (see Late September 2001, January 9, 2002, and August 1, 2002). The report finds that Yoo and Bybee, along with former OLC head Steven Bradbury, exhibited “poor judgment” in their actions. The OPR refuses to make the report’s conclusions public. It is known that senior Justice Department official David Margolis made the decision not to refer Yoo and Bybee for legal sanctions. [Office of Professional Responsibility, US Department of Justice, 7/29/2009 ; Washington Post, 1/31/2010]

Tea party activists Dale Robertson and Laurie Roth, co-hosts of a radio talk show in Spokane, Washington, welcome Martin “Red” Beckman as their guest. Robertson is known for actively denying that tea party organizations condone racism, though he himself displayed a sign with a crude racial slur at a recent tea party event (see February 27, 2009). Roth has called President Obama a “socialist Communist,” a closet Muslim, and a traitor who wants to overthrow the US government in favor of an Islamist “caliphate.” According to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights’s Devin Burghart, Roth and Robertson routinely invite “birthers and other bigots” on their show. Beckman is a well-known anti-Semite and militia supporter, who in 1994 was evicted from his property in Montana for refusing to pay taxes on the property. Robertson introduces Beckman by saying: “Red’s a great guy. He’s been actually leading this fight long before I probably was even born. Red has written many books, one is Walls in Our Minds, another is Why the Militia. And so you’ll find that he agrees with you, Laurie, wholeheartedly that owning a gun is a constitutional right. And he is an authority on the Constitution and what the government has done to undermine our authority as citizens.” Robertson concludes the interview by recommending that his listeners read Beckman’s books, saying, “Once you read them you’ll realize that we’ve definitely been deceived by our government and we need to do everything in our powers to take our nation back.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010; CDAPress (.com), 4/19/2011] Another anti-Semite invited onto Roth and Robertson’s show is John Weaver, a Christian Identity preacher (see 1960s and After) who has written numerous articles calling Jews the “spawn of Satan.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]

A photo of one of the billboards erected by two Georgia anti-abortion organizations. [Source: Opposing Views (.com)]Anti-abortion organizations are putting billboards up throughout Atlanta claiming, “Black children are an endangered species.” The organizations Georgia Right to Life and Radiance Foundation have placed 65 billboards throughout the Atlanta area, and are planning to erect more throughout Georgia. The groups’ Web site, “toomanyaborted.com,” says legalized abortion is a crisis in the African-American community because, they claim, 40 percent of pregancies among African-Americans end in abortion. Abortion is an evil analogous to Jim Crow segregation and eugenics, the site writes, with abortion clinics placed in “urban areas where blacks reside.” They claim that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to reduce the black population. And, the site suggests, the legalization of abortion has led to the deterioration of black families, sexual promiscuity, child abuse, and urban decay. The site provides statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that show a disproportionate number of abortions in Georgia were performed on black women, and Georgia is second only to New York and Texas in the number of black women who have abortions. However, as a report from The Grio’s David Love notes, “the CDC data provides no evidence that black children are an endangered species because of abortion.” Instead, many critics of the billboard campaign say the billboards characterize black women as criminals who kill their own children. The organizations take umbrage at this characterization, stating: “Contrary to the statements being made, the Endangered Species Campaign is not designed to target black women, but is designed to educate. The toomanyaborted.com website has documented information to support our contention that the number of black babies aborted in the US and in Georgia are at holocaustic levels. Since 1973 more than 18,000,000 black babies have been aborted. Georgia, in 2008, set a record in the numbers of abortions performed on black women, almost 21,000. We are not targeting black women, but are fighting for black babies.” Love writes that while it may be reasonable to view the number of black abortions with alarm, and that it is even arguable that African-Americans have been “an endangered species” for 400 years, the reasons cited by the anti-abortion groups are completely wrong. “[B]lack children today are in a crisis because of poverty, hunger, and a lack of opportunity,” Love notes. “At some point in their childhood, 90 percent will require food stamps. An increasing number of black children, 3.7 million, do not know when or where they will find their next meal, according to a USDA report. They are subjected to an inferior education in crumbling schools. Although they are 15 percent of American children, they are 32 percent of the 510,000 children in foster care, and are less likely to be adopted than white children. In many depressed urban communities, they face a cradle-to-prison pipeline. And poor children of color are more likely to face health challenges.” Groups such as Georgia Right to Life and Radiance “are never around to speak up on behalf” of black children who are battling poverty and neglect, Love writes, “so forgive me if I think these eleventh-hour cries of black genocide ring hollow. In fact, the Christian Right never stood up for African-American children, and always supported the gutting of social safety net programs that would help them. Focused singularly on fetuses, abortion opponents give the impression they care little about the well-being of children who were already born, and who struggle to survive in the midst of deprivation, hopelessness, and unresponsive public policy.” [The Grio, 2/9/2010]

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck suggests to his listeners that President Obama chooses to use his given name of “Barack” to identify with his “Kenyan… heritage” and anti-American “radicals.” Beck, talking with his co-host Pat Gray, says that Obama deliberately switched from his childhood nickname of “Barry” in order to “make a statement” and “fit in” with his “anti-American,” “radical” friends in college. “You know what?” Beck says. “This sounds ridiculous. But I don’t believe it is. Maybe it is.… He chose to use his name Barack for a reason—to identify, not with America—you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Is—really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.” [Media Matters, 2/4/2010]

In a highly unusual action for a sitting Supreme Court Justice, Justice Clarence Thomas strongly defends the Court’s recent Citizens United ruling that allows unlimited corporate and union funding of campaign activities (see January 21, 2010). He makes his remarks at the Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida. Thomas was part of the 5-4 majority that ruled on the case. He also says that he refused to attend the recent State of the Union address by President Obama, where fellow Justice Samuel Alito apparently contradicted Obama’s critical characterization of the ruling (see January 27-29, 2010), because under Obama, these addresses have become “partisan,” stating: “I don’t go because it has become so partisan and it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there… there’s a lot that you don’t hear on TV—the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments (see September 9, 2009). One of the consequences is now the Court becomes part of the conversation, if you want to call it that, in the speeches. It’s just an example of why I don’t go.” Thomas mocks media criticisms of the ruling, saying: “I found it fascinating that the people who were editorializing against it were The New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company. These are corporations.” It is a mistake, Thomas says, to consider regulation of corporations’ campaign activities as “some sort of beatific action,” and he cites the 1907 Tillman Act, the first federal legislation banning corporate contributions to federal candidates (see 1907), as being sparked by racism, saying: “Go back and read why [Senator Benjamin] Tillman introduced that legislation. Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.” Thomas says the underpinning of the decision was the First Amendment’s protection of speech regardless of how people choose to assemble to participate in the political process. “If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association,” he says. “If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you’d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association. But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?” The answer would be the same, Thomas says. [New York Times, 2/3/2010]

The retired director of the ACLU, Ira Glasser, writes a detailed editorial in support of the recent Citizens United ruling that opened the way for corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited money in campaign activities (see January 21, 2010). The ACLU supported the case throughout its progression (see January 10-16, 2008, March 24, 2008, March 15, 2009, June 29, 2009, and September 9, 2009), and filed briefs in support of the plaintiff, the conservative advocacy group Citizens United. Glasser says that the “screaming dismay” that “most liberals” evinced on hearing of the decision was unwarranted. Corporations are still banned from directly contributing to political campaigns, and President Obama’s assertion that the decision “reversed a century of law” is incorrect; the 1907 Tillman Act that banned corporations from contributing to campaigns or candidates is still in effect (see 1907). Instead, Glasser writes, the decision is “a huge victory… for freedom of speech and against government censorship” (see January 21, 2010, January 22, 2010, and February 2, 2010). Corporations, he writes, have the same right to speech as individuals, and they exercise that speech by spending money promoting issues and candidates, or criticizing those issues and candidates. He cites two instances in which the ACLU was stopped by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from engaging in “political free speech,” one in 1972 when the FEC stopped the ACLU from taking out an ad in the New York Times criticizing President Nixon’s opposition to school busing to implement integration, and in 1984, when the FEC barred the ACLU from making public statements critical of President Reagan. Both instances took place inside the “window” of time before an election (30 days before a primary, 60 days before a general election) in which such utterances were considered supporting a candidate. Nonprofit groups such as Citizens United have been victimized for decades by campaign finance restrictions, Glasser writes. Later in the article, he derides the idea that restricting or controlling speech creates equality between rich and poor in elections, curbing the propensity for the rich to wield more influence and be heard more broadly than less wealthy citizens or organizations. “Money isn’t speech, but how much money one has always determines how much speech one has,” Glasser writes. “Most if not all of you reading this have never had as much speech as, say, the New York Times or George Soros or Nelson Rockefeller or George Bush or, as we recently discovered in my city, Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg. The inequities of speech that flow from the inequities of wealth are certainly a big and distorting problem for a democracy, and have always been so, and not just during elections. No one knows how to remedy that, short of fundamental re-distributions of wealth. But I’ll tell you what isn’t a remedy: granting the government the power to decide who should speak, and how much speech is enough. Nothing but disaster flows from that approach, and that was what was at stake in this case.” He concludes by advocating public financing of elections entirely, writing: “Liberals and Democrats have been the chief offenders… favoring equity in the abstract but never seeing how the particular reforms they advocated made the problems they wished to remedy worse, and never seeing that giving the government the authority to regulate speech was not a good thing. Maybe now this result, which has steamed up liberals and Democrats, may at last shift their attention to the kind of public financing that equitably provides money for more speech instead of pretending to create equity by granting the government the authority to restrict speech. We shall see.” [Huffington Post, 2/3/2010]

Some “tea party” leaders express their dislike of the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections (see January 21, 2010), a position that puts them at odds with the Republican Party and mainstream US conservatism. Hours after the decision was handed down, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele hailed it as “an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights” of corporations (see January 21, 2010, January 22, 2010, and February 2, 2010), but some tea partiers see the decision much differently. Texas tea party activist Shane Brooks says in an email to Talking Points Memo reporter Zachary Roth: “This decision basically gives the multinational corporations owned by foreign entities [the right] to pour unlimited funds into the pockets of corrupt corporate backed politicians to attack everything this country stands for. We might as well be able to vote for Disney or the SEIU as president of the United States of America.” Nashville Tea Party official Kevin Smith recently wrote that the ruling “puts corporations in a position to crowd out smaller competition and buy politicians from the local sheriff to the president himself.” Dale Robertson, the leader of TeaParty.org, said after the decision: “It just allows them to feed the machine. Corporations are not like people. Corporations exist forever, people don’t. Our founding fathers never wanted them; these behemoth organizations that never die, so they can collect an insurmountable amount of profit. It puts the people at a tremendous disadvantage.” Sacramento tea party activist Jim Knapp tells Roth: “Most of the anger by tea party supporters is directed at the effects of special interest money.… I believe that campaign finance reform is the most important political issue facing America. I would even go so far as to say that this issue is even more important that our current financial crisis and jobs. Everything in American politics is affected by special interest money. From who controls our monetary policies in treasury and the Fed to regulation of Wall Street. I would also venture to say that it was special interest money which precipitated the current economic crisis.” Everett Wilkinson, the leader of a Florida tea party group, tells Roth that his group has “mixed feelings” about the ruling. On the one hand, he says, “getting corporations more involved with politics could be a detrimental thing.” The ruling also upholds free speech, he counters. FreedomWorks, the lobbying organization that helped found the tea party movement, and officials of the Tea Party Patriots refuse to speak to the issue with Roth. The reporter writes: “[T]heir opposition to the Court’s ruling on behalf of corporations hints at an ideological split between the movement and the GOP that has long existed under the surface. Tea Partiers—especially the rank-and-file activists, as opposed to the movement leaders—often embrace a more populist, anti-corporate position than does the Republican Party, or the conservative movement that under-girds it. This difference underlies much of the tension we’re increasingly seeing between Tea Partiers and the GOP.” [TPM Muckraker, 2/3/2010]

Conservative author Jonathan Kay covers the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee (see February 4-6, 2010), and publishes a column that states: “[I]t has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It’s more John Birch than John Adams.” Kay, who is writing a book on alternative theories about the 9/11 attacks, is astonished at the breadth and depth of the conspiracy theories that many tea parties, and tea party organizations, seem to embrace. The “villain list,” as Kay calls it, includes banks; bailed-out corporations; Republican Party leaders such as RNC chairman Michael Steele, whom they feel ignore the tea parties; colleges and universities; CNN’s Anderson Cooper; Fox News pundits like Bill O’Reilly who scorn them; “big media” outlets such as the Washington Post; and even moviemakers like James Cameron, who make movies that they feel contain “hidden messages” to fool Americans into supporting gay rights, cuts in military spending, and the like. The central figure in their net of conspiracy theories, Kay writes, is Barack Obama (see May 7, 2010). The convention is opened by anti-environmentalist Steve Malloy, who accuses Obama and his administration of working to control every aspect of Americans’ lives, from the colors of their cars to the temperatures to which they set their home heating units, all to comply with what Malloy says is the United Nations’s greenhouse gas-reduction program. According to Malloy: “Obama isn’t a US socialist. He’s an international socialist. He envisions a one-world government.” Kay is particularly concerned that, based on what he hears at the convention, the tea parties are affiliating themselves with far-right, white supremacist ideology such as that espoused by the John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011). They seem particularly enamored of the “New World Order” conspiracy (see September 11, 1990, November 5, 2008, March 17, 2009, March 18, 2009, March 24, 2009, March 24, 2009, and April 6, 2009). A convention speaker, former judge Roy Moore, tells his listeners that Obama intends to station “a UN guard in every house[hold].” Radio host Alex Jones is a favorite among tea partiers, Kay writes; Jones claims that Obama’s presidency is a plot by the leaders of the New World Order to “con the Amercican people into accepting global slavery.” One conventioneer tells Kay that Washington liberals “engineered the financial crash so they could destroy the value of the US dollar, pay off America’s debts with worthless paper, and then create a new currency called the Amero that would be used in a newly created ‘North American Currency Union’ with Canada and Mexico.” Shortly thereafter, the convention shows a “documentary” entitled Generation Zero that makes similar claims. The claims that Obama is a Kenyan who is ineligible to be president is a favorite theory, Kay writes; WorldNetDaily publisher Joseph Farah (see August 1, 2008 and After, December 5, 2008, May 28, 2009, July 21, 2009, and August 1-4, 2009) tells the crowd that the circumstances of Obama’s birth are more mysterious than the birth of Jesus Christ, and says, “My dream is that if Barack Obama seeks reelection in 2012 that he won’t be able to go to any city, any city, any town in America without seeing signs that ask, ‘Where’s the birth certificate?’” (see May 18, 2009). Kay concludes: “Perhaps the most distressing part of all is that few media observers bothered to catalog these bizarre, conspiracist outbursts, and instead fixated on Sarah Palin’s Saturday night keynote address. It is as if, in the current overheated political atmosphere, we all simply have come to expect that radicalized conservatives will behave like unhinged paranoiacs when they collect in the same room. That doesn’t say much for the state of the right in America. The tea partiers’ tricornered hat is supposed to be a symbol of patriotism and constitutional first principles. But when you take a closer look, all you find is a helmet made of tin foil.” [National Tea Party Convention, 2/2010; Newsweek, 2/8/2010]

