Federal agents investigating the attempted bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane have found a pile of new evidence abandoned in a remote area near the U.S.-Canadian border.

Forensic comparison tests are now being conducted at the FBI lab on 75 items to see if they are tied to a “weapon of mass destruction” case brought last month against Kevin William Harpham, a 36-year-old unemployed ex-soldier.

Seizure of the 75 items on March 25 was first publicly mentioned Thursday at a U.S. District Court hearing in Spokane but federal prosecutors gave no particulars other than to say a search warrant wasn’t required.

“The items were seized in connection with the investigation,’’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Harrington told Senior U.S. District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush, who asked when FBI reports would be provided to the defendant’s attorneys.

Hatewatch has subsequently learned a search warrant wasn’t needed because the items were left as abandoned property in a remote area where firearms or homemade explosives could have been tested or assembled. The location was not far from the suspect’s home, sources said. ( continue to full post… )

An Arizona jury has handed down a second death sentence in the murder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter, who were targeted by border vigilantes two years ago as part of a plot to steal money and fund an increasingly militant operation against immigrants along the border.

Jason Bush was sentenced to death Wednesday, a month after being convicted of murdering Raul Junior Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia Flores. Bush, known as “Gunny,” was part of Minutemen American Defense, founded by Shawna Forde.

Led by Forde, Bush and another man, Albert Gaxiola, went into the Flores home in Arivaca, about 50 miles southwest of Tucson, believing that Flores was a drug dealer and would have plenty of cash on hand. Prosecutors charged that Bush was the gunman who shot Flores dead before shooting his wife in the leg. He then walked over to Brisenia, who was sleeping with her puppy on the couch, and shot her twice in the head at close range. ( continue to full post… )

Starting today, the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is holding its fifth annual Hold Their Feet to the Fire (HFTF) event. Fifty talk radio hosts are in Washington, D.C., for what FAIR calls “the largest immigration ‘town hall’ of the airwaves to date.” The hosts will broadcast from near the Capitol, chiefly to demand that members of Congress and other officials take a harder line against immigration. FAIR supporters will also be on hand to lobby elected officials for anti-immigrant legislation that will “relieve many of the burdens that mass immigration – legal and illegal – imposes on the American people.” ( continue to full post… )

The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), long listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its demonizing and false propaganda directed at LGBT people, is casting its net of hate even wider.

The organization has created a new grassroots campaign called “The Task Force to Stop Shariah Law in America.” According to one of the latest TVC fundraising letters, the group seeks to “ban Radical Islam’s Shariah Law in every state in America.” Rev. Lou Sheldon, TVC’s founder and chairman, claims in one of the enclosures in the fundraising packet that radical Islam is “subverting our Constitution” and will place “you and your family under Shariah Law.” Also in the packet is a “survey” asking if respondents are aware that the Shariah takeover plot is already in full swing. ( continue to full post… )

Anti-Muslim activists are walking an ideological tightrope, condemning the actions of the Florida pastor whose burning of the Koran on March 20 set off murderous riots last weekend in Afghanistan, while condemning President Obama for not emphatically reaffirming the pastor’s right to do what he did.

Terry Jones, the non-ordained “pastor” of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., held a mock “trial” of the Koran two weeks ago, during which the holy book of Islam was found “guilty” of several “charges.” The stunt drew little attention domestically, but Jones posted a video on his website showing a Koran being burned as part of its “sentence.” The online spectacle didn’t escape the notice of Muslim leaders in Afghanistan.

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President Obama’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya to cripple dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s ability to combat rebels trying to topple his regime didn’t sit well with two American black nationalist leaders who consider the long-time strongman a friend and ally.

“Now you may laugh, but in a few days, something is going to wipe the smile and the laugh from your face,” Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), warned Thursday during a rambling press conference at the group’s headquarters in Chicago. The uprisings in the Arab world coupled with the tsunami in Japan signify that divine spaceships waiting to avenge black suffering will soon arrive, Farrakhan said. “Brother Barack’s” decision to back the Libyan opposition against Qaddafi – who in 1972 lent NOI’s leadership $3 million to buy the headquarters from which Farrakhan broadcast his speech – is only going to hasten the UFOs’ arrival.

NOI theology has it that just before the biblical end of times, believers will be whisked away in small spaceships called “Baby Wheels” to a giant “Mother Wheel,” where they will live while other divine ships eradicate those who remain on earth with enormous bombs, explains Mattias Gardell in In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. ( continue to full post… )

Is Terry Jones a mass murderer?

Probably not, under American law. But does he bear moral responsibility for the deaths today of at least a dozen people in Afghanistan, after mobs enraged by his March 20 burning of the Koran stormed a United Nations building and killed men and women inside?

That’s an entirely different question.

Jones is the wretched “pastor” who tried to hold an “International Burn a Koran Day” at the height of the Ground Zero controversy in New York last summer. He was finally persuaded not to do so after high officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, personally asked him not to, citing the firestorm he predicted would erupt. ( continue to full post… )