Former Governor Sarah Palin speaks at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. [Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer]Tea Party Nation (TPN), one of the national “umbrella” organizations that coordinate and promote local tea party events and groups (see August 24, 2010), holds a two-day Tea Party Convention in Nashvillle, Tennessee. Around 600 people attend, with another 500 or so attending only the speech given by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who ran for vice president in 2008. “America is ready for another revolution,” she tells the crowd. In a statement addressed at President Obama, she says the tea party movement is “about the people, and it’s bigger than any one king or queen of a tea party, and it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” A Harvard Crimson report describes TPN as an “eclectic mix of Ron Paul libertarians” and “George W. Bush social conservatives” who are “predominantly white and above age 50” and have a common “dislike of President Obama, the debt, future tax increases, and the bank bailout.” Some critics accuse TPN of profiteering from the convention; tickets cost $549 ($349 to just hear Palin’s speech), and Palin receives a $100,000 speaker’s fee, which she claims “will go right back to the cause.” Some prominent lawmakers, including Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), canceled their planned appearances at the event, saying that their appearance at such an event would conflict with House rules. [National Tea Party Convention, 2/2010; The Week, 2/4/2010; Beth Rowen, 2/9/2010]
Incendiary Rhetoric Opens Event - Speakers include Fox News contributor Angela McGlowan, WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah, and Rick Scarborough, an author who writes of the impending tyranny of “activist” judges. Some of the topics discussed during the convention include: “Correlations between the current Administration and Marxist Dictators of Latin America”; “5 Easy Fixes to the High Cost of Mass Immigration”; “Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process”; and “Why Christians Must Engage.” The first speaker is former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who insults minority citizens and rails against the Obama administration. Tancredo says “illiterate” minority voters are responsible for putting Obama, “a committed socialist,” into office, and he goes on to say that perhaps literacy tests (see 1896 and June 8, 1959) and poll taxes (see February 4, 1964) should be reintroduced to ensure that candidates such as Obama never be elected again (see August 6, 1965). Tancredo says that the voters who put Obama into the White House “could not even spell the word ‘vote,’ or say it in English.” Tancredo goes on to say: “The president and his left-wing allies in Congress are going to look at every opportunity to destroy the Constitution before we have a chance to save it. So put your running shoes on. Because I’ll tell you, I’ve heard we need a revolution. My friends, we already had it. We lost. I mean, what happened to us in that last election was a revolution.… This is our country. Let’s take it back.” Hilary Shelton of the NAACP later calls Tancredo’s remarks “the politics of denigration.” [National Tea Party Convention, 2/2010; The Week, 2/4/2010; Chattahbox, 2/5/2010]
Rival Tea Parties Boycott Event - A number of rival tea party organizations and leaders asked tea party members to boycott the convention. One of those, organizer Shane Brooks, recently left TPN after deciding that the organization was too cozy with the national Republican Party. In a YouTube video, Brooks asked tea partiers to “boycott the National Tea Party Convention” and said: “[W]e will not allow Tea Party Nation or any group to achieve national leadership of this historic grassroots revolution by the people!… We must not allow the tea parties and other patriotic grassroots movement to be hijacked by the GOP.” Prominent Seattle tea party leader Keli Carender (see February 16-17, 2009) also decided not to attend after being listed as a convention speaker, telling an NPR reporter that she did not want the tea party movement to become too centralized. Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots said that the $549 convention attendance fee was far too high: “Most people in our movement can’t afford anything like that. So it’s really not aimed at the average grassroots person.” TPN founder Judson Phillips told a reporter that the high fees would allow TPN to make a profit and “funnel money back into conservative causes” through a 527 group it plans to set up. TPN leaders refused to discuss Palin’s speaking fee. A local tea party member said skeptically, “The tea party movement is a grass-roots movement; it’s not a business.” Another accused Phillips of being “someone who is trying to make a grab.” Others echo Brooks’s concerns that Phillips and TPN are attempting to “co-opt” the movement and become power brokers within the GOP. The Tea Party Express, an organization run by a small group of well-financed Republican consultants, is part of the convention, dismaying some more independent tea party leaders. One activist wrote in an online comment: “The tea party movement is about to be hijacked. TeaPartyNation.com organizers are hard lined GOP who use the proverbial veil of ‘conservatism’ to attract supporters.” RedState blogger Erick Erickson called the convention “scammy.” [TPM Muckraker, 1/11/2010; TPM Muckraker, 1/18/2010; Publicola, 2/3/2010]

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) are introducing legislation that would undo the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision that allows corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts on political advertising (see January 21, 2010). The proposed legislation is a “patchwork,” in the New York Times’s phrasing, “of spending restrictions and disclosure requirements—many based in current laws. The measure would greatly expand the scope of an existing ban on political commercials paid for by foreign corporations, ban political commercials paid for by government contractors or recipients of bailout money, and force corporations and unions to make public details of what they spend directly or through advocacy groups.” Schumer and Van Hollen say they want the legislation enacted in time for it to constrain spending in the November 2010 midterm elections. “Otherwise the court will have predetermined the winner of the midterm elections,” Schumer says. “It won’t be the Republicans or the Democrats. It will be corporate America.” At least one Republican senator would have to vote to allow the bill to come up for a vote, and as of yet, it is unclear than any Republican senator will do so. Schumer and Van Hollen say they crafted the legislation to remain in line with Citizens United, providing firmer constitutional ground for the spending restrictions and disclosure requirements in the bills. The Times explains, “The Court has frowned on speech restrictions aimed at specific speakers and leaned toward disclosure as a constitutionally permissible response to fears of corruption or undo influence.” The proposed legislation would not ban corporate or labor union spending outright, but would ban spending by any domestic domestic corporation with at least 20 percent foreign ownership, any corporation whose board included a majority of foreigners, or any corporation where executive control belonged to a foreign company or government. The disclosure requirements are broader—if a corporation paid for a political ad, the legislation would require that corporation’s CEO to appear at the end of the ad to take responsibility for the message. For advocacy group ads, the biggest donor would be required to appear, and the five biggest corporate contributors would be named in the ad. The legislation would also force corporations and interest groups to set up political spending accounts and file reports of their activities. [New York Times, 2/11/2010] A Times editorial appearing six days after the initial press reports lauds the legislation as “a sensible” if “partial” response to the Citizens United decision. The Times will state: “The Schumer-Van Hollen bill is expected to be introduced later this month. Congressional leaders should put it on a fast track so it can be in place in time for this year’s midterm elections. It could help keep special interest money in check until the real solution comes: a Supreme Court ruling reversing the deeply antidemocratic Citizens United decision.” [New York Times, 2/17/2010]

Richard Mack speaks to a tea party rally in Post Falls, Idaho, in November 2009. [Source: Rajah Bose / New York Times]The New York Times publishes a large front-page story on America’s “tea party” movement. The report is written by staff reporter David Barstow, who researched the story for five months, first joining a bus tour by the Tea Party Express (see August 28, 2009) and then staying for the month of October in and around Spokane, Washington, to interview tea party members and others, such as white supremacist militia members, who have some affiliation with tea party organizations. The first person he mentions is a retiree named Pam Stout, who once worked for federal housing programs and is now aghast at the government’s handling of the economic crisis. She told Barstow that one day “she awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated—even manufactured—by both parties to grab power.” She went to a tea party rally, then a meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party Patriots, where she surprised herself by nominating herself for president. Under her leadership, the Sandpoint group joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project (see March 13, 2009 and After), the extremist, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), and the Oath Keepers (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010), a far-right militia organization. Stout told Barstow that her family worries that she has become enmeshed in a group of conspiracy theorists and ad hoc revolutionaries, but she said she has never felt more engaged. [New York Times, 2/15/2010; Columbia Journalism Review, 2/18/2010]
Increasing Tilt towards Anti-Government Militia Ideology - Barstow writes that many tea party members are like Stout, with an inclination to conservative anti-government politics, but also with a fear of eventual government tyranny that has driven them to join the movement. “These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the tea party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement,” he writes, “a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates, and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve. Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show.” Many tea partiers hold former President Bush and President Obama in equal contempt, holding them jointly responsible for deliberately undermining the Constitution and the free market system “for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites” (see February 4-8, 2010). Coalition groups like Friends of Liberty are “forming hybrid entities of tea parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. A fear of government tyranny is one of the most common ideological threads running through virtually all tea party organizations.”
Targeting Republicans as Well as Democrats - Barstow continues: “These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal—a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain” and other Republicans whom they consider part of the “government conspiracy” to destroy democracy. While tea parties routinely target Democrats in elections, they are also targeting more moderate Republicans, especially those who support ideas or legislation that they feel is part of the “conspiracy.” Republicans who supported the government bailouts of large corporations are being targeted, as are those who support global warming legislation or who have shown any impetus to work with the White House or with Congressional Democrats (see January 29, 2010). Barstow notes that the tea party movement is anything but homogenous and rigidly organized: “It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure.” Some groups are “essentially appendages of the local Republican Party,” but many are not. However, many of the beliefs espoused by individual tea partiers tend to be reflected in most groups. Not all believe that Obama wants to impose a dictatorship, with or without McCain’s help, but many do. The frustration expressed by Stout in the economy and the government’s response to it is echoed throughout tea party groups in every state.
Turning to Radical Ideologies and Conspiracy Theorists - One of the tea partiers’ favorite thinkers is Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck (see March 29, 2009). Beck’s often-revisionist, often-inaccurate opinions led many tea partiers to read the Federalist Papers (or, more often, right-wing blogs about the Federalist Papers), conspiracist “exposes” of the Federal Reserve, and the novels of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Online resources tailored for tea party organizations provide a wealth of what Barstow calls “radical critiques of Washington.” Two of the primary sites are ResistNet.com and InfoWars, both of which combine far-right ideology with a plethora of conspiracy theories covering everything from 9/11 and the Federal Reserve to the New World Order (see September 11, 1990). Some tea partiers are joining with militia groups, or forming their own, and making stockpiles of food, gold, and weaponry to prepare for the end of civilization. Many tea party leaders say they believe that a return to a strict adherence to constitutional law would solve most of the nation’s problems, but many of them espouse a radical view of the Constitution, such as that delineated by radical Constitutional revisionist W. Cleon Skousen (first popularized among the tea party community by Beck—see 1963). Many want to completely do away with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the federal income tax, and most government agencies, all of which they say violate the Constitution. Some go even farther, advocating secession, states “nullfying” federal laws, and the formation of citizen militias. The tea parties in the Pacific Northwest, Barstow writes, have been shaped by influences such as libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) and by the sometimes-violent anti-government activism of northern Idaho (see Early 1970s, 1980-1982, 1983-1995, and February 15, 1995). The 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992), which occurred in nearby Idaho, is a touchstone for many tea partiers, just as it was for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see August 21-31, 1992). Many, but not all, tea party members and groups embrace the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama is not a natural American citizen. A favorite news blog, WorldNetDaily, routinely electrifies the movement by warning of new White House plans to build massive internment camps and stuff them with tea party members, or of plans to send waves of United Nations troops throughout the nation to confiscate Americans’ guns. ResistNet regularly warns that Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his own personal police force, and advises tea partiers to “grab their guns.” Tea partiers like Mary Johnson of New Mexico points to the Bush-era wiretapping scandal as proof that the government can, and is, preparing to bring democracy to an end. As the groups’ fear and contempt for the federal government grows, Barstow writes, they turn more frequently to “fringe” groups such as white supremacist, anti-government militias. In Indiana, a militia coalition called Defenders of Liberty is networking with tea party groups and other “Patriot” organizations throughout the state. Darin Stevens, the leader of the Spokane 9/12 project, told Barstow that before tuning in to Beck’s show, he had paid almost no attention to politics. After the recession hit and his personal financial structure started to collapse, he began watching Beck. “I had no clue that my country was being taken from me,” he explains. He began the Spokane chapter of Beck’s 9/12 project, and was astounded that 110 people attended the first meeting. Stevens now belongs to the Oath Keepers as well as the 9/12 Project. Spokane tea partier Leah Southwell became a convert after stumbling on Paul’s speeches on YouTube. Southwell turned from being a successful Mary Kay makeup sales representative to being a self-described member of “the uprising.” Southwell, through Paul, is now fully supportive of the Patriot ideology, and holds as evident truth a number of conspiracy theories involving the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. “The more you know, the madder you are,” she told Barstow. “I mean when you finally learn what the Federal Reserve is!” Southwell is now a local official with the John Birch Society. She says that the affiliation between organizations like the JBS and the tea parties will continue to grow: “Most of these people [tea partiers] are just waking up.” Former car salesman Richard Mack, a longtime militia supporter who co-wrote Ruby Ridge survivor Randy Weaver’s memoirs, is a favorite speaker at tea party events. “People just do not trust any of this,” Mack told Barstow. “It’s not just the fringe people anymore. These are just ordinary people—teachers, bankers, housewives.”
Amorphous Structure - Local tea party groups often join, in one degree or another, one of several competing national tea party organizations such as ResistNet or the Tea Party Express, most of which are organized, staffed, and funded by conservative lobbying groups such as FreedomWorks (see February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, February 27, 2009, March 2, 2009, March 13, 2009 and After, April 14, 2009, and April 15, 2009) or Americans for Prosperity (see Late 2004, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, and April 2009 and After). Some tea party groups have been joined by, or in some cases overrun by, other groups, from “birthers” to militias, supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, pro-gun groups, and the sovereign states movement. Many coalitions such as Friends of Liberty were formed in opposition to what leaders called the endless “hijack attempts” by state and county Republican Parties. Dann Selle of the Official Tea Party of Spokane told Barstow, “We had to stand our ground, I’ll be blunt.”
Support from Elected Politicians - Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and a possible 2012 Republican candidate for president, has joined with Texas tea parties in supporting the state’s secession from the United States. Nevada Republican Joe Heck, who ran for Congress in 2008, attacked both parties for moving the nation towards “socialist tyranny” and solicited tea party support at a rally in Las Vegas. Indiana Republican Richard Behney, running for the US Senate, told tea party supporters that if the 2010 elections did not turn out to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.” [New York Times, 2/15/2010]

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president, tells a crowd of Republican activists and tea party members in Little Rock, Arkansas, that the tea party movement must choose between the Republican and Democratic parties if it is to survive as a political force that elects its members to public office. “Now the smart thing will be for independents who are such a part of this tea party movement to, I guess, kind of start picking a party,” she says. “Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken? Which party will best fit you? And then because the tea party movement is not a party, and we have a two-party system, they’re going to have to pick a party and run one or the other: ‘R’ or ‘D.’” Palin recommends that tea partiers choose the Republicans, though she notes that her husband Todd Palin is not a registered Republican and the movement should be open to including independents. (Both Palins have been affiliated with the far-right, secessionist Alaskan Independence Party—see March 2008 and October 15, 2008). Much of her speech is drawn from her 2008 campaign speeches. Much of the 18,000-seat Verizon Arena is empty, with the entire upper level closed off and the bottom level less than half full. In the hours before the event, the Arkansas Republican Party slashed prices on tickets to the speech to $20. The dining tables on the arena’s floor are crowded with donors who paid $175 for a ringside seat. Palin’s recommendation for the tea partiers to join the GOP draws mixed results from influential bloggers. “Allahpundit” at HotAir says Palin is correct in her statement about embracing the GOP over running Quixotic third-party races that are doomed to fail, and such races will just put more Democrats in office. Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice says the tea party is through as an independent movement if it follows Palin’s advice; many tea partiers are equally critical of both parties, and joining one to battle the other is just more politics as usual. And John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent says Palin’s recommendation is essentially moot, as the tea party has always been “a subsection of the Republican Party.” [CBS News, 2/17/2010; The Week, 2/18/2010]

Florida State Representative Charles Van Sant (R-FL) submits what he calls the “Florida for Life Act,” which will make all abortions illegal in Florida. The law directly challenges the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling that abortions are legal in the US (see January 22, 1973), and makes no exceptions for incest or rape (abortions would be legal only if the life of the mother were at risk). If passed, the act would punish abortion providers, not the expectant mothers, with a first-degree felony and a penalty of up to life in prison. [House of Representatives, 2/17/2010; Women's Choice, 2/23/2010] The bill states that “The Legislature of the people of the State of Florida finds that all life comes from the Creator and begins at conception.” According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the bill “openly challenges the legitimacy of the US Supreme Court” by saying: “The Legislature finds that the justices of the United States Supreme Court are not qualified to determine, establish, or define the moral values of the people of the United States and specifically for the people of Florida. The Supreme Court’s removal of moral and political questions from the political power of the people to determine, under color of constitutional adjudication, is a violation of the peoples’ right to self-government guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States.” [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 10/15/2010; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/7/2011] In February 2011, a Sarasota Herald-Tribune editorial will call the bill “extreme to the extreme” and not “worth the time lawmakers may waste on it,” claiming that if passed, the law “would flout US law and thwart the state constitution’s privacy clause.” [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/7/2011] Some Florida Republicans will refuse to publicly endorse the bill, saying it goes too far. As of March 2011, the bill is not predicted to gain passage. [Florida Independent, 12/2/2010; St. Petersburg Times, 3/22/2011]

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck lambasts so-called “birthers,” who argue that President Obama is not a citizen (see see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, and August 1-4, 2009), calling them “idiot[s]” and members of “the fringe elements.” Beck says “birthers” are on “the fringe” along with “9/11 truthers” and “progressives.” He calls all of them “the crazy people that don’t really like America.” He includes Philip Berg and Alan Keyes, who brought lawsuits claiming Obama was not a citizen (see August 21-24, 2008 and November 12, 2008 and After), as “birthers.” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011]

Bob Marshall. [Source: Chicago Now (.com)]Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall, a Republican, says that disabled children are God’s way of punishing women who have had abortions. Marshall makes his statement at a press conference outlining his opposition to Virginia funding for Planned Parenthood. “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically,” he says. “Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.… In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.” Dean Nelson, head of the Network of Politically Active Christians, says at the same press conference that Planned Parenthood is an “unethical, immoral, and racist” organization because it includes abortions in its comprehensive care for women, and says it should change its name to “Klan Parenthood” because its founder, Margaret Sanger, made statements some considered racist in the 1930s. At the same conference, the Reverend Joe Ellison says he is “declaring war against Planned Parenthood.… We’re asking pastors to shut them down in the community. We’re asking pastors to pray them out. And we’re asking Planned Parenthood to leave our children alone.” Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) opposes continued funding for Planned Parenthood. A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood says the only Virginia funding it receives is from Medicaid reimbursements; in 2009, the organization received $35,000 in state funds. Marshall later denies any intention of insulting disabled children, and implies that his words were misquoted or misconstrued. In a post on his Web site, he writes: “No one who knows me or my record would imagine that I believe or intended to communicate such an offensive notion. I have devoted a generation of work to defending disabled and unwanted children, and have always maintained that they are special blessings to their parents. Nevertheless, I regret any misimpression my poorly chosen words may have created as to my deep commitment to fighting for these vulnerable children and their families.” [Gainesville Times, 2/22/2010; CBS News, 2/22/2010] Video of Marshall’s statement proves that his words were reported accurately. [Right Wing Watch, 2/23/2010] A day after the news breaks in the press, Jean Winegardner, a writer and the mother of an autistic child, lambasts Marshall’s statements in a post on the Washington Times Web site. She writes in part: “Mr. Marshall, I don’t much care that you have reinterpreted your statements after they came under fire. What I do care about is that you told my disabled child—and every other disabled child—that he is a punishment, that he is less than, that he is wrong. You have also told him that his mother is wrong. You have created a situation where someone has to be to blamed for disability. You say that you have ‘devoted a generation of work to defending disabled and unwanted children.’ I don’t know your record because I haven’t followed your career, but working to defend children starts by accepting them as valued and right. You can’t say in one breath that these children are fundamentally flawed by their mother’s ‘sin’ and then turn around and claim to defend them. If you really do support people with disabilities… treat them with respect. Show us with your actions that you really do value this segment of society. Prove us doubters wrong by standing up tall for individuals with disabilities. And always remember that words hurt—just as your words hurt me and my family. My disabled child has never and will never be a punishment. I value him, love him, and am grateful for his perfect autistic existence every day of his and my life. His being is a gift, and could never be described as ‘nature’s vengeance.’” [Washington Times, 2/23/2010]

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) interviews David Barstow, the New York Times reporter who just published a front-page research article about the “tea party” movement (see February 15, 2010). Barstow says the article was sparked by the raucous, sometimes-violent events of the “town halls” of the summer of 2009 (see July 23, 2009, July 24, 2009, July 27, 2009, July 27, 2009, July 28, 2009, August 1, 2009, August 1, 2009, August 2, 2009, August 2, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6-7, 2009, August 6-8, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 8, 2009, August 8, 2009, August 8, 2009, August 8, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, and August 11, 2009).
Joined Tea Party Express Bus Tour, Stayed in Spokane Afterwards - He joined the Tea Party Express bus tour (see August 28, 2009), and covered over 30 tea party rallies in a little over two weeks. Barstow realized, he says, that the Tea Party Express (TPE) was but one of many distinctive tea party organizations. TPE’s goal is to gain seats for Republicans in Congress, and the tour organizers “were not really representative of the tea party movement as a whole, which was very much a grassroots creation that was drawing in lots of newcomers who were extremely concerned about preserving their independence and not being co-opted.” Some tea party organizers agonized over whether to host the TPE tour in their towns. But, Barstow goes on to say, the bus tour itself was incidental to the final story. He was far more interested in the stories of ordinary Americans like Pam Stout, an interview subject who went from being completely uninvolved in politics to becoming president of her local tea party chapter. So many Americans’ lives have been impacted by the recession, Barstow says, and many of those people have turned to their local tea parties to try to get involved in a movement to express their frustrations and perhaps do something about the government that they blame for allowing the economy to fail. The other driving force behind the tea parties, he says, is the members’ overwhelming fear of “impending tyranny.” Most tea partiers fear that American democracy will disappear, perhaps during their own lifetimes, to be replaced by some form of dictatorship or “one-world government” (see February 4-8, 2010). After the TPE bus tour concluded, Barstow stayed in Spokane, Washington, for the month of October 2009, interviewing many tea partiers and affiliated people. He chose the area because of its history of anti-government activism. He says he wanted to cover not just formal tea party organizations, but other groups with connections to the tea parties, including the 9/12 movement (see March 13, 2009 and After), the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), the Campaign for Liberty, and groups with strong ties to white supremacist militia organizations. From time spent in and around Spokane, he learned that the area’s tea parties are quite disparate and factionalized, though “you can make too much of that. If you spend enough time talking to people in the movement, eventually you hear enough of the same kinds of ideas, the same kinds of concerns, and you begin to recognize what the ideology is, what the paradigm is that they’re operating in.… There’s a fear that both parties have been complicit in this giant charade that has done enormous damage to ordinary Americans. It’s very complex, and yet at the same time there is something coherent about it.”
Increasing Militia Influence - Barstow says the influence of far-right, white supremacist militia groups on the tea party organizations in the Northwest and other areas is increasing. Even tea partiers who do not belong to or support militias often accept the idea of militias and civilian paramilitary training (see April 8, 2009, May 8-15, 2009, January 14, 2010, February 2010, July 23, 2010, August 24, 2010, August 24, 2010, and May 5, 2011).
Understanding the Tea Parties - To understand the tea parties, Barstow says, one must read the literature that informs the movement. He recommends reading books such as W. Cleon Skousen’s The 5000-Year Leap, a radical reinterpretation of the US Constitution; Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island, a book purporting to prove the Federal Reserve is a fraudulent institution; and Atlas Shrugged, the novel by Ayn Rand that explicates her “objectivist” social philosophy. Barstow says the tea party movement is informed by “a robust intellectual subculture” that helps shape members’ world views. According to Barstow, the tea parties are not, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has maintained, becoming the activist conservative wing of the Republican Party (see April 21, 2010), but something more. “They are seeking a bigger transformation than just nudging the Republican Party a little bit to the right,” Barstow says. “A lot of the coverage is about how these people want smaller government and less taxation. That’s true, and yet it doesn’t completely get what’s going on.” [Columbia Journalism Review, 2/18/2010]

Representative Steve King. [Source: The Iowa Republican (.com)]Some on the political right label Andrew Joseph Stack, who killed himself and an IRS manager by crashing his private plane into an Austin, Texas, office building (see February 18, 2010), a hero. The labeling begins when Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Bells, calls him a hero because of his antigovernment views on an ABC morning talk show. While his suicide attack was “inappropriate,” she says, “[m]aybe now people will listen.” White supremacist Web sites and forums fill up with expressions of approval and support, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). One poster on the neo-Nazi Web site Stormfront calls Stack “a true HERO!!!” While Stack had no apparent connections to white supremacist or other hate groups, the SPLC’s Mark Potok says, many of those groups’ members have become excited by Stack’s action. “A few other white supremacists suggested that lionizing Stack could be a bad thing for the radical right, but they appeared to be in a minority,” Potok observes. Ken Hunter, who lost his father Vernon Hunter in the crash, says he is alarmed by the fact that some people are portraying Stack as noble and courageous. “How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane… and flies it into a building to kill people?” he asks on the same ABC broadcast. “My dad, Vernon, did tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad’s a hero.” [Christian Science Monitor, 2/22/2010] The controversy intensifies when Representative Steve King (R-IA) blames the IRS for Stack’s actions. He refuses to condemn the attack, or Hunter’s murder, saying instead: “I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for 30 years and I’m for a national sales tax.… It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.” Asked if Stack’s grievances against the IRS were legitimate, King responds: “I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘Why is the IRS in my kitchen? Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back?‘… It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.” [Think Progress, 2/22/2010]

Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) tells citizen reporter Mike Stark that “half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.” Stark writes that though he believes Franks has no intention of insulting blacks, and likely does not “see the racism (or paternalism) in what he’s saying… [i]t sounds an awful lot to me like the congressman is suggesting that blacks were better off as slaves.” Women’s Rights blogger Alex DiBranco notes that “black women do have a higher rate of abortion—and a higher rate of unintended pregnancy. Factors that contribute to this include a lack of access to health services, education, and opportunity. If Republicans were really so concerned about the African-American community, which disproportionately suffers from poverty, passing health reform would be a good start.… The concept that a woman’s ability to make choices about her own body is more devastating than slavery is deeply offensive.” [Mike Stark, 2/26/2010; Women's Rights, 2/26/2010]

Campaign finance lawyers tell the New York Times that a loophole in the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision, a decision that allows corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts on political advertising (see January 21, 2010), could allow corporations and unions to make their donations anonymously and avoid the disclosure requirements that the Citizens United ruling left in place. Two earlier Court decisions, the 1986 Federal Election Commission v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life (see December 15, 1986) and the 2007 Wisconsin Right to Life rulings (see June 25, 2007), could be used in tandem with the Citizens United decision to make it possible for corporations and unions to donate anonymously to trade organizations and other nonprofit entities. Those entities could then use the money to finance political advertisements. Those nonprofit groups, usually called 501(c) groups after the applicable portion of the IRS tax code, had been allowed to finance so-called “electioneering communications” long before the Citizens United decision, but until now, corporations have not been allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money advocating for a candidate’s election or defeat. Nor could they donate money to nonprofit groups that engage in “electioneering communications.” The 1986 decision gave some nonprofit organizations the right to advertise for or against political candidates, but banned corporations and unions from giving money to those groups. The Citizens United decision overturned that ban. And the 2006 ruling allowed corporations to spend money on “electioneering communications.” Now, experts like corporate lawyer Kenneth A. Gross, a former associate general counsel for the Federal Election Commission (FEC), believe that corporations will donate heavily and anonymously to those “third party” groups to buy political advertising. “Clearly, that’s where the action’s going to be,” Gross says. Corporations that spend money directly on political advertising still have to identify themselves in the ads, Gross says, and report their donors. Many corporations do not want to identify themselves in such advertisements. The nonprofit groups are an attractive alternative to public disclosure, Gross says. Congressional Democrats call the loophole dangerous, and have proposed legislation that would require nonprofit groups to disclose their donors for political advertising (see February 11, 2010). The Times states, “It is impossible to know whether corporations or unions are taking advantage of the new freedom to funnel pro- or anti-candidate money through nonprofit organizations.” [New York Times, 2/27/2010]

Private Lee Pray, a member of the Oath Keepers. His finger tattoo spells out ‘THOR.’ [Source: Mother Jones]The progressive news magazine Mother Jones publishes a detailed examination of the Oath Keepers (see March 9, 2009), one of the fastest-growing “patriot” groups on the far right. The group was founded in April 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer who once served as an aide to libertarian US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). According to author Justine Sharrock, it has become “a hub in the sprawling anti-Obama movement that includes Tea Partiers, Birthers, and 912ers.” (Sharrock is referring to the burgeoning “tea party” movement, the people who believe President Obama is not an American citizen (see August 1, 2008 and After and October 8-10, 2008), and the “9/12” organization formed by lobbying organization FreedomWorks and Fox News host Glenn Beck—see March 13, 2009 and After.) Beck, MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan (see May 28, 2009, June 20, 2009, and July 16, 2009), and CNN host Lou Dobbs have publicly praised the organization. In December 2009, a grassroots summit organized by the Oath Keepers drew lawmakers such as US Representatives Phil Gingrey (R-GA) and Paul Broun (R-GA). Sharrock’s profile is based on research and interviews with Rhodes, other Oath Keeper leaders, and ordinary members such as Private Lee Pray, who is stationed at Fort Drum, New York.
Group Made Up of Uniformed Citizens - What sets the group apart from others on the far-right fringe is that its membership is restricted to US citizens in uniform—soldiers, police officers, and veterans. At its ceremonies, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution, but then go a step further, vowing to disobey “unconstitutional” orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government. Pray says he knows of five fellow Oath Keepers at Fort Drum.
Preparing for Tyranny, Martial Law - He and other members are actively recruiting, arguing that under Obama, the US government is turning increasingly tyrannical and must be opposed, violently if need be. Pray says that many Oath Keepers had problems with some government policies under President Bush, but those reservations have grown with Obama’s ascension to power. Rhodes tells Sharrock: “Too many conservatives relied on Bush’s character and didn’t pay attention. Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. Maybe you said, ‘I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists.’ But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, ‘I think you are a threat to the nation?’” Pray, like many members, believes it will be a year at most before Obama declares martial law, perhaps under the pretext of a natural disaster or another 9/11-level terror attack, and begin detaining citizens en masse and banning interstate travel. Another Oath Keeper advises Sharrock to prepare a “bug out” bag with 39 items including gas masks, ammunition, and water purification tablets, so that she will be prepared “when the sh_t hits the fan.” Pray and his friends have a “fortified bunker” at one of their member’s parents’ home in rural Idaho, where they have stashed survival gear, generators, food, and plenty of weapons. If need be, they say, they will attack their fellow soldiers. Pray describes himself as both a “birther” and a “truther,” believing that Obama is an illegitimate president installed by a government that launched the 9/11 attacks on its own soil to drive the country further down the road towards tyranny. Pray has suffered demotion for a drinking problem, and was denied deployment to Iraq when he injured his knees in a fall. Right now his job involves operating and maintaining heavy equipment on base, and he is listed currently as “undeployable.” He and his fellow Oath Keepers on base spend their free time researching what they call the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) and conspiracies about detention camps. Pray is one of the few active-duty members who will agree to have his name made public; Rhodes encourages active-duty soldiers and police officers to hide their membership in the group, saying a group with large numbers of anonymous members can instill in its adversaries the fear of the unknown—a “great force multiplier,” he calls it. Pray worries that the CIA is monitoring his phone calls and insists that unmarked black cars follow him when he drives. A fellow Fort Drum Oath Keeper who only allows his first name of Brandon to be used, and who is also “undeployable” due to his own injuries, says that the off-limits areas of Fort Drum contain concentration camps. Sharrock notes that the soldiers’ behavior might be considered “paranoid,” but writes, “Then again, when you’re an active-duty soldier contemplating treason, some level of paranoia is probably sensible.”
Stewart Rhodes - Rhodes, a Yale graduate and constitutional lawyer, is working on a book currently titled We the Enemy: How Applying the Laws of War to the American People in the War on Terror Threatens to Destroy Our Constitutional Republic. He is an Army veteran who was honorably discharged after injuring his spine in a parachute jump, and worked for a time supervising interns in Ron Paul’s Congressional office. He briefly practiced law in Montana, has worked as a sculptor and a firearms instructor, and writes a gun-rights column for SWAT magazine. He describes himself as a libertarian, a staunch constitutionalist, and a devout Christian. He decided to abandon electoral politics in 2008 after Paul’s presidential bid failed, and turned instead to grassroots organizing. In college, he became fascinated with the idea that had German soldiers and police refused to follow orders in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler could have been stopped. In early 2008, he read a letter in SWAT magazine declaring that “the Constitution and our Bill of Rights are gravely endangered” and that service members, veterans, and police “is where they will be saved, if they are to be saved at all!” Rhodes responded with a column predicting a future President Hillary (“Hitlery”) Clinton turning the US into a despotism while dressed in her “Chairman Mao signature pantsuit.” He asked readers if they intended to follow this “dominatrix-in-chief,” hold militia members as enemy combatants, disarm citizens, and shoot all resisters. If “a police state comes to America, it will ultimately be by your hands,” he wrote. You had better “resolve to not let it happen on your watch.” Shortly thereafter, he set up a blog he called “Oath Keepers,” asking for testimonials from soldiers and veterans, and began gaining popularity. Military officers offered assistance. A Marine Corps veteran invited Rhodes to speak at a local tea party event. Paul campaigners provided strategic advice. In March 2009, Rhodes attended a rally staged by a pro-militia group, and in front of the crowd of some 400 participants, officially launched the Oath Keepers movement (see March 9, 2009). Buchanan and Beck have praised Rhodes, with Buchanan predicting that he “is headed for cable stardom.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars.com has repeatedly featured Rhodes and the Oath Keepers on his radio talk show.
Attracts Attention of Anti-Hate Organizations - The Oath Keepers has come to the attention of anti-hate organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which have cited the group in their reports on rising anti-government extremism. Rhodes has accused the SPLC of trying “to lump us in with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and of course make the insinuation that we’re the next McVeigh,” referring to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Author David Neiwert, an expert on right-wing groups, tells Sharrock that it would be a mistake to term them another amalgamation of “right-wing crackpots” or “extremist nimrods,” as other press outlets have done. “[T]he reality is a lot of them are fairly intelligent, well-educated people who have complex worldviews that are thoroughly thought out,” Neiwert says. Neiwert and Sharrock tie Rhodes’s message to the much earlier views expressed by members of the now-defunct Posse Comitatus (see 1969), and note that the last reemergence of this brand of rhetoric took place during the last time a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was in the White House. Today, groups like the Oath Keepers use the Internet, particularly Facebook and YouTube, and cable news networks, to connect with like-minded citizens around the world. “The underlying sentiment is an attack on government dating back to the New Deal and before,” Neiwert says. “Ron Paul has been a significant conduit in recent years, but nothing like Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann [R-MN] and Sarah Palin (see October 10, 2008)—all of whom share that innate animus.” While Rhodes and most Oath Keepers say they will only begin active disobedience under the delineated circumstances laid out by the group, some members have gone down their own paths of violence. Oath Keeper Daniel Knight Hayden set off a controversy last April 15 with a barrage of messages on Twitter stating his intention to “START THE KILLING NOW!” by engaging in a gun battle at the Oklahoma State Capitol and urging other Oath Keepers to join him (see April 14-15, 2009). Rhodes denounced Hayden, but Neiwert notes that Rhodes’s inflammatory and inciteful rhetoric can have what he calls “an unhinging effect” on people inclined toward violent action. “It puts them in a state of mind of fearfulness and paranoia, creating so much anger and hatred that eventually that stuff boils over.” In January, ex-Marine and Oath Keeper spokesman Charles Dyer, who beat a treason charge for advocating armed resistance to the government, was arrested on charges of raping a 7-year-old girl, and authorities found stolen military weaponry at his home; some militia groups have hailed Dyer as “the first POW of the second American Revolution,” but Rhodes removed information about him from the organization’s Web sites and now denies he was ever a member (see January 21, 2010). Rhodes says he and his Web staff are “overwhelmed” with the need to delete messages encouraging racism and violence from their blog, and recently he shut down one Internet forum because of members’ attempts to use it to recruit for militia organizations. Chip Berlet of the watchdog group Political Research Associates and an expert on far-right movements equates Rhodes’s rhetoric to yelling fire in a crowded theater. “Promoting these conspiracy theories is very dangerous right now because there are people who will assume that a hero will stop at nothing.” What will happen, he adds, “is not just disobeying orders but harming and killing.” Rhodes acknowledges that to follow through on his rhetoric could be risky, and reminds Sharrock that freedom “is not neat or tidy, it’s messy.”
Gold Standards, Muslim Rights, and Treasonous Federal Institutions - During a recent meeting at a North Las Vegas casino, Sharrock took part in discussions of whether Muslim citizens had rights under the Constitution, why the Federal Reserve was a treasonous institution, why the government should be run under Biblical law and a gold standard, and how abortion-rights advocates are part of a eugenics plan targeting Christians. The group takes no official stance on the US’s war on terror or its foreign engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a recent Oath Keeper member who promoted his dual membership in the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) on the Oath Keepers blog had his post removed by Rhodes, who called the IVAW a “totalitarian” and “communist” organization.
Expanding Membership - Rhodes says the group has at least one chapter in each of the 50 states, and claims the group has some 29,000 members, not counting the ones who keep their membership off the computer lists. Volunteers are preparing a large “outreach” to soldiers serving overseas. The organization has worked hard to become a staple of tea party events, and tells tea partiers that bringing guns to those events reminds participants of their constitutional rights. The organization has made strong connections with groups such as the Constitution Party and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and national figures such as Ralph Reed, the former director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, and Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America. Elected officials such as Broun, Gingrey, Bachmann, and Steve King (R-IA) have expressed their interest in sponsoring legislation crafted by Oath Keeper leaders. [Mother Jones, 3/2010]

An appeals court overturns the verdict in Snyder v. Phelps, in which the father of a slain Marine was awarded $5 million in a judgment against the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After). WBC members had picketed the funeral of Matthew Snyder (see March 10, 2006 and After), and Snyder’s father Albert Snyder filed a lawsuit against the WBC claiming harassment and the infliction of severe emotional distress (see October 2007 and April 3, 2008). The appeals court rules that even though the WBC protesters displayed “utterly distasteful” signs at Snyder’s funeral, the signs commented on issues of “public concern” and were therefore constitutionally protected speech. The court also orders Snyder to pay the church over $16,000 in legal feels and court costs, a decision Snyder calls “a slap in the face.” Snyder will appeal to the US Supreme Court (see March 2, 2011). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2007; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012; Anti-Defamation League, 2012]

Logo of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks the activities of so-called ‘hate groups’ around the US. [Source: GuideStar]The number of extremist militia and “patriot” groups has expanded dramatically since the election of President Obama, according to a report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit organization that tracks “hate groups” and other, similar organizations. The number has expanded from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009—a 244 percent increase. “That is a lot of change in a short period of time,” says SPLC research director Heidi Beirich. The SPLC report says the number has “exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream.” While many of these groups do not espouse violence and are not considered a direct threat to government officials, government property, or citizens, some of them do advocate violent strikes against government organizations and/or “liberal” groups or individuals. The number dwindled during the eight years of the Bush presidency, the SPLC reports, but since the election of a black, Democratic president, along with a poorly performing economy and a female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), as catalyzing factors, the number has increased, and continues to grow. “The country is becoming more diverse,” Beirich says. “Some people find it hard to handle.… These are extreme stressors for people.” Chip Berlet, an analyst for Political Research Associates, writes: “We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history. We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage.” The SPLC tracked 42 armed and potentially violent militias in 2008; that number has grown by over 300 percent, to 127, since then. The SPLC writes: “Patriot groups have been fueled by anger over the changing demographics of the country, the soaring public debt, the troubled economy, and an array of initiatives by President Obama and the Democrats that have been branded ‘socialist’ or even ‘fascist’ by his political opponents (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 10, 2008, October 27, 2008, January 2009, March 4-6, 2009, March 17, 2009, March 25, 2009, March 29, 2009, April 1-2, 2009, April 3-7, 2009, April 9-22, 2009, May 13, 2009, May 28, 2009, July 24, 2009, Late July, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 18, 2009, September 1, 2009, September 12, 2009, September 17, 2009, November 5, 2009, January 27, 2010, May 7, 2010, May 19, 2010, May 25, 2010, July 3-4, 2010, September 13, 2010, September 18, 2010, September 21, 2010, September 29, 2010, September 29, 2010, October 3, 2010, October 14, 2010, October 26, 2010, November 16, 2010, and April 27, 2011). Report editor Mark Potok says: “This extraordinary growth is a cause for grave concern. The people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead” (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Moreover, the report finds, the “patriot” movement has made common cause with the “tea party” political movement, and the two are becoming more and more entwined. The report finds, “The ‘tea parties’ and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories, and racism.” The “patriot” movement’s central ideas are being promoted by national figures, such as Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck and lawmakers such as House member Michele Bachmann (R-MN). The number of identified “racist hate groups” has not increased significantly from 2008 from 2009, the report finds, growing from 926 to 932. However, the growth rate would have been far higher if it were not for the collapse of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a key neo-Nazi network whose founder was arrested in October 2008 (see December 18, 2009). So-called “nativist extremist” groups, vigilante organizations that go beyond advocating strict immigration policy and actually confront or harass suspected immigrants, have also grown in number, from 173 in 2008 to 309 in 2009, a rise of nearly 80 percent. The SPLC reports: “These three strands of the radical right—the hate groups, the nativist extremist groups, and the Patriot organizations—are the most volatile elements on the American political landscape. Taken together, their numbers increased by more than 40 percent, rising from 1,248 groups in 2008 to 1,753 last year.” The report warns that the number and intensity of violence from these groups, and from “lone wolf” extremists perhaps triggered by these groups’ rhetoric and actions, is increasing. Since Obama took office in January 2009, six law enforcement officers have been murdered by right-wing extremists. There are large and increasing numbers of arrests of racist “skinheads” for plotting to assassinate Obama, and an increasing number of anti-government extremists have been arrested for fomenting bomb plots. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 3/2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 3/2/2010; Detroit Free Press, 3/31/2010] A Detroit Free Press report will directly tie the Michigan Hutaree, a radical Christian group arrested for planning the murder of local police officers (see March 27-30, 2010), to the growing trend of militant activity documented in the SPLC report. Political science professor Michael Barkun, an expert on extremist religious groups, says of the Hutaree arrests: “I don’t think this is the last we’re going to see of these groups. The number of such groups has increased fairly dramatically in the last couple of years.” Beirich will note that the Hutaree were not isolated from other militias: “They were part of the broader militia movement,” she says. However, her conclusion is disputed by Michigan militia member Michael Lackomar. “They more closely fit the definition of a cult,” Lackomar will say. “They believe the world is about to end according to how it was written in the Bible, and their job is to stand up and clear the way for Jesus and fight alongside him against the forces of darkness.” While “[a] lot of people are upset at an ever-growing government that is overreaching,” Lackomar will say, most militias do not go to the Hutaree’s extremes. He will call the Hutaree’s plans to attack police officers “despicable.” [Detroit Free Press, 3/31/2010]

Chief Justice John Roberts tells a group of law students that President Obama and Congressional Democrats turned the recent State of the Union address into a “pep rally” targeting Court justices, and questions the need for justices to attend the event. During the speech, Obama criticized the Citizens United decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising (see January 21, 2010), and Justice Samuel Alito drew media attention by mouthing the words “Not true” in response to Obama’s remarks (see January 27-29, 2010). Roberts is referring to the fact that many Congressional Democrats cheered the president’s remarks. He calls the event “very troubling,” and says, “To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we are there.” Six of the Court’s nine justices, including Alito and Roberts, were in attendance. Roberts says he is less concerned about the criticism of the Court than the expectation that the justices must sit silently: “Anybody can criticize the Supreme Court.… I have no problem with that. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the Court—according to the requirements of protocol—has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling. It does cause me to think… why are we there?” Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas did not attend, complaining that the address would be a “partisan” event (see February 2, 2010), and Justice John Paul Stevens, who strongly dissented from the Citizens United decision, did not attend due to age and health issues. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responds strongly to Roberts’s remarks, saying, “What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections, drowning out the voices of average Americans.” [Los Angeles Times, 3/10/2010] Three weeks after Roberts makes his observations, conservative talk show host David Limbaugh will call Obama’s criticisms a “public assault” on the justices. [David Limbaugh, 4/5/2012]

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses an appeal from ‘birther’ lawyer Orly Taitz of a $20,000 judgment levied against her by a Georgia judge (see October 13-16, 2009). The court finds that Taitz’s arguments are “unpersuasive and therefore affirm[s] the district court’s sanctions judgment.” Taitz says she has no intention of paying the fine and will appeal it to the US Supreme Court (see July 7 - August 16, 2010). [Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, 3/15/2010] Taitz’s appeal contains the following: “[A]llowing sanctions by judge [sic] Land to stand, will signify beginning of tyranny in the United States of America and end to the Constitutional Republic which is the foundation of this nation. The question is as follows: ‘If the judiciary can sanction an attorney for bringing an action to uphold a Constitutional right, what is next? Will FEMA camps be turned intothe next GULAG? Will we see a wave of political assassinations of dissidents, as were seen in numerous totalitarian regimes around the World, such as regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or regime of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Iran?’ This is the most dangerous road a judiciary can take. When judiciary is pandering to an illegitimate dictator, who sits in the White House, using a Social Security number of another individual and not having a valid long form birth certificate, the country descends into tyranny.” [Washington Examiner, 7/7/2010]

Tea party protester Chris Reichert berates pro-reform protester Robert Letcher. [Source: Columbus Dispatch]During a tea party protest against the Democratic attempt to reform health care in front of the Columbus, Ohio, office of Representative Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH), one protester, Chris Reichert, confronts a counter-protester, Robert Letcher, and verbally mocks his illness. Letcher suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and when Reichert accosts him, is sitting down in front of the anti-reform protesters carrying a sign announcing his illness. The sign reads: “‘Got Parkinson’s?’ I Do and You Might. Thanks for helping! That’s community!” The incident begins when an unidentified man berates Letcher, saying: “If you’re looking for a hand-out, you’re on the wrong end of town. Nothing for free over here, you have to work for everything you get.” Reichert then steps out of the crowd, bends over Letcher, waggles his finger in Letcher’s face, throws a pair of dollar bills in his face, and says: “I’ll pay for this guy. Here you go. Let’s start a pot, I’ll pay for you.” He throws more dollar bills at Leichert, and shouts: “I’ll decide when to give you money. Here. Here’s another one.… No more handouts.” Letcher, a former nuclear engineer who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2000, later explains: “I feel I embody the controversy that was being fought out. No one was engaging, everyone was screaming. I thought, I don’t have to scream, I just have to be there. I walked over and sat down.… I sort of presented myself as an argument by myself.” Kilroy and Democratic supporters immediately condemn Reichert’s actions, and Kilroy enters a link to a YouTube video of the incident into the Congressional Record. Reichert initially denies doing anything of the sort, but the videos prove his involvement. He eventually admits his actions, and will explain: “I snapped. I absolutely snapped and I can’t explain it any other way.” He will continue: “He’s got every right to do what he did and some may say I did too, but what I did was shameful. I haven’t slept since that day. I made a donation [to a local Parkinson’s disease group] and that starts the healing process.… I wanted this to go away, but it won’t and I’m paying the consequences.” Reichert will go on to say that he fears for the safety of himself and his family after reading some of the comments people have posted on the Internet. “I’ve been looking at the Web sites,” he will say. “People are hunting for me.” Reichert says he is a registered Republican, but is not politically active: “That was my first time at any political rally and I’m never going to another one. I will never ever, ever go to another one.” [Columbus Dispatch, 3/17/2010; TPM LiveWire, 3/19/2010; Columbus Dispatch, 3/24/2010; CBS News, 3/25/2010] The progressive news blog TPM LiveWire later says Reichert may be connected to the conservative lobbying group Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The videos show him carrying an “I am AFP!” sign under his arm. AFP’s Ohio director, Rebecca Heimlich, says she does not know either Reichert or the other man who berates Letcher in the video. She states: “I have seen the video and found [Reichert]‘s behavior completely inappropriate. Americans for Prosperity certainly does not encourage or condone harassing behavior. Our goal is to send a message to Rep. Kilroy that we oppose this health care takeover bill. We always encourage our members to be considerate of others in their demonstrations.” AFP is a financial supporter of a number of tea party organizations, and sometimes helps the groups coordinate their rallies and actions. [TPM LiveWire, 3/22/2010; TPM LiveWire, 3/24/2010]

John Boehner. [Source: Slate]House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) makes what some believe to be an implicit threat towards Representative Steve Driehaus (D-OH). Boehner, discussing Driehaus’s vote for the health care reform package, says Driehaus will pay a heavy price for his vote. “Take Steve Driehaus, for example,” Boehner says. “He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati. The Catholics will run him out of town.” After Boehner’s statement is publicized in the national media, Driehaus begins receiving death threats, and a right-wing Web site, The Whistleblower, publishes directions to his house urging readers to “protest” at his home. The headline of the article: “Tea Party Vows Revenge.” Driehaus’s press secretary Tim Mulvey releases a statement that reads in part, “This comes during the same one-week period that a right-wing special interest group published a photo of Rep. Driehaus and his children, the local Democratic Party headquarters in Cincinnati had a brick thrown through its front window, and Rep. Driehaus’s office received death threats.” Driehaus tells a reporter: “I’m very protective of my family, like most of us. There is no reason for my wife and kids to be brought into any of this. If people want to talk to me, if people want to approach me about an issue, I’m more than happy to talk about the issue, regardless of what side they’re on. But I do believe when you bring in a member’s family, that you’ve gone way too far.… Mr. Boehner made comments about me and my predicament when I go home which I felt were wildly out of bounds for his position and very irresponsible, quite frankly. He’s from next door [Boehner’s district adjoins Driehaus’s]. That’s not helpful. That’s irresponsible.” Shortly thereafter, Driehaus confronts Boehner on the floor of the House. “I didn’t think it was funny at all,” Driehaus will later recall. “I’ve got three little kids and a wife. I said to him: ‘John, this is bullsh_t, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.’” According to Driehaus, Boehner did not intend to urge anyone to commit violence against him or his family: “But it’s not about what he intended—it’s about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work.” Driehaus will recall that Boehner is “taken aback” when confronted on the floor, but never actually says he is sorry: “He said something along the lines of, ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’ But he didn’t apologize.” [National Review, 3/18/2010; Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/24/2010; Politico, 3/24/2010; Rolling Stone, 1/5/2011] Republican Party chairman Michael Steele says of Boehner’s comments: “The leader does not condone violence, and his remark was obviously not meant to be taken literally. He is urging Americans to take the anger they’re feeling and focus it on building a new majority that will listen to the people.” [Politico, 3/24/2010] Boehner says that when he called Driehaus a “dead man,” he was referring to Driehaus’s political career. [Talk Radio News Service, 3/25/2010]

Photo of a rock included on his blog post by Mike Vanderboegh. The meaning of the Roman numeral III is unclear. [Source: Mike Vanderboegh]Mike Vanderboegh, the former head of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, writes a blog post urging his readers to show their displeasure over the Democrats’ health care reform bill by breaking the windows of Democratic legislative offices. “To all modern Sons of Liberty,” he writes on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars,” “THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW.” Vanderboegh, who lives on government disability payments, writes of what he calls “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act”: “So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows. Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats. But BREAK THEM.” [Mike Vanderboegh, 3/19/2010; Kansas City Star, 3/22/2010; Think Progress, 3/23/2010; Daily Beast, 3/24/2010; Washington Post, 3/25/2010; Salon, 3/26/2010]
Vandalism, Death Threats against Lawmakers and Children in Three States - In the days that follow, windows and glass door panels are shattered in Democratic Party offices and Democrats’ district legislative offices in Arizona, Kansas, and New York. At least 10 Democratic legislators report receiving death threats, harassment, and vandalism at their offices. In the Niagara Falls, New York, office of Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), a voice mail message is left threatening to send snipers to “assassinate… the children of lawmakers who voted yes” on health care reform. [Kansas City Star, 3/22/2010; Think Progress, 3/23/2010; Politico, 3/24/2010; Washington Post, 3/25/2010] Mike Troxel, an organizer for the Lynchburg, Virginia, Tea Party, publishes what he believes to be the home address of Representative Thomas Perriello (D-VA), and urges angry voters to “drop by” for a “good face-to-face chat.” (The address is that of Bo Perriello, the brother of Thomas. Troxel refuses to take it down from his blog, but says he would be happy to amend his post with Perriello’s own address. Within days of Troxel’s post, someone cuts Bo Perriello’s propane gas line, an act that could lead to a fire.) Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI), whose last-minute compromise on abortion (see March 24, 2010) guaranteed passage of the health care bill, reports receiving multiple death threats on his home and office answering machines, including one that said, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you.” Stupak tells a reporter, “My wife still can’t answer the phone.” The messages are “full of obscenities if she leaves it plugged in. In my office, we can’t get a phone out. It’s just bombarded.” [Politico, 3/24/2010; Right Wing Watch, 3/24/2010]
Prediction of 'Civil War' over Health Care, Taxation - Though Democratic Party officials in New York call for Vanderboegh’s arrest, believing he is behind an incident of vandalism in Rochester, he has not as yet been interviewed by law enforcement authorities. Vanderboegh tells Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker that he has no regrets over his call for vandalism and violence, and says that throwing bricks through windows sends a clear message to Democrats that “the health care reform legislation they passed Sunday has caused so much unrest that it could result in a civil war.” Vanderboegh, Rucker writes, has “a complicated theory that IRS agents will go after people who refuse to buy insurance or pay the fines,” and the result of that action will be “civil war.” Vanderboegh says: “The central fact of the health care bill is this, and we find it tyrannical and unconstitutional on its face. The federal government now demands all Americans to pay and play in this system, and if we refuse, we will be fined, and if we refuse to pay the fine, they will come to arrest us, and if we resist arrest… then we will be killed. The bill certainly doesn’t say that, but that’s exactly and precisely what is behind every bill like this.” Throwing bricks through windows, he says, is “both good manners and it’s also a moral duty to try to warn people.” Vanderboegh describes himself as a “Christian libertarian” and a gun rights advocate who once belonged to two Alabama militia organizations. Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that tracks extremist and hate groups, says the SPLC has been aware of Vanderboegh “forever,” and says: “He hasn’t been involved in any kind of violence that we know of ourselves, but these causes that he’s involved in led to a lot of violence. The ideas that Vanderboegh’s militia groups were pushing were the same extreme anti-government ideas that inspired [Timothy] McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing” (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). [Washington Post, 3/25/2010; Salon, 3/26/2010] One of Vanderboegh’s blog commentators asks, “Is this our Fort Sumter?” referring to the opening battle of the Civil War. [Mike Vanderboegh, 3/19/2010] Reporter John Avlon writes that the comparison to 1938’s “Kristallnacht,” the Nazis’ “Night of Broken Glass,” are “inevitable.” He notes that Vanderboegh’s home page warns, “All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.” [Daily Beast, 3/24/2010]
Prediction of 'Race War' - Vanderboegh tells Avnel that he believes President Obama’s election will spark a “race war,” saying: “Now we have a gangster culture in the middle of the cities. We’ve imported into this country over the last 20 years a significant subculture that comes from south of the border [presumably Mexico] that also has not bought in and identified with the larger culture. Our fear is that any breakdown in this country of law and order will turn into a three-sided race war, and I can’t think of anything that’s more calculated to bring long-term tyranny and chaos than something like that.” [Daily Beast, 3/24/2010]
Republican Leadership Should 'Stop' Incendiary Rhetoric - Representative C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) says: “The real problem is the people who are calling and talking about a revolution and overthrowing government. They can be angry. We’re all for that. But when they talk about taking over the government, the leadership has to do its part to stop that.” [Politico, 3/24/2010]
Problem for 'Tea Parties'? - Progressive columnist David Weigel predicts that Vanderboegh’s “off the rails” post “will end up making a lot of trouble for Tea Parties… calling, many times over, for violence against members of Congress. Vanderboegh basically courts controversy—his blog profile tells readers how to send him anthrax and death threats—but as Democrats make hay from attacks on Congressional offices, this blog post might become a sort of Rosetta Stone of wingnuttery.” [Washington Independent, 3/25/2010]

Democratic lawmaker Emanuel Cleaver, walking through the crowd of tea party protesters around the same time he is spat upon. [Source: EurWeb (.com)]Tea party and other anti-health care protesters in Washington denigrate African-American lawmakers with racial slurs, one African-American congressman is spat upon, and a gay congressman is called an anti-gay slur by another protester.
'Kill the Bill, N_gger!' - John Lewis (D-GA) and Andre Carson (D-IN), both members of the Congressional Black Caucus, after leaving a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, encounter a large and angry crowd of tea party and other protesters. According to Carson and a number of staffers accompanying the lawmakers, protesters first scream and chant, “Kill the bill!” referring to the pending health care legislation, then alter the chant to say, “Kill the bill, n_gger!” When Lewis confirms that he supports the bill, protesters shout, “Baby killer!” Police quickly escort Lewis, Carson, and their staffers into the Capitol building. Carson later tells a reporter that he heard the first slur from a single individual: “You see one or two tea party people kind of look at him, and then you hear it again as we’re walking. Then we walk across [Independence Avenue], and that’s when it starts getting deeper.… You heard it in spurts, in the midst of ‘Kill the bill. Kill the bill.’ One guy, I remember he just rattled it off several times. Then John looks at me and says, ‘You know, this reminds me of a different time.’” Lewis confirms Carson’s account of the racial slurs, and adds, “People have been just downright mean.” Heath Shuler (D-NC), a white congressman, also confirms that he heard the racial slurs.
Lawmaker Spat Upon - Another African-American congressman, Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), is spat upon by an unidentified protester; police arrest the man, but Cleaver declines to press charges and the man is later released.
Lawmaker Called 'F_ggot' - Protesters in the same rally accost Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), who is openly gay, inside the Longworth House office building; one, an elderly white man, shouts, “Barney, you f_ggot!” causing many in the group to laugh and a woman to shout, “We don’t need that.” CNN reporter Dana Bash later says that her producer personally witnessed the homophobic slur towards Frank. When Capitol police threaten to expel the protesters from the Longworth building, according to one reporter, the police are “outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed.” After tea party protesters equipped with high-end video cameras arrive to film the encounter, the police relent and allow them to continue protesting inside the building.
Rhetoric Similar to '60s Civil Rights Protests - Frank later says of the protesters: “I’m disappointed at a unwillingness to be just civil. [T]he objection to the health care bill has become a proxy for other sentiments.… Obviously there are perfectly reasonable people that are against this, but the people out there today on the whole—many of them were hateful and abusive.” Frank puts some of the blame for the incident on tea party organization leaders and Republicans who align themselves with the organizations, and notes that today’s incidents are not the first of their kind (see June 30, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28-29, 2009, August 4, 2009, and August 11, 2009). “I do think the leaders of the movement, and this was true of some of the Republicans last year, that they think they are benefiting from this rancor,” he says. “I mean there are a couple who—you know, Michele Bachmann’s rhetoric is inflamatory as well as wholly baseless. And I think there are people there, a few that encourage it.… If this was my cause, and I saw this angry group yelling and shouting and being so abusive to people, I would ask them to please stop it. I think they do more harm than good.” Frank tells another reporter: “The Republican leadership is making a mistake not doing more to disassociate from this.… It’s a mob mentality that doesn’t work politically.” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), an African-American, says: “It was absolutely shocking to me, last Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus Pomford University where 50 years ago, as of last Monday, March 15th, I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit-ins… quite frankly I heard some things today that I haven’t heard since that day. I heard people saying things today I’ve not heard since March 15th, 1960, when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus. This is incredible, shocking to me.” [TPM Muckraker, 3/20/2010; MSNBC, 3/20/2010; Mediaite, 3/20/2010; ABC News, 4/13/2010] Anne Caprara, the chief of staff for Betsy Markey (D-CO), says of the protesters: “I’ve been in politics for 10 years and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. To be amongst that crowd outside and to see some of the people who walked into our office, these people were very unhinged.” [KDVR-TV, 3/25/2010] The New York Times later publishes a correction to a follow-up article that notes it is impossible to prove that actual tea party members were the ones hurling the racial and homophobic epithets, nor is it clear that it was a tea party member who spat upon Cleaver. [New York Times, 7/17/2010]
Tea Party Supporters Claim False Accusations - Conservative bloggers quickly accuse Lewis, Carson, Cleaver, and the “liberal media” of lying about the incidents [Media Research Center, 3/20/2010; John Hinderaker, 7/25/2010] , and are joined by Bachmann (R-MN), who will falsely inform an audience, “No witness saw it, it’s not on camera, it’s not on audio.” [ABC News, 4/13/2010]
Videos Surface - A blogger at the liberal Daily Kos posts a video of the protests. [Daily Kos, 3/20/2010] Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart later posts a video claiming that it proves no such incidents took place; further examination proves that the video was shot over an hour past the time of the incidents. Breitbart will offer a $100,000 contribution to the United Negro College Fund if anyone can prove to his satisfaction that the incidents occurred. After stating flatly that his video proves the incidents “didn’t happen,” Breitbart later partially retracts his denial, saying, “I’m not saying the video was conclusive proof.” Other conservatives will accuse Lewis, Carson, and Cleaver of deliberately walking through the crowd of protesters in order to provoke a reaction. [ABC News, 4/13/2010] Days later, another video surfaces, showing Cleaver walking through a crowd of angry, shouting protesters, then suddenly jerking his head back and wiping his face. [EurWeb, 3/29/2010]

Liberal columnist Joan Walsh denounces the racial and homophobic slurs hurled at Democratic lawmakers by tea party protesters during a rally outside the US Capitol (see March 20, 2010). She writes that while the tea party movement may have had its start in economic protests (see After November 7, 2008, February 1, 2009, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009, and February 19, 2009 and After), it is now “disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches.” Based on just what mainstream media reports say (ignoring reports on Twitter and blogs), Walsh writes that Representative John Lewis (D-GA) was called “n_gger” at least 15 separate times, incidents confirmed by Representative Andre Carson (D-IN) and Lewis spokesperson Brenda Jones. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) was spat upon; the perpetrator was arrested, but Cleaver declined to press charges. CNN’s Dana Bash personally heard protesters call Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) a “f_ggot.” Walsh describes Bash as seemingly “rattled by the tea party fury.” Walsh notes that Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, one of the lobbying groups funding the various tea party organizations (see Late 2004, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, and April 2009 and After), recently appeared on an MSNBC talk show to deny that the violence and verbal assaults common at tea party rallies are emblematic of the movement as a whole (Phillips was on to discuss a tea party protester taunting a man with Parkinson’s disease at a recent Ohio rally—see March 16, 2010). Walsh writes, “But such demurrals don’t cut it any more.” She notes that tea party leader Judson Phillips, speaking at the recent National Tea Party Convention (see February 4-6, 2010), denounced the racism exhibited at tea party rallies, but then endorsed racist speaker Tom Tancredo (see May 26, 2009 and May 28, 2009), who received loud cheers when he advocated that US voters be given literacy tests, a Jim Crow-era tactic to keep blacks from voting. Walsh says she wants to believe the tea party movement is populated by something other than old-school racists who coalesced to oppose the first African-American president. She notes that Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) has criticized the slurs hurled at Lewis, Carson, Cleaver, and Frank, and went on to distance the Republican Party from the tea party frenzy, saying: “I think we’ve reached a tipping point here. I think the American people are rising up with one voice and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’” Walsh writes that Pence seems to blame Obama, Lewis, Carson, and their Democratic colleagues for the inflammatory rhetoric being hurled at them, “and ignore the role of GOP racism.” She goes on to note that Representative Geoff Davis (R-KY) hung a “Don’t Tread On Me” sign over the Capitol Balcony shortly after Pence’s remarks, and reminds readers that Davis called Obama “that boy” in a speech (see April 12, 2008). [Salon, 3/20/2010] Days after the incidents outside the Capitol, tea party leaders denounce the racism and homophobia at the event, but deny tea party members were involved, and claim Democrats and liberals are using the “isolated” incidents to whip up anti-tea party sentiment (see March 25, 2010). Tea party leaders will also claim that reports of racist epithets and sloganeering among their members are invented by Democrats and liberals (see March 26, 2010).

A portion of Palin’s image, which puts gunsights on 20 Congressional districts, and names the Democrats who represent them. [Source: Sarah Palin / Huffington Post]Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), a Fox News contributor and generally accepted leader of the far-right Tea Party movement, posts an image on her Facebook page that depicts gunsights (crosshairs) on 20 Congressional districts and lists the Democrats who currently represent them. The image reads: “20 House Democrats from districts we [Republicans] carried in 2008 voted for the health care bill.… IT’S TIME WE TAKE A STAND. Let’s take back the 20 together!” The liberal Huffington Post calls Palin’s image and rhetoric “decidely militant.” Conservative commentator Elizabeth Hasselback calls the use of gunsight imagery “despicable,” saying: “I think the way some Republicans are handling this is nothing more than purely despicable. The names that are next to and being highlighted by those crosshairs—I think it’s an abuse of the Second Amendment. I also feel as though every single person on here is a mother, a father, a friend, a brother, a sister, and to take it to this level is—it’s disappointing to see this come from the party, and I would hope that leaders like Sarah Palin would end this.” The image lists the 20 Democrats by name (noting that three are not running for re-election, and marking their districts in red):
Vic Snyder (D-AR, retiring)
Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)
Harry Mitchell (D-AZ)
Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)
John Salazar (D-CO)
Betsy Markey (D-CO)
Allen Boyd (D-FL)
Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL)
Brad Ellsworth (D-IN, retiring)
Baron Hill (D-IN)
Earl Pomeroy (D-AL)
Charlie Wilson (D-OH)
John Boccieri (D-OH)
Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
Christopher Carney (D-PA)
John Spratt (D-SC)
Bart Gordon (D-TN, retiring)
Thomas Perriello (D-VA)
Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
Nick Rahall (D-WV) [Huffington Post, 3/24/2010; Huffington Post, 3/26/2010]
After one of the listed Democrats, Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), is shot in the head by an apparent assassin in January 2011, Palin’s staff will remove the image from Palin’s Facebook page and issue the claim that the gunsights were actually intended to represent surveyor’s marks. However, Palin herself will call the gunsights “bullseyes” that “target[ed]” her opponents. After the November 2010 election, when all but two on the list have either retired or been defeated, Palin will post on Twitter: “Remember months ago ‘bullseye’ icon used 2 target the 20 Obamacare-lovin’ incumbent seats? We won 18 out of 20 (90% success rate;T’aint bad).” Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler will write: “[I]t’s silly for her aides to claim she did not intend these to be gunsights. They can defend it, or apologize, but they shouldn’t pretend otherwise.” [Tammy Bruce, 1/8/2011; Washington Post, 1/11/2011]

President Obama signs an executive order affirming the “Hyde Amendment,” which bars federal funding for most abortions (see September 30, 1976). The White House does not hold a press conference to highlight the signing of the order, and administration officials have acknowledged that Obama agreed to sign it to keep the support of conservative Democrats in Congress for the health care reform package. William Galston of the Brookings Institution says of the order: “The executive order found a sweet spot, which I’m surprised existed. Something that didn’t send the base of the party into a tizzy but seems to have satisfied a very important minority within the party. It was the model of win-win pragmatism.” Pro-choice activists condemn the decision to sign the order, and anti-abortion organizations insist the order does little to advance the cause of making access to abortions all but impossible. The National Organization for Women (NOW) says that Obama’s commitment to abortion rights is “shaky at best,” and adds that his willingness to sign the order demonstrates that “it is acceptable to negotiate health care on the backs of women.” NOW president Terry O’Neill says: “What we need to hear our leaders say is that the Hyde Amendment is bad law. It needs to ultimately be repealed. It hurts women.” Cardinal Francis George, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, says the order does not go far enough: “We do not understand how an executive order, no matter how well intentioned, can substitute for statutory provisions.” Bart Stupak (D-MI) says that the order “protects the sanctity of life.” [Washington Post, 3/24/2010; US Catholic, 3/25/2010; Los Angeles Times, 3/25/2010]

Congressional Democrats are calling on Republicans and tea party leaders to curb the harassment and death threats being directed at Democratic lawmakers and their families. The harassment and threats stem largely from tea party members and others who are virulently opposed to the health care reform proposed by Democrats and the Obama administration. As lawmakers head home for spring recess, the FBI, the Capitol Police, and the House sergeant-at-arms meet with the Democratic Caucus to hear lawmakers express their worry for the safety of themselves and their families. Phil Hare (D-IL) says he knows Democrats who have told their families to leave their home districts while the lawmakers are in Washington. “If this doesn’t get under control in short time, heaven forbid, someone will get hurt,” Hare says. Hare is holding eight town hall meetings in his district over the recess, and has requested that the Capitol Police coordinate with local law enforcement authorities to provide security. Hare’s wife has asked him to cancel the events, but Hare intends to go forward. “My wife is home alone, and I’m worried for her,” Hare says. “I am about to have my first grandchild. I don’t want to have to be worried.” In recent weeks, an unknown perpetrator cut the gas lines at the home of Thomas Perriello (D-VA)‘s brother, prompting an FBI investigation; the gas lines were cut after a tea party activist posted the brother’s address online, believing it to be Perriello’s (see March 19, 2010 and After). Steve Driehaus (D-OH) has had his address posted on tea party Web sites with exhortations for protesters to visit him at his home to protest his support for health care reform; a photo of Driehaus’s family was printed in a recent newspaper ad attacking Driehaus’s support for health care reform. A brick was recently thrown through the window of the Democratic Party’s office in Cincinnati (see March 19, 2010 and After). Bart Stupak (D-MI) says he has received numerous death threats (see March 19, 2010 and After). Hank Johnson (D-GA) says Democrats need to coordinate an internal security plan. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) says he fears that violence may erupt in the districts. Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) has condemned the threats, but Driehaus has complained that Boehner has implied his own threat towards himself and his family, calling Driehaus a “dead man” for voting for the health care legislation (see March 18, 2010 and After). Boehner blames Democrats for causing the violence: “I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” he says in a statement. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change. Call your congressman, go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, make your voice heard—but let’s do it the right way.” Hare says Boehner needs to apologize for his own words and restrain fellow House Republicans, whom Hare says often “rile up” protesters from the Capitol balcony. “If he can’t control his members, they have to find someone who can,” Hare says. At least one Democrat has stood up to the threats; when tea party activists paid a visit to the office of Jim Moran (D-VA) earlier this week, aides got between the protesters and the clearly angry Moran. When the activists asked the aides if Moran needed “bodyguards” to protect him, one aide responded: “We’re not protecting him from you. We’re protecting you from him.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says he believes that Democrats and their families are in real danger from protesters. [Politico, 3/25/2010] House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) denounces “this crazy stuff the Republicans are doing here,” and says Boehner and other GOP leaders “ought to be ashamed of themselves for bringing these people here to Washington, DC, and they’re acting like this.” Tim Ryan (D-OH), on the House floor, criticizes “these tea bagger protesters who have been out today” and “call[s] on the Republicans to say shame on the tea party for that type of behavior.” Many Republicans and tea party officials claim that the incidents are fabrications, and have called on Democrats to apologize for making false accusations. Some say the racial epithets and death threats come from Democratic supporters who want to cast a poor light on the tea parties. Memphis tea party organizer Mark Skoda says there is an orchestrated attempt among Democrats and liberals to falsely paint the tea parties as racist. [Politico, 3/22/2010]

A portion of the Northern Colorado Tea Party logo. [Source: Northern Colorado Tea Party]In the wake of tea party anti-health care reform protests that resulted in protesters verbally abusing a disabled man (see March 16, 2010), hurling racial and homophobic slurs at lawmakers, spitting on a lawmaker (see March 20, 2010), and threatening Democrats with violence (see March 24-25, 2010), the leaders of some tea party organizations condemn the harassment and threats of violence their members are producing. At the same time, these leaders say that their members are responsible for the incidents they condemn. Politico reports, “There hasn’t been any hard evidence that the reported harassment is linked to the tea party movement, but Democrats have tried to draw the link between the harassment and the sometimes-inflammatory rhetoric that tea partiers and Republicans deployed in opposing the health care overhaul.” A group of Florida tea party organizers releases a letter to Congress and President Obama saying they “stand in stark opposition to any person using derogatory characterizations, threats of violence, or disparaging terms toward members of Congress or the president.” The letter calls the tea parties “a peaceful movement,” and says its leaders denounce “all forms of violence” and “support all efforts to bring [any perpetrators] to justice and have encouraged full cooperation within our movement and have asked for the same from the members of Congress who have laid such claims.” The letter is also signed by the Florida chapter of FreedomWorks, the Washington-based lobbying group that sponsors and coordinates many tea party organizations (see April 14, 2009). FreedomWorks spokesman Brendan Steinhauser, who helps organize local tea parties around the country for FreedomWorks, issues a statement saying, “Political violence is both immoral and ineffective, and will only set the movement back.” He says he is “reminding all grassroots leaders that it’s important to focus our efforts on peaceful, political efforts like protests, office visits, letters, petitions, and of course, voting.” However, Steinhauser says, there is no evidence that tea party members have engaged in any such actions: “We must remember that the folks committing these acts are small in number, extreme in their methods, and not yet proven to be members of our movement. But we must be diligent in denouncing all acts of political violence and racism, when they occur.” A Colorado tea party coalition issues a similar statement, which reads in part, “Tea party and similar groups across Colorado are saddened tonight to hear of threats made upon Democratic lawmakers in response to the passing their recent health insurance reform legislation, specifically… Rep. Betsy Markey.” Office staffers for Markey (D-CO) have reported at least one death threat from an unidentified caller. The Colorado release states, “[I]t does not appear that these threats stemmed from those within Colorado’s tea party movement.” However: “organizers and members alike are firmly denouncing any acts of intimidation or threat. Statewide, tea party leadership has encouraged disappointed members to get involved in the political process rather than dwell on the passage of the health care bill.” Lesley Hollywood, the director of the Northern Colorado Tea Party, promises: “I can assure you that myself and my colleagues will take immediate action if any of these allegations are discovered to be connected to our organizations. At this time, our internal investigations have not revealed any correlation between the threats and the Tea Party.” [Politico, 3/25/2010; Fox News, 3/26/2010] Of the threats directed towards Markey, Hollywood says: “Tea Party and similar groups across Colorado are saddened tonight to hear of threats made upon [Markey]. Although it does not appear that these threats stemmed from those within Colorado’s tea party movement, organizers and members alike are firmly denouncing any acts of intimidation or threat.… These threats are likely coming from rogue, outside sources.” [KDVR-TV, 3/25/2010] Days before, FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon said: “If the movement gets tattooed as at all sympathetic to those [racist and homophobic] views, I won’t want to be involved in it anymore. It’s very distracting not only to our side but also to the debate and the country.” [Politico, 3/22/2010] Atlanta Tea Party co-founder Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, says: “We support peaceful means.… There are so many tea party groups that are out there.… It’s like herding cats. It’s impossible.” James Clyburn (D-SC), a Democratic House member, accuses House Republicans of egging on abusive behavior from the tea partiers. “If we participate in it, either from the balcony or on the floor of the House, you are aiding and abetting this kind of terrorism, really,” he says. Steinhauser alleges that similar threats and rhetoric have come from liberal activists, and accuses the media of ignoring those actions. [Fox News, 3/26/2010]

Tea party leaders angrily deny that their movement has any tolerance for racism and anti-Semitism, and say that accusations of this are attempts by “liberals” to “marginalize” the movement. Any incidents of racist or anti-Semitic sloganeering or other activities, they say, are isolated and not tolerated by the organizations themselves (see February 18, 2009, August 1, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 11, 2009, September 2009, September 14, 2009, March 16, 2010, March 20, 2010, March 24-25, 2010, May 14, 2010, July 14, 2010, July 15, 2010, July 23, 2010, August 6, 2010, September 11, 2010, September 12, 2010, and April 15, 2011). Sal Russo, chief strategist of the Tea Party Express, says: “Liberals and Democrats, with help from their friends in the media, have tried to marginalize the tea party movement. First they said [the tea party movement] was AstroTurf, that these weren’t real people (see March 13, 2009 and After, April 2009 and After, April 6-13, 2009, April 8, 2009, April 14, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 16, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 24, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6-7, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 28, 2009, July 3-4, 2010, August 30, 2010, and September 20, 2010).… Then they said it’s just a bunch of crackpots, and they would go out and find the oddest person in the crowd. Now they’re using race. But the attempts to vilify this movement is what you’d expect. It’s not going to work with the tea party.” Tea party leaders say that recent reports of harassment, threats, and vandalism of Democratic lawmakers by opponents of the Obama administration’s health care reform initiative (see August 5, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 10, 2009, March 20, 2010, and March 24-25, 2010) are isolated incidents that have nothing to do with their organizations; House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) says he has also received hateful emails and telephone messages, but has chosen not to publicize them. Cantor has previously said that someone fired a bullet into his Richmond office, an event that local police will determine was a ricochet and not fired directly at his office. As to suggestions that Republican lawmakers such as himself have encouraged their supporters to harass or threaten Democrats, Cantor says, “Any suggestion that a leader in this body would incite threats or acts against other members is akin to saying that I would endanger myself, my wife, or my children.” However, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) says he and others were singled out by Cantor, and have received death threats and harassing emails and telephone calls, including some from people identifying themselves as tea party members. Senate Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer has told reporters that there is “no evidence that annoying, harassing, or threatening telephone calls or emails are coordinated.” Dale Robertson of TeaParty.org says that he believes the reports of tea partiers vilifying or spitting on Democratic lawmakers are lies concocted by Democrats: “These people could be anybody. I wouldn’t put it past the Democrats to plant somebody there. They’re trying to label the tea party, but I’ve never seen any racial slurs.” In February 2009, Robertson was photographed holding a sign at a tea party rally in Houston bearing a racial slur (see February 27, 2009). [Washington Independent, 1/4/2010; Washington Times, 3/26/2010; Mediaite, 3/26/2010]

The Washington, DC, Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously holds that provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA—see February 7, 1972, 1974, and May 11, 1976) violate the First Amendment in the case of a nonprofit, unincorporated organization called SpeechNow.org. SpeechNow collects contributions from individuals, but not corporations, and attempted to collect contributions in excess of what FECA allows. In late 2007, SpeechNow asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) if its fundraising plans would require it to register as a political committee, and the FEC responded that the law would require such registration, thus placing SpeechNow under federal guidelines for operation and fundraising. In February 2008, SpeechNow challenged that ruling in court, claiming that the restrictions under FECA were unconstitutional. FECA should not restrict the amount of money individuals can donate to the organization, it argued, and thusly should not face spending requirements. It also argued that the reporting limits under FECA are unduly burdensome. The district court ruled against SpeechNow, using two Supreme Court decisions as its precedents (see January 30, 1976 and December 10, 2003), and ruled that “nominally independent” organizations such as SpeechNow are “uniquely positioned to serve as conduits for corruption both in terms of the sale of access and the circumvention of the soft money ban.” SpeechNow appealed that decision. The appeals court reverses the decision, stating that the contribution limits under FECA are unconstitutional as applied to individuals. The reporting and organizational requirements under FECA are constitutionally valid, the court rules. The appeals court uses the recent Citizens United ruling as justification for its findings on contribution limits (see January 21, 2010). [New York Times, 3/28/2010; Federal Elections Commission, 2012; Moneyocracy, 2/2012] The FEC argued that large contributions to groups that made independent expenditures could “lead to preferential access for donors and undue influence over officeholders,” but Chief Judge David Sentelle, writing for the court, retorts that such arguments “plainly have no merit after Citizens United.” Stephen M. Hoersting, who represents SpeechNow, says the ruling is a logical and welcome extension of the Citizens United ruling, stating, “The court affirmed that groups of passionate individuals, like billionaires—and corporations and unions after Citizens United—have the right to spend without limit to independently advocate for or against federal candidates.” [New York Times, 3/28/2010] Taken along with another court ruling, the SpeechNow case opens the way for the formation of so-called “super PACs,” “independent expenditure” entities that can be run by corporations or labor unions with monies directly from their treasuries, actions that have been banned for over 60 years (see 1925 and June 25, 1943). The New York Times will later define a super PAC as “a political committee whose primary purpose is to influence elections, and which can take unlimited amounts of money, outside of federal contribution limits, from rich people, unions, and corporations, pool it all together, and spend it to advocate for a candidate—as long as they are independent and not coordinated with the candidate.” Super PACs are not required by law to disclose who their donors are, how much money they have raised, and how much they spend. CNN will later write, “The high court’s decision allowed super PACs to raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates.” OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that monitors campaign finance practices, later writes that the laws underwriting Super PACs “prevent… voters from understanding who is truly behind many political messages.” [New York Times, 3/28/2010; Federal Elections Commission, 2012; OpenSecrets (.org), 2012; CNN, 3/26/2012; New York Times, 5/22/2012]

Some of the armed militia members gathering in support of Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul. The two depicted are wearing pro-Paul stickers. [Source: Think Progress (.org)]US Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY) is a featured speaker at an “open carry” rally held in Frankfort. “Open carry” advocates claim the right to openly carry firearms in public places. The rally includes groups like the Ohio Valley Freedom Fighters, an organization that has openly worked with and defended the Michigan-based Hutaree militia (see March 27-30, 2010). During his address to the rally, Paul calls the armed attendees, many of whom are wearing “I’m A Rand Fan” stickers, his “private security detail.” [Joe Sonka, 3/29/2010; Think Progress, 5/17/2010] (Note: progressive news Web site Think Progress misidentifies the militia organization at the Paul rally as the “Ohio Valley Freedom Fights.”) [Think Progress, 5/17/2010]

Christian Science Monitor reporter Mark Guarino delves into some of the reasons why Michigan has such a high concentration of militia, anti-government, and other extremist groups within its borders. The analysis comes in the aftermath of the arrest of nine members of the Hutaree, a violent Christian group whom the FBI says were planning on murdering one or more police officers (see March 27-30, 2010). Michigan has 47 known militia or “patriot” groups, second in the nation behind Texas (which contains 57 such groups). These numbers come from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization that tracks hate group activity. The SPLC says dozens of new militia and “patriot” groups have begun since the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president; between 2008 and 2009, the SPLC says, the number of groups throughout the country has grown from 149 to 512 (see March 2, 2010). The Michigan branch of the Hutaree is one of the most violent and far-right of these groups, the SPLC says, but Michigan and the entire Upper Midwest has become a hotbed of “patriot” activity. Chip Berlet, an analyst for Political Research Associates, says: “There are a number of regional factors that, over time and at various moments, helped the militia movement take hold in different parts of the country. It certainly has emerged strongly in the upper Midwest.” Indiana has 21 such groups, Wisconsin and Ohio 13 each, and Illnois 10, according to SPLC figures. Michigan has a long history of such activity, according to SPLC official Heidi Beirich. Many of Michigan’s most prominent militia groups, including the Michigan Militia, came into being during the term in office of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. The Michigan Militia gained notoriety when the media found ties between it and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994, January 1995, 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995, and April 21, 1995). Militia activity in Michigan dwindled during the Bush presidency, but with Obama as president, has risen sharply. The Hutaree members were able to attract some members of less openly violent groups such as the Michigan Militia, though spokesmen for that group say that their organization rejects the Christian survivalist doctrine of the Hutaree. Beirich says, “The roots of militia activity are there [in Michigan], so if you want to organize something you know who to call.” Experts say a combination of factors contribute to the rise in militias: a troubled economy, changing roles within the traditional family structure, and shifts in the racial makeup of the country’s population. Berlet notes that shared anxiety among lower-to-middle-class people is often a catalyst for generating conspiracy theories, which have the potency to provoke people to take up arms and commit violence. “The candidacy of Obama—when it looked to become serious—prompted a lot of anxiety, and the anxiety continued to rise up to the inauguration,” says Berlet. “This is really getting out of hand,” Berlet says. “It’s a serious problem when people decide the solution to political problems lies in arming themselves and going underground.” He concludes: “While you can look at the Republicans and right wing and say, ‘You let things go too far,’ the Democrats use very demonizing language and aren’t interested in a policy debate, either. They’ve been interested in bashing the Republicans and right wing as crazy and ignorant. So it’s a mess.” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/30/2010] Former federal prosecutor Aitan Goelman, who helped convict McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing, suggests that the true danger of groups like the Hutaree and other militias is not from the groups themselves, but from the risk of these groups’ inflammatory declarations and actions sparking violence from so-called “lone wolves,” who like McVeigh are not necessarily active members of any such groups, but whose actions go farther than most groups ever intend. Goelman notes that in 1995, a Democrat was president, just as today; Clinton pushed through a controversial federal assault weapons ban (see September 13, 1994) and Obama has successfully implemented an equally controversial health care reform package; and, both then and now, extremists on the right are warning of an impending government takeover. “On the edges” of political discourse today, Goelman says, “you have rhetoric that carries over to extreme factions.” He continues, “Anytime you have group-think and this churning of ridiculous ideas back and forth, eventually you’ll get someone like McVeigh who’s going to say, ‘I’m going to take the mantle of leadership and fire the shot heard around the world and start the second American revolution.’” McVeigh considered the Michigan Militia “too moderate” and himself as a “man of action” who wanted to go farther than these groups. “I think [his associations with militias] put a battery in the pack,” Goelman says. “Some of this is fantasy. I think the idea that it is kind of fun to talk about a UN tank on your front lawn and the New World Order (see September 11, 1990)… but when someone blows up a building and kills 19 kids in a day-care center, it’s not so glamorous anymore,” he says, referring to the Oklahoma City incident. “The reality of murdering innocent people ends up far less glorious than striking the blow.” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/31/2010]

The anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) sends what the Anti-Defamation League calls “a virulently anti-Semitic DVD” to Jewish organizations and individuals around the nation, in what apparently is an escalation of its recent spate of attacks on Jews (see April 2009). The DVD also attacks President Obama, calling him the “anti-Christ,” and includes vehemently anti-gay and anti-Catholic rhetoric. [Anti-Defamation League, 2012]

Attorney Karl Crow, one of the leaders of the Themis project. [Source: Little Sis (.org)]Charles and David Koch, the oil billionaires who are behind the conservative tea party movement (see 1940 and After, 1977-Present, 1979-1980, 1981-2010, 1984 and After, 1997, Late 2004, Late 2004, October 2008, August 5, 2009, November 2009, July 3-4, 2010, August 30, 2010, September 2010, August 17, 2011 and October 4, 2011), begin to build a huge, nationwide database of conservative voters that they intend to use to drive conservative votes in elections, beginning with the 2012 Republican primaries and on to the November 2012 general presidential election. The database is nicknamed “Themis,” after the Greek goddess of divine law and order who imposes order on human affairs. According to The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, “the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views, a move that will further enhance the tycoons’ political influence and that could prove significant in next year’s presidential election.” Pilkington writes that Themis will bring together “the vast network of alliances” the brothers have formed over the last 20 years. [Politico, 10/10/2011; Guardian, 11/7/2011] Patrick Glennon of In These Times writes: “Email lists, phone numbers, and other contact information from disperse sources will merge into a comprehensive and streamlined political weapon. Purportedly, the database will also include extensive information relating to occupation and income levels, useful details for targeted fundraising initiatives.” [Politico, 10/10/2011] The database begins in April 2010, and is expected to be completed and functional by the end of 2011. Few details of the project are known; development leader Karl Crow, a Washington lawyer and longtime Koch advisor, refuses to speak about it, as do media representatives of Koch Industries. A member of a Koch affiliate organization who specializes in the political uses of new technology says in November 2011 that the project is almost ready to go live: “They are doing a lot of analysis and testing. Finally they’re getting Themis off the ground.” The project is intended to, Pilkington writes, “bring together information from a plethora of right-wing groups, tea party organizations, and conservative-leaning thinktanks. Each one has valuable data on their membership—including personal email addresses and phone numbers, as well as more general information useful to political campaign strategists such as occupation, income bracket, and so on. By pooling the information, the hope is to create a data resource that is far more potent than the sum of its parts. Themis will in effect become an electoral roll of right-wing America, allowing the Koch brothers to further enhance their power base in a way that is sympathetic to, but wholly independent of, the Republican Party.” The specialist tells Pilkington, “This will take time to fully realize, but it has the potential to become a very powerful tool in 2012 and beyond.” Themis is modeled in part on a project called Catalyst, a voter list that compiled and shared data about progressive groups and campaigns (see Late 2004 and After) and helped Democrats regain momentum after the 2004 defeat of presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA). [Politico, 10/10/2011; Guardian, 11/7/2011; In These Times, 11/8/2011] The 2008 Obama campaign used social media outreach techniques to augment Catalyst’s database. Themis apparently incorporates many of those social-media and other interactive features in its construction. [The Kernel, 12/19/2011] Josh Hendler, the former director of technology of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), tells Pilkington that Themis could do for the GOP what Catalyst helped do for the Democrats. “This increases the Koch brothers’ reach,” he says. “It will allow them to become even greater coordinators than they are already—with this resource they become a natural center of gravity for conservatives.” Mary Boyle of the political watchdog group Common Cause says of the reclusive brothers, “What makes them unique is that they are not just campaign contributors; they are a vast political network in their own right.” Themis will only deepen the Koch brothers’ control of American right-wing politics, Pilkington observes. Politico’s Kenneth Vogel writes that the Kochs intend to spend at least $200 million in 2012 on the Republican presidential campaign and other related activities. Pilkington writes: “Their potential to sway the electorate through the sheer scale of their spending has been greatly enhanced by Citizens United, last year’s controversial ruling by the US Supreme Court that opened the floodgates to corporate donations in political campaigns. The ruling allows companies to throw unlimited sums to back their chosen candidates, without having to disclose their spending. That makes 2012 the first Citizens United presidential election, and in turn offers rich pickings to the Koch brothers.” Themis will help the Kochs “micro-target” voters and potential fundraisers. Pilkington writes that it is reasonable to assume that Koch-funded lobbying organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are part of Themis, as are Koch-funded think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. “Between them, they have tentacles that extend to millions of voters,” Pilkington writes. Liberal reporter and blogger Lee Fang says the impact of Themis and the Koch funding on the 2012 presidential campaign will be immense: “This will be the first major election where most of the data and the organizing will be done outside the party nexus. The Kochs have the potential to outspend and out-perform the Republican Party and even the successful Republican candidate.” [Politico, 10/10/2011; Guardian, 11/7/2011; In These Times, 11/8/2011]

American Grand Jury logo. [Source: Post & Email (.com)]Walter Fitzpatrick, a Tennessee resident and leading member of a right-wing group called “American Grand Jury” (AGJ), walks into a county courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee, and informs the foreman of a grand jury, Gary Pettway, that he is under “citizen’s arrest.” Fitzpatrick tells Pettway: “I’m charging you with official misconduct. I’m placing you under arrest. You must now come with me.” AGJ has attempted and failed to convene a grand jury to investigate President Obama for voter fraud, a charge stemming from AGJ’s belief that Obama is not a natural-born US citizen (see October 8-10, 2008). Fitzpatrick says that Pettway has violated state laws governing the length of time a grand jury foreman can serve, and this precipitated his efforts to “arrest” him. The foreman refuses to accompany Fitzpatrick; instead, local law enforcement officials arrest Fitzpatrick for disorderly conduct, inciting to riot, disrupting a meeting, and resisting arrest. Fitzpatrick is jailed for several days. Fellow AGJ member Carl Swensson posts about Fitzpatrick’s incarceration on his Web site, telling site visitors that Fitzpatrick has “put his life on the line for us in very much the same fashion that our founding fathers did.” Swensson then asks: “What do you intend to do for him, and for this country? If we don’t come to his assistance, if we don’t get to the courthouse, if we don’t call him, if we don’t walk and march on that courthouse and that sheriff’s department, we don’t deserve the freedoms we have.… Get down there, get him out of jail, and make sure that justice is served.” [Carl Swensson, 4/5/2010; TPM Muckraker, 5/6/2010; Crooks and Liars, 5/6/2010] A militia member will later be arrested as part of an abortive attempt to “take over” the Madisonville courthouse and free Fitzpatrick (see April 20, 2010 and After).

Adam Skaggs, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice, writes that the controversial Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court (see January 21, 2010) is going to have a huge impact on judicial elections in 2010 and beyond. The record for the costliest judicial race in US history was set in a 2004 Illinois contest between Lloyd Karmeier and Gordon Maag, competing for the bench in the state’s 5th Judicial District. Between them, they raised and spent almost $9.4 million, more than double the previous national record, and an amount Karmeier later called “obscene.” Special interests on both sides of the election became heavily involved, with Karmeier’s corporate donations from such organizations as the US Chamber of Commerce and State Farm Insurance winning out over Maag’s donations from trial lawyers. After the election, Karmeier cast the deciding vote in a case that saved State Farm $500 million. An Ohio labor official said in commenting on the often-heavy spending on judicial races, “We figured out a long time ago that it’s easier to elect seven judges than to elect one hundred and 32 legislators.” The Citizens United case, Skaggs writes, will undoubtedly lead to corporate spending in judicial races like never before. That spending, he writes, “threatens to further erode the judiciary’s independence.” Even former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that “Citizens United has signaled that the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections might get considerably worse and quite soon.” Skaggs cites a number of races that will likely be targets for big corporate donors:
Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald is a probable target after striking down a 2005 law that placed caps on medical malpractice claims; Skaggs predicts the same corporate interests that helped Karmeier win a judicial seat will attempt to defeat Fitzgerald.
In Alabama, three seats currently held by Republicans are contested. One of these, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, is the likely recipient of heavy corporate funding, because, as Skaggs writes, groups like the Business Council of Alabama want Parker on the bench to protect conservative interests on economic issues. That corporate spending will likely outstrip spending on Democratic candidates, which will come primarily from liberal judicial groups and the state’s Democratic Party.
A 2006 study by the New York Times showed that judges routinely decide cases involving campaign donors, and in 70 percent of those cases, find in favor of those donors. One judge in the study voted on behalf of his donors 91 percent of the time. In Nevada, judges routinely accept huge donations even when running unopposed, often from donors who have cases pending before those judges. Nevada voters will decide in the November elections whether to scrap the system of an elected judiciary and move to an appointment system. Skaggs recommends that states should adopt public financing systems for judicial elections (four states—New Mexico, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin already do so) and eliminate entirely the concept of outside interests donating to judicial campaigns. He recommends stricter disclosure rules, so that the public knows who is contributing how much to judicial candidates. And, he writes, “states should institute new disqualification regulations to ensure that, if a judge is assigned to hear the case of a major campaign supporter, he or she must step aside and let a wholly impartial judge preside.” Otherwise, he writes: “The very legitimacy of the courts depends on the public believing that judges will treat every party without bias or favor. If, in the Citizens United era, states don’t adopt public financing and strong disclosure and disqualification rules, the judiciary’s credibility will dissolve—and quickly.” [New Republic, 4/5/2010]

On NBC’s Today show, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), widely expected to mount a presidential bid in 2012, tells an NBC audience that “tea party” leaders “understand that in the end their job is to help defeat Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.” Gingrich tells interviewer Matt Lauer that it would be a “disaster” if the “tea party” movement split the base of the Republican party in the November elections, and would “guarantee… the re-election of Nancy Pelosi as speaker.” Pelosi (D-CA) and Reid (D-NV) are the leaders of Democrats in the House and Senate, respectively. [Media Matters, 4/6/2010] Gingrich has not hesitated to vilify Pelosi in the media (see May 15, 2009).

The non-partisan FactCheck.org, an organization sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, examines a claim being promulgated in a recent series of chain emails. The emails claim that President Obama has the ability, under the newly passed health care reform legislation, to create his own “private army” of 6,000 soldiers. The email states in part: “Obama Just Got His Private Army. Were you aware of the fact that the health care bill created a civilian army? A Ready Reserve Corps for service in time of national emergency. All commissioned officers shall be citizens of the United States and shall be appointed without regard to the civil-service laws (which means they will not be sworn to uphold the Constitution) and compensated without regard to the Classification Act 2 of 1923, as amended. Remember when Obama said he wanted a ‘national security force’? Not the national guard, but a civilian one that has not sworn to uphold the Constitution?” The email references then-presidential candidate Obama’s July 2008 speech, where he advocated the creation of “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the US military. Obama was talking about strengthening organizations such as the Peace Corps, Americorps, the USA Freedom Corps, and the State Department’s foreign service arm. (Republican lawmakers such as Michele Bachmann have accused Obama of wanting to turn Americorps into “re-education camps” designed to brainwash American children—see March 31, 2009). Since then, some have insisted that Obama wants to create a privately operated “national security force” answerable only to himself. They believe that Section 5210 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care overhaul recently signed into law, gives Obama just such power. The US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps now has the power to create and eventually deploy a “Ready Reserve Corps,” under the control of the surgeon general and designed specifically to help the Public Health Service (PHS) respond quickly and effectively to emergencies such as natural disasters. The Commissioned Corps has integrated the former, quite small reserve corps into itself, expanding its numbers to some 6,600 personnel—mostly doctors, nurses, scientists, and medical professionals. The new Ready Reserve is intended to augment the Commissioned Corp when the government sends response teams to offer assistance in areas that are stricken by natural disasters such as floods or hurricanes, or in the case of sudden pandemic outbreaks of dangerous diseases such as H1N1. The Reserve Corps is still being formulated, but PHS officials anticipate the number of Reserve Corps members as being in the neighborhood of several thousand. Most will be public health professionals. Jerry Farrell, executive director of the Commissioned Officers Association, says that the Ready Reserve can help the PHS avoid situations such as what happened after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, when so many members of the regular and reserve corps were dispatched to New Orleans and other areas hit by the hurricane that “the corps discovered, for instance, that they had deployed a whole surgical clinic of the Indian Health Service.” FactCheck concludes “there is absolutely no support for this chain email’s speculation that uniformed members of the Public Health Service would be ordered to give ‘lethal injections’ (a.k.a. vaccinations) to ‘unworthy people.’” [FactCheck (.org), 4/7/2010]

Former federal judge Andrew P. Napolitano, a Fox News legal analyst since 1998, says in an interview with the right-libertarian magazine Reason that the 17th Amendment must be repealed. “Can an amendment to the Constitution itself be unconstitutional?” he asks the interviewer, and answers himself: “Yes, that one. If you read [Foundng Father James] Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention, they spent more time arguing over the make-up of the federal government and they came up with the federal table. There would be three entities at the federal table. There would be the nation as a nation, there would be the people, and there would be the states. The nation as a nation is the president, the people is the House of Representatives, and the states is the Senate, because states sent senators. Not the people in the states, but the state government. When the progressives, in the Theodore Roosevelt/Woodrow Wilson era, abolished this it abolished bicameralism, the notion of two houses. It effectively just gave us another house like the House of Representatives where they didn’t have to run as frequently, and the states lost their place at the federal table. That was an assault, an invasion on the infrastructure of constitutional government. Even kings in Europe had to satisfy the princes and barons around them. And that’s how they lost their power, or that’s how their power was tempered. Congress believes it doesn’t have to satisfy anybody. Its only recognized restraint is whatever it can get away with.” Napolitano also promotes the idea of nullification to expand states’ rights at the expense of the federal government (see October 14, 2010 and March 23, 2011). [Reason, 4/8/2010] The 17th Amendment provides for the direct election of US senators, rather than their selection by state legislators, in part to eliminate cronyism and corruption in their ascension to the US Capitol. It was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Recently, far-right Republicans and tea party activists have begun calling for its repeal, joined by some members of Congress. [Media Matters, 9/7/2010; Legal Information Institute, 2011] Napolitano has previously advocated repealing the 16th Amendment (see April 28, 2009). In 2009, former Republican Governor Mike Huckabee called the 17th Amendment “one of the dumbest things we ever did in this country” (see October 16, 2009).

Pakistan’s National Assembly passes a set of constitutional reforms that greatly reduces the powers of President Asif Ali Zardari. The unanimous vote turns the office of president into a ceremonial head of state and transfers powers to the prime minister and parliament. Zardari himself backs the reforms. Experts claim the move could help make Pakistan more democratic and less likely to return to military rule. Zardari will still hold considerable power in Pakistan because he is also head of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has a parliamentary majority. Also, he has the loyalty of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, who is also a member of the PPP. [Reuters, 4/8/2010]

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin, in a screenshot taken from his March 30 statement as recorded on YouTube. [Source: credit YouTube / CBS News]Army doctor Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lee “Terry” Lakin is ordered to face a court-martial for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. Lakin claims that because President Obama is not a US citizen, he does not recognize Obama’s authority to give orders as commander in chief. Lakin, ordered this week to report to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, refused to go to the Kentucky Army base, and instead went to the Pentagon, where he was confronted by his brigade commander, Colonel Gordon Roberts, a Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient. Roberts read Lakin his Miranda rights and told him he faces a court-martial; Lakin’s Pentagon building pass and government laptop computer were seized. Lakin faces a dishonorable discharge if convicted. On a March 30 video statement posted on YouTube, Lakin said: “I believe all servicemen and women, and the American people, deserve the truth about President Obama’s constitutional eligibility to the office of the presidency and the commander in chief.… Seeking out public office, especially the highest in our land, means you must uphold the Constitution, Mr. President, and confirm your eligibility.… The minimal invasion to any politician’s privacy from having to show an original, signed birth certificate is far less than the harms to our country by someone not qualified whose election would thus subvert the law and the truth.” In the video, he promised to “disobey” orders to deploy, and acknowledged he was “inviting” a court-martial. Lakin won a Bronze Star for meritorious service during a previous tour in Afghanistan. [MSNBC, 4/13/2010; New York Daily News, 4/14/2010; Politico, 4/14/2010; CBS News, 4/15/2010] Lakin’s legal defense fund is being coordinated by a “birther” group called the American Patriot Foundation. According to Army spokesman George Wright, Lakin will be reassigned to duty at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington pending an investigation into whether he violated two provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: missing the movement of a unit and violating an order. [Politico, 4/14/2010]

Fox News host Glenn Beck, touting his “Plan” for government entitlement spending, tells his viewers: “Tomorrow, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and begin. We’re going to cut health care. Right now, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are 40 percent of our budget. They’re going away. It’s going to be ugly, a lot of crying, but America needs a cure.” [Media Matters, 4/12/2010; Media Matters, 9/7/2010]

Lawyer and “birther” activist Orly Taitz (see November 12, 2008 and After, March 13, 2009, July 8-16, 2009, August 1-4, 2009, September 16-21, 2009, October 13-16, 2009, October 29, 2009, April 16, 2010, July 7 - August 16, 2010, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011) is “disinvited” to an upcoming Tax Day Tea Party rally in Pleasanton, California. Several Republican political candidates, including Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, are scheduled to speak at the rally, but after they complain about Taitz’s inclusion, she is removed from the slate of speakers. Bridget Melson, founder and president of the Pleasanton Tea Party, says the organization had been “getting calls from candidates like crazy.” She explains: “It’s not worth it. She’s too controversial. This is not what the tea party is about at this point.” Taitz herself is running for California secretary of state, a position that would presumably give her the power to block President Obama from being on the ballot in 2012 if she were to win the post. Fiorina, along with a representative of Senate candidate Chuck DeVore, and several congressional and state legislative candidates are scheduled to speak at the Pleasanton rally. Josh Trevino, a DeVore spokesperson, says, “I can say emphatically that the Chuck DeVore campaign and Chuck DeVore himself strongly disapproves of Orly Taitz and the crazy theories she continues to advance.” Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund says, “President Obama is absolutely eligible for the presidency and is a natural-born United States citizen.” She notes that Fiorina staunchly opposes most of Obama’s policies. At least one scheduled speaker, House candidate John Dennis, told organizers that if Taitz were retained on the slate, he would withdraw entirely. “The presence of a discredited publicity seeker on the same platform with patriotic Americans distorts the focus of our movement, distracts from our common message, and gives ammunition to those who continue to question our legitimacy,” Dennis told organizers. At least one rally attendee, Tom Del Beccaro of the California Republican Party, says Taitz’s questions about Obama’s citizenship may be valid: “I certainly don’t have enough information to decide that (see June 13, 2008). I’ve never seen yay or nay either way, so how could I know?” Taitz has caused controversy in her current race for secretary of state, questioning the legitimacy of her Republican primary opponent, real estate entrepreneur Damon Dunn, and accusing Republicans of supporting Dunn over her solely because he is African-American. [Los Angeles Times, 4/13/2010]